Me, I love seeing how things
work. Give me a bit of unknown machinery with cogs and drive shafts, pistons or
springs, pivots or chains and I’m mesmerised.
Some people like crosswords or
Sudoku, which is OK as brain fodder, but with no tactile experience. You need to feel the delicate balance of a
lever or the tension of a spring; in addition to the brain workout of wondering
what it is for or how does it work.
I remember learning to use a
centre lathe and being set the task of producing a perfectly spherical ball
from a round bar of brass – to within 5 thousands of an inch of design size.
What the instructor didn’t mention was that brass heats up quickly when
machined. However perfectly round the
first couple of attempts, they were always too small when the time came for
inspection.
Why? Because measuring them with a micrometer
whilst in the lathe, (not turning, of course) was a waste of time until the
metal cooled down. Spot on in the chuck could
be 2 thou. smaller by the time the ball had stood waiting for that crafty
inspection.
Working with capstan lathes was
all about changing the gearing cogs to fit the speed of the material being
worked on. But I don’t expect anyone in
manufacturing companies have to do this anymore. No doubt the computer can out-perform my best
results to produce a brass ball exact to .0000001 of an inch, when cold, time
after time.
The nobility of engineers were
the pattern makers, those master craftsmen who could produce anything from
scratch, to a zero tolerance off the plan, using eye and hand as much as the
finest measuring tools. I expect most of them are long gone with the arrival of
Computer Aided Design and 3D printing.
My worry is that all these skills
are being lost. But does it matter? After all we lost the skills of tens of
thousands of blacksmiths when horses gave way to the internal combustion engine
and mass produced fire pokers and tongs. Why should I be concerned when what
replaces these skilled craftsmen are quicker, more accurate and cheaper production
methods?
Perhaps it is also the unforeseen
consequential loss of the art of mending things, and with it the great feeling
of personal satisfaction that something that was useless is now restored to
full working order at little or no cost. All thanks to the combination of
experience, skill and the right tools.
Give me an industrial museum with
great clunky bits of metal turning, moving or reciprocating. The air laced with
the smell of hot oil, and the noise of motors whirring and banging, and I’ll be
young again, with a 3/16ths Whitworth, chrome molybdenum spanner and a set of
feeler gauges sticking out of my back pocket, and that adolescence confidence
that I can fix anything.
What do you think?
