I really like his "tanging of the blade" when he puts the tang on so he can hold the blade in HT. He does that in 30 seconds...which is amazing. He even notches the tang, so he can snap it off clean after HT.
The other really neat thing was the "Nail Nick" forging. No need for a fly cutter for this chap.
Imagine being able to repetitively form an exact copy of these two folder blades by eye over and over again and have all of them fit together in a knife. I know there is extra metal for the grinder and the cutler, but these are really forged to a close tolerance. My hat is off to this fellow.
Sam, I am sure that he made 336 small parts in a day, but those were not blades like this. Small parts could be lanyard rings, backspring blanks, spacers, etc. The guys were commenting on his making 336 blades a day...which is not what he said.
I was using eight hours as a standard ( see below), even at sixteen hours it would defy logic to forge, harden, and then temper 336 blades. In sixteen hours, you would have needed to take a pee/crap, eat some food, drink some water, take breaks, etc. That would drop the rate to about 2.5 minutes per completed blade .... IIRC, a good nail maker would average out at one to one and a half nails per minute in a days work....and they were making simple unhardened nails.
I went back and watched the video a couple more times, and he spends about seven minutes doing the two blades. In that time, they had several jumps in time (heating time in the forge) and did not show the HT of the second blade. Even at that, he is amazing with his hammer control and accuracy.
As to the length of a work day, even though we all like the stories Grandpa told about walking to work uphill both ways, and the lore of 16 hour days, six days a week in the factory .... this is pretty much the realm of the movies, unless you were a farm worker in the rural South.
In the UK, the labor laws got started right after the industrial revolution. By the mid 1800's, the law was 10 hours a day for six days max. Few worked more than 50 hour weeks. By 1906, when Albert Craven first started at the knife shop, the day was pretty much set at 8 hours for most factories and industries. After WW1 the law became 40 hour workweeks, overtime pay for any work above 40 hours, and a six day max week, with 12 days paid vacation. On top of that you got health and accident insurance, and a retirement...all guaranteed by law.
When Albert started work, jobs like his were called "contracted". That meant that you signed a contract between you and the company agreeing to apprentice with them for a period of time ( ten to fifteen years was common), and they guaranteed you a job, benefits, and continued employment if the first contract period worked out. Silver watches were often given at the time of the first contract completion with the date engraved. You would then sign a new contract with the company, or seek higher wages in the industry elsewhere. Most people stayed with the same company. At the end of the second term ( often twenty-five or thirty years) you received a gold watch with the dates of the entire period engraved. You then became a pensioner and were paid a retirement for life, unless you wanted to stay on until you were around 60 ( which many did). Later laws set the age at 65 in the UK.
