Sunday, August 9, 2020

masters, teachers and peers - machinist edition

I call these guys The Machine Shop Mafia.  They all know each other via YouTube, and a bunch of them have been getting together at meet-ups around the country for various things.  I haven't included everyone in that circle of YouTubers, only my favorites who I follow faithfully...

Tom Lipton, OxToolCo - Tom is like the uncle I never had but wish I did.  He seems so genuinely nice, and calm, and un-excitable that for me, watching his content is like a mental oasis, a micro-vacation.  Tom is a lover of tools, especially precision measuring tools, but he is also a lover of precision generally, and therefore, he also owns and obsesses over the laboratory standards and instruments which are used to calibrate the high-precision measuring tools which are used in a machine shop.  As a tool fanatic, he also has a great appreciation for shop-made tools, the unique fixtures, tooling, and problem-solving widgets that machinists - or indeed, anyone with opposable thumbs - create in order to make their daily work a little easier.  I have made many tools to solve problems in the shop, but none of them were useful more than once, and none were made to last.  Tom's own work and his appreciation for the work of others, inspires me to try to do better. -- https://www.youtube.com/user/oxtoolco/featured

Adam Booth, Abomb79 -  Don't take this guy on in a 4-jaw aligning competition. As near as I can tell, and I apologize if I got this wrong, Adam is a 3rd generation machinist, who worked in his dad's shop, who in turn worked in his father's shop.  As a result, Adam strikes me as the consumate competent machinist; he's probably forgotten more tricks and tips than I will ever know - every time I watch one of his videos, I discover some new time-saving technique that makes me smack my forhead, or the existence of a tool I didn't know existed and now positively must own because it's fundamentally better than what I've been using all my life. -- https://www.youtube.com/c/Abom79/featured

This Old Tony - Tony is the funniest guy in The Machine Shop Mafia.  Blink and you'll miss it.  He does a lot of work restoring or upgrading eccentric old machine tools.  He seems to get a lot done in a very short amount of calendar time, so I wonder whether he sleeps. -- https://www.youtube.com/c/ThisOldTony/featured

RobRenz - I found RobRenz two days ago via some comments that Tom Lipton made about him in one of his videos. Anybody that Tom thinks well of is somebody I need to know about.  He seems to be into very high precision (physical) metrology. -- https://www.youtube.com/user/ROBRENZ

Cà Lem - I just found this fellow this morning, via a comments conversation between Cá Lem & some of the other fellows listed above. He is a machinist, makes nice tools, also does restorations -- but as far as I can tell, HE'S JUST A KID!! - https://www.youtube.com/c/CáLem/featured is his channel, but watch this amazing video to get a perfect summary of why his channel is so respected by the other YT machining pantheon: https://youtu.be/skMvRMGVybM

Clickspring - Does a lot of clock related stuff.  Features a lot of very finy, small, fiddly work, like a jeweler, clock-maker, or watch-maker.  Beautiful craftsmanship.  I learned about how to "time" screw heads from him. -- https://www.youtube.com/c/ClickspringClips/featured

 These are the machine shop folks I look up to, when it comes to truly advanced machining and toolmaking.  But I am not qualified to teach what they do.  I intend my blog to be for beginners.  I consider myself basically competent as a home shop bodger.  I do not call myself a machinist because I am not one - I have not worked as one professionally, nor do I have the skills of a professional.

When I watch the videos of the people listed above, I am very much a dog watching origami.

 Fortunately, I have a good friend who is a professional toolmaker, with whom I have a pretty good relationship, although I think he has done me far more favors than I have done for him.  I also did a very small amount of paid part-time (piece) work in his job shop which AFAIK worked out fine for both of us, which helped me understand some shop viewpoints and "ways of working" which were of a larger scope than the simple tasks I was performing.

 He helped me evaluate and decide on buying my lathe, for which I am grateful, and much more to the point, he sold me a Bridgeport for well below market value for which I am in his debt.  And he lets me bug him with the occasional question.  I can't figure out how to pay this kind of thing back, either, and it eats at me sometimes.  I have a lot of treasured friends like that, it is the way I am most fortunate, and I am baffled how I earned such people in my life.

 Frankly, that's how most of my professional education has gone - I hang around people who are smarter than me, I pay close attention to what they do and how they do it, and I ask a lot of questions.  For most of my life, I have managed to get paid to do this - I've been doing a sort of high-level On-The-Job-Training, without pursing any college.  Bonus: many of my friends are professional nerds with similar shared interests, so much of the time I (used to) spend socializing or recreating, I was learning tech skills too.

 I grant you it's not for everyone - especially if you are a Reading/writing type* learner.  Although I am an avid and strong reader, that's not how I learn best - I am half Visual and half Kinetic style learner, in that model, so YMMV.

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* the so-called "V.A.R.K." model of four types of learner, developed by Neil Fleming in 1987

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