Well, each to his own and all that Jack. I wonder if you got beyond Part 1 if you found no info on correct filing procedures, metals, chalking, etc, etc? But yes, it's a long post, and no one said you have to read it all, which I think it's pretty obvious that you haven't. Thanks for the comment anyway.
Hi I did read it but not past part 1....I scanned (speed read) much of the first part and admired the effort and sketches and your intent to educate...As a once-was Tech teacher and remedial trades teacher who helped lads find their brilliance I thought it great....however I wondered whether it might be good to hit the practical and then the details...Not all folk have the really profound trades and tooling background taught post war to 1960's ... I thought it good your reminder about not using for opening paint cans etc...and not as hammers...they send hard ships very fast!!..
I look forward to the rest in your series and am downloading it for re-reading.
Some of my 'why??"
On my point, when I did my original trade it was "electrical fitter mechanic". A much more detailed course than the last 50 years especially with motors but really across the board we had to construct tools and then the crowning part was to build a commutator motor having only the shell.
We were given the rough gear and specs. The copper bar had to be filed to a trapezium 17.5 degrees from memory (thus my memories of stance, attack, chalk and file card!!) cut into segments , the tapered commutator casing made and screw threaded on lathe, the forms made for the windings and windings made and fitted. The segments were fitted with the handmade mica partitions and all assembled.
I particularly recall mine as with a week to go I was soldering the segments to the windings...uh....what's this??...have I missed soldering a segment in assembly....Oh NO!!...I was a segment short in the commutator. , why I don't know. Panic, then 'has to be done'.
I had to un-solder, disassemble and redo the entire commutator. I made it in time, two hours to go. That was in NSW.
In Qld they have the gall to allow electrical mechanics to be called 'fitter mechanics'...
Not only are "about 75% during my teaching time there heart-ached by some 'capstone' examiners as 'should not be licensed...but we have to to clear classrooms'. Later we find some electrocuted.
None of those 'fitter mechanics' ever (officially) saw a lathe or file during the course but on my enquiry (as was also my task) most of them had not even completed the work required of apprenticeship.
Most students ..not 60% 'most' but>96% 'most' had no employer details done for years ...Their employers then bodgied-up reports over a week or so after my demands for their apprentice's records. I reprimanded some for not trading apprentices with other organisations to actually get them experienced and not just be wire-jerkers.
I gave the only safety lecture of which I heard in my time in Qld and I recall my astonishment when in 3 x 3rd year workshop classes of over 20 in each only one lad had ever connected up a simple breaker board. Why ??.."the boss says we'll take too long. Mon Dieu! Mon DIEU!!
There were more brilliant teachers than I but I was a dog at a bone and outspoken ...especially during their appalling lack of safety during SARS, My complaints and efforts to turn out safer, sounder apprentices instead of just passing failures saw me accused of stealing deputy principal's book ...ludicrous but I'd stood up to him....then on a rigged interview which was reported as a complete lie... out of a job. There was not a single complaint in work interviews about my performance... It was a kabal.
It's now changed but how much I don't know.I do know I have been thanked in the street by some of my students....including one I tossed out of the class then helped him to get his act together.
My own story which perhaps drives me?...I'd served my time (1960's) in a large international company. Forty years later a boss I often worked before being given my own sites (before I finished my apprenticeship) told my daughter "the apprentice-master said your father was the best apprentice to ever go through the company".
I spent much time in 'tune and test'which was the 'elite' and I saw it as awe inspiring in a way...shy but solid, like a theatre- nurse when working with tradesmen. I never saw myself up with those 'flash rats' apprentices I so admired who had fancy sports-cars or one a huge new Ford 500 Fairlane and 'wow' girlfriends.
I would work 24 hour shifts when I could to buy a parts for my Buick 8 rebuilds, Riley 2.0 L's, Morgan, and scores of others. That was a sickness, but I became very skilled through the demands of it and my insistence I modified engines completely (eg...line boring, static and dynamic balancing, distributor advance springs to match the new performance, suspension cluych and brake mods to match it all , and so on)
I file- finished to blue-print mating surfaces including my ( personally assembled) stroked Lotus escort. I could enumerate other technical feats requiring savvy and engineering excellence.... which I just saw as "how to fix this". I'd do any necessary research but mostly just got on with it...solutions were clear. I refused and still refuse to use silicon. So.... I am opinionated about tools, use and safety as is horribly evident.
I was given a year off my five years for passes and performance. That was 54 years ago. The electrical 'world' has become much more micro-tech and some of the lads brilliant at it but the use of tools and the 'wit' and 'panoramic view' so important on construction sites is rare, here or overseas. I studied electronics and communications and electrical engineering and pursued other trades as well as a Masters degree.
It all comes really from the profound excellence of what I was taught and exposed-to as an apprentice. Thus as said I admire your effort to impart excellence....my comment was perhaps driven by whether the low level concentration "X-Y" gens can stick with your long explanations of the detail and important mineralogy with conclusions later.
Although condemned for it at Uni, my reports in Defence during Vietnam were always constructed with ' recommendations' first...Decision makers need recommendation before seeing whether they are interested. At Uni they use a close cousin called 'Abstract' but don't realise it was little different from my military recommendation-conclusion style (though abstract is not a conclusion it uses some factors of conclusion).
Whilst I have not followed my own advice here (chuckles) to get interest in the body of any formal submission..which yours really is...the first three paragraphs capturing the reader's 'imagination' can be a winner. In thousands of dissertations and perhaps 30 theses I read during my Masters those properly abstracted were the best. You don't have to read many pages or the conclusion to see 'value'....and if I read 1000 in-toto or as far as I needed...I'd have dismissed hundreds of others. Undisciplined abstracts (for example introducing 'in text citations') were a 'warning' and I argued that case on Researchgate against other academics. I'm too medically battered at present including with asbestosis and arthritis and constant pain to take on a PhD so....I'm treading water.
Hopefully I have said 'we are on the same track'. Hopefully I am not s-t boring and hopefully I become a warmer person than I may otherwise seem.
