The World's First Roll-In

Chris Topp’s rolling mill, 2010

We thought we'd like to hold a meeting at our workshop at Tholthorpe near York. There's some pretty unusual
equipment in there that we use most days for rolling wrought iron, and a number of people had expressed a desire to come and play. Hence the Roll-In. About sixty smiths booked in, some with their partners, so we were a bit apprehensive about fitting them all in. As it happened, they all behaved themselves, even with the beer in them during the evening hog roast in the workshop.

As there wasn't any camping - we are on an industrial estate —we hired the village hall and quite a few slept on the floor. We had eight people from France, two from Belgium and four from Ireland, and thanks to them for taking the trouble!

The theme of the weekend was of course hot rolling of pretty well anything twisted minds could come up with —mostly twisted bars as it turned out. We were hoping we could learn something about what can and cannot be done with a rolling mill, and we did.

Because it's a dangerous piece of kit, Andy and Mike who normally work the mill were on hand to feed the monster. Sure enough, as the weekend progressed the suggestions became more inventive. The effect of rolling pierced stainless plate into a thick mild steel plate was interesting and someone had the idea of rolling a motorcycle chain and things made out of wire.

Stephane Chevalier —always the inventor —discovered that he could forge weldmesh and in this most unpromising of materials made a really nice model of the Empire State Building. He couldn't quite manage the Eiffel Tower which some would have seen as more appropriate, but I expect he's working on it.

There was a lot of random forging as well of course and after we brought proceedings to a halt on the Sunday at five o'clock by turning off the power, we had a nice bird's nest. This isn't a euphemism for anything, we really did have a giant bird's nest, with a giant bird to go in it, thanks to the French contingent. The bird and nest now sit five metres high on a cast iron column we had left over from a bandstand and stands on the industrial estate as our first piece of industrial sculpture.

PS. The galvanizers refused to treat it as they were afraid bits would fall off —no spirit of adventure some people —so we put it up rusty, and do you know, it's the perfect colour for a bird's nest.

Thanks everybody