Help! > Mistakes, muckups, and dangerous behaviour

Oh the pain !

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Rik Shaw:
Oh how I remember the pain. More than fifty years ago I started my technical engineering apprenticeship at the company apprentice training centre in Port Sunlight. The first project we had to undertake was surely designed to knock the cockiness out of us kids. We were all issued with a piece of 6? x 4? x  ?? gas cut boiler plate, a cold chisel, a bullnose chisel and a big ole? ballpein hammer. All edges had to be chiselled square then finished of with a ?? wide 45 degree bevel chiselled along one long edge.

Days later (I am right handed), my left hand ? was a bruised and bloody mess but the best thing was yet to come. Using the bull nosed chisel this time we had to chisel our three initials on one face of the slab in letters three inches high and the radius of the bullnose deep. Those who were unlucky enough to only have two initials had to insert the dollar sign instead. I am sure that the resident instructors had a deeply pathological hatred for us kids and enjoyed watching the pain as the hammer yet again missed the chisel.

Did it teach me anything? I?ll say it did! ? I learnt more new words for ?ouch? than you could ever imagine.

It was such a relief to finish that exercise and start the next one ? hand filing a square in a square, sheer heaven  (derisive grimace !!!!!).

Jo:
As an electronic engineering apprentice I only had the honors of doing C blocks. Which had to fit together every which way including 90 degrees into each other, without a 5 thou feeler gauge being able to fit in anywhere. Every time it went it you lost one of your ten points, when it got to zero the piece was thrown in the bin and you started again. One of those character building tasks  :naughty:

The mechanical boys had E blocks to do and the file a square out of a piece of bar followed by a ball out of that square (of the same diameter as the square).  :lolb:

Jo

Raggle:
I remember that too, also fifty years ago. We didn't carve a slab like that but it was an exercise to remove excess steel down to a line scribed and highlighted with regular punch marks. The idea was to make the punch marks half visible. Line it up against the vice jaws and "walk" the chisel alternating the angle of attack each hammer blow.

The lesson was to demonstrate that all cutting tools are in fact chisels, though they may be in a row, like files and saw blades. I've used the technique many times since, I suppose we all have.

Ray

Arbalest:
We had to chisel a 4 inch long 1 inch diameter mild steel bar until it had a square section. Some guys had blood mixing with the marking blue ...

Admiral_dk:
I didn't like our filing exercises when I started at "Svagstr?msteknisk Skole" (DK ~ Low current (ha) technical school) in 1978 (pre school for either an electronic technician or electronic engineer (Master degree)), but with one or maybe two exceptions, I still have all those tools we had to make : A small vice, a PCB holder (multi adjustable), a drill bit sharpener gauge (a scaled 59 degree angle (for 118 degree bits) with a ? degree angle in the other end for the other angle on the bit and the high quality power supply (had to build the case, transformer, circuitboards too).

And we all hated soldering the test frames (a frame with some 10 slots on each side = 100 solder points where the wires meet) with a very lousy soldering iron (a la those cheap ones you see in DIY shops) - one not perfect out of those 100 and you had to make a new - not one in class managed that in less than two months  :Mad: and when you finally managed that you where presented with an old style heavy duty soldering iron and had to do it with that too  :cussing: - But I must admit that it certainly made us good solders (soft solder - we learned silver solder in a day after that, but not to the same standard). So using modern solder stations is a breeze  :)

 I loved the part where we learned to use the lathe and the mill (two months) and have longed for a lathe ever since, so I finally bought this worn down house in 2007 so I could build a workshop - changed from having money but no place to do anything that makes noise, to having the space but almost no money and a lot of repairs to do before doing the shop ::)

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