About

Geoff Metcalfe

Hi, and thanks for visiting the website.

My name is Geoff Metcalfe.  I am 58 years old, married with two grown up children, two grandchildren and a passion for motorbikes.  This includes all aspects of riding, racing (watching!) and engineering.

From a very early age I had a great interest in taking things apart, and putting them back together as something else, or using the parts for a different function than they were originally intended.

After leaving school at 15, I was employed as an engineering apprentice by Platt Brothers of Oldham, Lancashire.  Platt Brothers was the largest manufacturer of textile machinery in the world and employed thousands of people.  It had it’s own foundry, plating rooms and the largest main shop floor I have ever seen with hundreds of ‘semi-skilled’ workers on capstan lathes.

At that time, despite being a technical apprentice, with intention to go into the drawing office, I like all apprentices had to spend a minimum of 6 months in the apprentice training school.  For technical apprentices like me, this was followed by 3 to 6 months in various departments throughout the factory for the following 3 years.  The idea being that draughtsmen/designers would then have a far fuller understanding of the production processes involved in the items of equipment they were designing.  It was this basic grounding in sound engineering practises and principles that would stand me in such good stead throughout the rest of my career.

I left Platt Brothers and joined the Royal Air Force working as an aircraft engineer, ending my time specializing in non-destructive testing.  I was also lucky that during the 22 years spent in the air force, they paid and supported me during my studies for an engineering degree.

On leaving the air force, I went back to my general engineering roots, but this time with a firm producing specialist non-destructive testing machines.  I was employed as a project engineer and then went on to run production, design and manufacturing.  Since then I have held a variety of positions in engineering management.  However, my roots have always remained in the ‘hands on’ approach to engineering.  This is reflected in my love of designing/manufacturing as many of the parts of the bikes that I make myself.