After which, you should heat up the first part to a bright red and beat it into obscurity.

On 23 July 2024 at 18:24 Engine Builder Said:

The only way to find a part you have just made and lost, is to make another, then the lost part will turn up!

Although I was going to mark that down as a little workshop humor (sorry, no ‘u’ for this Yank), it turned out to be humorously correct.

I spent five minutes after lunch looking while cleaning various spots free of swarf.  No luck, so I proceeded to make a new part.  Halfway through the new part I opened the drawer to get the mic and…”Thar she blows!  The white whale!”…right next to the mic.

At least I didn’t imagine making it.*

Mike

* Since this is the Tea Room I shall tell another tale, and this is also a true one.  Almost 20 years ago, and to this very day, I have a vivid memory (an actual memory, not a memory of a dream) of going to work completely in the buff.  If “buff” doesn’t mean the same in the UK as it does in the US I’ll point out that I was stark ravingly devoid of clothes.  Not a stitch.  No joke.  Vivid to the point that I still feel that it happened.  And several times since then I have worried about having done such a stupid prank.  Now, I’ll point out that I only know that I didn’t do it by way of deduction.  I have no recollection of being thrown off the public bus.  Nor had any of my coworkers ever since mentioned it (“Hey, Mike…Remember that time you came to work naked?!”).  But so much of that day is a vivid memory.  So what must have happened is that the imagining (dream or whatever) accidentally got put into long-term memory.  Similar to what happens with a “deja-vu”, where it bypasses the normal processing route and gets compared back to make one think it has happened again.