I get up every morning and schlepp around contemplating the world around me. The topic with myself today was about being mechanically inclined. I have always liked mechanical things and construction and those sort of things have always come easy to me mainly because I assume the interest was there. I recognise that being mechanically inclined doesn’t make me any better at anything in fact maybe because I’m at ease with it I’m more lax. The reverse also applies to someone who isn’t mechanically inclined may have to work very hard at something and end up doing a much better job that I would or ever could do.
So when do I remember the first thing that showed at a young age that I was possibly mechanically inclined.? Wayyyyyyyyyyy back in the early fifties in London England at about age 5-6 I remember being taught how to build a wooden box. I still remember to this day being told about the opposite sides had to be the same length. The box could be any size I wanted, square or rectangle but the measurements had to be the same. I was taught how to measure, cut and nail it together. I remember making lots of boxes and even old Mr Jakes our retired neighbour would give me pieces of wood over the fence and make a real fuss at everything I showed him. (he cried when we moved to Canada).
The one problem I remember with the boxes is that they never had a bottom or top. They were only 4 sdes. At that age it was a real dilemma. I don’t remember ever being shown how to do the bottom. Maybe we didn’t have enough wood, I don’t know but I was really proud of what I could do. ” MR Jakes! Mr Jakes!……… an’uver box Mr Jakes, an’uver box” (London accent).
What is your first recollection of building or fixing something?
roger
Replies
Kindergarten. One day we were given the opportunity to make small wooden toys. I chose to make a sailboat. I was given a piece of 1X4 pine and a small handsaw. I was told to draw a point on one end of the 1X4 and then cut the two triangles off with the little saw. There was no vise in the room so I was expected to hold the 1X4 down on the desk top and cut it carefully with the saw. The reason I remember this so well is that on the second or third stroke the saw jumped out of the cut and landed on my nearby left thumb, causing a painful and bloody tear in my tender flesh...and a blood curdling scream from me.
You'd think that such a trauma would have precluded me from further participation in carpentry. It probably would have but the desire to build my own homes has always been stronger, thank God. And my skill with handsaws has improved a great deal as well. :-)
I think it's hereditary. I can trace my lineage back to the 1500s (on my maternal grandfather's side) and there are lots of people who made, built and repaired things. On my grandmother's side, there have been quite a few highly mechanically inclined people, too. On my dad's side, I can only go back a couple of generations but my grandfather and all of my uncles, as well as most of my aunts were able to do quite a bit of this kind of thing. My brother was adopted and watching him with tools is not for the squeamish.
I think the first thing I helped build was a birdhouse. I distinctly remember being in kindergarten and when someone drew Saturn on the chalkboard, at an angle to the rings, I got up and erased the part of the rings that should have been obscured by the sphere. The teacher was called into it and when I explained why I erased it, she said I was correct.
For good or bad, I have never been afraid to take something apart.
When I was in 6th grade, I had pneumonia and when I was bored, I grabbed the old Penn fishing reel my grandfather had sent and took it apart, since it didn't work. I cleaned and lubed it. Still works.
"I cut this piece four times and it's still too short."
Edited 5/28/2007 12:29 pm by highfigh
Oh man, it goes way back. I remember in grade school, we had these wood projects, like little tug boats made out of two pieces cut from a 2x4. It was a piece of cake for me - I got in trouble because I was doing everybody's, and they were lined up waiting for me to do theirs.
When I was just a kid I built these elaborate stick-and-tissue balsa airplanes, actual flying models. Some of them were rubber-band powered, and some had little motors. Plastic models all the time, too.
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We had a very creative and "outside the box" gang of kids in my neighborhood. One guy would build a balsa t-shaped frame, and attach a dry-cleaner bag. He'd melt birthday candles to the balsa, light them, let the heat fill the bag, and off it'd go. Who knows how many fires this guy started!
Another friend used to build extremely detailed scale WW2 models from paper - he'd draw in the ailerons, flaps, even the rivets - then he'd light them on fire and throw them off his roof. (same kid used to torture his army men with red-hot paperclips heated on the kitchen cooktop!) Another kid got some tupperware buckets and tied surgical tubing to them, and tied the other end to some broomstick handles. Awesome water balloon launcher!
I was always building stuff. Always. I think its sad how TV and internet and video games have taken kids away from that. One kid who helps out on our jobsite asked if he should throw away the rip strips left over from the table saw. I told him they were great for building kites - he just looked at me funny. Kids don't do that stuff anymore.
"I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun."
Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe
Edited 5/28/2007 1:21 pm by Huck
When I was about ten until sixteen or thereabouts, I must have spent a million hours building models. I could never seem to build iot stock though. I was always chopping and customizing, body putty, borrowed parts from other cars, etc.I never was one to stick to the story liune that well, I don't follow a recipe straight on either, and paint by numbers was lost on me. Ask me to copy a manuscript word for word and you are wasting your time. Unless I use copy/paste, I always 'improve' whatever I am copying.Guess I've always been a renovator at heart
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That's funny. That was us too - remember those "skeeter" little rubber-band powered flying stick models?
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We would modify them into P-61 Black Widow versions with two fuselages. We'd make bi-plane versions, even tried pusher models with the propeller in the back. We'd make a bigger body, then put all these rubber bands on there, and wind them with a hand drill with a bent-nail hook in the bit.
The trees and roofs in my neighborhood were littered with these things!"I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun."
Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe
balsa doesn't taste very good tho
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balsa doesn't taste very good tho
I beg to differ. It has a natural sweetness. Kinda like the popsicle stick tastes good even after the popsicle's gone. I know because we used to put the stabilizer in our mouth to wet the wood, then we'd hold it in the desired position while it dried, to get the proper "trim" to the glide.
View Image "I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun."
Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe
Ya know, when a man gets top be old enough, it can be pretty hard to remember something like that...
Some things you never forget, liek your first woman, where you were when Kennedy got shot or when the space shuttle blew up....
Hmmm...
When I was pre-kindergarteen, we went out on the hay fiel;s as it was being raked into windrows and piled them into wall positions, like sketching out a floorplan using hay on the ground. Then we went in and out the doors and used the bathroom....
Does that count? Or was that architectural design work? Field studies?
Then we moved when I was 6-7 YO and there was an old chicken coup out next to the barn. My brothers and I renovated it into a 'camp' Got to learn what dusty dry chicken poop does to one's sinuses.
Oh, yeah, we learned that when you shiongle, you should start at the bottom and lay up. We started at the top and worked down cause it was easier and safer, but those laps facing uphill made for a wet camp that first night out.
But that was remodeling, not building, I guess....
I guess now that I think a while, the first thing I 'built' was a tree house. Climbed twenty feet up into a pine with a couple of boards and laid them acrosss the limbs so I had a place to sit and watch the critters. I must've been 10-12 YO about then
Welcome to the
Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime.
where ...
Excellence is its own reward!
Someplace I still have a book I'd made with a leather cover and two stories in it.
I was pretty young as I remember printing the word dog and it looks like loog with the d being made as a b and the b not connecting thus looking like lo.
be lo and LOL
Beyond memory.
Mom says I took apart part of the vacuum cleaner before I could walk.
Do remember my first cedar shingle roof (18 YO) as was on it when future DW walked up to the bottom and asked a question.
Remember building 1st set of wall mounted cabinets (near end of cub scouts, Mom still uses them). Carved part of a boy scout totem pole when 6 YO, before cubs as Pop was scoutmaster.
Probably 1st thing remembered about "building" was about 4 YO, late 1940s, central IL had a tornado real close to the house and tore of a few porches and roofs in the area. Pop got home the next day from work and there were a few hundred 5d box nails driven into the perimeter of the back porch - at least Pop asked (which prevented a spanking) first and just chuckled when I said I didn't want the porch to blow away. Some of the nails are still there.
The next tornado was last year, last month went back and put new roofing on the same house.
So, How much thrust did that vacumn develope?sounds like my next brother. He took EVERTHING in the house apart to see what made it work. Clocks, radios, vacumns, if it had two screws holding it togethther he took them out to see what moved. He ended up with a Corvair dune buggy that would walk up the banks of the gravel pit or do better than a hundred on the pavement!
Then he built his Camero!
Twice!
Just because.after I had been gone for a few years I visited him after he got back from SE Asia. He had a Triumph bike taken apart in the living room, the engine in his bathtub, and the carburator onthe kitchen table. He dcouldn't eat, couldn't bathe, and worse yet, he couldn't watch TV, until he got it all back together that weekend!
Welcome to the Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime. where ... Excellence is its own reward!
I dont remember .
I was a builders child and it was a long time it seemed before I was trusted to work alone . I believe I could have built lots of things before I was let do it .
I do remember one thing that wasnt building to give example .
It was my job to fetch and on footings to hold the stick. We were putting in a sepictank and I thought it was time for me to learn to run the backhoe . He told me not to ever get on it . I wanted to really bad . He left for lunch and I spent the lunch hour digging . I figgured the butt whipping would be worth it but I didnt get one . I ended up with that job.
Thats the first thing I remember .
Tim
With my grandfathers guidance, I built a 3 car garage for my parents when I was 11. That got me started and I haven't looked back.
Bing
That's a tough question. What came first? With CRS syndrome I'm never sure.
Dad worked at Anaconda American Brass and brought home all sorts or stuff. Which I confiscated or used. A spool of real thin copper wire: inserted that in the wood floors between bedrooms to wire up a door bell. Off cuts from the company box shop to make some deadly rubberband guns. Larger offcuts to build cars; one brother rode while the other pushed. Big treehouse in the neighbors plum tree and an underground fort below the tree. Took apart every lock in the house. just because I could. Couldn't get enought shirt cardboard from just dads shirts so talked the laundry guy into bringing me hundreds of extras. Built models of sailing ships and trains with that cardboard and drew in all the details with pencil. Built a zip gun - killed a stop sign. Built a boat - put it in the pond - it sank.
Oh, man you're taking me back....
It must have been a 2x4 boat. I remember cutting the bow with my little 15" crosscut saw and using Dad's coping saw to cut the recess in the stern for the rubber-band-powered paddle wheel. And then sanding and sanding until it was smooth, and finally painting it up red and blue and putting the paddles on it. Grandma took me to Central Park and I sailed it in the model boat basin, too young to be embarrassed at my home-made effort being outclassed by all the fancy-arsed kit boats around me. Of course it puttered out into the middle and then stalled, and I cried until Grandma persuaded some other kid's father to get mine while he was out there getting his own son's. (Grandma was not going to go wading in that pond holding up her skirts! Ladies of any age did not do that in the 1950s....)
We all built shoe-shine boxes, too. I think every boy in the school had to build one of those in shop class. My dad made me use mine, though: I got to shine his wingtips once a week, like it or not....
We made kites and model planes, and I remember building a mini-soap-box racer for the Cub Scout races with Dad, who helped me weigh it on the baby scale and then drill holes in the body to stuff with solder to bring it up to maximum legal weight. We used baby powder to lube the axels....
I took apart my old baby carriage when I was about 10, and used the wheels to make a street-sized racer. Man that was fast! Ball-bearing hubs, look out! We went straight down Roselle Street hill and almost right through the bay window of the house facing it before we could stop. No heels left on my new Buster Browns after that one. Mom was pissed about the shoes but glad I had at least come home for once without blood all over me....
Dinosaur
How now, Mighty Sauron, that thou art not brought
low by this? For thine evil pales before that which
foolish men call Justice....
When I was about 10 I started to build a 8 foot wooden punt(boat) from one piece of 4x8 sheet of 1/4 plywood which was featured in Popular Mechanics. I was in heaven when I discovered Popular Mechanics, Mechanics Illustrated and Popular Science. I actually think that way with Fine Homebuilding.
Anyways, I managed to get my parents to buy this piece of plywood but I still needed 3/4 inch plywood for the front and back which of course adds up to more than ONE sheet of plywood. I only had a hand saw so I couldn't do a great job of cutting and cutting the end pieces on a chamfer was a disaster. The special brass screws were out of the question so I used nails and whatever screws I could find. I never finished it for a couple of years( gee, even back then I was like that) then had to finish it in a hurry to use to go fishing with my new brother-in law. It worked! Well it floated with us in it. My sister ended up with 3 sons and they played with that punt for years. I never went in it again.....................I was older................................and smarter.
roger