Posted on 05/03/2016 4:23:41 PM PDT by DuncanWaring
Was talking to a recently-retired computer-science professor today; he said in the last few years he's been seeing students showing up in college who have literally
Never.
Used.
A.
Screwdriver.
He has been teaching a higher-level class in automating control of a train setup.
Part of the project is to assemble a train car from a kit.
These kids have no idea how to do it.
By the way, there are many YouTube video tutorials on working with carbon fiber and fiberglass.
Carbon fiber is a little lighter, a little stronger per pound and much more expensive than fiberglass.
Girl skills have vanished too.
I know how to sew. I learned about 25 years ago that I had to keep that a secret, because when word gets out, women I barely know will ask me to do free alterations.
It used to be that only the men didn’t know how to sew a button on a shirt. Now almost nobody knows.
Didn’t learn to stitch-weld first?
Obviously not, he had a vent pipe crawling up the wall about 10 degrees off vertical. It didn’t take a draftsman’s eye to see it either, lol.
Heck, I learned how to sew a button on a shirt and darn a sock when I was about six years old.
But it was purty!
Sounds like the insomniac, dyslexic agnostic - lay awake all night wondering if there was a Dog.
I saw some of the younger people on some recent tv shows, they sure aren’t afraid of power tools though, lol. Me on the other hand, I use as many hand tools as I can regardless. A coping saw is my favorite tool, lol, used one today to put up a birdhouse for the Bluebird. He embarrassed me today. His old house was a disaster over the winter and I had planned putting him up a new one. He landed on the cross wondering where his old house was. I got her done. We live near a church, it was appropriate.
During the ‘90s, I was acquainted with a member of such an international team that worked to predict future trends and make reports. He was a former high school teacher and rugby coach in New Zealand. Very nice fellow who visited our Library of Congress once a year. They analyzed probabilities of wars, natural disasters, economic effects and other possible future events. He sometimes even visited some very scary places (e.g., mosques in volatile regions).
I bet there aren’t 100 girls under the age of 30 who know how to use a thimble.
Hey, you’re right about the desirability of a manual transmission but please cut the profanity. /
Screws are better than nails.
I use a microfiber cloth.
My ‘86 Nissan PU is just about ready for its first replacement clutch — 102,000 mostly city miles. I’m still driving it but if you put it in a high gear on a hill and give it a big hit of throttle you can see 200 or so RPM of slippage. Some clutches go higher mileage but they’re usually doing it on a lot of highway miles.
That’s great mileage for a clutch in the city. You’re a good driver for vehicle endurance. I drive a vehicle with nearly 300,000 miles on it and am about to rebuild everything.
...been looking at some info on engine rebuilding to see if there are any useful, new methods. Nothing’s changed on fault-testing, reaming, honing, lapping and replacing internals as far as I can tell. Some of the newer engines’ heads don’t appear to benefit much from porting and polishing, though. That much has changed. Looks like they’re already nearly optimal, like motorcycles.
Won’t be long before changing a tire, changing out the flush valve in a toilet, putting a lock set on a door, changing out a light switch, etc. - those things we learned by watching our dads do them - will be lost arts requiring the services of a hired handyman or repair service.
When I was back in graduate school I had one professor who was proud that he didn’t know how to change a tire on his car - some people consider it a sign of superior intelligence to be let’s say manually challenged.....
Watch out if you work on late 60’s or early 70’s Chrysler cars and you’re changing lug nuts.
This was just minimal one-off connect a lead or two stuff, and not in an industrial setting, where air flow/hoods might be incorporated to minimize accumulated exposure.
Obviously, a lot more is known about the risk of metals poisoning than in days of yore. I remember back in the days of regular lead-tin 60/40 solder that some engineers would light their cigarettes (which they could smoke in the lab) on their soldering irons.
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