Doing the filleting on the SCAMP and I am not overly happy with the results. >:(
What wasn't lumps and bumps, was voids and streaks. :'(
People say I am hyper-critical, a perfectionist, an obsessive-compulsive and truly, I am none of those things. :P
However, I DO see clearly and objectively and call things out, where and when I find them wanting.
And then I remembered my first tool box.
What does a tool box, have to do with SCAMP fillets?!? ???
A digression:
My birthday is in June, which I figured as a small child was a Good Deal. 8) Any toys that got lost or busted, would get replaced in a few more months, at Christmas, if I just hung in there.
In the mid-50's, all us little kids had toy guns. After all, it was in the days of the Lone Ranger, Hopalong Cassidy, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, the Cisco Kid, and Zorro and as we got older and were allowed to stay up later, all the night-time Westerns, as well.
Have Gun, Will Travel, The Bounty Hunter, Wanted Dead or Alive, the Rifleman and of course, Bonanza.
Right in the midst of all this, I began experiencing an inequity. :-X
Never got guns for Christmas, although I got plenty of them for my birthday, in June. What I got for Christmas, was tools: Hammers, saws, pliers, screwdrivers, etc. a few more every year.
The problem was, all the other kids got their guns at Christmas time and I didn't, so I couldn't play with the other kids.
By June, when I got my shiny new 6-shooters, all the other kids had lost or broken theirs and I STILL had no one to play Cowboys and Indians with. :(
Near Christmas one year, I decided to address the inequity with my Mother.
"How come I only get tools and never guns, for Christmas? Why do I always have to wait until my birthday??"
She replied: "Because we are celebrating a Carpenter's birthday."
Wow. Try and craft a counter-argument for THAT! :o
As time progressed and we kids got older, my carpentry skills came into sudden popularity, building push-scooters out of worn-out roller skate carcasses and whatnot.
And as that same time progressed, I needed a tool box to hold the accumulation of tools, from over several Christmases.
So at age 10, I decided to build one from scrap 1X6 boards, left over from some shelving project of my parents.
Bottom and sides were easy enough and the base, but the hip roof ends gave me fits. >:(
Did not get the angles drawn consistently from one side to the other, or from one end to the other and cutting with a handsaw, exaggerated even those errors. >:(
As a result, one side board didn't reach up to the hip roof bevel and the other side overlapped it.
Worse, yet, when I drilled the holes for the broomstick dowel handle, I got the height uneven at each end and adding insult to injury, nailing through the top of the ends into the broomstick, managed to split the end boards with the nail. >:(
Had to hold the split wood together with a fence staple at each end. :(
I was frustrated with my efforts and never liked that tool box. >:(
By the time I was 16 and REALLY needed a decent toolbox, I used a sabre saw to cut some plywood and made MUCH better hips for the ends. 8)
Fast forward half a century and I was in Tennessee, visiting my aged Mother a few years before her death and was promptly tasked with fixing some home repairs around her house.
I asked where any tools were and was told they were in the utility room.
In my old tool box, from my childhood.
"Mom! Why do you still have this piece of ------ (Slam on the mental verbal brakes, Charles! She's still your Mother!) :o ----- junk, laying around for all these years?!?" >:(
"Why?" She asked.
"It's crude, ugly and barely holding together!" >:( (Actually, only one side was a little loose; easily fixed with a small nail or two.)
I figured, since I couldn't draw worth a damn' and she never had any childhood pictures to tape to the refrigerator, that must be why she had kept the tool box.
She considered me a moment before answering: "It doesn't have to be beautiful, it only has to be a tool box. And it has been, ever since you first built it, and it still is."
OK, how do you counter THAT argument?!? :o
I looked at the fillets, again.
They don't really have to be as shiny and smooth as the gleaming white gel coat of Boat Show Marina Queens; they only have to be fillets.
Lesson learned, Mom. :)
Charles Brennan
Great story!
Don't let perfection get in the way of good enough. I would never have finished any of my many projects had I not learned that.
Love that story! I also have a very high opinion of your mother. I am willing to bet it was beautiful to her for what it represented. I started making things at a young age too. I also watched those same shows.
I like your mother.
Reality! It's a tough road to ride because of how we WANT it to be. But it NEVER is that. Some jobs are a ( insert choice words here) and just don't turn out PERFECT. That don't mean they're BAD, just that they didn't meet OUR almost unreasonable expectations.
I once did a quick fix on some steam piping. In reality, I should have replaced a section and valve to stop a tiny leak, but I knew a trick. The leak was a pin-holed spot in a 1/2" valve, and to do it per spec says you have to drop the 150# pressure, drain the line, replace the stuff, and pressurize to test. Instead, I sharpened a center-point chisel and punched the metal on the valve right next to the leak. What that does is move the metal of the valve body OVER the leak and stop the steam. Viola, we good NOW!
(DO NOT USE THIS TRICK unless you know EXACTLY what you are doing, including risks).
In retrospect I decided to keep an eye on this thing so that so if it blew out and caused problems, I needed to know THAT too. The last time I laid eyes on the thing some ten years later, it was STILL good. Which in the lifetime of steam service, is like forever. Only you can decide whether I should have taken half a day and involved SEVERAL other people or did what I did and went about my way.
I miss my Mom. MS Francis had a fiery spirit and an iron will, but she bought me my first set of Craftsman tools. I still have most of them, well used and responsible for keeping the world moving for me for over half a century.
Actually, in retrospect, YOU PIKER! You gotta get that stuff PERFECT! How are we gonna read anything if you get DONE?????
Hopefully, we will and it'll be a WATER STORY!!!! YAY!!!!
My Dad supplied me with Craftsman sockets and wrenches when I went to college. I think he feared I might borrow his! After I got married and we were living on our meager income, he also supplied me with a few power tools. Back when they all had metal bodies. Those have all passed on to the "heavily used" tool graveyard but the sockets and wrenches just keep on trucking.
Your Mom new that sooner or later she would need something fixed, and you could not do it without your basic tools.
Where should she keep them?
My brother and I received tool boxes for Christmas, the same year. Same tools in each.
Mom built those boxes, sort of. They were wooden Armour Star Corned Beef in cans, imported from Argentina. Without electricity or an ice box, we ate a lot of canned meat and fish.
She nailed the lid back on, sawed it around an inch below the lid, put hinges on, and a hook and socket on the other side of the box. Painted white, only one coat, same paint she put on the wood work as they built the house (Mom and Dad).
Hammer, small saw, plyers, screw driver, folding rule ( still have that). When we needed a larger saw, we borrowed from Mom or dad, depending on who was home.
We moved to Washington DC in 2 stages, when we were in an apartment, household furnishings were moved, the tools and heavy stuff was left in the old house, which was rented to trustworthy friends. When we sold that house, and bought one here, we bought a trailer, and brought all the tools and heavy stuff. The contents of those old boxes were added to the drawers of Dads tool chest, which was now co owned by the two of us.
I think we were 3 and 5 that Christmas. 13 and 15 when I drove from Louisville to Takoma Park MD, pulling half a ton in that trailer that I had bought with Mom's money, wired with lights, added a hitch to the '49 Ford, plug connector for the lights, and all working. Dad's tool chest had everything we needed.
I had spent 2 summers on a relatives farm, and had quite a bit of legal driving time there. Mother had just gotten a drivers license, and the trailer was more than she was ready to tackle.
So the two little boxes became one large one.
The little boxes went out...
"The death of the fillet as a work of art" :'( In the late sixties my profession was code welder, ASME Section VIII, DIV I, oil and gas related pressure vessels. As taught by the "pros" from Tulsa, when welding full penetration projections, nozzles and flanged pipe, into the vessel, the procedure was to fill to the surface then finish with a fillet. This was done generally with a fast fill electrode to get to the surface then the fillet was generally done with an electrode that would "stack" by just circling and stacking around the nozzle. Then the last thing you did was "lace it off" with a fast freeze electrode that would let you very artfully create a laced look by dragging from the top to the bottom of the fillet as you went around. When done right it was beautiful, a work of art, and I really liked doing it.
And one day it was over. The Engineer in the front office concluded that "lacing off" was of no purpose other than looks and that extra time was wasted, so the edict came out that from that day on it was no more. He was absolutely right of course, but great mourning ensued. We had to stamp our welds with a code stamp for identification purposes, but in truth we could just look at the lace off job and make a good guess who did it.