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I Forge Iron

It was my fault........


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How about that for a new thread?

Last week I had a very basic level student who wanted to drift a hole out a bit. He was trying to do it cold so I told him it wouldn't work cold. He needed to heat it. Of course there is the language barrier here......

A few minutes later I saw him with a red hot drift trying to enlarge the hole. It was my fault. I should have specified which piece to heat!

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Unless your student had given you some reason to believe you had to explain that to him, I don't agree it was your fault. You can't teach common sense. People either have it or they don't. Your student may benefit from a change in educational goals.

Bill

Edited by wedwards
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We had a crucible failure one time in the forge and the molten copper ran into the ash dump forming a nasty mess of clinker, ash and copper.

I told the fellow working on it to use the *hack* saw and cut it up for remelting, turned around and he was using my *back*saw, one of my finest woodworking tools---totally ruined the edge of it and having it re-sharpened was going to cost several times what I originally paid for it...

I have also learned to put my "tool colour" on *everything* or else hold downs and punches and drifts get used as stock...

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Philip in china;
You have experienced what I believe to be a communication dilemma that is more common than one may think. And I believe it could be stated as; “the assumption that the receiver of the information will use common sense, or has a pre-existing basic understanding of the topic concept”.

Over the many years of being a supervisor, running my own business, teaching, or the life experience of raising children, the possibility of the concept of what you described seemed to be waiting in the background by only one different concept or interpretation away from what is really meant.

It seems as though sometime perspective has a broad range of different concepts about the same thing that is as broad as there are people. It took me quite some time to learn how important it was for me to put instructions into “Measurable and Definable Terms”.

I find it interesting that Napoleon had an idiot available for his general staff members to test out orders on, to see if he could understand what was being said before they would give the orders out to the troops.
They would first see if the idiot could understand what was said in an order, and if he could, then they would put the order out to the rest of the troops.

Back in the 50’s when I was in basic training for service in the army; something happened that I will never forget.
Our company was doing some night training in the field. We had a large bonfire going that gave light to the instructor.
At the end of the training session, one the cadre pointed to a new trainee and told him to grab a can of water and put the fire out.
The cadre member failed to consider that a new trainee would not know the difference between a water can and a gas can. The tragic results were that the trainee poured gas on the fire. It led me to see the first of many men I seen severely burned or die by fire.

So now when I teach, I follow Vince Lombardy’s concept of not assuming they know anything. When he took over the team of seasoned football players, he started from the bare basics when he said: “Men, this is a football”.

I am glad things turned out OK Philip!!
Ted Throckmorton

Edited by Ted T
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I did a silly thing myself yesterday. I had been forging some rebar into square stock on the powerhammer. The tongs I was using had a very slightly loose rivet so I put them under the tup and pressed the pedal. Then spent 10 minutes trying to get the tongs to work again. That rivet sure is tight.

Regarding idiots and the general staff I was once told that in the Boer war the Boers were told NEVER to shoot a British general. Apparently they were judged to be so stupid that each one was more service to the enemy than to the British.

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My similar example was to ask an apprentice (many years ago) to replace the roll of tape in a 'Dymo labeling machine' (old style one that uses the tape similar to the picture).

OK - so having realized that my apprentice had not returned in the requisite time allocated in my mind to achieve the task I began searching, only to find said apprentice hiding with a deconstructed 'Dymo machine' including almost all of its component pieces (screws, spring ....) trying to figure out how to re-assemble it with the new tape installed.

Needless to say this taught me to accept that not all have the same understanding of a task and the BTW the dymo never worked properly again.

Phil - I am glad your experience was equally not life threatening.

Trevor

18367.attach

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Years ago I was asked to check on how a new programmer at the computer center was doing with the software project he was working on. He had created about 12 copies of the various pieces of software across three mainframes, all with various modifications, and had no idea which version of each piece of software was which. He completely trashed three years of time and effort that was spent developing the software. It was years before the computer center hired anyone with a degree in computer science again.

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I have found that if I don't say this is a foot ball and this is what it does, AND!!! this is what I want you to do with it.... then ... when the project is completed upside down and backwards.. then there is no one left to blame but me. ...

Some of the chuckle heads I work with enjoy proving this concept to me as often as possible...

I forget whose signature line it is .. but it says common sense isn't common... or words to that effect...

Its nice to know I am not alone in this... but I wish some days some one else was... just to get away from misguided for a day would be nice.... and no I am not wishing this on anyone...
Cliff

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I worked as a designer for various companies that did engineering plans for HVAC, plumbing, electrical and fire protection of various buildings. To accomplish this you have to know various building codes, regulations and design criteria. Well there are basically three ways to do things, the right way, the wrong way, and of course my favorite way, the government way. I did a preliminary set of plans for a project for the US Corps of Engineers which has a very specific way of doing things and don't always make senses to you and me. I was not on the project for the next phase of the project and another designer was put on the project. He thought he knew the "right" way to do the job and set about doing so. The COE has very specific milestones that have to be met and they want to see certain things on the drawings at certain times, not before and not after. Well you can guess what was happening, that's right the review comments were piling up and up, something like 20 per page of drawing. Common sense wise the young designer was doing a fine job but he was doing it the right way not the government way. He was at 90% submission when a COE team showed up at the office on a Monday morning to discuss the plans and lack of response to review comments. As a senior designer I was assigned the unpleasant task of making totally new drawings that conformed to COE design and drawing standards in four days. Right way, Wrong way, Government Way, What's common sense got to do with it?

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It's not just the government. I am an electronics tech for a large printer. We get the whole, "I know it doesn't make sense but that's what we have to do," bit all the time. About 60% of my job is trying to idiot-proof the world. Of course as the reputation of the plant goes down in the community the grade of idiot goes up by an equal amount.

At work my biggest mistake is wrongly thinking people running the machines have a clue.

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H.L. Mencken said, "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public." It's not just Americans. However, in many cases "it doesn't make sense" really should be, "it would make a lot more sense if I had all the relevant information."

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May Contain Nuts? Well I hope so. A friend of mine at church, his grandson can't take peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to school because there is a 5Th grade student that is allergic to peanuts. My friends grandson is in kindergarten. The thought is they might trade lunches, kindergarten students are not allowed to have lunch with anybody but other kindergarten students. One student out of 300 has an allergy and they are not even sure that it is a true allergy and everyone dances the jig.

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