In no way are we suggesting the life of the legendary movie archaeologist in any way resembles our day-to-day activities at Standard Engineering – we are almost never attacked by Nazi’s, or for that matter, dropped into a chamber of snakes.  However we do face the challenge of identifying ancient artefacts.

We are often called upon to uplift machinery a customer wishes to trade-in, or supply parts for a finisher of a, shall we say, seasoned vintage.  Given the antique nature of a number of our more equally seasoned employees, we can often provide more information, and in some cases, parts for machines than really should be the case.

There can’t be many industries where machines that should have been pulped to make parts for Spitfires are still used, and customers are sometimes disappointed when they are told that the parts are no longer available, because the machine that used to make them was given over to the production of  bullets which helped to bring about the end of the Third Reich.

Sometimes we can help, whilst other times we have to hold our hands up and respectfully suggest a slightly newer machine, maybe one that is only 20-30 years old, may be the best way forward!

On occasion we are reduced to pouring over old photographs such as this Photograph of the 1937 Shoe and Leather Fair in London attended by Whitfield Hodgson & Brough.  Unsurprisingly it features models of finishers and stitchers we have taken out of shops in the last year or so – as seen by the included photographs.

Occasionally we have donated items or information to small museums.  Unfortunately there are few shoe making and shoe repairing museums out there to absorb the enormous amount of ancient machinery we acquire, and the vast majority have had to be scrapped. Unlike the Indiana Jones films, we have no enormous warehouse where we can box these items and store them forever.  Or, if not forever, at least until the sequel – “Indiana Standard and the missing Geneva stitchers"