How bad can tradesmen get?

When I was operating Viking Engineers in the late '80's, I was doing some marine engine work for a local slipway and marine business. I was overseeing an overhaul to a main engine in a very old tug from the Solomon Islands. The senior apprentice from this place was assigned to the job, a fourth year who had finished college with good results. One afternoon I asked him to book out the big hand cranked ridge remover from the main yard and bring it the next day. No ridge remover, already booked out on another job. Says I "Righto, grab your scrapers and hop up on that engine and take off the ridges." Dumbfounded apprentice within a few months of becoming a full blown fitter tradesman wanted to know how he did this. I gave him a few minutes of instruction in the use of scrapers and told him to get on with it and that he must have missed all the prac. in first year college if he didn't know how to use scrapers. He was made to scrape all seven cylinders to my satisfaction. He hated me intensely after this particularly as I told his master he was bloody incompetent (many other reasons not just scrapers) and should never become a tradesman without repeating years 3 & 4. No notice taken unfortunately.

Brian,

Your a hard man, hard but fair? Hand scrapping probably got replaced by a lesson on CAN Bus and OBDII.

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Originally Posted by slug_burner

Brian,

Your a hard man, hard but fair? Hand scrapping probably got replaced by a lesson on CAN Bus and OBDII.

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First year Fitting and Machining still has the old exercise of "Reducing a surface by chipping, filing, and scraping". The apprentice makes a small surface plate from rough castings without using a machine tool. The point was that he had completed the three years college component of his apprenticeship without acquiring basic skills.

Oddly enough in one of my tool boxes is a set of hone stones various grades, and a ridge removing tool large enough to do a Landrover 2.25 ltre,and a set of brake wheel cylinder hone stones,just some of the stuff one collects over time :)

Brian, No doubt you are correct. I was hedging my bets with the reply and would change it to a lesson on G Code and CNC programming but still happy to take your judgement as correct and if more hard decisions were made like that then maybe this thread would be more about how good tradesmen can get.

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Originally Posted by slug_burner

Brian, No doubt you are correct. I was hedging my bets with the reply and would change it to a lesson on G Code and CNC programming but still happy to take your judgement as correct and if more hard decisions were made like that then maybe this thread would be more about how good tradesmen can get.

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nice thing about power tools.

I remember a certain uncle John of mine who upon learing of this new electicry controlled computery junk machining crap who set upon a race with some young blokes who thought all this power and computery stuff was the ducks danglies.

Rules of the race. He would use nothing but hand tools and they, whenever it could be bought to bear would use power tools and computer controlled equipment.

The challange.

deck a 3 pot diesel block. fortunately there were 2 of them due for obsolesence from the same type of vessel, in the same general condition and to be fair he would let them select the engine they wanted.

I knew it wasnt going to go well for them when the first thing they did was strip off the bolts holding the exhaust manifold to the frame mount...

by the time they had the fruit off using power tools he was at the head and was measuring it with a straight edge and feeler gauges. Hed already leveled the cylinders stuffed them with rags and put a very powerful magnet in a bag in each of the pots padded with more rags

by the time they had the drive coupling and housing off (rusty rounded bolts from power tools) of the engine he had scraped the block and was bluing it so he could invert an engineers plate on it to check it for flat. the whole process of flattening the deck too him better than 3 hours, a long slow patient process

by the time they had the engine out and started to dismantle it so that it would fit into the mill he was bolting his back together.

and while yes, the mill once setup machined the top of the deck in something like 15 minutes, they were still cleaning up swarf from inside the block when he kicked his into life. Something about an experienced engineers touch was sagely mentioned

Sure the CNC mill did a much quicker job of machining the block, Doesnt make sense that he could not only do the job faster but with less assosciated costs by hand......

Computer controlled stuff has its time and place. Other times do it by hand its quicker and you get a better overall result, assuming of course you have the basic hand skills to start with.

Story rings a bell.

A Hungarian Mechanic I know has a very dim view of Aussie 'training'.
- Their first job at Tech school was to make their own hand tools.... with which they created a threaded nut and bolt.
After this...and other hand-tasks, did they start on engines.

Oh yes, basic auto-electrics, and panel-beating/welding/bronzing/painting was also expected for most European Motor-Car Mechanics, especially the Eastern end...

You wouldn't want to know what the words meant when he expressed his view of LR and the LT230 he successfully repaired. (No RAVE or documentation provided by his boss, just repair/replace the broken bits as he stripped it.)

Speaking of a good tradesman.
Hired a shipwright , taught by the missions, 50 years of building wooden boats, on the beach, no power& or power tools. Just a steam box and hand tools.
Did a superlative job, (slowly), until he finished, stole my oakum, copper sheet, copper rivets, etc, and sent a message asking for his bonus.:o

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Originally Posted by superquag

You wouldn't want to know what the words meant when he expressed his view of LR and the LT230 he successfully repaired. (No RAVE or documentation provided by his boss, just repair/replace the broken bits as he stripped it.)

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I'm guessing that since he didnt have to have an electronic diagnostics box to tell him which bit was wrong with it just so he could swap out the whole thing it wasnt that bad.

most of the bad words I throw at landrovers when Im spannering on them are aimed at the monkies that have been let in there before me.

Vaguely, I remember the problem as a mainshaft gear set, the one that is hollow, cogs on (both?) one end and splines. - The one that should have had holes in it to lubricate but didn't. LR later modified them with holes...
So the splines stuffed up. Must have, as the original problem was 'No drive' and 'Expensive Noises before the No Drive...'
As I mentioned, such a skilled artist, that shims/clearances etc throughout were set by experience, not supplied info.

Box was smooth and 'Japanese' - quiet afterwards...:wasntme:

He also re-built my Pajero diesel. Compressions were at the top end of the tolerance scale and within ONE needle-width of each other.:eek: Ran very smoothly too ! Just wished I'd taken his advice about removing the balance shaft...