Saturday, July 24, 2010

a few notes

1. Wearing a watch on the left wrist. I always sorta wondered why right-handed people did this; I use my right side for all fine adjustments, and my left for gripping and power, so it made no sense to put the watch on the power side instead of the information / attention side. Now I finally get it - if I'm sticking my hand through an instrument panel to tighten nuts back by the firewall, the watch doesn't get hung up on wires or tubing if it's on the unused wrist. Chalk it up to me having thin forearms and small wrists that it took nearly a decade of working on planes before I found a position where this made clear sense to me.

2. Cutting oil makes cutting and cleaning up threads go from mildly annoying to pretty darned easy. It also extends the life of the die. Now, that's wonderful!

3. After cutting new threads, like on the tie rods, cut a small rectangle of the red scotch-brite that gets used for most minor abrasive around the shop, and run it over the threads like twisting a nut on and off. This will round off the edges of the fresh cuts sufficient to not leaving many parallel little cuts on your hand when you grab them.

4. Mental exhaustion is no different from physical exhaustion; when you're done, you're done. Pack up your tools and go find something else to do. Some things, not even chocolate can fix, and I need a day off.

Off to the Palmer Air Fair!

2 comments:

  1. So... did you get your watch back??? Another reason for the opposite wrist is if you are timing something like a pulse, you use your 'touch' hand to feel it, and your strong hand to time (with the watch).

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  2. Yes, and I didn't even break the wristband doing so!

    Timing by touch makes perfect sense. I'm going to try to retrain myself to wear it on my strong wrist - we'll see! You can teach old dogs new tricks; the old dog just has to want to learn.

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