My pet hates are: lock washers under nyloc nuts, using two nyloc nuts to lock a nut in place and making slim nuts by cutting one in half. This stupidity also extends to the use of pet tape (plumbers tape) on hydraulic and compression fittings. Pet tape is only for use on tapered fittings like BSP. stopping a leaking compression fitting on a water pipe might work in the short term - but you know its wrong. there is no way on earth you would perform such stupidity if it had 10K psi behind it, so why do it even though you know its wrong. Building machines and equipment using mixed fasteners IE metric and Imperial, not trying to standardise when using Allen studs. Perry Tritech in Florida was fantastic for this not to mention the mix of hydraulic fittings. To be fair the most fantastic thing they did do was use JIC fittings, brilliant - love them. I had a discussion with a friend of mine recently regarding tolerances, Now Norman is a bit of a boffin and i'm a good old clanky. after several beers i was still trying to convince him that tolerances were just a way of designers covering their arses for misalignment of fixtures, i was irritating to the max. As one of our colleagues above has stated the use of 3/8 in a 10 mm hole - this may actually be within spec. i grew up on a farm and i'm sure we did far worse before i was brain washed by the establishment. 6 mm spout bolts (coach bolts if you are posh) were used every where, they have the tensile strength of custard, however i can always remember using old bolts as drawbar pins for towing four tonne trailers. i'm sure NASA would go to the far end of a fart to explain that we should use material of a certain diameter and tensile strength, purph - worked didn't it. I have never seen any calculations for the bolted gussets on any of Brunell's bridges. To be fair I have seen several 25 tonne shackles destroyed. If you intentionally abuse the the kit, it will fail, but ts sneaky it waits until you least expect it.
Only clowns set themselves up for deliberate falls.
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