How it all got started

[mklotz]

Marv and all,

The lathe experience paid-off and helped launch my eventual career.

All the experience I gained in those shop courses and in my Dad's basement shop helped immensely in the course of my education and career as well.

In a high school AP biology course, I built a perfusion machine to keep rabbit kidneys alive without the benefit of a rabbit while I studied the effect of various contaminants in the blood stream. This involved building pumps, both blood and water, an oxygen diffusion gauge, and cannulae for connecting the kidney arteries and ureter to the machine.

The machine is long gone but I still have my documentation of the work including a hand-drawn sketch of the machine. I don't have a scanner big enough for it but I took this picture with it pinned to a window for maximum contrast; you should be able to get the idea of how it worked...

In college, one of the physics labs required us to build a radiation detector tube, turning metal and blowing glass. It was my first experience with making pass-through-glass wiring. I can remember helping several Bronx High School of Science graduates with the lathe work. They had grown up in New York apartments and had never seen anyone except the apartment house super use tools.

My senior project in college involved superconducting solenoids which meant more lathe work to make the coil forms and associated field measurement instrumentation . I was studying various properties of the Niobium-Zirconium wire in use then. These fist-sized coils could generate extremely intense fields while wired to an ordinary automobile battery because, of course, they had zero resistance so could draw huge amounts of current.

If they generated a sufficient field to drive themselves out of the superconducting region, they would dump all their stored energy back out as a huge current pulse. We kept a one ohm resistor wired across the battery as a fuse. It had lower resistance than the battery internal resistance, so the pulse would pass through it, blowing it to smithereens with a satisfying POP that alerted us to the fact that the field had collapsed.

[tonyfoale]

Hi Marv
the most useful thing I made back then was a tension/torque wrench like this...

Attachment 22801

Peter

I have a clicker torque wrench identical to the one in your picture. It was given to me by an 85 year old when I was 16. 58 years later I still use it at least monthly.

[ncollar]

Marv
Just imagine where your life would have taken you if it was not for your dads old lathe and then shop in the school system. It might have flaws but at the time it was just what you needed to fall in love with the shiny stuff. Enjoyed your story and thank you so very much for sharing.
Again very nice
Nelson

[Toolmaker51]

Hi Christophe
The education system is similar in the UK, it is now left to going to a trade school for those who do not achieve the exam grades.
I spent my early years obsessed with Mechano and would spend the whole evening with it spread out over the living room floor until bedtime (no TV in those days).
It taught me about gears and pulleys but above all patience and a sense of achievement and in my youth I progressed to model making, my bedroom would always smell of balsa cement and paint.
Today it does not seem very cool to get your hands grubby but maybe they have got it right as everything has to move on, if I had had a crystal ball I do not know if I would have chosen to spend most of my working life in the equivalent of a cow shed for average wages.
Gave it up for the last 10 years to go self employed renovating houses.

Marv's original thread sure pulled up lots of reminiscing on how it started for us. Each post in the thread relates individual avenues toward this work we enjoy so much. Quite sure we identify the similarities, no matter where you call home.
One in particular crystallized my attitude.
So, reading olderdan's post sent me off about what is "Mechano"?. It's a British creative toy engineering set. For the Yankees, it turns out very much like our "Erector Sets". Wikipedia has it spelled differently as 'Meccano', and you'll love this kicker...wait for it.
In 1901 Frank Hornby, a clerk from Liverpool, England, invented and patented a new toy called "Mechanics Made Easy" that was based on the principles of mechanical engineering.
The word "Meccano" was thought to have been derived from the phrase "Make and Know".
True or not, that is what happens.

[mklotz]

Marv
Just imagine where your life would have taken you if it was not for your dads old lathe and then shop in the school system. It might have flaws but at the time it was just what you needed to fall in love with the shiny stuff. Enjoyed your story and thank you so very much for sharing.
Again very nice

Perhaps I would have been better off had I become a machinist rather than spending all those years chasing an education. I'm reminded of two famous quotes of my avatar, Einstein...

If only I had known, I would have become a watchmaker.

If I had my life to live over again, I'd be a plumber.

Now, for me, plumbing is definitely off the table. It's one of the few home repairs I will not touch. However, I think I might have made a fair watchmaker. I love tiny mechanical stuff and am fascinated by all the mechanical trickery that's been invented to make clocks more accurate.

[Toolmaker51]

Perhaps I would have been better off had I become a machinist rather than spending all those years chasing an education. I'm reminded of two famous quotes of my avatar, Einstein...

If only I had known, I would have become a watchmaker.

If I had my life to live over again, I'd be a plumber.

Now, for me, plumbing is definitely off the table. It's one of the few home repairs I will not touch. However, I think I might have made a fair watchmaker. I love tiny mechanical stuff and am fascinated by all the mechanical trickery that's been invented to make clocks more accurate.

Lol. There are aspects to plumbing I really like. My home was built 1901-02, still has majority of it's original fixtures. And I've rebuilt all of them; refaced seats of faucets, hose bibs & freeze lines, new washers, repacked stem seals, made new stems for two [long wait to find genuine red brass rod], re-fit three WC's top to bottom, even trimmed the drain sleeves of two tubs [calcium builds up and they leaked out in the time it took for a bath]. Some of the drains are lead pipe, glad that's not popular anymore - very thin & fragile. Interesting how many early parts remain, even still being made! I'm familiar with backflow [Watts & Clays, hooray!] devices, fire sprinklers, motor and engine driven stations, centrifugal and positive displacement pumps, mechanical seals, Victaulic fittings....a lot of upstream stuff. Drainage uh, not so much!

And the clocks part I'll agree with too. One of my favorite historic quests centers on the Harrison's; William and John. I can identify with pursuing a solution for decades...Can't picture making them, not the small parts [done lots of microscopic electro-mechanical assembly] but machines to make them are TOO SMALL!

[Frank S]

When it comes to clocks my big hands are not well suited for working on them but I did construct a cuckoo once from a Black Forest kit it had dancing minstrels 3 cuckoos and very ornate carvings I built it back in the 70's while stationed in Germany Then while living in Kuwait the wife and I went to Germany several times 1 time I found an older Hielbronn grandfather clock. at one of the companies I was buying some machinery from. It was shoved back in a corner with a drape over it. I asked about it and the guy just said kaput He had no idea what was wrong with it. After taking a closer look I noticed it had a true Black Forest clock work so I finagled a deal for it to be shipped along with the equipment. Simple straight forward repair someone had pulled the winding chains too hard and fast and dislodged the escapement wheel
Currently I have a 31 day spring wound wall hanger that was given to me because it would do the whole 31 days in 30 hours really annoying to hear the gong go off every 20 to 30 seconds it is hanging on my kitchen wall now either gains a minute or 2 every few days or looses the same every few days. I can always tell when it is time to rewind it since it will have the correct time
A neighbor commented that my clock was 10 minutes fast I told him to come back in a few days and it would have the correct time.
I don't mind plumbing all that much just before I went into the Army for a while I worked for a plumbing contractor and learned a few things. At least enough to know which side the hot should be on and the brown stuff runs down hill the Boss is a *** and Friday was payday. What's not to like as long as it is new construction and I don't have to go under the house LOL.

[mklotz]

I live in a typical California house. No basement and much of the plumbing is in the eighteen inch high, dirt floored crawl space underneath the house. At 77 years old, I just don't bend in the right places to get under there. Inside the house, everything is in awkward locations reachable only with more impossible contortions and all the pieces held together by stronger-than-welds corrosion.

Also, I don't think I've ever had a plumbing job that went as planned. The straw that broke this camel's back came with an attempt to replace the flush handle on a toilet. The rod that holds the float had broken free of the handle so replacement was the only option. I thought I was really smart for knowing that the thin nut holding the assembly was threaded left hand. Everything welded with corrosion.

Somehow, I managed to twist a bit too hard and a large, dagger-shaped chunk of porcelain broke from the tank and speared into the carpet about an inch from my sneaker-clad foot. This was, of course, followed by a miniature waterfall that dumped the contents of the tank on the bathroom carpet and my pants.

I'm not the tool-throwing type so I just stood there gobsmacked, then erupted into a litany of curses in three languages. Finally, I realized that this was a sign from the plumbing gods that I should not invade their space. Since then, I call the plumber for anything more complicated than a washer replacement or a new toilet flush valve.

You just have to learn to pick your battles. Only fight enemies you have a chance of defeating.

[Frank S]

I live in a typical California house. No basement and much of the plumbing is in the eighteen inch high, dirt floored crawl space underneath the house. At 77 years old, I just don't bend in the right places to get under there. Inside the house, everything is in awkward locations reachable only with more impossible contortions and all the pieces held together by stronger-than-welds corrosion.

Also, I don't think I've ever had a plumbing job that went as planned. The straw that broke this camel's back came with an attempt to replace the flush handle on a toilet. The rod that holds the float had broken free of the handle so replacement was the only option. I thought I was really smart for knowing that the thin nut holding the assembly was threaded left hand. Everything welded with corrosion.

Somehow, I managed to twist a bit too hard and a large, dagger-shaped chunk of porcelain broke from the tank and speared into the carpet about an inch from my sneaker-clad foot. This was, of course, followed by a miniature waterfall that dumped the contents of the tank on the bathroom carpet and my pants.

I'm not the tool-throwing type so I just stood there gobsmacked, then erupted into a litany of curses in three languages. Finally, I realized that this was a sign from the plumbing gods that I should not invade their space. Since then, I call the plumber for anything more complicated than a washer replacement or a new toilet flush valve.

You just have to learn to pick your battles. Only fight enemies you have a chance of defeating.

Hate it when that happens.
Once a very long time ago I thought I wanted to be a house flipper long before the term was heard of. I bought a slab built house and decided to do some minor renovations and upgrades. YEAH RIGHT!
I received a brutal education in why you never buy a HUD 322 tract home if it is over a few years old. After all of the cosmetics were completed and I was just about ready to put it on the market the city took it upon themselves to up the pressure in the area to the newer standards. I started noticing plumbing service trucks in the area every day. So I was thinking boy I'm sure glad I replaced all of the fixtures and have my inspections out of the way. Then the unthinkable happened I got my water bill which was many 1000s of gallons more usage than the months before. I made sure nothing was turned on in the house then checked the meter the little dials were spinning faster than the impeller of a turbo jet engine. I did the only thing I could think of I called a plumber one whose name I had seen in the area previously.
Long story short after a week of constant jack hammering enough cement dust in the house to start up my own concrete recycling plant, pipes replaced new concrete poured new drywall ripped out new carpets ruined and a bill for the repairs nearly equaling what I paid for the house I decided that buying and renovating houses were not for me. Also I have never owned another slab built house.

[Toolmaker51]

I [certain we all] enjoy Marv's descriptions. Science, physics and engineering are so distinct and seemingly regimented. But creativity bends that for advancements. Then, there is everyday life. A foray in and right back out of household plumbing is a perfect example.
Count this as a youtube of me; for images of miniature waterfalls and "erupted into a litany of curses in three languages". Don't need or want to know which, I'm having fun guessing at two of them...