In response to some of the posts that this thread has evoked, I am reminded of some work I had been doing at a local machine shop. This was last November (2020), and even with Covid-19 precautions, the shop management was trying hard to bring young people into the shop. In particular, they were trying to make places for young people with disabilities. I do some welding inspection and set up weld procedures for this shop, as well as some engineering and mentoring/teaching.
One of the young people whom the shop management had brought in was a young man who was rapidly losing his eyesight. He was legally blind but wanted to learn the machinist trade in spite of it. He had studied quite a lot and had quite a bit of 'book knowledge'. When he had his sight, he had taken every possible shop course in HS and a BOCES program. Aside from that, to get into the shop's program, he had taken aptitude and academic tests and scored quite high on his math test. He was motivated. The shop management was willing to take a chance on making a shop hand out of a blind young man.
Unlike persons who have been blind for some time, this young man had not developed his tactile sense and feeling for depth/size perception to compensate for his loss of sight. We decided to start the young man off at the bench, and work with such things as simple filing and deburring of parts. It was an interesting assignment as I was working to develop his tactile sense and non-visual perception as much as his knowledge. We set him up a workbench and I taught him to recognize different cuts of files by feel, how to 'heft' a part in his hands to determine if it was steel or aluminum or polymer, and anything else I could think of. We told the young man and the people who provided disability services for him that he could expect a few nicked fingers along the way. He was still game to go for it.
I worked with this young man for some weeks until a case of Covid in his own household sidelined him. Then, my own health issues arose.
Interestingly, I was born with fine and gross motor skill delays. Back then, when I was a kid, this went unaddressed. I was thought to be clumsy or odd (since I could not pitch nor catch a ball, I had no interest in sports and with an active interest in machinery, I did not relate to my peers. I could visualize and had a good idea of things, but my hands lagged in being able to do the work neatly or properly. I began to draw, forcing myself to draw and finding I could draw in perspective. Of course, while my peers in school drew pictures of Yankee Stadium or baseball diamonds, I was drawing steam locomotives and machine tools. I came into machine shop work at Brooklyn Technical HS and then in part time/summer jobs in machine shops. This also brought in my fine motor skills to some extent. The shops worked on regular jobs, and I was OK with that. Then, in the summer of 1971, I was hired on as a machinist in the instrument machine shop at Sloan Kettering Cancer Research Hospital. I did OK for a few weeks until I was assigned to make some surgical snares. This was the 'maker or breaker' for anyone working in that shop.
Making the snares required drilling a small hole down the center of a 1/8" diameter brass rod. To drill the hole, the rods were held in a collet in a Hardinge bench lathe. The wire-sized drill (under 1 1/16th diameter) was held in a pin chuck with a knurled handle. The pin chuck was supported in the fingers of one hand, and the thumbnail on the other hand was used to steady the drill itself. The drill would 'pull in' to center if you had the right feel for things, and you then gently fed it in and drilled a hole maybe 3/8" deep axially down the rod. Every toolmaker in the shop tried to teach me to drill those holes. Days passed, and I ran drills out the sides of the rods or broke drill bits. The word was that if I did make acceptable surgical snares by that Friday, I was to be fired. This was tantamount to dishonor with me, and I tried too hard and things seemed to go from bad to worse. Then, on that Friday morning, all of a sudden, I started drilling holes down the centers of the brass rods, neat and true. I moved on to cutting fine music wire, making loops of it, and sticking the ends of the music wire into the drillings in the rods. Lastly, I carefully flowed a little solder into each of the holes to hold the music wire. I had gotten the hang of it. The men in the shop were happy for me as no one wanted to fire me. They took me to a bar for some Urquell Pilsner beer and we all celebrated.
What had happened was my fine motor skills had come a long way in a short time. The overall quality of my work as well as my drawings and lettering on them took a real upturn as well.
In two interesting twists to this story: I was over 50 years of age before I could properly catch or pitch a ball. I had never had the desire to try, given the scorn and insults I had endured as a kid. When my wife and son were out on the lawn one evening tossing a softball around and having a grand time, I decided to come out and asked to be taught. My son taught me, and I was happily leaping into the air to catch high balls, connecting with them, and pitching them back to him.
The other twist concerns Sloan Kettering Cancer Research Hospital. I had worked there, as I wrote, in 1971. In 2021, as I posted on this 'board, I was diagnosed with a cancer on the exterior wall of my stomach. The local oncologist wasted no time in calling Sloan Kettering. I was admitted to Sloan Kettering, and underwent surgery there. I view it as a kind of 'homecoming'. I was unable to visit the machine shop, which, I was told is still down in the 'third sub-basement' of one building. I did learn the shop, which back in my time there, had manual machine tools, is doing a lot of CNC work. It was quite an experience to come back to streets I had walked as a kid, seeing old familiar buildings I had walked past (I took the subways to and from work, living in Brooklyn at my parents' house). Instead of European bars and similar, the old buildings now house trendy coffee shops and the like. I enjoyed telling some of the staff that I had worked at Sloan Kettering 50 years earlier, before many were born, or were small children. The research fellows (board certified surgeons doing research working under the surgeon who operated on me) spent a lot of time with me and asked quite a bit about my time as a machinist . We all agreed that it was a very good thing I was being treated for my cancer in 2021 vs 1971, as diagnosis and surgery and much else had come a few light years. Sloan Kettering had brought in my fine motor skills with fine machine work requiring hand/eye coordination and feel, and 50 years later, took the best care of me.
The lesson here is that if a person wants to learn shop work, they will do what it takes. If they sustain a few cuts and bruises, they will shrug it off and keep on going. If they have the head to learn shop work, they will have the good sense to keep clear of parts of the machine tools that could bite them or pull them in.
Giving people a chance to learn shop work and 'bring them along' is a wonderful thing, particularly in these times when a knowledge of the existence of machine shop work is not all that commonplace. I was given that chance when I was a kid, even when I was legally too young to work in shop (I started at 15, when the legal minimum age was 18).
Now, recovering from the cancer surgery and side-effects of the 'targeted immune cell therapy drug" (a horse-choker pill I take each morning), I am back into my shopwork. It feels so good and 'homey' to take the tools in hand again and get some grunge under my fingernails again. Friends are bringing in shop jobs, and it is therapeutic for me at several levels.
Another reward I've had in this life is bringing my nephew, Sam, into shop work. Sam was a kid when he visited us. He was bored, so I took him into my shop and showed him the machine tools. We made a small toy boat, with him cutting the hull out on the bandsaw, and using the Bridgeport to rout a recess for the cockpit. He cut some sheet stainless on the bandsaw, finished it on the belt sander, and with files, and I showed him silver brazing to make a keel and rudder. Apparently, this time in the shop was something more than a cure for a boy's boredom. Sam went to Israel and studied to become a jewelry designer. This included time in a well equipped machine shop (Deckels and a Schaublin geared head lathe). Same returned stateside and came to live with us. I introduced him to the folks at the machine shop in Kingston. Sam took to the work like a duck takes to the water. He started in shipping and receiving and straightened out a mess there. Then it was 'parts prep"- deburring, filing, finishing. He moved on to the CNC waterjet, along with a Moore jig grinder, Blanchard and Hardinge HLV lathe amongst other things. He worked carefully, and had almost no rejected work, and was soon doing his own setups and programming on the CNC waterjet. The result was he was asked if he would enter a formalized apprenticeship to become a CNC machinist or toolmaker. Sam jumped on it.
I gave Sam a machinist chest and basic tools in it. He is on the shop floor, early to start work, working any overtime they have, and eating up the work. I get good reports about my nephew, and I took Sam's father (up from Florida) to the shop for a visit. Perhaps the highest praise a parent could hear was: "Do you have any more Sam's at home ? We could sure use them here."
I look forward to mentoring more young people, and I am old-fashioned enough not to look at it as a potential source of lawsuits or similar. Dr. Hillbilly has the right idea, and is to be commended and encouraged. If we do not take the time to bring interested people along in shopwork, a lot of what we love will die with us when that time comes. We may not have children interested in our work, so being able to pass our knowledge and skills along to other people outside our households is a good legacy and quite rewarding. I liken it to 'pollen on the wind' as our knowledge and skills (along with such niceties as expressions we use, humor, philosophies) is passed along far beyond our immediate households or families.
but ... 
