I have made a pretty fair living machining, However, I could have retired quite wealthy years back were there someone willing to pay for my screwups. So, I owe, I owe, its off to work I go.
LOL! "Screwup" once got me a job ....and a "legend" as a mentor, too!
JR-HS shop project was a USELESS steel-handled hammer. With interchangeable heads. And a bore in the arse to hold a centre punch under a screw-on cap. Lovely to look at, knurled and selectively gun-blued or polished to anti-glare, but smoooooth.
But a person would be an
idiot to
strike anything with it - possible exception a Union Contract violation! Ring your ass like a bell!
Herr Pelz is looking it over. Unscrews the cap. Keeps open and closing it, getting a more powerful eye-loupe to figure out how it is the seam is TOTALLY invisible and there is no movement at ALL.
Finally asks me what the thread was.
Now I figure I'm f**ked and go all red-faced. No job will be found for me!
"Uhh 32 TPI, Herr Pelz."
"What
diameter?"
"Uhh.. it's tapered, Herr Pelz"
"What
sort of taper?"
"Uh.. Herr Pelz? I have no ACCURATE way of knowing."
"Our school shop is still new. We have no micrometers yet. I used a scale, inside and outside spring calipers and just made both parts to fit each other."
NO job?
The Grand Old Master had been doing much the same for over 65 years, figured he had found another "natural" ... and we worked each other half to starvation conveying the knowledge as fast as he could impart it.
Must say my acute HUNGER for
learning gave neither of us any mercy for FOOD, either!
Until his wife commanded he bring me home for dinner so she knew he hadn't been missing dinner 'til way late at night with some bimbo! At 75 or so years of age?
She was a grand cook. He had a damned fine shop in his basement too, and a "real" son around 45-something as was a seriously bright Graduate Engineer with Westinghouse.. so THAT worked!
Damned glad I hadn't made vee blocks!
They'd have actually been useful in the shop.
But not for running a factory. Or a Company. Let alone retirement at age 49. Screwups and all.
A person can risk nine f**k ups to ONE success.
So long as the f**k strokes are small. And instantly corrected.
And the "win" is a BIG one!
But THAT part wasn't learnt from a Master Metal Worker.
Nor a General. Blood and bullets wars aren't known for second chances, let alone nine lives, any more than failing to hit specs are.
Learnt from a Master
MERCHANT, and a "Corporate Warrior", rather!
"Try it. If it doesn't work? FIX it. But fix it
FAST!.
So it became a skillset to make mistakes. Really. It did. But seldom. And always cheaply. Ergo usually to ultimate
advantage.
"R&D of Action" rather than "R&D of product"?
The goal is to get to the
end.. any process along the way is
not the goal. Fewer, simpler, and faster of them, the least waste on avoidable time and expense, the better.
Let the OTHER guy come late or never.
Not as if there was ever any shortage of volunteers for that, was there?