So......when I Was An Apprentice I Had To.....................

[SLIPSHOD & SLAPDASH]

I was sent to the local hardware shop for some inch & half left handed screws, they had them !!!!  much to the sparkys annoyance when the office charged him for them as they cost triple. People had thrown them away after giving up trying to screw them in (probably with their Stanley pump driver)

 

[sprocketflup]

Monkee is Speschal - Didn't you know  :facepalm:

Ive had good teachers

 

[sprocketflup]

Is that the same as a "Yankee"?

If so, I also have the scars

 

[SLIPSHOD & SLAPDASH]

And don't  forget  a tin of  



Whilst your there.

Yep aka The Yankee. I still have mine with the obligatory jubilee clip secured to stop it rolling off the scaffold/ladder

 

[kerching]

Yep, still,got my Yankee. AND I have a wood boring bit to fit it!

You can still buy all the bits for them including POZI bits!

Always interesting when it slipped on the screw head and scuttered off across the face of whatever you were working on!

Electricians short sweep brace for getting in tight spaces.......needed the strength of Geoff Capes to turn it with anything bigger than. Three quarter bit in it.....then you hard to sharpen the bit

Does anybody of the "new ilk" ever sharpen bits anymore?

 

[SLIPSHOD & SLAPDASH]

HSS bits shatter all the time now, it was rare to break one back then.

 

[sprocketflup]

Aldi were selling a drill bit sharpening jig the other week...it was £8.99 or summat, the you still had to get the diamond stone or whatever to do the actual sharpening....

I didn't buy one

I go thru SDS chisels at an alarming rate

 

[SLIPSHOD & SLAPDASH]

Always interesting when it slipped on the screw head and scuttered off across the face of whatever you were working on!

Not as interesting as when it slipped off & went through my finger, pinning it to  a plywood sheet. You know, its taken 30 odd years for that scar to go.

 

[Steve3948]

Not as interesting as when it slipped off & went through my finger, pinning it to a plywood sheet. You know, its taken 30 odd years for that scar to go.

Where did it go !!!!

I thought a scar was for life ??

 

[kerching]

Where did it go !!!!

I thought a scar was for life ??

Well, if he wakes up in the morning AND he is dead.......then it was for life

Just saying...

 

[SLIPSHOD & SLAPDASH]

Well its sort of there, but all the other scars have disguised it    and its blended in, thinking about it, 35  years ago.  Sometimes i look and cant remember which finger it was & other times i get a sharp pain from it, for no apparent reason (the old war wound syndrome i suppose)

 

[sprocketflup]

Where did it go !!!!

I thought a scar was for life ??

no, sadly lol

I had a wicked scar from falling out of a tree onto pointy metal railings when I was a kid, I was a lucky boy that day, and really proud of the scar. Couple years later and no sign of it - gutted lol

 

[SLIPSHOD & SLAPDASH]

My 2nd proper paid job (1st was the paper round)  , my greengrocer on the corner of my road started making toffee apples. Great job & fantastic pay for a schoolkid except the toffee is made from boiling  malt  vinegar so your clothes stunk, anyhow  when you spun the apples in the boiling cauldren of 10000000 degree toffee you often flicked a tiny spec on your hand. This scabbed up and left scars for a long long time that people used to ask about, they have all gone now.

 

[binky]

The dockyard apprentices had a revenge tactic for people who gave then too much stick. The yard being ancient in places, to the point of still having hooks i the wall where they used to hang people, also used to have some strange toilet arrangment, whereby there wasn't a flush, but a constantly running flow of water under the seats. So, the trick was to wait until victim was trousers down, then set fire to a wad of newspaper and chuck down the end trap so that the flow of water would take flaming paper under the rest of the traps, and gently singe backsides.

Whatever happened to 'engineers blue'?

 

[SLIPSHOD & SLAPDASH]

Toilets, that was a posh place. Who remembers the galvo piss buckets that an old  Irish labourer had to walk around changing.  Every now and then you would use a stagnant, forgotten one and as you broke the crust, my god what a stink

 

[Sidewinder]

I did my time in a factory also.

Some good & bad.

L/H screwdriver, long wait at the stores, being greased, but, that was not allowed unless they used barrier cream at our place even back in the early 80's.

Filing a square in a square.

Lacing cables.

Learning to weld with O-A, Arc & MIG, as well as use an O-A cutting torch.

Acetylene bangs...

Finding a dead rat in the water tank for the canteen!

Shift work.

Being "taught" by the tradesmen.

 

[NozSpark]

Ahh "lacing cables"..... all our loose wires were laced, we spent hours and hours getting that right

 

[OnOff]

A sharpened piece of welding rod with a "cone" made from a porno mag. Then fire it into the asbestos ceiling from the compressor and a length of conduit. Months later they would work their way out and fall back down point first!

Using a big cable drum as a work bench to drill on...........then finding the whole reel is knackered! (Then binning it and saying it was "lost"!).

Printing! Poxy ammonia printers and amending drawings with a scalpel! And "velo" drawings.......accidentally feeding a velo into the wet developer and watching it melt!

Cutting through the bench as well as the work piece then being made to weld it back up.

Bluing in oil and sawdust.........

Being sent to buy new spirit level bubbles and being amazed they sold them and it wasn't a wind up!

Driving the transit round Heathrow air side as a 16 year old! Can see that happening now!

Questioning out loud why you had to change & re-wire the WHOLE control cabinet just because the fibreglass where the pendant/gland went in had cracked. Making the suggestion that a reinforcing plate would save it from happening again........Then having it explained that doing it that way would mean no more doing it on OT!

 

[Evans Electric]

Firm I was with banned the use of Yankee drivers because the spring (I think)  connected the driver tip to the big metal screwhead on top of the handle where your palm sits .          Can't remember if its true now as everyone who worked there stopped using them including me.

 

[ProDave]

Oh yes overtime.  Being told to slow down, you are making the rest of them look bad.

Making sure you don't go to the loo during a tea break.