SHOP ML
Page 49
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
• Underneath the arches. . . We approach the Nineties with nostalgia for the Forties a popular entertainment motif and in these late Eighties there remain plenty of workshops rented from British Rail where the fitters could use Bud Flanagan's fur coat to keep warm. If these premises are not, for the most part, part of the Black Economy, their technology is too often a grey area.
Many archway and backyard shops doubtless do a good job down to a price and that's needed. There remain areas where Britain must leave the Dad's Army era. Look at the following quote. It comes from the Garage Equipment Association newsletter reporting Kevin Hayward of PPG Industries at the GEA's dinner: In nearly every other market, he said, cellulose "went out with the ark," but in the UK it still accounted for nearly half of the paint uses. The reason for this, he said, was cellulose tolerated conditions found in the damp, dirty caverns used by body shops under the arches. The new materials — hard, durable and glossy — demanded good, clean conditions and required specific safety measures against the inhalation of spray mist.
• Mayvil Chemicals joint managing director John Rowsell has a vested interest in the matter, but we must come clean and say he is straight on when he points out that buying the cheapest chemicals offered in road transport is not always the best policy in the long term.
There is a difference between a product which just removes dirt and one which just removes a thin layer of paint along with the dirt. We can see the difference every day on the roads between sparkling lorries projecting a good image and those with flattened paintwork and fading logos.
Mayvil was a co-sponsor with Croda Paints and Boalloy at a cleaning seminar held at Solihull — claimed to be Britain's first ever on the subject of correct cleaning.