Steel City maestro on working four decades as a forger at Portland Works

One of few artisan steelmakers left, Mr Cole is based at Portland Works, in Sheffield, where he started at Wigfull Tools aged 14, and “never left”.

His parents had suggested that rather than Mr Cole fulfilling his desire to become a mechanic, he should “go and help (owner) Eric (Wigfull)” on his school holiday.

Eventually he took over, and was employing 12 people when the recession struck and mass cheap imports of the stonemason and builders’ tools his firm made started rolling in.

The business shut down, but Mr Cole, who was part of the campaign to keep the former cutlery factory in Highfield open when it was under threat of being converted to flats, was determined to continue.

In early 2013, Portland Works was bought by nearly five hundred people, through one of the country's largest community share issues.

These days more than 30 small businesses are now based in the Grade II* listed building, including rug and guitar makers, and a gin distillery.

Many of the tools Andy makes go to America and Canada to craftsmen such as professional woodturners "who want to turn really elaborate things".

Mr Cole is a forger – which he says is rather like being a blacksmith. It can be over 100 degrees in the summer in his workshop.

“The machines I work on are mechanical, they date back to the building being built in 1878. I have a blacksmith’s hearth but my main thing is making specialised tools.

"It's actually seeing something being produced out of a piece of steel.

"It’s only a tool, but it’s still someone handling it and making other things out of that tool you have made.

"It’s just in my blood, I love it.”

He has created huge number of tools - just one of the hundreds of items he was making he was turning out at a rate of 500 a day for more than 25 years.

Such a hard physical job has left him with a catalogue of injuries, including "white finger" - a disorder of the blood supply to the fingers - and his hearing is "not 100 per cent".

But Mr Cole, 58, says that is “just one of those things”.

His four children don’t want to follow in his footsteps, but he is hoping that one of his young apprentice blacksmiths one day will take the business on.