On
25 February 2025 at 06:44 Diogenes Said:
Hmmm – A reluctance to dispose of the useless is most definitely a vice and not a virtue.
But first decide whether the thing in question is useless.
Whether completely or to you both now and in the future.
Which can be tricky for neophytes who have neither the experience to appreciate what it does and how it can be exploited nor a functioning crystal ball to show what things they will be doing in their model engineering career so they only get what is needful.
The basic manual marking out kit is as effective as it ever was and relatively inexpensive compared to the more modern things most of the experienced folk have graduated to. Just slower. But it’s generally much easier to see whats going on with scriber and marking blue.
This old fart generally works direct off the part and drawings using the DRO system. Which takes money and experience to be good and confident. But I still sometimes mark out first when there is the possibility of confusion or the need to verify that what looks right on paper is right in the metal. My height gauges, one vernier, 2 APE ball type, are quicker but a surface gauge is just as good unless super accuracy is needed. Not to mention £££ cheaper.
The old fool also keeps his share of useless, no longer up to the job or worn beyond use stuff ready to be destroyed as the basis for at temporary tool. He still has the irredeemably awful, but pocket money cheap, mail order Foreign socket set gotten when he was 16. The sockets haven’t seen a functioning nut for 52 years or more. But when miracle removal of the remains of corroded, abused and jammed nut whose shape has been reduced to an indescribable shape by unskilled efforts hammering on one of the rubbish sockets frequently provides enough grip to shift. Most of the sockets still survive to fight another day. I’m impressed.
A knack for economical purchasing is important when building up equipment.
Even at today’s vastly lower, in real terms, prices for useable quality equipment from the import suppliers.
This old fart probably has in excess of a million pounds worth of kit if assessed at todays new-new like for like equivalent brand quality replacement prices. Assuming that such were possible.
Vastly over the top excessive by any normal ME or Home Workshop persons standards but he did expand things to take in commercial work as a post redundancy career move if the consultancy thing didn’t work out. Calculating a realistic assessment of the actual spend for tax purposes to value things on shutting down implied something over £250,000 spent over 30 or so years. Which was way more than I expected not having realised just how much my own personal kit, bought before the proper accounting needed by the business, was theoretically worth.
I guess every member of our community has enough money tied up in the workshop to get into serious trouble if answering honestly when the distaff side enquires “How much have you spent on your toybox?” in that voice.
The single lifestyle has its advantages!
Bottom line is good work can be done using a careful selection of “inexpensive ‘cos they are old fashioned” tooling and methods.
But modern technology gives the opportunity to grow out when you are ready without ruinous cost.
When Clive was young nobody could afford a DRO. They hadn’t been invented. Factories bought jig borers and all the kit. Which in the general run under open factory conditions did very little better than a decent import DRO kit can manage in skilled hands.
Clive