Shop Time w/T.W. Friends

I’ve never been to school for machining and barely graduated high school, definitely no college, a friend got me on where I am and when I started 25 years ago there were a couple of older gentleman who taught me a lot. One of the guys named Charles Pierce was a retired machinist from a large tobacco plant near by and worked 3 days a week. If I needed to know an angle he would show me how to figure it out on paper.

One day I went over and he had a piece of paper with numbers written all over it. I said what are you trying to figure out? He said “my gas mileage if I change the tires size on my truck”.

I use autocad now

 

that was before you could post on tacomaworld about what size tires fit with no lift lol

 

Is it Monday? This was on my bench this morning.

 

For sure

 

Morning fella's Dondon's Monday. I got to have honey on my emergency corn dog lunch days lol

 

I would absolutely have an Excel file somewhere in there just riddled with unnecessary formulas.

 

Looking back over the years I'm very thankful of all the older gentlemen who have mentored me as well. I have a little college for math and machinist apprenticeship. You have some good skills creed. I have no auto cad or cam but do have a trusty machinist handbook to fall back on time to time. The other day when you machined that cone for the funnel, I wondered if you've ever threaded with it? Cool stuff, I wish I knew more about
CNC

 

I used to single point threads on our old lathe before we got the 2 CNC's we have now. I can turn them on and run them in manual but not make them do tricks. I can make the 2 CNC mills do anything though, I'd rather run the mill than the lathe, I don't have to baby sit it most of the time and can work on other stuff, for myself

The guy who runs both our lathes is 60 some years old and an excellent machinist even though he is stuck in 1967

 

Lol, well I'm old but just born in 1967, so not that old

 

Check out this machinist handbook a guy gave me before he left here https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/shop-time-with-crèéd-friends-©.669927/page-68#post-24323287

 

I was born in 1975

 

Still have the setup tools for single pointing threads. Haven’t touched them in years until now.

 

Mornin’ fellas! Going on 3 hrs of sleep today, should be a fun one!

Hey, at least they had the courtesy to give you a warning!

 

1983 here

 

Same here!

 

That was me yesterday. Last 3 Sunday nights in a row I couldn't sleep.

 

On the subject of education, I have a 2 year Associates Degree and my wife has her Doctorate.

Yeah, I definitely married up.

 

I did similar, I only got a couple college courses under my belt before I realized I needed to find a career to pay for it and stopped! My wife has her masters in speech language pathology and had zero student debt when she graduated! Thank god her parents enrolling in pre-paid college when she was young which paid for her bachelors, and her grandparents starting a college fund for her when she was born which paid for her masters degree.
With that in mind, we’re doing everything we can to make sure our boys have similar plans set up for their education. We simply do not get a tax return every year. We set up a pre-paid plan and the refund goes to paying that every month.

 

You guys impress me with your fancy high school diplomas. You college grads are just over achievers lol. 10th grade education here and doing fine, thanks. My work keeps my brain pretty sharp and my interests cause me to learn all the time (lots of podcasts at work).

Yesterday I made 4 of these plates. Well, I actually didn't make the plate but I made the knobs and attached them. Theyll get sandblasted and the knobs will look seamlessly attached.

 

College just wasn't in the cards for me. I did good to get out of high school. I couldn't stand it, I'd rather be working instead of learning, that and we were broke growing up. I never even thought about going to college and didn't know what I wanted to do when I got out of school. I worked at a landscape nursery my junior and senior year in school, quit right before I graduated and was out of school 2 days and went to work at a heating and air place, worked there 2 years and got hired here at the machine shop in 1995 and been here since. My wife and I got married 10 years ago and bought the store, wish we'd never bought it but it is what it is.