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Beautiful work. I'm curious though if these patterns would react if they were used to cut acidic stuff like tomatoes.

Biggun, A few months ago I had a situation where a "typical" detail drawing had dimensions in feet, inches, and fractional inches. The overall assemblies in question were comprised of repeated dimensions from the "typical" detail. Most of the "on screen takeoff" systems generate results in decimal feet. These are used to measure digital drawing files (usually .pdf) in the construction industry. I had several days of back and forth with the design team because none of them would actually do the math to solve the overall measurements to feet, inches, and fractional inches. The decimal foot output is rounded to two decimal places which isn't precise enough to determine whether things will fit or not. It's amazing to me that these people didn't trust themselves to sum up fractions, yet they felt perfectly comfortable trusting a digital approximation of a rough drawing, neither of which was rendered with enough precision to suit the purpose. One major reason the architect uses a detail drawing, is to provide a higher level of dimensional precision. Another, is to provide dimensionally correct figures for a drawing that might not be perfectly scaled. It's a whole lot easier to adjust the displayed dimension to fix an error, than it is to re-draw the whole thing. This is why even in 2019, most plans will have a note stipulating that the "plans should not be scaled".

JHCC, I was asking about the fundraising, thank you for bearing with me. That's definitely an interesting insight. It almost sounds like last wills and testaments.

JHCC I'm curious about what you mean by that. Thomas, it'd be neat to calculate how many times you've circled the globe in air miles. Biggun, I actually know two people who are in a similar situation. One works at an industrial bakery, and the other works in X-ray film manufacturing. Frosty, I hope vernier scale reading skills aren't so rare. I've seen cheap vernier calipers for sale at big box stores in my area. Most of the micrometers I've seen in active use were vernier too.

I thought it might be fun and interesting to hear some seldom shared insights into working life. I'll kick things off. I'm a construction estimator, which means that I prepare competitive bids to win all the construction contracts for my company. I think the thing that most people wouldn't expect about this job is how important it is to be sociable with everyone I work with. Many jobs are won or lost over participation. It can be very time-consuming to find, and then convince the right party to quote some portion of the work to me. How about your line of work?

Not to take this conversation on a weird(er) tangent, but I've noticed that a lot of travel experiences I looked forward to as an adult are a let-down in huge part because there's some aspect that nobody who has been there will think to talk about. For example, I loved the show C.S.I. which was set in Las Vegas. When I went to Las Vegas, I was absolutely gobsmacked by the noise level everywhere I went. The live concerts were very literally quieter than restaurants, bathrooms, casino floors, parking garages, sidewalks, and pool facilities. It's bizarre to me that nobody thinks to mention this. Another example, people in Midwest states tend to describe Colorado as though it's lot like Northern Canada or a warmer version of Alaska. Most of the state is high desert plains. On any given day, you're far more likely to die of dehydration than hypothermia. It's so dry here that people carry water with them all year around. I watched a lot of westerns as a kid, and they pretty much never mentioned, or depicted wind in Wyoming. I've been to Chicago and experienced many calm days, Cheyenne, not so much.

The tone on that thing reminded me of a metal garbage can. I can't imagine listening to that racket all day, every day.

To the OP, be advised that the responses are measured in depths of packed, burning coke. That's a bigger distinction than it may seem, especially if you're using coke fuel. A lot of recommendations to learn "fire maintenance" don't go into specifics. For example, lots of dry coal will pretty much catch fire wherever it's got airflow near the burning coke. This is why some smiths wet their coal around the fire's perimeter to keep the fire centralized. Burning coke will develop hollows, especially where heated stock and clinkers are removed from above. If you don't pack burning coke together, air passages will form which makes a fire where stock takes forever to heat up, then suddenly burns in half. The airflow through the coke acts like a cutting torch. There is a pervasive assumption that "hot enough to throw sparks" means the fire will be able to forge weld. Sometimes, stock is sparking because the oxidizing fire is burning through the stock so quickly that the adjacent material can't get to forge welding temperatures before the material is burnt through.

pnut, I have that book too! I was going to mention that the gent in that passage liked to use salvaged steel from washing machines because medium carbon steel had a brighter tone.

A few years ago I discovered that there are three separate part numbers for every individual component in an appliance. The first is put on the part by the factory. The only internet search results that will return this number are repair blogs, and people selling salvaged or "new old stock". The second internet search result, is the "replacement part" number. The sites selling these will charge 30-40% less than the next option in my list, but they do not allow returns, nor do they provide appliance make and model information to confirm the replacement part's compatibility with a given appliance. I'm guessing that these internet retailers are catering to appliance repair technicians. The third, is the part number you'll find if you search the internet by the make and model of the appliance. The sites selling these will charge roughly 5% below whatever an appliance repair company will quote to furnish and install the component. They do however, provide verification that the part will actually fit a specific make and model of appliance. Everything about this seems to be geared towards the do-it-yourself customer. To the best of my knowledge, there is no publicly available cross-reference between the last two part numbers. It seems entirely possible that one part retailer might have separate "internet storefronts" for repair techs, and DIY people. For what it's worth, I noticed that both types of sites use the same stock photos of the part which virtually never show dimensions, or definitive component characteristics like an end-on view of connection points. So what does all that mean? A do it yourself person can very likely repair their appliance for half the cost of a repair company. However, the part number tags are typically mounted in the appliance so they cannot be read without major disassembly. That's half the work of replacing the part, and if you buy the wrong thing through the "replacement part number" retailers, you can't return it. However, if you wanted to roughly approximate the service guy's repair cost for a given part, you could search by the appliance make and model. Add 5% or so to get yourself in the ballpark, so long as you keep in mind that we're talking about component level (pumps, sensors, control boards, etc), not individual washers and screws here. I've found similar schemes with replacement parts for common power tools as well. Commutator brushes and drill chucks are a great example. If you search by the make and model of the power tool, the parts often cost more than if you search by the part's actual number.

I regularly encounter a similar phenomenon with clients when it comes time to make a decision that costs money. There's lots of entanglement, we can measure what they want, and what it costs, but as soon as those figures emerge, their budget disappears.

pnut, I've read about that too, it's incredible how the pursuit of precision can lead to situations where the numbers start to dramatically jump. There are examples in advanced particle physics where observation actually changes the properties. It's my laymen understanding that it's only possible to accurately measure any two out of three related properties, before the third property becomes impossible to quantify.

Sand in a bucket is a very easy tool for cleaning oil off a quenched part. The sand gets into all the little nooks and crannies. Sawdust works pretty well provided the part is cold. Be very careful when quenching tubular stock as the "cold" end can erupt with dangerous steam.

A.R. That's a very tough situation, I wish you well with it. I have no idea if this applies to your situation or not, but reading your words brought to mind a few things. First, you're absolutely right that people respond to stress in all sorts of strange ways. There can be a powerlessness when a loved one is ill that can feel overwhelming. I've encountered my fair share of incompetent medical practitioners. When those two are combined, with the life of a loved one hanging in the balance, it's not the time to quietly acquiesce. In my experience, this is rarely seen as the loving action of someone doing their best to find the right help. Nobody likes the angry relative who argues with the medical staff. Not even the rest of the family. If you thought your loved one was going to die unless you got her to the right help, the families desire to mourn in place might seem like a life-threatening obstacle. With all that said, I think it's important to point out that this is incredibly stressful, which makes it hard to accurately assess what's going on. People who "default to action" might look for any opportunity to act on hope, no matter how thin. In my opinion, the thing that really matters most, is to do what your mother wants. With so many people who love her, she must have done the important things right.

It's worth pointing out that most civil engineering drawings and projects in the US are done in decimal feet. I worked for a site utilities contractor for one summer and had lots of fun asking the guys if we were "still working ten inches to the foot"! Working as an estimator, I've noticed that a lot of people assume that multiplication and division are harder with fractions. However, there are a great many situations where that's actually not true. I suspect it's because people *think* it's more accurate to have an answer that rounds off at the second, third, or fourth decimal place. I had a physics professor who loved to write a couple of questions in each exam that could be solved entirely in your head so long as you did the operations with the fractions intact. "Simplifying" to decimal equivalents only made the problem harder to enter into your calculator, and didn't allow you to end up with the perfectly correct answer. He put the less-accurate calculated decimal equivalent as an option to trap the unsuspecting.

Recent events have reminded me of a few things that are worth sharing. Starting at the beginning, a contract defines the scope of work. A well developed contract, will define the cost, the time, and any other relevant terms pertaining to how that scope is delivered. Anything that changes the terms of that agreement requires contract modification which is typically initiated by a change order. It's very important to note that there are many cases where the contract terms change without affecting the cost. A good example is when drawings are approved by the building department with no changes. The contract is often written on the "For construction" set, because some material will need to be ordered before the permit set will be ready. Generally speaking, change orders are associated with a formal directive from the owners representative. For example, if the answer to a question leads to additional work, the change order for that work would reference the answered question. Somewhat like the rules at a 4 way traffic stop, most people never consider more complex situations, because it's easier to just follow the lead of whoever got there first. Because of this thinking, there's a tendency for contractors to conceptualize change orders in terms of client instruction and answers. To be sure, it's easier to validate the change order if you can attach a document from the client telling you to add something. However, this approach is easily delayed or defeated by clients and representatives who simply refuse to answer the question. It's pretty common to find yourself in a situation where you've spent hours, days, and weeks trying to "help" a client or their representative to determine what their best course of action is. Some decisions lead to a reduction in scope which results in a change order to credit the value back to the client. All of that time sunk into consulting the client has value, yet many contractors are unwilling to present that work because they do not distinguish between management which is part of the contractual scope, and consulting, which is not. It's therefore not surprising, that many experienced clients and their representatives demand consulting services from their contractors without offering to pay for them. Before I go any further, I think it's important to touch on some common assumptions about change orders. Broadly speaking, many clients assume that all change order work is overpriced. Many contractors price change order work assuming that the work in question, will be harder to do than it really should be. It's my opinion that the cost of "free" consulting, is getting rolled into change order costs. It's also my informed opinion, that most contractors would actually charge less for consulting, than they're adding to the additional scope change orders, because they'd know they were getting paid before they did all the consulting work. Now, it bears mentioning, that most clients hire their design teams to do "Contract administration". This means that the design team should be acting as the clients consultant and representative. The problem with combining these roles, is that the design team has no incentive to accept financial responsibility for fixing their mistakes. Like just about anything else involving people, it's important to manage expectations as soon as possible. It might be a good idea to respond to a clients request for consultation, with a change order proposal for consulting services. Even if the client rejects it, they will likely proceed with a better understanding of the contract terms, and the value of your time. Every change order proposal should define the changes to the scope, the conditions pertinent to the changes, and an expiration date. I hope that helps.

I believe I've got another universal job skill that is worthy of our list. When faced with uncertainty, identify the common guideposts, and proceed through the center without moving the goal posts. Guideposts are defined risks, goal posts are defined rewards. Things that might happen aren't defined risks or rewards. The path between guide posts is as wide or as narrow as the individuals fit to the problem at hand. In the working world, there are a lot of people and things that are commonly seen as impossible to quantify. Some people will bicker about definitions, others will bicker about ethics or morality, and still more will bicker about relativism. In many cases, the only point of agreement is to collectively throw their hands up and claim the subject is impossible to quantify. We've all seen examples of this in forum discussions dissecting uncertain designations like the "good" from the "bad" job, or the "craft" from the "trade". These discussions are basically attempting to size up the things that must pass through guideposts of risk, on their way to the goal. However, the impasse leads some to incorrectly assume that the guideposts of risk will move in response to whatever quantity they choose to apply to themselves. That's not how nature, or free market economies work. There are people who are so focused on uncertainty, that they cannot see an opportunity as a path bounded by visible guideposts leading to their goal. To them, there is only blind faith that perseverance will provide. Unless they stumble through the guideposts by luck, they are certain to fail. Then there are some people who navigate their path by aversion to risk, which charts a path where the reward is always beyond the horizon. To these people, there is only the constant hustle to outrun the outcome of their decisions. Finally, there are people who refuse to recognize that there isn't always a path for them through the guideposts, no matter how clearly they see their goal. If they are too "big" or too "small" in whatever criteria applies to threading the gap in guideposts, they are not going to get through to their goal. This is the world telling them to find a different path.

George, That's a really excellent point! I've also encountered people who were at the opposite end of the perfectionist spectrum who act like briars, just looking for a way to generate a snag. I typically find them working in the quotes department wherever a custom part is needed in a time-sensitive situation.

Volodymyr, Two things that weren't mentioned earlier. First, a slightly domed hammer face might help you. Big flat hammer faces can magnify every error. It's difficult to be perfectly accurate with a heavy hammer and a hard blow. Correcting errors early and often will also keep things on track. The second thing that wasn't mentioned thus far is to consider how you're holding the stock. Most smiths alternate 90 degree blows on stock by moving their wrist. Some tongs will only securely hold stock that's "clocked" with respect to the reigns. If you've got to cock your wrist a few degrees to make the stock flat with the anvil, it'll be harder to move your wrist 90 degrees plus or minus that fudge factor with any consistency. If possible, it's helpful to use longer square stock so you can mark a spot to place your thumb on the "top" face. That gives you a reference point to see what's going wrong. For example, if your top faces are parallel, but the side faces are off, you'll know that you're not rotating exactly 90 degrees. Another thing that might help is to take a lighter grip with your holding hand. If the stock isn't fully supported by the anvil, the hammer blow will make it jump. I noticed that it took a lot less effort to hang onto the stock once I got a feel for a well supported hammer blow. I find that holding my stock holding hand against my hip gives me a frame of reference to get leveled out with straight stock.

Thomas, One thing that might be worthy of your consideration is a concept called the "pain letter". The idea is that once you find a company that's in need of your services, you write a letter to whoever would be your direct manager. The letter should identify the "pain" that said manager is enduring, in such a way as to present your abilities as the relief for their pain. It's vital to understand that this is geared towards generating a need where one didn't previously exist. I encountered this concept by reading articles from a "thought leader" in human resources. Basically all of their advice is geared towards working around human resources, because the "formal hiring process" in most companies is dysfunctional. Another thing to consider is to do a deep dive into your contacts. Reach out to absolutely everyone you know. Some business analysts suggests that only a fraction of the total job openings are ever visible to the public. Many managers are allowed to hire a referral directly without involving HR. Even if your contact only tips you off to a potential lead, it's still infinitely superior to spending your days uploading resumes to robotic HR programs that then require you to manually enter everything that was on your resume again.

Anvil, Your comments remind me of a few things. Aim at what you can hit. Chasing every opportunity simply because it exists is an excellent way to squander your shot at all the opportunities. More businesses go out of business because of the bad job(s) they won, than any number of good jobs they lost. Be selective about who you work for. I see where you're coming from in terms of positive thinking, but in business, there are serious ramifications to biting off more than you can chew. For what it's worth, I've met quite a few ethically weak people who are experts at explaining why their dishonest "techniques" are necessary. It's been my experience that no single factor is more likely to ruin a human endeavor than dishonesty.

Frosty, you're making good points as usual. I do think that there's a bit of nuance to seeing both sides that nobody teaches in terms of the value of labor, and the value of an opportunity. I'm not sure it's really feasible to develop an accurate perspective without guidance, or a lot of frustrating experience. A friend of the family is a stay at home mom who is one of the most intelligent and hard working individuals I know. One day she was bitterly complaining about entry-level wages and how they wouldn't allow her to contribute much to the household. I pointed out that her intelligence and work ethic are not "entry level". An employment gap isn't the same thing as no experience.

Irondragon, Frosty, pnut, MrTMichaud, You've all mentioned situations where the value of the work wasn't adequately rewarded in wages (or opportunity). A long time ago I read an excellent article about job hunting where the author made a wonderful observation about job offers. Job offers are a statement of what the employer thinks of your worth. "Low-ball" offers consistently come from terrible employers because their underlying assumption is that you're worth less than the work you're doing. When I applied that to my life, it was amazing how consistent that turned out to be. I've never had a good boss who "low-balled" my wage. Perhaps the universal job skill here, is to recognize what drives a bad deal?

This is a good one. Lots of wisdom can come from individuals with difficult personalities. Another application of this idea is to avoid the rookie mistake of repeating bad information. This reminded me of another universal job skill. Develop effective ways to check your work.

I was thinking about this the other day when I read an article claiming that technological advances are outpacing schools. The crux of the discussion was whether or not it was worthwhile to attend a school if your skills be out of date by graduation. When I consider the best professionals I've worked with, there are a few common traits they shared. It occurred to me that these traits are actually skills. At a very basic level, all of them shared an accurate perception of individual roles in the bigger picture. This is distinctly different from just one person's opinion. Anyone who worked with these people would notice that the consistently saw things they way they really are. It seems to me that instruction on how to maintain accurate perspective would be a universal job skill. What skills would you add to the list?