I had my moment

[ladylola]

A couple of weeks ago whilist on a re-enactment I had a conversation with an engineer. It started with him heaping critisim on a reproduction wheel barrow I had made. It was a copy of a medieavel wheelbarrow found in manuscripts and if you are interested there is a picture on the tools forum under "which builders wheelbarrow" or something like that. He started saying it was badly designed because all the weight of the load is behind the wheel rather than over it and despite several people telling him he was wrong because the design keeps the center of gravity low, the height makes it easy to load and having long handles gives extra leverage he was adamant that he was right.
He then started on what I was doing at the time. I was dressing a small tree trunk into a square post with an axe, well two axes. "When I was an apprentice " he said "we were given a piece of round bar about six inches long and had to turn it into square stock with only chisels and files"
"We had to get it accurate to within two thousandths of an inch too" he added "you don't get that with timber do you?"
This is when I had my moment to get back and I said "Nah two thou's no good to us at all we have to get it spot on"
I really couldn't believe he hadn't heard that one before but he hadn't and then seemed to remember some pressing engagement and walked off

 

[pred]

Interesting story, reminded me of the Triumph BSA group not quite so far back in history though, early 70s more or less, churning out the same old bikes over a couple of decades, measuring in thousands of an inch +/- 5 thou for the main bearing, then along come those pesky Nips from the "Land of the Rising Sun" and they are measuring in MICRONS the rest is history.

Great Britain had had its moment.

 

[oilboffin]

My mate was a maintenance fitter in a foundry and whilst working in the machine shop said something which the Forman replied to with " you won't understand you're not a centre lathe turner" my mate was fuming and then two days later he was back in the same shop and was explaining to this Forman why this machine had broken down to which the Forman said. " well I didnt think that would cause it to break down " to which my mate replied
" you wouldn't know that you're not a maintenance fitter " I loved it