Are we losing something?

[cs]

The other day I was talking to one of you supt and got to talking about the generation before us, specifically my Dad and uncle who has went on.

But anyway we started talking about how when they needed something they made it. You know I'm kinda proud of the way I make things work and can improvise, but these guys make me look like an idot.

The would routinly do stuff like take an old water heater and an air conditioner and make a air comprassor.

Or say you need a good sturdy hitch on your Samuria? Just go down to the scrap yard and fabricate a custom hitch.

Or what about when you need a set of helper springs on your Scout? Just take that old set of Cadillac springs and manufactur your own brackets and put them on.

Say your Scout doesn't have power steering? No problem, they would custom fit a power stearing pump and make it work.

Or what about if you have a Mazda station wagon that has a good body but a bad engine and you have a good Pinto motor with a trashed body? No problem just put the Pinto engine and transmission in the RX-3 and it works great.

I guess what I'm getting at is these two just had this ability to visulize what they wanted and make it. I wonder if this is a dying art? I certainlly don't have the skills to do this like they did.

Chad

[Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson )]

Introducing Godzilla, & TALLY HO update

http://www.woodenboatvb.com/vbulletin/upload/showthread.php?t=71146

[cs]

Joe that's what I'm talking about. I"m not sure of Ken's age. The folks of my father's generation had that ability to make what they needed.

Are we losing that ability in our disposable generation?

Chad

[Henning 4148]

Partly, I'd say.

I guess the art to create was driven from a combination of desire to have and lack of funds to go and buy or lack of suitable offer on the market.

Today, many products have become very complex (cars ...) which doesn't invite tampering. Also, for many applications you can get well made (safe) products at decent costs "off the shelf". Very often, people will compromise on the features of what they buy instead of defining exactly what they want and then creating (or ordering) a custom built solution (which might take considerable time or cost more money). Advertising is pushing for this view, especially if price is brought in as an aspect.

Another aspect is, that with the cost and performance pressure that is on everything, products are designed much closer today to fit one application, often leaving little room for "abuse" in other applications. If that little engine in your coffee maker is designed to run for 1 minute at a time, it will not react happily to run for hours at a time in a different application with a similar load.

Most of all, I think, it is because people have become used to consume. TV, radio, products, everything tailored to average needs, no need to do something, just consume. If you want to get back to "create", get rid of the TV first.

[Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson )]

http://randysswchevy.com/CarsAug2005/1964_Impala_engine1_large.jpg

1964 Chevy Impala

http://www.autobytel.com/images/carPics/TestDrv/Lyons/500/Impala_engine.jpg

2004 Chevy Impala

Something lost something gained. Which one would you rather tinker with ? ;)

[Nanoose]

I think it was part of the depression/post WWII mentality. If you needed it, you had to figure out how to do it on your own, or go without. I saw the same thing in my dad, Chad, and for him I believe it came from being born in '24 and having the depression make a huge impact on who he was/how one lives.

[ishmael]

I've done my share of jury rigging with bailing wire. Pop was of the generation Chad speaks of. He could make things out of simple materials at the need. Picked it up from him.

Truth be told, there's not that much you can fix that way these days. Open any electronics today and there's no place for bailing wire. Open the hood of a modern car! Uh, yeah, the fluids look good.

Steinbeck once remarked in "Cannery Row" that men knew more about the carburator of a Model T than they did about the clitoris. Seems the tables have turned.

[Bill R]

Chad,

I think we are losing something. I grew up next to a farm, and spent my years between 6 and 18 following Joe the farmer around helping him where I could. It seemed he could do anything with just a couple simple tooks. I watched/helped him cut down trees, mill them and then build anything from a barn to a (beautiful) cabin. In the fields, he could fix anything with a bent nail and some baling twine.

I have spent my life trying to get even a fraction as innovative as he was. Now, most of the men in the professional world where I work can't change their own oil, much less an engine. It is truly pathetic. Whereas I am still not equal to someone of Joe the farmer's caliber, or Ken with his Godzilla gizmo, I try like hell, and usually won't buy something if I can make it myself, or pay someone to do it if I can do it myself. I am trying to instill that in my 5yo son as well. With supervision, he can already change the oil in my truck, and rotate the tires with some help...

We are definately losing something. All you and I can do it try to keep it going the best we can, and pass the skills on to our children.

[Tom Hunter]

Making all this stuff takes tools, and you have to be taught how to use them.

We are losing something, but gaining too. The generation before could make lots of things with wood and metal, but knew nothing about software. Kids today can make a movie, music, or a game, but not fix a car.

In general i think it is a good thing, because stuff is cheap and people are expensive. When stuff is dear and people are cheap life gets hard.

But it is a definite change, and I have a lot of respect for people that can start with raw materials and end up with a finished product.

[JimD]

With so many nations churning out manufactured everything its now often easier and cheaper to buy a new one than to jury rig or fix an old one.

[Ron Williamson]

Credit is cheap too.
No need to save up for a new one while making do with the old one.
Instant gratification.
R

[cs]

Joe I would prefer to tinker around with that 64, but that's just me.

Anyway, tinkering is not what this is about. This is about hauling a tractor and bushhog up the mountain and realizing that your springs weren't stiff enough and than going home that night and adding a second set of helper springs to make it carry the load better.

Not really about using bailing wire and duct tape to fix something, but about making something pratical and useful with what is on hand using your mind to think it through.

This is part of what I think we are losing.

Guess I will go out tomorrow and take the salvaged pieces of metal from the destroyed trailer to build the new bunks for my other trailer. But first I will have to sandblast the pieces of metal to remove the paint and rust, using the presssurized sand blaster that my uncle built out of spare parts.

And than to keep the traddition alive I will take the undercarraige of the old trailer to be the base for a new flat bed trailer.

Chad

[cs]

Don't reckon I will do any sandblasting today, too much rain.

A book I'm reading made me think of something else that has been lost in the shuffle, and that is the ability to build a radio. A generation or two ago didn't kids make radios? Seems like I've read about that. I wouldn't have a clue where to start.

Chad

[hokiefan]

When I was a kid; my Dad, sister, and myself went for a walk/bike ride most summer evenings. He used to regularly drag home a mangled bicycle out of someone's trash pile. He would strip off all the mangled parts and put the still good pieces up in the attic. Whenever we needed a bike he would pull out his collection, pick a frame, clean it up, paint it whatever color we wanted, then put together a bike. We rarely had a new bike, but we had the sweetest running bikes in the neighborhood. And all the kids brought their broken bikes around for my Dad to fix. He grew up in the Depression and considered "scrounging" to be a fine art.

Bobby

[Canoez]

We are losing something. That's why we have to work at keeping these things alive. It's also why this:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0061243582/bookstorenow56-20

Is being published.

[Bill R]

A book I'm reading made me think of something else that has been lost in the shuffle, and that is the ability to build a radio. A generation or two ago didn't kids make radios?
Chad

BAD IDEA!!!!! I did that once, and I have spent the last 20 years doing for a living! (Kinda like crack...do it once and you are hooked)

We DO NOT want to lead children down this path of corruption! Lets teach them reak skills so they can get a real job and actually be contributing members to society.

[Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson )]

Here is the machine. It's my own design put together from roller chain and sprockets from McMaster-Carr. All of the shafts are on bearings so it runs very smoothly. Usually I just use the hand crank, but have automated it using my lathe components as shown below. To provide tension and allow for the take up during the twisting process, I use a fishing reel with the drag set and a couple of swivels. I use the machine mainly for demonstration but it is nice to have on hand, if I have a request for a bell rope, or turks head done in a certain color. I can load it up with colored thread and make whatever color hard laid twine I might need. To make the stiff, 1/8" cord pictured above I used cotton twine similar to butcher twine.

I am familiar with all of the sources listed in the thread above and can confindently say that you will not find hard laid stuff like you want, unless you make it yourself or stumble across a forgotten wharehouse with a spool stashed in a corner somewhere.


http://www.marlinespike.com/images/wbf/ropemaking_01.jpg

http://www.marlinespike.com/images/wbf/ropemaking_02.jpg

http://www.marlinespike.com/images/wbf/ropemaking_03.jpg

From up in
Resources / Product Search (http://www.woodenboatvb.com/vbulletin/upload/forumdisplay.php?f=4)

[Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson )]

Hey while we are at it some of my own design ;)

http://i107.photobucket.com/albums/m320/fosterhere/tiplamp_2.jpg

[LeeG]

everyone can make a pipe, resources and rewards Chad.

If there's a reward we'll make do with the resources available. If there isn't, there's no need.

[Dan McCosh]

"If the women don't find you handsome, they should find you handy."
--Red Green

[PatCox]

We have lost the time, we most of us don't have time to do the things we could do. Its become convenient instead to turn to a specialist, hire a pro, and its become profitable for people with any particular specialized skill to offer their services as a pro.

Its what economists call efficiency.

[ishmael]

A small example from childhood. Pop encouraged making things, learning basics from simple things. An example. We and the neighbor kids made a telegraph between our adjacent houses. Wire wrapped around nails made electromagnets, with a dry cell for power. Pop laid out the principles and gave us the simple materials then stood aside. It worked! And we learned things that aren't in books. How does an electric field translate into magnetism? A question physicists are still asking. We looked at it, amazed. Now just how are you going to string the wire that will carry the current? It was fun, too.

We also made cat whisker crystal radios, and model planes of balsa.

And Pat is right, it's partly a matter of time. Pop worked hard, but not sixty hours a week. He was available, as was mom, to teach and encourage.

[paladin]

If you look at Popeye's skectch, you can replace the resistor and crystal diode with a safety pin and a gillette "Blue Blade" razor blade......if you need amplification, after the diode (or razor blade/saftey pin) add a capacitor, either commercial or made with a mayo jar and some aluminum foil, place one side of the capacitor next to the diode, and the other side to the base of an NPN transistor. Place the base lead of the transistor to ground, then one side of the headphones to thecollector of the transistor, and the other headphone lead between the "capacitor" and the diode. The diode strips away the dc carrier from the radio station and the capacitor blocks it, now it is turned into dc. the headphones and transistor will hear the ac component (the music) because it will pass through the transistor, the unused dc will power the transistor and cause amplification.
If you are near a powerful radio station you can use this technique to actually build a transmitter/responder using the tuned circuit and the diode, using the magnetic earphone as a transmitting device to modulate the current in the diode.......