James L Adams—People and Products

New Venture

I seem to have written posts for this blog for over 5 years (over 300 of them). I began the blog to discuss product quality, since it is as topic that has always interested me, and after a heroic and successful effort in the U.S. to improve manufacturing quality (which of course reflects on overall product quality), industry drifted off into other traditional directions (profit, grow-the-organization, etc.). As I mentioned in my last post, the manufacturing quality goals were nicely described in a classic paper written by David Garvin and published by the Harvard Business review in 1987, when quality was the hot word.

In 2012 I wrote my book Good Products, Bad Products, published by McGraw Hill, to pay more attention to such critical “dimensions” of quality that even though difficult to deal with quantitatively, are very important to human users. It is also mentioned in my last post, and discussed at more length earlier in the blog.

 I wrote my book partly as a text that I used to teach a course in the Stanford Engineering school (Good Products, Bad Products), that was taken over by Professor Dave Beach when I retired, who did a wonderful job with it until last year, when the course too was retired. The book suffered from lack of publicity, and perhaps a decreased interest in product quality in the U.S. Surprisingly (or not), although the book’s sales in the U.S. have been disappointing, it is doing much better in India, China, South Korea, and Japan —countries that perhaps are presently more sensitive to the value of quality in products. After all, it was Japan that awakened us in the 1970’s and 80’s. China, India, and South Korea are coming up fast.

But over the years, I also wrote posts on subjects I was also thinking about which ranged from the fit between the directions of technology and people, the joy of working with the hands, engineering, management, and so on.

I never sought wide distribution of these posts, as I wrote them to force myself to think more deeply about my areas of interest, and I did not want to become involved in a full-fledged conversation with large numbers of people, although the responses to my posts were thoughtful and flattering. But now I have been talked into a project that sounds difficult, but worth doing, by Tim Keely, a friend of mine who is an IT person of amazing talent at Stanford. The project is for me to go through these posts, pick the ones I think are the best, organize them, edit them, and allow him to make an e-book (or several) from them. I am going to try.

This will make my posts even fewer in number and perhaps more wandering in nature as I come up with new thoughts for the book(s), but I am looking forward to the attempt and hope you will bear with me. I will continue to write posts when I need more material for this project, or when I can’t bear not to —like commenting on ridiculous wastes of technology and money such as Trump’s proposed wall on the Mexican border, which hopefully will never happen, but should it, will set an all time record for lack of overall product quality.

So wish me luck. I’ll post progress reports as I go.

Reliability and Quality

A bit over a year ago I ordered a microwave oven after looking at the ratings and comments on the internet. I didn’t spend a lot of time in research, since our old one had failed and a microwave has become very central to our lives, and I figured by now they would have become fairly standardized. When it arrived, it didn’t work. I therefore returned it, after a fair amount of hassle, and bought another brand, which was also highly recommended. The new one worked, but only slightly beyond the one year warranty, and after finding that repairing it would take more time, effort, and money than I considered it worth, I bought yet another brand, which so far is working beautifully—I do like to fix things, but I have to draw the line at some point.

In past posts I have spent a lot of time on product quality, and have mentioned the eight dimensions of quality discussed in a classic paper written by David Garvin and published by the Harvard Business review in 1987, when quality was the hot word, rather than innovation. They are :

PERFORMANCE

FEATURES (APPROPRIATE)

RELIABILITY

CONFORMANCE

DURABILITY

SERVICEABILITY

AESTHETICS

PERCEIVED QUALITY

The bottom two are not discussed in detail, because as Garvin pointed out, they are difficult to handle analytically and matters of personal feelings.

In 2012 I wrote my book Good Products, Bad Products, published by McGraw Hill, to pay more attention to critical “dimensions” of quality that even though difficult to deal with quantitatively, are very important to human user. The Chapter titles are:

PERFORMANCE, COST AND PRICE

HUMAN FIT

CRAFTSMANSHIP

EMOTIONS AND NEEDS

AESTHETICS

SYMBOLISM AND CULTURAL FIT

GLOBAL CONSTRAINTS.

 Although the oven came up short on my list, let us focus on Garvin’s list. As far as aesthetics, my short-lived oven, although not what one would call exciting, was probably okay, because microwave ovens seem to have adopted a clean, sterile, technological look, and, do have fairly standard approaches to turntables, transparent door panels, latches, and so on. As far as perceived quality, the product certainly is visible enough in stores and on the internet and the maker is an old established company, so that one would think that it is of high quality. One of Garvin’s other dimensions, conformance, has to do with whether the product conforms to various regulations, and here it has to follow the rules, or it would not be sold.

But on the others, it does not do well, because it failed (performance,reliability, and durability) is difficult to service, and like many “modern” appliances suffered from the ecstacy designers feel when they realize the power and low cost of modern electronics—trying to include too many features.

The photo  shows the control panel, and herein lies the problem. Forgive the reflections in the photo, because it is a shiny black surface that reflects confusing images at all times, which does not help the user read its relatively delicate script, To make matters worse, the text is not lit , which forced me to hang a battery-operated LED light on a wall at a weird angle so that the words could be read without being blinded by the light itself.

But I had two more major problems with the controls. The first had to do with the functions themselves. Of course, it is necessary to memorize the part of the manual describing the function of most of them (custom set, the difference between auto defrost and express defrost, soften, melt, less, more ) because they are not standardized across ovens or foods, and to experiment a great deal to find out what such pads as “potato”, “rice”, and “popcorn” actually accomplish, since they do not usually result in outcomes the user desires. But I am used to living with such things in these days when manufacturers are attempting to make products appear smarter than they are, and consumers have fantasies of perfect automatic machines and the fantasy is so important than they will accept poor performance. 

But my main problems with the controls was that they failed, and at a slow enough rate that I never returned the oven until it failed completely, at which point the warranty had expired. Very early the potato and reheat buttons quit doing their job, but it is easy to live without them. But over time the remainder kept failing. While the timer still worked we could still use it since we are experienced with these ovens, and when it failed, we could even go with start and stop, but finally they too gave up. At one point, I actually began looking for replacement parts, but by that time I hated the oven so much I thought it deserved to die.

While fighting this dying beast, I could not help noticing our gas stove, which I bought used in 1962 and that, does everything one would want to do as far as cooking is concerned —warming, boiling, frying, stewing, baking, broiling, and even keeping time and automatically turning things on and off— almost total control of cooking for over 50 years, with only occasional needs for cleaning and a bit of tuning up. Near to it is our 20 year old refrigerator, which has served us faithfully with no maintenance yet, and also a Kitchen Aid mixer that is not only 50 years old, but, if you would, has never missed a beat. 

So why do we accept this “digital device” attitude (everyone should have a new one every year)? Granted it makes money for companies, but give us a break. Products should be adequately tested during development, especially if they contain such things as touch pads. Tools should last long enough before failing that we can integrate them into our lives, or at least learn to use them well before they fail. I love our veteran stove, refrigerator, and mixture. And I loved the earlier microwave ovens we owned. We bought our present one (that we like a lot) because it had fewer control options and mechanical controls rather than a touch pad matrix. And the labels on the controls do not require the owner’s manual for interpretation. Assuming it holds up for several years, I will grow to love it.

I never did find out the difference between auto defrost and express defrost.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Attraction of the Small

Why are we so attracted by small things? At one point in our marriage, my wife somewhat wistfully told me that when she was a little girl she never had a doll house. Well, this would not do, so I built her a doll house, complete with furniture and electric lights, and she crocheted tiny blankets and painted oriental rugs. I even had my mother, a water colorist, paint a few pictures at the proper scale (1 inch = I foot), and she loved doing that. Of course, I had a great time with the project and my wife loved it, so it was a win all around.. The doll house still lives in an honored position in our house (see photo), and now all of our woman friends, who tend to be in their 70’s, love it.

What is the attraction of small things. My wife collects folk art, and the next photo shows some tiny examples. But we have full size pots and such things. Why does she like little ones so much?

    

 

 

Gender thing? Not at all. I am writing this in my office at home surrounded by models I have built. The next photo is a British warship, made from plans available from the Admirably Museum in Greenwich, England – hand planked, rigged, and outfitted by me—no plastic. I do not even like oceans and ships that much, but I became entranced with the history of the British navy, decided to build a model of one of their historic ships, and  was hooked. I finally had to force myself to quit (after I built six or eight of them) because they take an unreal amount of time and I was getting behind in life. My insight came from meeting a  model builder who was building wonderful model ships in a glassed-in shop on the Queen Mary in Long Beach. His story was that he was a physician who had a large successful practice, but was ruining his health by staying up all night building ship models. His wife finally told him that if he didn’t quit building models he would have to give up the practice of medicine. To her amazement (and I guess unhappiness) he quit his practice.

I have made models of many other things,. The following photograph is of a shelf in my office and maybe in the middle you can see a small figure of a welder, which I carved years ago when I was working in an oil field. Why? I was surrounded by real welders!

As an extreme example of miniaturization, there are a large number of mostly men in the world making working models of engines, equipment, etc. The photo below shows a friend of mine who has been terminally bitten by model railroading. His train is a perfect replica, down to the stove in the caboose. If you look on the internet for "miniature running engines",  you will see more of the tip of the iceberg.

I have a working full size antique steam tractor dating from approximately 1900. A working model would be worth more than my real one, as well it should be, because it would be rarer and require an absurd amount of time to make. And yes, there are many people out there either owning or building one.

And this love of small things extends well beyond models. For a long time, I could not figure out why I didn’t get better at typing on my iphone. But I finally did a study and realized that my thumb overlapped six keys. I am good at typing with a full size keyboard, okay on a large pad, but still pathetic on my iPhone.   Also its screen size is ridiculously small, so it cannot deliver nearly as much as my desk top. But I like it because it is capable of doing so much for its size Also, it fits in my pocket, so I can break its glass protector with my keys. And flashlights, now that they sport LEDs and ion batteries, are shrinking so that they are easier to lose.

Maybe we like small things because they make us feel big and powerful. I used to love watching little girls reprimanding their dolls. Instant adulthood. And if I become really annoyed at my iphone I can throw it very far away.

Swell Book —The Wright Brothers, by David McCullough

Sorry to be lagging in writing posts, but I am catching up on my reading. I just finished a wonderful book by David McCullough, one of my favorite writers, entitled The Wright Brothers (Simon and Schuster, 2015). He is not only an outstanding story teller, but an amazing researcher, although I expect he has help in his research because he typically gives credit to several people in the Library of Congress. But having won two Pulitzer prizes and twice received the National Book Award, he probably deserves it.

This book is an in depth look at the Wright brothers (Wilbur and Orville— there were two other brothers and a sister Katherine , who became a major supporter and cheer leader), their successful quest for flight, and their friends, family, and others who supported them, as well as those who competed with them. It is an American success story, and, in fact, after they became world famous and people would ask them how they did so, they would tell people to grow up in Ohio in a good family.

The difficulties they overcame were many, including Orville killing his passenger and almost himself in a demonstration flight.   People had wanted to fly like birds for most of recorded history, and at the time of the Wright brother’s effort, there were many people (Lillienthal, Moullard, Chanute, Langley, Cayley, Maxim, Bell, Edison) who were working on the problem, and many people applying for patents on flying machines, most so outrageous that they became a mainstay of humor, but the majority of people in the world simply felt that humans were not meant to fly, and those seeking the ability were perhaps a bit nuts. In the midst of this, the Wright brothers, by then proprietors of a bicycle shop, quietly set about to solve the problem—no wealth, no government support, no college, no brilliant insight, no desire to become rich and famous, just an obsession for flight and long hours of hard work. I could somewhat identify with them, because their life was somewhat like my grandmother prescribed, when sayings such as “the devil finds work for idle hands” and “people who don’t take care of their (garden, farm, horse, house, truck, etc) don’t deserve one” abounded and were laid on kids like me who were found lying in the sun. In fact their very supportive father was a minister, and later a bishop in their church.

I also identified with their ability to work with their hands as well as their mind. There is a quote in the book by a local resident after they built their “home” on Kitty Hawk, a desolate area far from Dayton chosen because of its constant wind. which is “They could do anything they put their hands to. They built their own camp, they took an old carbide can and made a stove of it; they took a bicycle and geared the thing up so that they cold ride it on the sand. They did their own cooking and washing and they were good cooks too.” My kind of guys (although my wife faults me on washing, but hey California is in a drought).

But not only were they wonderful people, but from an engineering standpoint they did everything right, even though not educated as engineers.  There was little usable theory, but they learned what existed and what had been tried, and started from there. Their competitors in the world were trying to concoct theory and arguing with each other, but only making simple fairly uncontrollable unpowered kites and gliders and flying them very little. The Wright Brothers started with a kite, gradually improved it until it could carry them, and flew in the result as much as possible. They continued after they added an engine, built from scratch in a short period by Charlie Taylor, a mechanic friend of the Wrights. The engine added a series of failures, but the process of fixing the problems, improving the machine, and flying continued, in spite of minor and major crashes and other setbacks. This constant testing and improving reminded me of my days working at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, because that is how wonders such as the Curiosity Martian Rover are produced. And a major advantage that the Wright Brothers had on December 17^th, 1903, when they made their famous flight (actually they made four of them that day, the last one some 850 feet), was their skill at flying, because each of them had spent many days learning to control their primitive machines and a total of four years achieving this goal.

This experience and  approach to testing and improvement made extending the range of Wright “flying machines” straight forward, so that five years later, the brothers won the newly-minted Michelin Cup with a flight of 2 hours and 20 minutes. They were, by then, touring the world, flying all day to the delight of massive crowds, and taking royalty for rides. They did become rich and famous, but because they wanted to fly like birds, not because they particularly wanted to be rich and famous (although they didn’t mind being in that category.)

It is a feel good book, shedding light on how one of the many advances in technology in the early 20^th century happened, and how many still do —through dogged determination and evolution rather than from one brilliant idea.  The only thing that depressed me about the book was how much better McCullough can write than I can.

Steam Show—Roots of Motive Power Inc.

Willits California is a small town on Highway 101 a couple of hours north of San Francisco. It is perhaps best known as one end of the “skunk” train, a restored train engine and cars that run between Fort Bragg on the coast and Willits and is quite popular with tourists. As  explained here, Roots of Motive Power Inc. is a group of people that operate in conjunction with a fine little museum (the Mendocino County Museum) and that have space next to the museum and across from a small park on which they can and do run antique heavy equipment . They sponsor several events during the year, and over time have accumulated an excellent collection of old steam and diesel equipment, much of it restored, and more under way.   Their largest event (The Festival) just occurred, and I attended with my older son Bob and one of my older friends, Marc Faye, the owner of the farm in the Sacramento Valley to which I escape.   Lest you think age is required to attend, the group that attends includes large numbers of kids, partly because there is a restored train that runs continually around the property, and because kids like large dirty machines with whistles that make clouds of steam and smoke.

I attend this show for a number of reasons, including my love of old machines, my interest in the history of technology, and because people with rather unique hobbies and interests, who are not always understood by their friends and neighbors, are so happy when they get together with others of similar interests, that one cannot help but become swept away by it.   It is also a nice size (you don’t need a smart phone to keep track of each other), fairly close to where I live, and in beautiful country. And it’s even free.

A few photos might help. One of my favorite machines is a Bucyrus power shovel, often seen in photos of the digging of the Panama Canal. The photo at the left not only shows the shovel when not moving, but if one looks closely one can see the very clever way it is steered — by placing logs into one of the tracks, causing that one to slow down. The man standing by it is the log placer. The next photo shows it in action.

The photos below show a beautifully restored steam roller that is benign enough to be allowed to run on the city streets. a machine waiting to be restored, and a large crane I had not seen in action before

 

 

 

 

I have a friend named Loren Bryon who is very interested in and active in the restoration of old equipment and a superb craftsman, particularly if steam is involved. He is a regular at these activities and was busily conquering the details of how to control this beast which he had not driven. The controls of such machines do not include such things as steering wheels or other devices now normally used to control machines. But after an hour or two passed, he became confident enough to drive it down a street on the grounds with cars parked on the sides. The remaining photos show him at work.

An excellent day, and as usual, I came home much improved because of the experience—and highly motivated to work on my own restoration projects, because they seem to be so straight forward and easy compared to the ones being done by the Roots people. Tractors are much easier to handle than locomotives, and aren’t as likely to blow up and kill you.

 

     

Good Shoes and Bad Laces

Many years ago, a great break through was made in shoes, through the acceptance of athletic shoes (trainers in Europe) in circles that before had expected more formal footwear. They combine comfort, function, lower cost, and even fashion. Almost all people who work or study at Stanford or in what is called Silicon Valley, if not most people in the world, wear them. I took to them effortlessly, and have only one pair of shiny black shoes I wear when I figure that they are called upon. But complications set in even here because of fashion and the desire of companies to increase profit. The fashion angle occurs because of the desire to appear “athletic”, the profit from selling them to people who want to look like some one they admire (Air Jordans?).

Although at one time I was involved in sports, I no longer am, nor do I want to be. But I do walk a lot, engage in manual labor, ride my bicycle, etc. I lead an active life but not a competitive one. By rights I should be a perfect match to so-called walking shoes, and if I can find them wide enough and shaped somewhat the same as my feet (the front of my feet are somewhat square, not pointed) and in black instead of appearing that they belong to an endorsed professional athlete, they should be perfect.

But, why can’t the manufacturers figure out the laces to fit we amateurs. I don’t need extra long laces, because I don’t need or want a “heel lock”. And I don’t want to tighten them one set of holes at a time, so what’s with the little bitty holes through which the laces need to be pulled? I seem to remember that shoes had eyelets so one could simply haul on them from the top and tie them. Now they seem to want to be like runner’s shoes, where tugging them tight one crossing (or whatever) at a time makes them fit more closely. The photo below shows two different samples of my shoes, made by established companies. The lace on the shoe on the left has gone through all existing holes, and is still obviously too long. It is also obviously too fat to fit through the very small holes in the shoe. Like many of these types of fabric laces, it is on its way to losing the plastic tips that do fit through the holes. After both of these are gone, new laces will be required.

The shoe on the right uses wire loops to hold the laces except for the top holes (which an informal survey shows are not used by my friends). So for me, they are the proper length, but even though they are only three weeks old, the wire loops are stripping off the black covering, and even doing it in such a way that the covering ends up over the plastic ends, requiring a scissors to strip it away, and leaving what one of my friends calls “interesting looking” laces. So using the top holes, the left shoe laces are okay in length. The right shoe laces are okay in length if one does not use the top holes. But the stripable fabric laces make me look pretty indigent

I may seem overly picky, but I don’t want to buy new laces to fit the usage of ever pair of shoes I buy. I also don’t want to go through my vocabulary of curse words while tying and untying them. I want informal comfortable shoes that don’t pretend that I am an athlete. Been there, done that. I was pleased when it seemed that Velcro was taking over from shoe laces, but it didn’t seem to happen, leaving me often trying to stuff the unraveled end of a string through a hole of a lesser size, and spending more time than I want to fastening my shoes so I can get about my life.

Free Time, Productivity, and Making, Fixing, and Tinkering.

I am perhaps a bit late on this post because I have been down in Southern California helping my brother dig through three generations of stuff in several buildings. When we were kids we lived and worked in this series of buildings along with our parents, our grand parents, an uncle, and various dogs and cats (and before that horses and chickens). We were located on 20 acres of oranges, in the times when that and a few outside jobs were capable of supporting such a crew. After the death of our parents, grandparents, and uncle, the sale of ten acres, and my leaving for various vocations and locations, my brother John has been operating the remaining ten as a fruit and vegetable farm (Adams Acres). But unfortunately, the area has gone through hard times, and the customers for fruit and vegetables do not always match my brother’s desires in growing plants. He has an M.S. in botany, and a Ph.D. in soil science, and is a fan of fruit of a comparatively exotic nature compared to that bought by many who live in the area, who are motivated heavily by price and what they are used to. So he is selling most of the land to a developer and the need arose to "lighten up".

Although hard work, this sorting process has been both interesting and nostalgia producing. It graphically illustrates the difference in life in Southern California in 1907, when the grove was planted, and the present. I actively worked in the grove between the late 1930’s and the early 1950’s, when I went to college, never to return except for visits, and even in the 60 years since then there has been massive change. As far as agriculture, little remains in the area. As far as life style, the change is similarly complete. Work in the area at one time consisted mostly of manual labor. Now, work is scarce. Life was bucolic, with clean skies, little if any crime, and the sweet smell of orange blossoms, although the work was occasionally hard and money sometimes scarce. But compared to my present existence, and that of my friends, there seemed to be a lot more spare time.

The photo at the left shows a small hooked wool rug made by my grandmother, who died in 1965, but spent a lot of time making rugs, quilts, lace tablecloths, blankets, and such things. My mother, meanwhile. In her early days was making furniture, also clothes, and helping build buildings. Both were doing the cooking, the cleaning, and other such chores. My father, my grandfather, and I were working on the grove and the buildings, and my uncle was working full time as a machinist. But we seemed to have a lot of  time beyond these duties. This rug was not intended to be walked on!

The hooked rug is beautiful, partly because of the texture that could only have resulted from hand work. It takes a long time to make hooked rugs, but somehow the time was available. The photo on
the right  shows me in a shirt my mother made me from sulfur sacks in high school. It still fits me! She didn’t have to make me fancy shirts, but she loved to and had time to do it, and I loved the result.  She also made everything in my room when I was a kid (see below). She later became a very successful water colorist —time again.

During our sorting, we continually found evidence of this startling fact. Although the family did essentially everything having to do with life —building the buildings, doing the maintenance, working the grove, growing and, hunting and fishing for food, and making furniture, machines, and even toys (the two photos at the end of the post show a horse made for me by my mother and a toy tractor made by me for my brother).

We had a lot of free time to do such things as learn about music (I was the town pianist), read a lot of books, magazines, and news papers, listen to the radio, and do well in school, And we did not only constrain ourselves to large and challenging tasks. The  photograph at the right shows a small welder I carved, and a delicate goblet my beefy grandfather turned from Manzanita wood, complete with imprisoned ring. I admit he did this because of my grandmother’s frequent challenge to him to make something pretty since he was usually doing blacksmith work, building buildings, spreading fertilizer, or driving the tractor., etc. etc. etc.

Now it seems to be more difficult to provide for free time in ones life. Why? For one reason, in the old days in rural areas there were no diversions such as television, the internet, social networking and computers, and highways and advertisements beckoning us off to adventures in other locations. There were few movie theaters, little if any night-life, and friends were widely spread. Looking back, it seems that life should have been quite boring. But at the time it did not seem so. One could always make covered wagon models, toys for kids (my brother and I) or goblets from Manzanita wood, paint pots, or just goof around with one’s dog. And we didn’t know that life could be made hectic by endlessly “improving” ourselves.

Would I like to go back there? No. Am I glad I grew up there? Yes. I learned an incredible amount from the do-it-yourself stages of my life and my very talented family members, and gained great confidence and positive feedback from what I did. I also learned to make time in my life for hobbies that I love, and for just goofing around. Working with my uncle and grandfather obviously set me on the path to becoming an engineer, and being expected by those around me to do well in school and in my work led me toward becoming a professor, a career I have loved. And since I did have free time (nothing to do and no one to talk to) I did learn to entertain myself by thinking—an excellent way to spend time. And finally, I learned the importance of making time in my life for learning, for my hobbies (mostly requiring use of my hands), and for just goofing around.

 

The World War II Jeep —An Outstanding Accomplishment

I have for a long time been the proud owner of a 1943 Ford GPW (Jeep). Some 600,000 of these vehicles were produced by Willys and Ford during the war. More information is here. My jeep, as originally procured, had seen hard duty on a friend’s farm, as can be seen from the old photo at the left, showing two of my kids being thrilled with our new possession. I thoroughly worked it over functionally and cosmetically, the result is shown in the photograph below.  The driver is my son Dan, who is the blonde kid in the older photo. The second photo was probably taken some ten years ago, and shows Dan and family out touring. The markings on the Jeep are for the 311 Fighter Group of the Tenth Air Force in World War II, in which Irv Doe, my boss when I was in the Air Force served. He was an outstanding boss and mentor, so I painted the Jeep to help him be nostalgic, even though he liked P-51’s better than Jeeps.

One of the more impressive aspects of the Jeep, was the speed of design and development. As World War II approached, the U.S.Army, realizing it needed a better light vehicle, put out requests for bids from some 135 companies, with then difficult requirements (4 wheel drive, etc.) and an 11 day response deadline. The schedule demanded a first prototype in 49 days, and 70 completed vehicles delivered for test in 70 days — a total of 130 days to design, build, and deliver the first finished products, contrasted with the years required to do the same to modern automobiles.

I own a bunch of vehicles, but the Jeep is probably the most fun to drive. It is by far the slowest, rattles and shakes, is generally uncomfortable, has lousy brakes, and I barely fit inside it. But it has CHARACTER, a dimension somewhat missing from many much more efficient, comfortable, and high performing cars. Modern automobiles (Toyota, etc.) are miraculous in function and performance compared to the Jeep, but so much so that perhaps they are becoming a bit boring. The Jeep definitely keeps one awake and gives one a feeling of moving, especially with the windshield and the top down in crummy weather. It is just plain fun, and even though perhaps not as reliable as a modern car, amazingly simpler to work on. If it mis-behaves, it is a cinch to repair, and wonder of wonders, all parts are easily available almost 80 years after it first hit the road—as well as the incredibly well done manuals produced during its origin.

Hand Tools— Changing Slowly

Hand tools (no engines, chips, electricity or compressed air) have changed over time, but very slowly compared to what are sometimes called “power tools”. Old tools (100 years ago and more) were interesting, and often beautiful. The photo on the left shows a drill probably used to drill holes for knob-and-tube wiring in a framed or even completed house, and an old wooden brace from the time when braces ruled the roost , well before drills powered by electric motors, and now driven by ion batteries took over. I seem to have accumulated quite a few such tools just because they are beautiful, and using them makes me realize how challenging woodworking used to be.

But many hand tools have changed very little. The photo on the right shows a “modern” pick, shovel, and rake, that have certainly not changed in my lifetime, and are still heavily used in the day of leaf blowers, bull-dozers, and jack hammers. The next one on the left shows three hammers, the top one having belonged to my mother, who was building furniture and helping on the house before I was born, and was given to me as my first hammer. I still use it. I recently bought the one below it, and it is surprisingly similar to the one made 90 years ago. The one at the bottom, also recently bought new, is obviously striving for recognition as high technology, and I am less likely to break the handle, but quite frankly, I am not convinced that it functions a whole lot better than the 90 year old one, and it definitely cost more.

But many hand tools have improved greatly, due to the availability of new materials and manufacturing processes. The final photo shows two “grabbers”. Some of you may remember the large one with the wooden handle, because it is typical of those used in grocery and other stores to take items off of the top shelves. It is fun to use, as it is large and clunky and gives you the choice of one of two handles to close the grippers, depending on how high the desired object is.

But the small one, given to me when I had knee replacements a few years ago in hopes that I would not climb on rickety stools to reach things, and that I could get my pants on before I became limber again without bothering my wife, is indeed impressive. I had not had experience with these things at all, but this one is strong, able to fold for traveling, and very grabby indeed. It is extremely simple, relying on a simple spring to keep it open, and a nylon cord to close the claw. It is very light weight, the structure being a simple square tube of thin aluminum, and the two surfaces that close on the target are brilliantly made. I tested it in the hospital on everything from glasses of water, through pillows and picking up pills, to a large vase of flowers that was in my room. And yes, I still have it.

A professor friend of mine, who had also gone through surgery and was given one, fell so in love with it that he decided that his world had increased in size by four feet (roughly twice the length of the grabber), and proceeded to add four feet to the width of the desk in his office, and two feet to the height of his bookshelves. He also claimed to have radically increased the usable storage space in his garage and closet at home, and loves to entertain himself by challenging his friends to games of skill with his grabber and trouncing them viciously.

Most hand tools have improved over time, but slowly, and that is part of the reason I love them. Using them gives me more satisfaction than power tools and in the long run allows me to keep more fingers, and I do not have to spend money and develop new skills because improvements occur (as with digital devices). They are generally easier on the environment, offer free exercise, and let you impress you friends, neighbors, and sometimes even your spouse with your skills. Although in all honesty I must admit I am fighting the temptation to buy a new drill motor and electric screw driver because they now come with lithium ion batteries, which produce more power and hold more charge than the nickel metal hydride batteries in my present one. And I use lots of machinery when working with metal.  Nobody is pure.

Spirit House Redux

Marian, my high speed wife, has spent considerable time studying world religions and designing a religion for herself. It is primarily based on being a good person. Although raised as an Episcopalian, she has dipped into many others, including the edge of Gnostic Christianity, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, and Buddhism. I am proud of her and the result, because it contains no jealous gods, but if you want as good a one, you have to design it yourself

At one time, in the midst of her search, we happened to be in Laos, and she discovered spirit houses, that are often seen in front of houses in Southeast Asia, and even inns and hotels, and act as a location to place offerings of various sorts to Buddha and local dieties. She decided she would like to bring the custom home, but since they are difficult to pack for air travel, and since there is no required design for them, I told her I would build her one.

Needless to say I procrastinated for quite a while, but finally built her one. That was six or eight years ago and in the interim it acquired many signs of the wear and tear of being outdoors, , including bird droppings, an interior of rotting leaves, missing parts, stained paint, and overall scruffiness. She felt bad about this.   After another bout of procrastination, I just redid it, as the photo at left shows, and I must admit, I am proud of it, and have regained the points I received from my wife for building it in the first place.

In order to establish the nature of her beliefs, it is located right next to her favorite statue of Ganesh, the Hindu lord of Good Fortune who provides prosperity, fortune and success, and is the lord of beginnings and the remover of both material and spiritual obstacles.A statue of Quan Yin, Buddhist goddess of compassion sits at the base of the spirit house.

 She is a member of a group of women with similarly broad beliefs, who meet regularly and discuss topics having to do with religion, spirituality, and philosophy. They call themselves the Pagelians, in honor of Elaine Pagels a Stanford classmate and friend of Marian’s, who is now a professor of religion at Princeton University and who wrote the definitive book on the Gnostic gospels, entitled, not surprisingly, The Gnostic Gospels. I sometimes overhear their meetings, which are often in our house, and feel a bit like a heathen, but I try to be a good heathen.

Product Quality and Serviceability

I have several small machines (chain saw, hedge shears, blower, weed whacker) powered by gas engines that no longer work.  For  some time I have intended to go through them and heal their problems, but I keep postponing this, so I made a vow a few days ago that yesterday (a Sunday), I would work on them. But I didn’t. Instead I spent the day happily working on a non-working old tractor I own. It is a late 1920’s Cletrac that has not been run for many years, during which it was rained on enough to develop the nicest uniform coat of rust I have ever seen, and through lack of use was terminally gummed up.    

The small machines, after I repair them, will be immediately useful in the garden. The tractor will not be—in fact it does not even fit in the yard. The small machines will help my wife in her gardening, and will make her happy, even though she hates the sound of small gas engines (as do I – we won’t be pleased when the air is filled with drones). The tractor will not help her. What is with me?

Partly it has to do with when, where, and how I grew up. My parents and great grandparents went through the Great Depression scraping out a living on a small orange orchard plus outside jobs in Southern California, which at the time was occupied by many people doing the same thing. Because of this, no one considered themselves poor, and in fact in terms of satisfaction in life they weren’t, but people made what they could, bought the minimum of what they couldn’t, and repaired everything to the point where many of their possessions they built and maintained are still being employed by my brother, my children and I, including a house they built of materials such as siding from no longer used freight cars and shingles made from old orange boxes (nice house in great shape still lived in by my brother). The reigning ethic was never to throw anything away (hours spent straightening bent nails and bailing wire) and repair anything that broke. I can still hear the voice of my grandmother, sounding like the wrath of God, saying “If you can’t take care of it, you don’t deserve it!

I grew up in the middle of this, and somehow came to love making and fixing things and generally tinkering with them. Probably why I became an engineer and was attracted to hobbies that involve such activities. But I have not been able to escape wondering why these activities seem to appeal to some people (me), and not to others (my wife), and why some of them are more fun for me  than others . For instance, in the case of the tractor vs. the yard machines I can think of several reasons . First of all, to me it is more of an accomplishment to rescue something that is rusted together and hasn’t worked for years, than simply diagnose and repair something fairly new. Secondly, I find older objects, with their history, different ways of accomplishing their function (and often with great aesthetic appeal overall and in their parts), sometimes more interesting than contemporary ones. And strangely enough, the task is often easier.

Why easier? Farmers were the main purchasers of tractors and other such products and they had spare time to maintain them when the weather didn’t allow them to work directly on their crops. They demanded serviceability. As mentioned they often didn’t have enough cash to hire other people to maintain their products. They often liked to work on machinery. And in those days tractors were designed to be assembled in the factory more by hand, rather than by machines, so they were designed to be worked on by humans. Finally, they were less sophisticated technically (no digital circuitry) and manufacturing technology  did not allow the complexity that one finds in such things as modern multi-functional injection molded plastic parts

As a result, the Cletrac is relatively simple to take apart (few fastener types and not that many of them), understand, diagnose, and put back together. A couple of photos might help make the message, even though they are a bit confusing. The first one on the left shows shows my tractor minus its sheet metal parts and a large casting that covers the clutch, gear train, brakes, etc. Stripping it down to that level, despite the rust, took little time and was straightforward. Note the resulting easy access to the various components, compared to access of similar parts in an automobile. The photo on the right below is a close up of the components of the drive train —the differential, the transmission, and the brakes— at the same stage. If you are not familiar with such things, they are beautifully explained on the internet. But take my word for the fact that in old tractors like the Cletrac they are easy to reach and identify, and only a few standard tools are needed for further disassembly and repair, And as you may be able to see, one can work on these things without cranes, special tools, grease pits, or lying on the ground under the machine. Granted the parts are dirty and one becomes so also, but the dirt is easily removable (except perhaps under the fingernails, but dirty fingernails show that one is doing useful work).

The blower could be called more sophisticated, but although cleaner, and with smaller lighter parts, taking it apart and diagnosing what is wrong with it, finding the necessary parts, and putting it back together will be much less fun. Even the meager instructions are less intuitive. One dead giveaway to complexity and strange  fasteners is the phrase “Service on the blower must be performed by qualified repair personnel only”. Another is “Using a Torx screwdriver to….” I would bet that most people buying this sort of product do not own a set of Torx screwdrivers.

It is easy to tell the difference in what is often called serviceability with respect to the tractor and the blower by looking at the manuals that came with each. The blower manual mainly consists of instructions on how to operate it (should be obvious by looking at a good product), warnings about safety, various notices obviously for the purpose of avoiding lawsuits, a full page of exemptions from the warranty, and notices such as “if these solutions do not solve the problem, contact your authorized service dealer”. I happen to have copies of the Instruction Manual and Parts Manual that came with the tractor, and they represent the opposite end of the spectrum. The Instruction Manual spends a bit of time on the tractor operation, but then goes into the details of each sub-assembly of the tractor, how to assemble and disassemble it, and how to maintain it including beautiful drawings. The Parts Manual offers drawings of each part in various exploded views along with part numbers. Neither has warnings about safety, pleas to contact the dealer if anything goes wrong, or statements of how wonderful the product is.  And certainly not instructions to rely on “qualified repair personnel only”. The photo below shows two pages from the Cletrac Instruction Manual as an example. They show a portion of the undercarriage of the tractor and accompany a detailed discussion of how to test the assembly, take it apart, replace parts of necessary, and put it back together.

As I said in a previous post, serviceability is one of the central components of product quality. I am afraid we have lost a great deal of that as products have become more complex and difficult to understand. Or possibly we are considered (are becoming) less capable of taking care of our products. Or lost interest in doing so —throw it away and get a new one (as in "Oh goody, now I can get  a 6S plus with 64 gigs "). Or looking at it more positively, perhaps we would rather outsource the service function to specialists, thus creating more jobs for skilled workers. Maybe I should un-retire and fix things for money for other people instead of working on my own stuff. But then  my grandmother’s voice would be even louder. 

And I will fix the blower tomorrow.

Two Models

The photo below is of two bomber models.   Which one is best? The one in the background (letter A on tail) is a B-17, of World War II fame, built from a modern kit. As an engineer, I marvel at the accuracy and detail of the various molded pieces that the modern model maker cements together. I didn’t check to see if the small figures of crew members have fingernails or not, but I would not be surprised if they did. And such models go together beautifully, requiring little skill, except for keeping the paint and cement where it should be. My grandchildren were putting such things together when they were eight or nine years old, until their house ran out of available ceiling space to hang them on.

I built this model because through a fortunate chain of circumstances my wife and I were given a ride on the B-17 that the Collings Foundation has beautifully restored and tours around the country. I rode in World War II airplanes plenty when I was in the Air Force. World War II was well over, but many of its planes were in service, partly because the people who had served in World War II were nostalgic for them, and because they were sturdy, practical, and available. In fact the first military airplane I even rode in was a B-17, and I managed to sit in the  nose (great view) while we did a fly over for a parade in Marysville, California.

The ride was fun, and Marian seemed to enjoy it a great deal, so I put together the model to hang in her office to remind her of a fun day. But, although she did love the day, she wasn’t that thrilled with the model, which now resides in our basement, which together with our garage and a room I commandeered as an office, I control.

But the other model, although lacking in accuracy and detail, is by far the best. I built it when I was eight years old, and had just returned from a fly-over and a walk through a prototype of a bomber numbered the B-19, a Douglas Aircraft competitor to Boeing's B-29 for the successor to the B-17. It was to be a super bomber, and to eight year old me, it was. The B- 29 had won the competition, but Douglas was touring the B-19 around to learn from it, do a bit of advertising, and help build war fervor. The B-19 had a wing span of 212 feet, a length of 132 foot and weighed 130,000 pounds empty. As contrast, the B-17 had a wingspan of 104 feet, a length of 74 feet, and weighed 33,000 pounds empty. For that time the B-19 was huge, and in fact was the largest aircraft ever built in the United States. I still have a vivid memory of being at March Field in Riverside and having it fly what now would be considered dangerously low over our heads. A discussion of it is at http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/americas-real-wwii-flying-fortress-was-the-massive-doug-1632864365

I immediately went home and built a model of it. This was in 1942, and there was little plastic, injection molding was in the future, and I had never seen such a thing as a model kit (perhaps because my parents didn’t allow me to, or I would have nagged them incessantly). But at that age I was pretty agile with a few materials. Since I lived on an orange grove, and my father worked in an orange packing house and my grandfather had a fairly complete shop, I had excellent access to both picking and shipping orange boxes, a jig saw, a lots of files, hammers, glue, and above all tin cans. So I made the fuselage, wings, landing gear, and various small pieces  from an orange shipping box, the propellers and tail surfaces from tin can stock, and wheels and such from a dowel rod I found in my grandfather’s shop. I had a private stock of aluminum, red, white, blue, and black paint and a few small paint brushes I had scavenged from my mother. But no plans or photos.

I don’t know why the twin tail, except that in those days people didn’t carry cameras around, there was no internet and I could not find a B-19 photograph in the town library to augment my memory of it, and maybe I was thinking of the B-24, which was large, had a twin tail, and was introduced in 1941. Or maybe I just liked twin tails.

Although my B-19 model was not even in the same world of accuracy, complexity, finish, and scale as those that result from modern plastic model kits, I BUILT IT, and my friends, although they were at the demonstration, didn’t have a model of it at all. And in the process I learned a lot about airplanes in general, as well as about the B-19, which was loaded with armament and the state of the art in control systems and power plant. And rather amazingly I still have it, usually hanging in my office, and remember the real one flying over my head whenever I see it.  I still have it because my mother was very proud of it (and me, of course) and kept it. I found it late in her life when I was helping her go through her possessions, and took it home. I can’t say the same for other things I was doing when I was eight years old. But it was part of the long process that has made me good at making, fixing, and tinkering, as I have said in my blog, all necessary therapy in my life, appreciated by my wife and home, and passed on to my kids.

Incidentally, in the upper left corner of the photograph can be seen a portion of a sail boat. Although we were not that close to the ocean, I was interested in sail boats when I was a kid, and tried to make a model of one and failed, because the wood working was over my head and I had never seen a big one. So my mother made me one, and that is it in the background of the photograph. She kept my model, I kept hers.  She had never seen one either, but mothers are not stopped by little details like that. Later in life I scratched my itch by making several detailed models of old ships. But now you can buy them ready made from the New York Times store, at a price that doesn’t compare with the zillions of hours I spent on mine. BUT I BUILT MINE, and in the process spent zillions of very rewarding hours, and also learned lots about old sailing ships from the structure, through the function of the many lines on them, to much of the history of sailing ships and their role,  I learned how to work at very small scale, and needless to say, I met lots of interesting people who were hooked on old ships and making models of same.

I consider myself lucky to be an unrepentant DIY (Do It Yourself) guy, and am grateful to my parents and grandparents for encouraging and helping me.

Addiction to Old Machines

Today is Valentine’s day, so one would think my wife and I are out celebrating our love, but she is in Burma with some Indian friends, so I am working on restoring yet another tractor —I guess another (although weaker, of course) love. Besides it was Valentine’s day yesterday in Burma, and I sent her an unusually long and passionate message.   So I have quit my tractor project for the day, because  I have a couple of heavy house-cleaning and organizing days to do to convert it back from being ideal for me to reasonable for her.

The tractor presently undergoing treatment is a Cletrac K-20, manufactured by the Cleveland Tractor Company around 1930. This year is the 100^th anniversary of the Cleveland Tractor Company, so if you want to see some, go to a big tractor meet this year. The photograph at the left shows a restored K-20 in a museum.

Mine is shown at the right as it was  when I acquired it . The good news was that it was in a barn. The bad news was, of course, it did not run, and was filthy and bashed up, but that is part of the game. The next photo on the left shows signs of its rat habitation (also usual) The photo at the bottom left of the post shows it after it was towed outside.   California is having a stretch of beautiful (ugly if you are a farmer) weather, and I am taking advantage of it by working on the tractor in warm weather under a blue sky.

This tractor is interesting because it was unusually sophisticated for its time—perhaps too much so. The next photo on the right shows some of the plumbing that enables all track wheels to be lubricated from a central hand pump on the dashboard. The bad news was that the recommendation from the manual is that the pump be worked every 15 minutes, that the system needed oil instead of grease (which tended to leak more), and it had a tendency to clog. In contrast, the track wheels for Caterpillar’s tractors of those years required greasing each wheel separately, but not nearly as often, and really not that huge of a job. The Cletrac  also has wheel steering, using a mechanism to link the steering wheel to the brakes that actually turned the tractor —more parts to wear out and break, compared with caterpillar’s hand operated turning brakes. Also, a couple of people who had used them on their farms grumbled to me that the tractors did not weigh enough, and therefore didn’t have enough traction. Caterpillar, with simpler, heavier, more rugged machines out-competed them on the market. 

So far I have pressure washed it, to get rid of loose dirt, rat poop, spiders, and other such uneeded material. My first discovery as to its running problem is that the carburetor and the hose from the fuel tank were jammed with the kind of varnish that accumulates in gasoline fuel systems after years of disuse, so I took the carburetor apart and cleaned it out, and re-plumbed the whole fuel system. That is the reason the fuel tank is missing from the last photo. I have also cleaned up the magneto and it seems to be delivering an adequate spark at the plugs. Whether it is sparking at the right time I don’t know, but that’s adjustable. .If you do not follow old gasoline powered machinery, they tend to use a magneto (a small electric generator) to provide the spark. Unlike modern machinery, there is no battery involved, so starting them requires cranking— sometimes a challenging activity. The engine now turns over reasonably easily, and I have lubricated the engine with new grease and oil

Assuming I can get the creature running soon, I will begin seriously cleaning it, which consists of removing thick hardened grease deposits that cover much of the machine, including tracks, wheels, the undercarriage, and all existing crevices and corners. This involves use of scrapers, both hand and electric powered, occasional solvents and a heat gun to soften the most resistant deposits, much cursing, and finally a wondrous tool called a needle, gun, that I will advertise in a future post. Then after straightening out the sheet metal (obviously missing in the photos) I will paint the whole thing and happily add yet another rescued machine to my yard (or my son’s farm).

Some people wonder why I spend time doing this sort of thing, when I could be playing golf , taking my wife out to lunch and the theater, or watching sports on TV. My response is a carefully figured out “to each his or her own. And my wife likes me happy, rather than frustrated and cursing small annoying aspects of life (which I would be doing if I were playing golf), and while I am rescuing old machines, she can do things she likes to do and I don’t as much. As the wife of a friend of mine who has even more consuming hobbies than I do says, “I like Bill well hobbied up”.

Repurposing Products of Technology (Trash)

I have a fairly complete home shop and like to make things. I also have access to a huge amount of old scrap material at a friend’s farm, and discarded objects put out on the street for the twice a year free trash pickup in the area of my house. I frequently attend shows of antique machinery, which typically have a so-called swap meet, where no-longer-used pieces of equipment and components are available for very friendly prices. I have discovered that I can please not only myself, but friends and neighbors by turning old stuff back into useful objects. Eventually this scrap will be recycled either into raw materials (iron, aluminum, etc) or ground fill. Why not get some use out of it in the interim?

This post is about turning scrap metal into so-called yard art. I recently was not only annoyed, but flattered when a bird I had made out of various discarded objects was actually stolen. I just thought I was having fun, not creating objects of value. It is shown in the photo before it flew away.  Since I spent a year as an art student at UCLA, and was brainwashed as to what real art is, I do not consider this real art, but it is fun.  Maybe it is yard decoration.

In fact I have done a lot of this sort of stuff, now that I have outlived my art teachers. The photos below  show two more birds, an ant ,and a flower that also reside in our yard.

I also enjoy making functional looking things that do nothing. The next photo looks like water runs through it, or at least in and out of it, but that is not the case. As you know, I also restore abandoned machines, so that they operate and retain some of their early glory. A few are shown in the following picture, and I will talk about that use of time  in a future post. The final two are of  a restored pump-jack  holding our mail box ((corny, but Marian (yellow vest with bird and ant, likes it)) and a restored  oil pump doing nothing but sticking in the ground. (Incidentally, I realize that the layout of this post is awful, but I use the Typepad service, and no matter what I do, the service screws it up.)

 

 

 

 

 

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Space and Nostalgia — the Joy of Successful Projects.

When I watched the video of the successful landing, after deploying eleven satellites, of the Space Exploration Systems Corp. Falcon 9 first stage booster the other day, I teared up, which I also did when I watched the successful landing of the Curiosity Mars Rover. Why? Granted they were both incredible technological successes, but for me there was more.

I worked for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena CA part time in 1960 and 1961, and then full time until 1966, when I joined the Stanford faculty. It was a wonderful time to be there, as the U.S. was in the “space race” with the Soviet Union, NASA had taken over the lab from the army (although it is managed by Caltech), the military had built the necessary booster rockets, such things as solid state electronic circuitry and computers were available. Despite the Cold War, it was also a happy time in the U.S., as far as confidence and the economy were concerned, and a comparatively innocent one, since the U.S. was still in its post World War II victory mood (despite the Korean War), and not yet facing the many large problems at home and in the world that bombard us from all directions.

In 1960, when I arrived, the Lab employed about 2000 extremely competent people and built its products internally, as it had learned to do while developing rockets for the army. It was then working on the Ranger spacecraft to the moon, which was to accomplish a number of missions having to do with learning more about getting there, and its nature. I joined the people in the Lab who were thinking about exploring the planets and other bodies much further from Earth. In those days, many unprecedented problems needed to be solved, and the Ranger project, in which the first six missions failed for various reasons, was the big learning experience, which resulted in much technology and understanding used in following missions. The first launch was in August of 1961, the first successful one in July of 1964 (the photographs of the approach to impact that flooded every TV screen in the country), and the final one in November of 1964. Although I was primarily involved with the first Venus and Mars flyby spacecraft (Mariner 2 and 4 were highly successful, 1 and 3 failed, so we were better, but still learning), The various technical groups had continual contact with each other, so we planetary folk were very aware of what the lunar people were doing, and took as much advantage as we could of what they had learned and designed and built.

I worked on various temperature control and structural problems for the Venus shot but was on the preliminary design team through design, fabrication, and mission control for the Mariner Mars — probably the high spot of my time working on aerospace projects. At the time I was at JPL, the work was not only technically extremely challenging, but a bit romantic, since traveling in space has always had a certain cachet, and we did not yet know that the other moons and planets were as barren as they turned out to be. People still believed in canals on Mars, and at least some form of life. Also, through the Ranger failures, we had learned the difficulty of designing very complex and necessarily light weight, and therefore somewhat fragile equipment that could survive the launch environment and was extremely reliable from launch to the end of its mission. I will not try to describe the feeling when these spacecraft, which represented years of hard and challenging work, succeeded in their mission. One reason I cannot capture it, is when one works on a complicated system involving many disciplines, goals, and processes, one becomes increasingly aware of how many things can go wrong. Also, at the time I was at JPL, spacecraft were attracting an amazing amount of attention in the world, and failures were not accepted by those not involved in designing, making, and flying them. The failure of the first six Rangers earned a Congressional Investigation for JPL, which was no fun at all.

So I teared up upon watching the Falcon 9 landing and the people who made it cheering on my TV because it stirred up feelings I had over 50 years ago. I managed R&D groups, was involved in feasibility studies for future projects such as the Voyager series, and did other overall jobs at JPL, but nothing came close to the feelings of being an anonymous part of a larger group successfully completing a difficult project that they considered significant.

Kudos to Elon Musk. He is definitely carrying out his goal of making a difference. My son Dan was an early engineering employee at Tesla and worked there until very recently, at which point he resigned and joined a start up. He had a wonderful run at Tesla, and I imagine quit because he does prefer smaller companies.   He joined Tesla because he is very conscious of the environment, and Tesla’s goal was (and is) to demonstrate the feasibility of electric cars. They certainly have accomplished that goal. Next year a whole series of electric cars will hit the road from other companies.

But Tesla, and now Space X, whose goal was to get the private sector involved in space travel?   Is Musk for real? Perhaps he is a more highly developed life form. He speaks often of wanting to build a city on Mars, die on Mars, etc. Perhaps he simply wants to go home. But I hope he stays here. We need more like him.

Oh, by the way, if you have not seen the video of the Falcon 9 flight, it is here

And Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

Flaws in Complex Systems

As systems become more complex, flaws tend to appear.  A few weeks ago, the lining began to peel in our microwave oven, exposing a worrisome expanse of metal.  It was old and we clearly needed a new one, so we ordered one from Amazon, a usually straightforward action.  We promptly received an acknowledgement, saying it would arrive in two weeks, which seemed a surprisingly long time.  In a week or so  we received a message from “Tempus & Co. – Amazon Marketplace”, telling us that our oven had been packed and shipped, and it arrived soon after, and we walked out of our door one morning to find a large box with our new oven.  But strangely, although it was brand new and made by a different manufacturer than our old one, the lining was also peeling off of it.

 The shipping/billing receipt in the plastic envelope on the side of the box showed that it came from Home Depot, with no mention of either Amazon or Tempus & Co., so we called the local Home Depot store customer service people to find out what to do.  They were not sure but told us to bring it into the store and they would refund our money.  But we had paid Amazon, and there was no shipping order for them to get back to either Amazon, or Tempus & Co., nor any of the usual Amazon return literature.  So they started phoning, and could not find any way to connect the faulty oven we had brought them, with the Amazon payment.  Finally, after an hour or more (seemed like three) of phoning (difficult if you have ever  have tried to phone Amazon) and the participation of the store manager, they made some kind of connection, found the original shipping number and figured out how to refund our money.  Apparently the oven had been purchased from another Home Depot store (not specified on the paper work), they guessed by Tempus & Co.,who when I checked on the internet, looked like a toy store, so none of us were sure what “Amazon Marketplace” meant.  I think we all ended up confused, and my wife and I had no fun at all cooling our heels in the Home Depot store and not knowing how and whether we were going to get a refund on a damaged  piece of merchandise.

 We had returned items to Amazon before, and had no trouble.  But I got the distinct feeling from this interaction and some of the comments made by the Home Depot store people that Amazon's operation has become so large and complicated that it is perhaps picking up more problems associated with size and complexity.

 As an interesting similar experience, our washing machine failed at about the same time, so we bought a replacement at Best Buy, a store at which we had always had good experiences.  The one we bought was discounted, since it was not in the box and had a couple small dents in the side, but otherwise appeared brand new.  Best Buy contracts out the delivery of their large appliances, and not only does one have to wait several days for this to happen, but the delivery people have the policy of calling the evening before the delivery and giving a four hour window when they will appear the next day, and someone over 18  years of age must be at the delivery point to receive the merchandise — kind of inconvenient for a younger working couple.  But we are retired, so were there to meet the delivery, but the back of the washer had been brutally smashed in.  The truckers explained that this happens occasionally in the warehouse, and that if they were us, they would not accept the washer.  Not a hard decision for us to make.

 So back we went to the store and bought a new one, went through the ritual again, and are happy with our new washer.  But we spent a great amount of time waiting for the delivery day, the truck to appear (twice) and driving to the store and back (tough to buy and exchange washing machines over the phone or from the information on the internet).  The people in the Big Buy store apologized for delivering the smashed-up one, and not only returned our money but gave us a discount on the new one, so we still like them, but it seemed to me that they should have a bit closer control on their warehouse and delivery schedule.  Are large chains, now that they are selling over the internet as well as from stores, suffering from operating with too few humans, forgetting that humans and computer systems are fallible, and tending to lose a bit of control over contracted and non-computer aspects of their business such as warehousing and delivery?  Not surprising if it is happening.  The more parts there are to fail, the more likely there will be failures.

The Adventure of Fixing

As I have told you in previous posts, I live in a wonderful 110 year old house (old for California) with original plumbing and wiring.  Since I do like to make, fix, and tinker with things, I apply this convenient urge to my house—convenient because most contemporary builders are used to being guided by modern codes, and 110 years ago, there were not such things.  Therefore my house is a giant puzzle, of great importance to Marian and me.

 Usually when “fixing” part of it, I go through a period of great frustration, and then extreme happiness when I succeed.  Is this some mental disease, that I enjoy pain because I know I will feel good when it stops?  Am I the possessor of some kind of masochistic personality disorder?   I do not worry, because it only applies when I am working on a very hard problem or am in a seriously annoying situation—and it feels so good when I escape.

 Minor example:  Our relatively ancient washing machine finally needed replacing, not only because too many parts were failing, but it was using an embarrassing amount of water, energy, etc, and not getting clothes very clean.  So we bought a new super-efficient one.  But as often happens to us, new appliances,  pieces of furniture, and other household objects are larger than the old ones, because new houses often have larger rooms in them , and people seem to like big things with lots of features (can you believe the ad here?—from MoMA, for God’s sake— only approximately $8,000—  click on the red version—tasty, huh?).  So I had to move the plumbing for the washing machine to a different location.

 The excitement of working with 110  year old steel pipe is that it thoroughly rusted, so that it is much more fragile than new pipe, and is usually rusted solid to things such as elbows, tees, couplings, shut-off valves, and other such devices.  When taking it apart, it may unscrew (good), or the pipe may break (bad).  In an old house, where the pipes wander randomly through the structure, a pipe that has twisted in two inside the structure can be very bad news.

 When I began to take the old pipe apart, I instantly found that it was thoroughly rusted together.  So I got a larger wrench and pulled harder.  I began with the valves, and sure enough, the nipples (short pieces of threaded pipe) twisted into pieces of rust, barely visible from the elbow that was next in line.  Since I could not get the wrench on the fragment of nipple,  I twisted the elbow, and sure enough, the longer pieces of pipe it connected to also twisted into two pieces.  I then followed one of the pipe assemblies further into the structure, becoming more and more worried, until finally one section cleanly unscrewed from the next—victory, I could put a new piece of pipe on it and rebuild the assembly as I wanted it to be.

 But the other pipe assembly was more resistant.  I became more and more depressed as I piled up pieces of rusted pipe, and as I began to have to work within wall structure.  I finally accepted the fact that I might have to do some major wall surgery, which might take days.  But just as I accepted defeat, A length of pipe not only unscrewed within the wall, but in a location where I could push a new piece into the into the wall and attached coupling and happily tighten it up.  Within a very few minutes I passed from utter defeat to complete victory.  That is one of the finest feelings available to the human (give or take minor things like sex, food, and good weather). 

 That was yesterday and I am still high today.  So the answer to “The Joy of  Fixing”, is dependent upon a high degree of challenge followed by success?  Not exactly a huge insight, and I certainly knew that from experience in everything from professional work to interpersonal relations, But somehow, I had never directly connected it to my love of doing things like repairing 110 year old plumbing.

Product Quality, Maintenance, Service, and Standardization

In his now classic paper “Competing on the Eight Dimensions of Quality”, Published in 1987 in the Harvard Business Review, David Garvin included serviceability as one of the critical eight.  This service must sometimes be performed by experts (the Boeing airliner), but often can be accomplished by the customer (oil level in a car, a bent prong on an electric plug, maybe replacing plumbing or getting a recalcitrant gas engine or your furnace to run).  People like me prefer servicing everything possible ourselves, for reasons ranging from economic to satisfaction.

 Products become more complex over time, as more features are added and technology becomes more sophisticated, and it seems to me that manufacturers are paying less attention to the owner’s ability to service the product.  The incentive for them to improve serviceability is offset by the profit to be made by being able to convince people to throw away the malfunctioning product and buy a new “upgrade” , and by the money to be made by the professional service people.  A clear example is Apple, whose products are very difficult to maintain, and who obviously don’t mind people taking their ailing equipment to the Apple store, so that Apple “geniuses” can try to sell them new equipment and while they are there, add-ons such as cool cases and new apps.

 But I am personally fed up with what appears to me a strong emphasis on designing for manufacturing (good), but less on owner service.  As a minor specific example, let me say a few words about the proliferation of nuts, bolts, and screws in the world.  We in the U.S. are somewhat guilty, since we insist on refusing to join the metric system, even though all nations except for Myanmar and Liberia have ( I think a wonderful example of U.S. arrogance ), and because of our major dependence  on  and participation in trade, have caused the world to use both systems, even though the metric system is far more straight forward and much easier to use. 

 But beyond that, although sizes and thread dimensions seem to be standardized, people continue to invent new geometries, and granted that many have advantages (especially in manufacturing), the tool requirements on the owner are getting ridiculous.  If you want to get an idea of the diversity in screws, nuts and bolts, run down the several pages of a table that might interest you here.

  The photo shows some of my own “standard” (slotted and Phillips head) screwdrivers.  Granted there is some duplication here, caused by defending against the normal response of borrowing but never getting around to returning screwdrivers, but due to modifications I have made on various ones to fit various odd screws, I use them all.  And of course I have a complete set of “Allen” hex (six sided)  wrenches (metric and U.S.) and a complete set of sockets and screw drivers for Torx screws (invented by the automobile industry but spreading widely).  But still I run into developments that amaze me, like the alternate screws developed by Apple to prevent “tampering” (which includes changing a battery,etc.)  The good news I suppose is that it opened up a new market for tools ( see the Amazon offerings here), and I have already participated by buying a battery kit over the internet, (but not without major resentment).  The bad news is that it is difficult for the average tinkerer to keep up with the tool requirements needed to use the expanding array of fasteners.

 So my plea to the manufacturers of the world is “Pay more attention to the ability of your customers to service your product”, because even the best of commercial service is an convenience and typically slow and expensive.  And my  plea to the rest of us to be more aware of the real cost (including resources and environmental damage) in throwing away a dishwasher because a new control panel plus a visit from a professional costs almost as much as a new one.

And there are many other reasons for making services simpler.  When I was younger my friends and I loved to “work on our cars”, and therefore were a natural market for well-used and cheaper ones, and came to love cars in general.    Nowadays, cars are much more difficult to “work on”.  Also the interest in cars among young people is plunging.  Suppose there is a correlation, auto manufacturers?  Kids don’t have as much money, but they are your hoped for future customers.

 

 

Swell new old tractor

As I told you in a previous post, I have been working on the restoration of a 1929 Caterpillar model ten
tractor.  The last photo I sent you is shown at the left.  At that point I had the the running gear working, and some of the parts painted, but  had removed the sheet metal to convince it that it should be flat and have fewer bumps in it. 

 This particular tractor had been painted grey with red trim when it left the factory.  But many old caterpillar products over time had been painted the familiar Caterpillar yellow.  In fact that had happened to this one, and much of the yellow and old grey had chipped off, as can be seen from the photo.  I removed the worst damage, sanded it, put a rust neutralizer on the spots that still showed rust, and returned it to grey. I also reworked or replaced several parts that were either missing or unsavable, and had the seats re-upholstered in official Caterpillar vinyl. 

 The model ten was the smallest tracked tractor that Caterpillar ever produced (the ten stands for ten horsepower), and is particularly fun to drive, since tracked tractors pretty much turn on their own length, and the ten is not that long.  If you are interested in details, it is approximately 100 inches long, 51 inches to the top of the seat back, and 52 inches wide, overall (37 inches between the centers of the treads).  It weighs approximately two tons.  As a contrast, the D-11, one of Caterpillars largest modern tractors, which is mainly used as a bull dozer in the mining industry and other applications requiring moving large quantities of dirt, is powered by a 770 horsepower engine and weighs approximately 100 tons with blade.  But one of them would not fit in my yard, and my Cat 10 will, although I will probably not get permission to keep it there because Marian believes (wrongly) that there is already too much machinery in her (as she sees it) garden. 

 In any case, the finished product is shown here (tin can temporary in case it ever rains in California) .  Needless to say, I am most pleased with it. It is particularly important to me because its previous owner was a wonderful man named Chuck Whitcher, who was a close friend and mentor in the old machinery line, and who recently died.  He had never gotten around to restoring this tractor, and I am proud to have done it for him.

 

Big Shows of Outstanding Products

I am a fan of huge shows —the kind that leave you sure that you haven’t seen everything  no matter how much time you spend.  I have been to many of them—the War and Peace Show and the Farnborough Air Show in England, the Tri State Gas Engine and Tractor show in Portland, Indiana, COMDEX, the AACA annual antique car show in Hershey, Pennsylvania, the Iowa State Fair, the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, and so on.

 But strangely enough, for years I have been neglecting one in my own back yard – the annual historic car races/show in Monterey California. Many people I know are regular attendees and participants, but they tend to possess rare and valuable show cars, and lots of money, so I figure it would be a playground for extreme show car snobs.

 But I was wrong.  It does have a few of them, but the very large attendance is mostly people like me (car fans, but drivers of several year old usually dirty Toyotas and such things). I do like cars. I grew up and lived in Southern California and  during the 1950’s and 60’s I was a fan of all sorts of automotive competitions, from oval track racing, to road racing, to destruction derbies, to drag racing. I have also put my time into “sports” cars.  I have owned 1956 Austin Healey, a 1960 Triumph TR3, a 1959 Porsche 356a, a 1975 Alfa Romeo Spider, and a 1970 E-type Jaguar. I bought them all used and needing a bit of work, and they were all fun. I still own the Alfa and the E-type (definitely not ready for Monterey), and put in my allotted time nursing them.  In fact both of them need work right now, so I will probably renew my intimate acquaintance with them in a week or two.  I must admit that I like to work on ailing cars, and cars like these give one the opportunity.

 If you like cars, and people who like cars, and can visit this event, it is well worth it, although you should be prepared to bite your lip when you pay the admission price (you need the "pit" pass).  I was motivated to attend the show by a friend/ex office partner/ex student, named Matt Ohline, who is a serious car buff, and always drives responsive machinery.  He has a wife, two kids, and a good job as an engineer, but no fortune that would enable him to own the cars he drools over.  He contacted me and invited me to be his guest at the show  and was clearly the best of all guides, since he attends each year.   I drooled with him.   Suffice it to say I will be there next year, because, guess what, when we left at the end of the day I felt that I had not seen everything.

 The photos in this post are of swell cars that were at the show.  The first one is Matt's choice for the most beautiful car in the world. The final one is a huge racing machine outfitted with a Hall Scott engine (also huge).  I was particularly interested, since I own one of the engines, which saw its original service in a fire truck.  I could build a ………………….. No Jim, don’t go there—just go to car shows with Matt.

Good Show and Challenging Task

I just returned from one of my favorite antique machinery shows—— The Oregon Steam up, held on the last weekend in July and the first weekend in August in Brooks, Oregon, north of Salem and South of Portland at Antique Powerland just off U.S. highway 5.  There are a very large number of such shows in the world each year, but this one is outstanding for the breadth of old machinery there and in operation, the well-done museums on the land (which are open during the year), and the swell and knowledgeable people who put it on, and who show and demonstrate their stuff.   For me, it is also of a nice scale and convenient because it is on the West Coast of the U.S. in one of my favorite states.  If you are interested in antique machinery you will especially enjoy this gathering, because of its emphasis on both steam and gas equipment and the in-place large engines, sawmill, etc. If  you are not interested in antique machinery you should be.  Don't you wish you had the vehicle in the photo above to go shopping in?

 But I had another reason for my visit.  Some years ago I began restoring a McCormick Daisy reaper, a machine that is in the American history books, and is fascinating to watch, as after it cuts the hay, it has arms that sweep it off of a deck onto the ground in piles, which can then be tied together and taken to the next stage of the harvesting process.  The six  arms can be controlled so that every arm sweeps the deck each pass, every other sweeps, every third arm, etc. My problem is that the very critical part that controls all of this is missing from my machine.  So I need to make one.

 There is one of the few complete Daisy reapers like mine that I know of at the Brooks show.  A photograph is below.   The part I need is sort of contained in the red outline in the photo below (apologies for the photo— the white blur at the bottom is my hand), although many weird curves and shapes are not visible.  The part includes the pivot. A complex curve hidden in the photo, the hook at the top, a curved rack of gear teeth that must engage the worm gear inside the main casting as the part turns upon its pivot, and a contact pad at the top of the rack.

I have several problems in re-creating it.  First of all, it is difficult to make, since it is a casting with no symmetry, no “parting lines” which would allow a mold to be separated, and critical and strange alignments between the parts which interact with the surrounding parts.

And, don’t say 3d printing —been there.  Three dimensional printing is not as easy as the media makes it seem, especially if scanning is involved,  and I want a steel part.  Sure I could make a mold from the part and cast it, but not surprisingly, the owner and museum were not eager to let me take the machine apart (also difficult) and take the part 400 miles away to use as a master while I copied it in my shop and Stanford’s foundry.  Had I been them, I would have felt the same.

 So I went to Brooks to take many photographs and make measurements (which I did) to work from.  Even with them, it will be a challenging job, as there were no base points on the part or machine to measure from, so I will have to cut and try and weld and curse until I get a prototype that will do the job, and then make a finished version from the prototype. But strangely enough, I love to do that sort of thing.

 I will write a post on the process and the finished part, but don’t hold your breath.  I am guessing several weeks, since my life is beautifully endowed with many other things to do, many higher on Marian's priority list than my making this part.

The Vanishing Machine Aesthetic

I really miss being able to see the details of machines.  Not only are they exciting, but often beautiful.  I am suspect, of course, being an engineer, but so be it.  When I was a kid, I used to love standing too close to steam powered railroad locomotives, not only for the emotional thrill of their size and sounds, but also to try to figure out how they worked (possible for a kid in those days).  I don’t stand too close to modern train locomotives, or in fact, even notice them.

 Something happened many years ago (1920’s and 30’s) to start us hiding the workings of machinery. 
The photo at the left shows a caterpillar 30, probably built in the 1920’s, with the usual kid playing on it.  The next photo shows a restored caterpillar 10 manufactured a few years later, but with a more “modern” approach to design.  Note that the workings are shrouded in sheet metal.  The third photo shows a beat up caterpillar 10 without the sheet metal (I am restoring it and straightening out the sheet metal).  To me, it is more interesting without the sheet metal, but I will put it back on so it doesn’t bother people.

The final tractor photo shows a caterpillar tractor manufactured in 1995.  Certainly looks faster (it is) and more powerful (it is) and more technically sophisticated (it is), but what is inside of its sports-car body panels?  Give or take a bunch of electronics and a steering wheel rather than clutch/brake levers, it is similar.  But I’ll bet the reaction of most people (not farmers) is not to care—they just like the exterior. (I do admit it is a great tractor and I like the exterior also).  But this tractor is perhaps more difficult to understand and to maintain than the Caterpillar 30, as well as not as much fun for kids to play on.

 

I think it is worrisome that we are no longer paying as much attention to how things work.  Personal computers are a good example —no clue as to what is in the package.  In fact, most of us are perhaps happier that way.  But the role technology is playing is increasing so that hiding it may delude us, especially if covered with modern marketing. The “Cloud”, being touted by companies with enormous server capability (Google, Apple, IBM, Amazon, etc.) is causing massive ignorance.  Traditional clouds are beautiful, especially close to sunset, the weightlessly drift through the sky, ever changing, and hopefully in California promise eventual much needed rain, and in summer cooler weather.  They are almost magic.

 The “Cloud” being sold by computer companies is another example of intentionally hiding technology that our society should better understand.  It consists of access to the company servers (not all servers), and is an attempt by the company to function as our digital memory and provide our operating systems, applications, and other software (conveniently allowing them to charge us a monthly fee).  This cloud consists of glass fibers and other conductors under ground, on the ocean floor, and occasionally in sewers, feeding massive number of digital devices in anonymous , windowless, extremely hot  buildings that suck  huge amounts of electrical energy not only to accomplish their function, but also to prevent themselves from overheating.  Some time ago I mentioned a book entitled Tubes, by Andrew Blum.  An excellent read if you think the “Cloud” is either beautiful or magic, or if you don't understand the physical components of the internet.

 What’s happened to us?  Many things, but the directions of technology and the strengthening of the design profession have certainly had large inputs.  The realization of the advantages of low-drag aircraft, beginning with the evolution of fighter planes and the design of airplanes such as the DC-3 in 1934 was certainly instrumental.  The photo at the right  shows a famous pencil sharpener prototype designed by one of the leading designers of the 1930’s, Raymond Loewy in 1933.  It never hit the market.  But granted that it would only sharpen one size of pencil, it does look like it could move through one’s office rapidly, and would have probably sold because of the then love of “streamlining”.  I have opened the hood of a few “luxury” cars only to find that the engine is almost entirely shrouded, although it represents a high level of craftsmanship.  And I can tell long and now amusing stories of putting a new battery into my admittedly sleek Apple iPhone.

 I am for unwrapping and better understanding how things work.  Not only is it interesting, but we can better evaluate what we are doing to ourselves.

 

Cyanoacrylate, CA, “Super Glue”, or Whatever. A Wonderful Product

Some people are dependent on alcohol, some on heroin, but I am addicted to cyanoacrylate (industrial nickname CA).  It has saved me huge amounts of time in my life, enabled me to impress my family and friends by my ability to perform instant repairs, allowed us to keep fragile items in our house within reach of children and then grandchildren, secure in the knowledge that I can fix them when they are broken, and been critical to various strange hobbies I have.

 It has been a part of my life since soon after it became available in the late 1950’s.  I first met CA while working in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.  It was sold by Eastman Kodak, where it was invented, and was called Eastman 910.  At JPL it was first used by the test engineers, who needed to rapidly place accelerometers on prototype spacecraft to measure the effects of simulated launch vibrations—these vibrations being perhaps the most severe portion of the launch environment.  Since CA adhesives in their pure form set in seconds, make strong bonds, and are immune to high temperatures and most solvents, they were perfect for attaching these accelerometers.  And conveniently, CA is not immune to acetone, which softens the set glue and allowed the accelerometers to be removed and attached elsewhere if desired.

 I first discovered CA as the result of a common prank played on new employees (those were the days of pranking, which I sorely miss).  Lubrication of mechanical components is always a problem in space, because most lubricants will “outgas”, and spread a thin layer of themselves on neighboring surfaces.  Not good, since such surfaces are critical for temperature control, and one would like the lubricants to stay where they are needed. Eastman 910 came in small bottles with a pouring spout, and the prank was to find an innocent engineer (me), tell them that there was this amazing new lubricant that would not outgas, and which was a superior lubricant to any others available.  “Try it”, the prankster would say. “Put a couple of drops on a finger, and rub it against another finger, and  you will be amazed”.  Amazed we were, because the fingers instantly glued together, and tightly enough that if not told about acetone, would have required slicing apart with a razor blade.  As you can see from the Wikipedia information here, one of the uses of CA is to glue skin together in cases of wounds, surgery, and other applications.  I later found out that in three or four days they could be separated even without acetone, but life is somewhat less convenient with two fingers glued together for even a short time.

 Although at this time, the glue was rare and expensive, it is now common and very affordable (a little goes a long way).  It is sold under various trade names, such as Super Glue and Krazy Glue, and often tricked up with other components so it can be marketed more easily.  But I am a purist, and stick to the straight stuff.  I usually buy it in the model section of hobby shops.  The small bottles (1/2 ounce) are often enough, since over time it is almost impossible to keep them from terminally plugging up.  It usually comes in three thicknesses.  The “thin” sets within a few seconds and makes the strongest bond if the joint is in good contact.  The “gap filling” is the middle one, takes longer to set, but does not require as tight a mechanical joint.  I never use the thickest version, which can handle even more “gap”, because part of the magic is the very rapid setting time, compared to other glues.  Clamping is rarely needed.  It is usually possible to apply the glue, hold the parts together a bit, and voila – mission accomplished.

 The skill, strangely enough, is to use it without gluing your fingers together, gluing parts to your fingers, getting it on your clothes or your best furniture, or otherwise losing control of the magic fluid.  But a few embarrassing accidents will help you learn.  One of my early ones resulted in my gluing a finger of each hand to a small pot that had broken into several pieces.  I was so intent in holding the pieces together I neglected to realize what was  happening.   I was working in the garage, but  looking around, I could see no acetone.  I remembered that my wife had finger-nail polish remover (acetone) in the house, so I went to find it.  But unknown to me, she had gone on an errand and locked the doors of the house.  Since the glue had set and the pot was repaired, I did not want to re-break it.  But ever try to get a full key ring out of the pocket of tight Levis with both hands glued to a pot?  No cell phones in those days, and even if there had been, at that point in my life I would have been reluctant to give my colleagues, friends,and  neighbors, the tasty story that hot-shot Ph.D. rocket scientist Adams had glued his hands to a pot.  Fortunately I was more agile in those days, got the key free without re-breaking the pot, opened the door, found the finger-nail polish remover, and managed to apply it to my attached fingers (and a bit on the floor and bathroom counter) before my wife returned.

 A professionally valuable result of my early exposure to CA, was that I became fascinated with glue, and how it works.  In fact, in retrospect I was becoming annoying at JPL, because I could see no reason why most of the spacecraft was not glued together, instead of using such archaic means as nuts and bolts, rivets, and welds.  The knowledge I acquired has served me in good stead all of my life.  Thank you, Eastman Kodak. 

 Incidentally, while you are in the hobby shop, buy yourself some 5 minute epoxy and hardener if you don’t have any.  Not as strong a joint as regular epoxy glue, but you probably don’t need that much strength, and 5 minutes is better than 5 hours. 

Bondo—An Old and Outstanding Product

Bondo, is a two component epoxy putty, originally developed in 1955 by Robert Spink, a car repairman in Florida.  Although it has changed in composition, it is still the foremost body putty used to repair irregularities in sheet metal auto body parts.  I first discovered it soon after it came on the market while involved in repairing minor damage to first my, and then my family cars.  It has a bad reputation with some people (a short cut and plastic), but certainly helps even out the surface after the sheet metal is pounded out to near its original shape.  Although there are many other epoxy based putties now, Bondo still holds its own.

 Since that time, I have found a multitude of uses for the material, from repairing damage to wooden porch floors in our 100 plus year old house, to stopping sewer leaks.  I sometimes think that the reason the Roman empire collapsed was because they did not have Bondo.

 But now I am worried a bit about the product.  The company was bought in 2007 by 3M, a large and successful company, that is using the Bondo brand on a variety of consumer products.  But I recently bought a new can of Bondo, and found that it was labeled as a “body repair kit”.  The kit part apparently refers not only to the body putty, but also a tiny (2 inch square) plastic applicator, and two so-called self adhesive patches made of a metal mesh.  I assume these are intended to bridge a hole in the sheet metal until enough Bond iss applied to seal the hole—but you don’t want to do that.  You want to weld, or at least rivet in, a metal patch and go from there.  And a two inch applicator?  The “kit” part was downright insulting. Bondo is obviously fishing for the DIY (Do It Yourself) market, but it takes a bit of experience to use Bondo well, and probably more than a two inch applicator.  I would suggest at least a reference on the can to one of the many excellent instruction videos on using Bondo available on Youtube . A fully set mishapen, lumpy mass of Bondo on his/her car would take the fun out of any DIYer's day (I incidentally am a veteran DIY person).

 And I noticed the can was not full —  hopefully not the grocery store game (keep the container size and the price, and cut the contents).  Maybe Bondo cans were never full, but I do not remember that being the case. The attached photo shows the freshly opened can, the crème hardener and the “patch” folded around the tiny applier.

 I also recently began using a wood filler now provided by Bondo, also a two component putty, that seems to set a bit softer, is more compatible with sanding and drilling, and can be stained to some extent.  But it sets at least as fast (3 to 5 minutes after mixing). On a car, Bondo’s fast setting time is a benefit, because usually one smears it onto the sanded sheet metal over a fairly large and reasonable even area. Then one planes it (with a so-called cheese grater) and sands it with increasingly fine paper as it sets until one gets the desired result. But in repairing wood, especially in a house, it is not always possible to place the mixed putty in the proper place and smooth it as one might want to in such a short time, since house repairs often require a bit of acrobatics and forcing the filler into  nooks, crannies, and crevices.  But hopefully the manufacturers will realize that car body repair and the repair of wood products are often two different things, and at least come up with an option of a slightly slower-setting wood filler— how about ten minutes instead of five?

I am praying for the continued high quality of Bondo products.  Hopefully, the long established reputation (brand) is not being  used mainly to rapidly improve the cash flow of 3M.  But marketing and potential quick profit have stolen the mind of many well meaning and venerable companies. 

 

 

When Most People Were Makers

I grew up in a time and place where people made and maintained a large amount of their stuff.  It was in the 1930’s, the depression was on, and I lived  on a small orange orchard in southern California.  In those days it was possible for a family to live off of the income from 10 or 20 acres of oranges, but there wasn’t much cash around.  But all people needed was enough cash to buy necessities they couldn’t grow, and there was no incentive to buy luxury cars, live in huge houses, or wear expensive clothes.  In fact, such things were considered in very poor taste.  And people were proud of their ability to make what they needed and fix it if it broke.

 I was born in my grandparent’s house, which my grandfather had built, and my grandmother decorated and maintained, in addition to cooking, making clothes, taking care of kids and other "traditional woman’s work".  This was before the massive shift in occupational expectations among women, and what she did was essential for the family, so although an extremely bright and strong woman, she seemed more than satisfied with her role. In addition to building the house, My grandfather also built a large garage/shop, a barn, and an auxiliary building for their occasionally exploding gas generator, and was also the area blacksmith.  And he planted ten acres of orange trees and installed the irrigation system. When they were first married my parents also lived in the house.

But after I became mobile as a small child, they clearly needed a house, so  they signed up my grandfather and built one.  I was allowed to think I was helping.  The photograph shows me doing so.  Note hammer, also note I am not actually working on the house structure.  It was a separate structure designed to keep me amused and out of the way.

 I recently was visiting this house, since my brother now lives in it, and was reminded of how much building and making stuff had occurred in that spot.  When I was six, it was decided that I needed my own room,  The photo below shows it newly constructed,  (again by the family), lived in by me, and outfitted by furniture (the desk,bed, shelves, drawer chest, and even the boat model) built by my mother.  She had become the family furniture maker. 

Toys were home built.  The next photo shows my brother as a kid and a horse he built (with a little help from mom).   And then she really took off as a maker and fixer.  Mom had always made her own clothes, and now branched out into clothes for all of us.  My father liked to fish, and I remember her making him a pair of waterproof hip boots from old tire inner tubes.  I became tall early, and could not keep my shirt tucked in.   She designed a shirt for me that did not need tucked in and made them for me until I was well into my forties, by which time I was adequately equipped.  They don’t wear out, and I still wear them.  The photo below is  a back view of one she made me from the sacks of the pulverized sulfur that was then used as a pesticide. Her shirts were not always flamboyant, but mostly were, and they were partly responsible for forming my  persona in high school—I needed a little more extroversion.

 And on it goes.  When I was in high school I built myself a swell bedroom/bathroom addition to our
house with my grandfather’s supervision, as well as helping him build other additions and upgrades,  When my grandfather died, I became family carpenter and maintenance person, and happily retained those positions when I married and became the owner of my own house, which I could radically improve. Also I went to college and studied engineering and spent enough time in industry and in my shop that I could build and maintain more sophisticated things.

 When my brother and I went off to college (a first in the family) Mom became a water colorist.  She took a few classes from an excellent water colorist (Robert Wood), loved them, and away she went.  The photo below is an example.  She became very good, and broke the family tradition by selling her work.  She won a number of awards (one from the California Historical Society for a series she did on old houses, several in art shows), all the while trying to hide from notoriety.

 My grandfather was a metal worker, carpenter, plasterer, concrete guy – the whole works. My father less so, and was more interested in farming and the orange business.  My grandmother was more into “traditional” tasks.  But on recently visiting the family house, I was again amazed by my mother's work.  She died only a few years ago, in the house at the age of 97,  from falling down while carrying a stack of her paintings down a stairs and breaking her neck – a fitting ending for her—quick, at home, and with her work.  She was a quiet and humble lady, but the breadth of her interests and abilities would be astounding these days.  And whether it was cooking, sewing, painting, making furniture, mending, working with concrete, fixing the sink,or teaching me to make model airplanes (from scratch), play the piano, or type, she was always trying to improve her work (and me). She was after quality. I think I was encouraged by my mother and her father to do the same.  But did I inherit something?  Was it nature or nurture?  Probably both.

 Whatever happened, as you know I am a believer in the importance of working with the hands.   I do it not to make money, but rather for pride and sense of accomplishment- and once in a while to keep from going nuts.  Except for Mom going commercial with her  paintings, the rest of my family, and most of the people I knew who were drawn to growing oranges in my home town were the same.  I miss that aspect in the area in which I live, where most (but not all) of my friends seem to tend toward buying things rather than making them, and hiring other people to maintain them and do their manual work. They seem to think that their time is too valuable to do such things. Perhaps this explains why even though I don’t want to grow crops, I am drawn to rural areas, where it is more common to see welding equipment in people’s garages.  They remind me of my early days when most people were makers, not because being a maker was cool, but rather because people could not afford to continually buy new stuff and making and fixing things and tinkering with them was satisfying.  In my opinion it still is.

 Incidentally,  I have given many talks, courses, etc. using the title “Making, Fixing, and Tinkering”, and am well into a book on the topic, so you will occasionally hear more about it in this blog. I am writing the book not only because I am a believer, but need something to defend myself against attacks from my friends who fervently believe I am wasting my time when I could be thinking or touring the world instead of tinkering.  Been there, and you have to think to write a book.

Do It Yourself

Within the last week I have done the following things, none of them important to society in general.

1 . Cleared out our kitchen sink drain  – a long and dirty job in our 100  year old house, equipped with iron pipe and many right angle bends that do not like snakes.  The coagulated grease, garbage disposal residue, and other miscellaneous material clogged about 12 feet of this. (plumber)

2.  Solved a tricky problem in my wife’s car – would not start even though battery would turn the engine over (mechanic).

3.  Repainted a number of yard chairs- even though they could have been cheaply replaced (painter)

4.  Re-potted some plants – I am in charge of all cactus in our garden (gardener).

5.  Re-wired the lighting in my shop (electrician)

6.  Worked on another tractor I am restoring – (lots of skills needed)

 The media has been making much of the DIY (do it yourself movement), and I am a living example of a long-time member.  I  have enough money to hire people to do all of the above-mentioned work and more.  And in fact, for most of my life people (including my wife) have suggested to me that I should do so, because that would give me more time to do what in their mind they think I should be doing.  But I won’t, until I become too old to do it (my wife some time ago revoked my roofing license after I slipped with no safety line and almost came off of the three-story part of our house— I couldn’t argue with that one.)

 I won’t (can’t?) because I was brought up to do such things and I get great pleasure from doing and having done them.  I grew up in an area of small farmers, who although not considering themselves poor, did not have much cash.  It was routine to make and fix most things themselves, including houses,  yards, equipment, and so on.  I learned much about doing so as a kid, and added to that with my education and career as an engineer and engineering teacher.  I have good hands, know how to use them, and somehow find rewards in doing so —even unplugging the sink, and in fact, perhaps the more difficult the job, the greater pleasure I get from doing it.  My wife has somewhat the same instincts.  She is the sole proprietor of a large and complex garden and has no interest in hiring help to take care of it—perhaps because the gardeners retained by all of our neighbors, seem to have been overcome by machinery, with the result that surrounding gardens seem to all look freshly blown and mowed, and very similar to each other. Ours seems to be the only house that has leaves under the trees —a natural and attractive phenomenon.

 So it is not the money.  It is the satisfaction of doing the job well and having it done.  My very influential grandmother said it very well:  people who have homes, (gardens, automobiles, etc.) who don’t take care of them themselves do not deserve them.  Unlike  my grandmother, I don’t judge other people, but it certainly applies to me, even though Marian points out the seemingly long time (to her) it takes me to get such work done. But she is not very familiar with the hassle and delay of hiring other people, and can’t quite appreciate the importance to me of doing such seemingly mundane things myself, especially when I want her to steady the ladder.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Cup Runneth Over

I figure that I have enough projects to keep me happily busy until I am 150 years old.  But judging from my friends and my body, I may not live to be that old.  Clearly trying to complete them more rapidly doesn’t work, because I am becoming slower.  I am still moving reasonably well.  I am well into becoming better organized (my wife will snicker at this), becoming more embroiled in writing my mythical two books, and catching up on my reading (difficult because excellent new books seem to be coming out faster than I can read).  And I am moving along at restoring stuff .  The photos below show the before and after condition of the McCormick mower I mentioned in a previous post.  It is now working well and I am about to take it up to my son’s farm and let him test it with a couple of his huge horses.

The photos below show the before photo of the high-pressure water pump I included in my last post, and the finished restoration, ready to pump. 

But I am still acquiring outstanding old hardware faster than I can restore it. And the hardware I have restored drastically needs more attention.  And of course there is my growing family,  my old and needy house, my failure to succeed in completely cutting my ties with Stanford, and frequent assignments from Marian.

What to do, what to do?  I am going to devote the next post to a book entitled Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other, by Sherry Turkle, one of my favorite authors (Basic Books, 2011).  I read this when it was released, but re-read it when I ran across it recently, and it spoke more directly to me now that I am further behind and my grandchildren are older.  Turkle is a psychologist on the M.I.T. faculty, and specializes in the interaction of technology and society.  This is the fifth book she has written during the “information revolution”, the previous ones being quite positive about computers, the internet, and so forth.  Fifteen years had passed since the last one when she wrote Alone Together, and her daughter was now in college.  This book discusses many worries about what the internet is doing to us and our children, and I will recommend it highly if you haven’t read it.

 In particular, it got me thinking about the increasing chunk of time my computer and the internet are requiring from me.  When I wrote my Good Products, Bad Products book, also released in 2011, my publisher talked me, an innocent, into entering the social networking scene in order to publicize the book.  With some reservations I joined Facebook, Twitter, and Linked in, and started this blog.  I enjoy writing this blog, because it makes me think, but have never really felt comfortable with the social networking sites, with the result that I have neither tried to increase the size of the pool of  people who I presumably interact with, nor have I done a good job of interacting with the people in the pool.

 And like many people, my e-mail has gotten out of hand.  I seem to be showing up on lists faster than I can make filters to stop it—probably partly because of my Stanford connection, the exploding number of overseas students looking for financial aid and admission to college in the U.S., an increase in technical meetings and consulting opportunities, and just plain marketing.

 So during the next week I am going to think hard about my interaction with the internet and digital communication in general.  Some years ago, Don Knuth, author of the set of classic book entitled “The Art of Computer Programming”, informed his friends that he was quitting e-mail, in order to have more time to think deeply and work on writing projects.  Since he is a god in the computer field, this attracted a lot of attention.  I am not a god, but I am feeling the same way right now, especially toward social networking.  I am fortunate in that I have a large number of real friends I love, and am not looking for cyber friends  or contacts.  And my computer is demanding an increasing and already far too much of my time.  I am certainly not alone in this feeling.  People are waking up to the downside of all of these digital miracles. More about this in my next blog.

 

A Very Good Day Indeed

 Today was a wonderful California spring day, despite the drought,  and in fact thanks to day light saving time and the month of April, it was a long one (sunrise at 6:29, sunset at 7:48).  Being Sunday, it began with Marian and my traditional religious service, performed by staying in bed reading the New York Times, drinking coffee, and eating coffee cake.  Upon finishing that, I decided to do something with a relatively small incredibly rusted high pressure water pump I had rescued from a junk pile a bit ago, and that was sitting on a hand truck in a place where I was sure I would receive encouragement soon to do something with it.  The photograph below shows it in its rusty splendor.

  The first thing I decided to do, was to take it apart.  But to my amazement (and pleasure), that required the entire day.  I have been reading a book I enjoy a lot entitled The Swerve, by Stephen Greenblatt, subtitled How the World Became Modern.  It is beautifully written (Pulitzer Prize) and is a wondrous combination of history, philosophy, and stimulating thinking (Greenblatt is the John Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University, and does not screw around—41 pages of notes and 26 pages of “selected” bibliography, all in fine print, of course).  So I got to think about stimulating concepts while I took apart my pump, and since a baby shower was occurring in the house (for a friend of our daughter’s, not us ) and males were not invited, I could stay outside and play all day, except for sneaking in and making myself lunch.

 The rusting on the pump was so advanced that I had to heat the “moving” parts of the pump to a red heat to get them to move, and the piston was stuck so thoroughly in the cylinder that I finally reverted to not only heat, but a small sledge hammer (not recommended practice, but I ran through all of the alternatives, and none worked).  Heating rusty joints is a powerful method of breaking them loose, since the metal expands, and the rust layer seems to weaken.  But if not carefully done, the process may result in them never coming loose, so I took my time on the project, and finally got the pump entirely apart just in time for dinner, which was outstanding because it consisted of left-over goodies from the shower, in particular crackers, dip, cookies, cupcakes, ice cream, and other types of health food.  I’ll send you a photo of the finished pump when I am done.

 Now I am catching up on my e-mail, and writing this post, and will soon return to bed and read more of  The Swerve. Looks  like tomorrow will be a beautiful day also.   Can’t hardly beat this.

Matthew B. Crawford, and the Issue of Manual Skills.

In 2006, Matthew Crawford, (equipped with a Ph.D. in philosophy, an obvious fan of working with his hands and proprietor of a small business of restoring/maintaining vintage motorcycles), wrote an essay entitled Shop Course as Soul Craft, which was published in Atlantis magazine.  A friend of mine, Dave Beach, (who has built and is responsible for a very successful and large activity in the Stanford Engineering School called the Product Realization Lab in which students design and manufacture products), and I found out about it and spread it all around the local community.  It covered the advantages of manual skills in life and the importance to individuals, schools, and organizations of encouraging them.  I am one of a large number of people who are believers, and who take great pride in their ability to make and fix things and I have seen the positive effects of doing such things on the lives of many other people.   I depend on such activities for keeping me from occasionally becoming less likeable from lack of quick feedback and an overdose of mental activities seemingly divorced from reality (yes I am a professor). Dave and I are also both believers, along with many other people, in the contribution of such activities to producing products of high quality.

 Crawford's "Shop Course" essay was later developed into a book of the same name, which made a large splash because it made its way to many people of like mind, and coincided with a time of much worry about the inroads computers were making into skilled jobs.  If you haven’t read the article or the book, you can find the article here.

 Now Crawford has written another book entitled World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, N.Y.).  This one is somewhat broader in reach, having to do with our mental attention in an age in which large numbers of individuals and organizations, backed by powerful media, are competing for for this attention, to the point where we may be paying a cost in individuality and in the ability to focus as well on our main interests.  His “Shop Class” book was broader in reach than his Atlantis article of the same name, and this book is broader still.  I read it and loved it, but it is a more difficult read.  Crawford is now a senior fellow at the University of Virginia’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, as well as being a fabricator of components for custom motorcycles, and I think he is showing the signs of immersion in an academic scene .  It is difficult for academics to write books that are easy to read, because in a university, life consists of communicating with people in similar disciplines and assuming they have similar backgrounds and familiarity with material—in this case philosophy.  The result is an understandable tendency to refer to people and works that the general reader has not met or read, nor will probably ever do so.  After 50 years of fighting this problem, I know it well.  I even run into it at home because I occasionally find myself trying to explain something that is interesting to me, like quantum computing or the working of make-and-break ignition systems or the physical portions of the internet to my wife, who is brilliant, but was trained as an historian, and seems to  have little need for techie jargon and details.

 But the message in Crawford’s book is straight forward and powerful.  He again makes an argument for hands-on contact with the world,  He begins with the attack upon our attention from all sides, from advertising to internet communications and seductive digital toys.  He then goes into the problems resulting from handling an overload of stimulation by seeing it in terms of broad representations and generalizations rather than reality (“the public”, “government”, “farmers”).  He talks about joint, or group attention, its importance, and the increasing difficulty of obtaining it.  He worries that we are  losing the “real”, by dealing with these generalities and stifling our true nature and individuality in the process.  He finishes the main portion of the book by presenting what he considers an example of good focus—an old and traditional pipe-organ company, in which people learn from the experience of others and gain their pleasure from attaining expertise in the building of their products. Once again, the shop. 

This book is especially timely since many college students now seem to be trying to stay in contact with an ever increasing quantity of people and changing information and are planning to start companies even though they are equipped with little experience and with a minimum of skills learned through practice.  Even some devotees of creativity seem to be swinging away from experience and the learning of skills. I wish them luck.  These are invaluable tools in life.

 If you are interested in things controversial and in modern trends, I recommend you read this book and that you discuss it with your friends, especially if you are neglecting hobbies or work you love that allow you to get your hands dirty.  Dirty hands for me seem to result in a cleaner mind.  I recommend them to all.

 

 

 

 

 

Work Is About More Than Money

In the March 22 edition of the New York Times, there is an article entitled “Why Not Utopia”, by Mark Bittman . It is here. Much of the article is about the loss of jobs due to more and more work previously done by humans now being done by computers.  This is a message that has and is being made constantly these days.  Bittman goes further and hypothesizes that this adds to the increasing economic inequality that bothers us.  He finishes by suggesting we go to another economic system in which the robots work for “us” (by which he must mean those who are not wealthy).

 Granted, there are more employment problems coming, although probably more about the quality of work than the quantity, but while everyone seems to be worrying about the effects that the “information revolution” may have upon the economy, we seem to be forgetting that jobs are about more than money.  Jobs, are a chief source of satisfaction to many of us.  My wife and I have worked  to support ourselves  and our family, but in addition we have worked, and still do work for the satisfaction we get.  In fact much of the work we do now does not pay at all.

 There is still work in the world that is stultifying, and even painful.  Agricultural stoop labor is an example, especially for older people in hot weather.  Miners in many parts of the world must work bent over in dangerous conditions, and such work is an excellent opportunity for robots.  Some work requires constant repetition, and would drive one mad if done alone.  But I remember when I was young, oranges were packed for shipping by hand.  This involved a large space full of women grabbing the oranges from bins that were constantly being refilled, wrapping them with a couple flicks of the hands and fingers, and tucking them neatly into the shipping boxes. I used to watch them with awe, because of the speed with which they filled the boxes.  And they did it all day long, day after day.  One would think they would have gone crazy, but instead they seemed to be having a wonderful time telling bad jokes, gossiping, singing, whistling at me, and generally carrying on.  The packing had obviously become completely automatic, and the day became a large social gathering.

 I have held many jobs that contained elements of what might be called drudgery.  I grew up on a farm, and did the usual shoveling of dirt, hoeing of weeds, trimming of deadwood, smudging, and irrigating.  But it was necessary, and probably added to the pleasure of being surrounded by the growing crops.    

 When I was relatively young (probably 9 or 10), I had a job mowing the lawns in front of the orange packing house where my father worked and the fore mentioned women packed.  It happened to be on the main street of town. The mower was hand pushed, and the grass grew fast, so it was a fair amount of work, especially in the summer (no shade, Southern California) and took several hours.  The work was tedious and physically hard at my tender age, but I was fiercely proud of the results.  I would go out of my way to ride my bicycle past it and realize that those were “my” lawns looking beautiful for all the passers by.  Did I get paid?  I don’t even remember, but certainly not enough to be considered a fair wage —that was often the circumstance when I worked at something in which my Dad was involved. But later I have worked in oil fields and in machine shops, and built a barn and several additions to houses, and served a tour in the Air Force.  I found it all to be rewarding.

 I have also done hard mental work, as a student, an engineer, a professor, and a consultant and loved it.  Now that I am retired, I am still working on writing books and restoring antique heavy equipment.  The photo at the left is a classical McCormick horse drawn mower that is completely restored except for the pitman stick, which converts the circular motion of the crank wheel into the linear motion of the cutting teeth, and which I will build from scratch this weekend.  I began this project with an incomplete rusted, twisted wreck, and have done a lot of work straightening it out, making the missing parts, getting it to run, painting it, and so on.  I am not going to sell it, and even if I did I could not rationalize the time I have put into it from the profit.  But I very much enjoy the process and the result.  I am proud of having the skill it takes to do such things and enjoyed learning about McCormick, reapers, and related subjects. A hobby?  Maybe but it causes me to sweat a lot.

 My wife is fortunately also a fan of working.  After her Stanford career, she started a consulting company. She is now doing research and writing books on historic houses at Stanford and on her family.  She is also taking an enormous number of continuing education classes at Stanford, and doing all of the assigned work even though she is not taking them for credit.   I am also working on a couple of books, and if you think writing books is not work, try one.  She also does all of the work in her larger-than-necessary  garden  and I repair everything that breaks in our 100 year old house. We must love working, because we have enough money to hire help to do such things—of course they would not do as good a job as we do.

 So as to Mr. Bittman’s article, digital equipment will continue to take over work that has previously been done by humans, and I say good riddance to work that is not somehow satisfying, but I do not want digital equipment to do things for me that I enjoy, and challenging and stimulating work is one of them.  When all automobiles are autonomous, I will be proud of converting one to manual drive (myself) and being ticketed for driving it. Finally I will be able to be a curmudgeon.

 

Products Bigger than a Bread Box*

Back in the late 1950’s. I was involved in the beginning of the Product Design program in the Stanford School of Engineering.  The chief instigators were Professor Bob McKim (degrees in mechanical engineering and industrial design), Matt Kahn, a professor of design in the Stanford Art department,  and Professor John Arnold (recently hired from M.I.T. to “modernize” the design courses in mechanical engineering.  I was then a Lecturer and my credentials were  degrees in engineering, a year’s study in art school which included several courses in industrial design, a love of design, and experience in industry. As I remember, Bob McKim was the person most influential in naming the program “product” design, instead of “industrial” design.  I thought this a bit strange, since I had been exposed to a lot of conversation with Henry Dreyfuss, an industrial designer (one of the founders of the field with large and influential offices in Pasadena Ca. and New York) who used the same words as Bob.  But “Product Design” it became, and many years were spent teaching the university faculty,industry, and the world what these words meant when applied to products requiring an interdisciplinary approach.

 Now, “product design”  and “design” seem to be favorites in engineering and business, and more and more universities are moving in that direction.  Students are very interested in invention and innovation, and courses and projects having to do with such things are cropping up in many parts of these universities. But they often focus on clever, relatively simple products with potential high profit and large potential market. Many start ups are also often based on such things.  Certainly such products as Tesla cars, DaVinci surgical robots, and Lockheed spy satellites are not simple,  but such things as new apps,  software for the internet, and digitally enhanced existing tools and appliances seem to outnumber them.

 The lead article in the February 15^th New York Times business section is entitled The Invention Mob, and concerns Quirky, a start up that seeks inventions and provides the necessary design, manufacturing, and marketing to get them to market. The article is here.  Quirky keeps 90% of the sales, with the rest divided between the inventor (s) and other contributors.  Typically the inventor(s) get 4 %.  The company seems to be doing well so far, having raised $185 million to date, including $30 million from General Electric, as well as investments from venture capital firms.  As to its future, who can say?

 But much of this seems to be focused toward clever products that can be thought up and designed by one or a few people, and do not require a large amount of complexity or sophisticated technical sophistication.  There is a reason for this, since many would-be entrepreneurs are looking for quick success and ownership, and developments in software and hardware (computer-based design and manufacturing, available software modules, more sophisticated marketing information) have drastically simplified the process of coming up with clever new gadgets with consumer appeal.  Clever new products mentioned in the Quirky article include a device for separating egg yolks, a plastic device that inserts into a lemon or lime and becomes a push-button spritzer, a corkscrew that cuts the foil off of a wine bottle and doubles as a pour spout, and a drinking fountain for dogs. 

 Cute, but perhaps not likely to have large impact on the quality of human life.  Quirky is aware of this, and according to the article, is trying to think more at a system level by focusing on the smart home—an anticipated large market.  But the example of a smart-home product in the article is an attachment to the motor of a garage door motor allowing it to be controlled by a smart phone.  As the article explains, the inventor was growing weary of the hassle of using his garage door opener (poor man).  He did not want to take the clicker with him when doing such things as running and taking his kids to the playground, so since he always had his smart phone with him (while running and playing with his kids?), Why not be able to open the door with his smart phone.  This is a system?

 I am  personally very fond of working on products that do involve complexity and many people.  I loved working on spacecraft design, testing, and manufacturing at Jet Propulsion Laboratory.  Hundreds of people were necessary, no one “owned” the products, and no one became rich from them. Nor could single individuals or small groups be thought to “design”  them. I worked in design at General Motors a bit, and enjoyed the essential, if sometimes grudging, cooperation between the “engineers” and the “designers”.  I was involved in  testing at The Air Force Flight Test Center when in the Air Force, and again liked mingling and arguing with a wide range of specialists. When  I came to Stanford I was involved in teaching systems engineering and have consulted a lot in connection with product design and development necessarily involving large numbers of people, many disciplines, and continual interactions between functions.  I am a subscriber to the viewpoint that to best enjoy Silicon Valley these days, one should have a job in a large organizations (Stanford University in my case), and watch it, rather than experience it through working 24/7 on a start-up developing  a highly specialized product .   I must admit sometimes I do feel like a member of a minority.

 To me, the products that are needed now in the U.S.  have to do with transportation, energy, resource management, affordable and uplifting housing, medical care,  and other such things that most of us realize need improving, but seem to be neglected with respect to building the “information revolution”. As an example, The U.S. lags terribly in trains. The BART system in the San Francisco is a good system, but needs extending, and upgrading so that one does not need to wear  ear plugs.  A north-south high-speed train is an obvious need in California, but is being held up by political wrangling.  I no longer take U.S. highway 5 between San Francisco and Los Angeles, because it is two lanes each direction, and often both lanes are occupied by trucks heroically attempting to pass each other, even though they are both going as fast as they can.  And flying?  If you are lucky, four hours for  one hour in the air. 

 Were I graduating from college these days, knowing what I now know, I would not try to start a company based on an app or a widget.  Nor would I try to become incredibly wealthy (if I did, I might consider lottery tickets).   Nor in fact, would I move to Silicon Valley.  I would go to work for a reasonably large company in a nice and more affordable area that produces complicated and much needed products that will increase the quality of life for the human race. And the products would be bigger than a bread box.

 *For those of you who have never encountered a bread box, they were once a standard fixture in kitchens in which two or three loaves of bread would be kept to minimize the moisture loss (maybe 20 inches square and eight inches high. Bigger (or smaller) than a bread box used to be a commonly used rough magnitude measure.   I like the expression and continue to use it around students, even though I pay the cost of explaining what a bread box is.

 

 

 

 

  

Minimalism,Organization, and Stuff

I seem to have become the home maintenance person for not only my own home, but for several of my friends and neighbors.  I also have several hobbies that require large amounts of materials and numbers of tools (new restoration project in photo at left).  To make matters worse, I grew up in a small-farm area at a time when the “great depression” had removed the little cash that was around, and was firmly taught that one never ever even considered throwing anything away that might have some use in the future, even if that use required modification.  So I have a lot of stuff.

 I often get subtle and well meaning advise from people who love me that I should have less stuff, and that I would  profit from better “organizing” it.  I thank them, but I am happy with my stuff, and “organization” varies from person to person.  I have probably mentioned my favorite theory which states that there are at least three approaches to organizing—by subject (what is it?), date (when did it happen?), or spatial (where is it?).  I am a spatial type, but “what is it” (filing cabinets, labeled boxes) people seem to dominate, especially if their stuff is not visible to the eye.  There are even consultants who help their clients dispose of stuff, and I am happy for them if they are successful, but they are not welcome in my life.

 This photograph shows the radial arm saw in my shop.  Notice that the table for the saw is clean.  That is necessary.  But the space behind the wall and the wall itself are simply full of things such as tools, tape, etc.  People who approach situations such as this by such things as painting outlines on the wall with hooks placed so that the tool, or whatever, can be placed on the outline think I  could improve the organiztion of my shop.  I thank that is admirable.   But this is my shop, and I don’t want to  take the time to place the tool exactly where its outline is.  I just want to get it off the table, and  hanging it on a nail is easy,  and I can find it rapidly because I can see it.

 This approach of being able to see stuff does perhaps require more space than if it is put into labeled boxes (drawers, etc) that are stacked.  But a tiny bit of thinking can help with this problem.  Take plumbing fixtures and associated pipes,
hoses, etc.  Since my house, and its sizeable yard, are equipped with 100 year old plumbing and wiring that tend to like frequent repairing, and since I mess around with old steam engines, orchard sprayers, and such, I have lots of pipe fittings and related objects around.  So I have taken to storing them by temporarily putting them together into hopefully interesting combinations and finding various places to keep them.  When I want something, I can instantly see what I want, remove it, and put it to use.  A few photos at right and below show some of these, which tend to be in corners either in my home office, my Stanford office, my basement, or my yard.

The final one, with the hoses attached, is my favorite.  It is in my yard, and almost always stops people who are walking around the yard, so that they can try to figure out its function and how it works.  It’s function, of course, is to act as a place for me to store pipe and hose fittings.  That’s all it does.

I  have found that I can smuggle great amounts of stuff into my house yard, and shop in a way that causes many people (including me) to think that it is “interesting”, instead of thinking I should either get rid of it or put it in a box. If you need/like large quantities of objects,and people you  love are bothered by that , keep them off balance by making the objects more “interesting”.  One person who loves me is Marian, my wife.  She also loves to make mobiles.  I am subtly encouraging her to make mobiles from some of my stuff.  Then it will hang around, be considered art, and I can cannibalize her mobiles if I need it  (although I may have blown my campaign if she reads this post). 

 

 

 

Good Product - The Cheap, Frozen, Thanksgiving Turkey

We are fortunate in having our children and grandchildren within easy driving distance.  Every couple of years, we host them all for Thanksgiving dinner.  But that gives us a minimum of eighteen people, ranging in age from three to eighty, plus usually a couple of parents or other relatives of some of them.  This year the total was twenty-one.

 Thanksgiving dinner is important to me, perhaps partly because it was a big deal in my own family when I was growing up, partly because it is an excuse to expend the necessary effort to get everyone together, and partly because it is an excuse to eat and drink far too much.

 Fortunately all adult members of our family can and do cook, a couple of them compete at making pies,  and all of them bring side dishes, wine, and such things.  My wife Marian is responsible for logistics (seating, settings, tableware, etc.) and is the vegetable person and I am the turkey and potato man.  I guess I acquired these responsibilities because I really like traditional Thanksgiving dinners, and when I was a graduate student, living with four others and taking turns doing the cooking, I snuck Thanksgiving dinner into the menu often, and have been cooking turkeys ever since, so I have a lot of experience with them.  Potatoes, of course, are a snap.  But nowadays so are turkeys, if you ignore all of the recipes in the magazines that precede thanksgiving and realize your job is to get the food on the table, hot and tasting good, and don’t follow the rules for gourmet cooking and healthy diet.  After all, Thanksgiving comes but once a year

 When I was young, people would raise a turkey or two for eating purposes.  They would now qualify as free-range and organic, but they tended to be tough, with little if any white meat, and with unpredictable cooking time requirements (they were also, incidentally, incredibly stupid, noisy, and generally unattractive).  Dinner was ready when the bird was ready.  Over the years, turkeys have been selectively bred to have more meat, be more tender, and have predictable cooking requirements and taste.  The ones sold frozen in grocery stores probably live short and terrible lives before they are killed, eat non-organic food, are filled with evil drugs, and so-on.  But they are standardized birds, even to their weight and price.  And before thanksgiving the prices are unbelievably low.

 I like the cheap ones not only because they are cheap, but because they have less flavoring stuff and unknown liquids injected into them.  And why do I like frozen ones?  Simply because I have had three experiences when the “ fresh “ ones I bought were spoiled, and I spent Thanksgiving morning trying to find a good one.

 Cooking Thanksgiving turkeys for our family now requires buying a couple of 25 pound birds (the family eats one, but my wife and I like leftovers),  letting them sit for two or three days on the washing machine in our unheated porch to thaw, stuffing them (an unprecedented opportunity to get rid of things such as stale bread, over-the hill apples, non-fresh nuts and so on), putting them in the pan, smearing some oil on them, finding a neighbor that will be out of town (we only, have one oven), putting the birds in the ovens, and waiting for slightly less than the recommended time (recipes involving meat always call for too much cooking these days because providers are afraid of being sued for e-coli or something).  It is necessary at some point to remove the giblets and put the yams in the oven.  And if you want you can do more chef-like things like basting them and cooking them until the legs feel loose.  But otherwise one is free to mingle with the guests, play with the kids, drink wine,  relax, and be assured that the turkeys will be done when you want them to be and taste swell.

There are good aspects to industrial farming.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Projects, Working with the Hands, and Happiness

I have occasionally extolled the many virtues of working with the hands, so what am I up to now?  I am still working on restoring my vintage (1920’s) John Bean orchard sprayer. It has been a challenging project, because it required rebuilding a rotten wooden tank and providing it with a missing cover and other pieces of hardware, re-building the engine, a great deal of straightening bent pieces of metal and fabricating missing ones,  and de-rusting parts and painting.  Fortunately, I had previously re-built the pump, not knowing that a friend would someday give me the wagon, the tank, and various other rusty, but essential pieces..  I also had the engine on hand, but it is still not ready to run.  At one point a valve had stuck so thoroughly that the rocker arm that actuated it had broken.  And the wondrously novel carburetor still needs re-building.  But other than that it is in good shape, as can be seen from the third photo below.

 I love doing stuff like this, and this project is coming along well.  There is a good bit of plumbing and building of new parts remaining, and I have a ridiculous number of other projects under way, but the sprayer will be ready to go by spring.  And if it is not, I don’t have an orchard anyway.

 The photos below show the tank and the front of the machine as of now, (the truck in the background is a reasonably preserved 1955 Peterbilt, and is next in line), Marian,  my ever supportive wife (as long as I don’t neglect things she wants me to do) standing in the back of the rig, and the engine and pump.  The fourth photo is the engine before I began working on it, as evidence that it needed a bit of work.

Not only is the restoration satisfying, but it reminds me of the past, since a few of these machines were still in use when I was a little kid.  On taking the partly-rotten tank apart, I found that the inside surfaces were covered with a strange white material that had worked its way into the wood.  My first reaction was to go over them with a belt sander.  But fortunately I realized that pesticides in those days (before regulations) contained such things as arsenic, strychnine, and what were then called mercury salts, — a  timely realization, because undoubtedly I would have sanded them sans mask.  But maybe I have an immunity, because when we kids got too close to the rig, the men doing the spraying (this was before the feminist movement) would spray us.

The Oxy-Acetylene Tank Set

Welding with oxygen and acetylene gas (the fuel) has been around for many years—at least since 1903, when two French engineers, Edmond Fouche and Charles Picard, put their name on it. By using pure oxygen rather than air the flame burns at a high temperature (about 3,500 F) and easily melts common metals such as steel and aluminum. Welding is typically done by causing the two pieces of metal to melt and feeding the resulting “puddle” with a “filler rod”. 

 Before oxy-acetylene welding, metal was welded by heating in a forge and then pounding the two pieces together. But oxy-acetylene provided a much more convenient and controllable way to weld metal.  Of course, any temperature hot enough to melt steel can be used to braze and solder, and by increasing the oxygen pressure (it is usually about twice the acetylene pressure) steel can be easily cut.

 I like to weld, and was taught to weld both with oxy-acetylene, and with an arc, or stick welder.  In this form of welding, a consumable electrode of metal is used to strike an arc with the metal to be welded.  The material from the melting electrode combines with the molten area on the material to form the weld.  Stick welding is used in situations where larger amounts of material are to be involved and electricity of the proper voltage is available.

 Now there are more sophisticated approaches to welding.   Tungsten intert gas, or TIG, uses a non-consumable tungsten electrode to draw an arc and melt the metal and a filler rod, and an inert gas atmosphere is used locally to prevent oxidation of the metal.  TIG units have a foot pedal to vary the voltage of the current, making for much closer control.  And there is MIG (metal inert gas) in which the consumable electrode in wire form is automatically fed into the weld at a chosen speed and voltage.  This can be done in an inert gas or with a flux included in the wire.

 And there are many more. I must admit I usually use TIG and MIG equipment rather than oxy-acetlyene, but my trusty oxy-acetylene tank set, consisting of the two tanks of gas with pressure regulators, a double hose to conduct them to the torch, and miscellaneous tips, lighters, goggles, etc. (see photo)  still gets a great deal of use.  For one thing, I love it, because it is the first kind of welding I ever did, and is extremely flexible.  But also it can be used for endless purposes other than welding, brazing, and soldering— from heating rusty nuts and bolts so that they will unscrew, to re-warming coffee, to removing stubborn paint, to partially burning new wood to make it match older wood, to melting a large number of materials other than metal, to showing off for my grandchildren and repairing things for my wife. 

I also like it because to me, fire is endlessly fascinating.  Why should combining two gases, one of which we need for life (oxygen), and one which comes from dropping calcium oxide into water (acetylene) and lighting the mixture cause such a hot flame? And unlike electric welding (and  heating), such things as extension cords and generators are not required.  It is just you and the fire performing miracles. The oxy-acetyline welding set is an old, but still high quality product.

Musings on Historians, Collectors, Acquirers, and Tinkerers

 I have always liked old things, especially mechanical ones, especially if I find them in an unappreciated, neglected state, covered with rust and missing a few pieces, and if I have had personal experience with them in my life. Repairing them, de-rusting them, perhaps painting them,and getting them running again is one of my major hobbies.   The photo shows a 1920’s orchard sprayer I am restoring to health.  A friend of mine gave me the wagon and tank and a number of components that were in bad shape (see the  photo below, which shows a surge tank with rust).  I happened to have the proper pump which I had restored, shown on the left photo along with the restored surge tank.  I also had the proper engine, although as can be seen from the photo below,it has not yet been restored.  I have de-rusted and painted the main chassis and rebuilt the main wooden tank, which contained boards which were warped and rotten, and am working on the sprayer’s many other components.

As a result of this hobby, I am usually surrounded by such things and the tools necessary to do the work, and my house and yard, are replete with the results, many of which have overflowed to a friends farm. I laugh when I see the many articles about simplifying life by getting rid of stuff, usually featuring a person who acts as a paid consultant to help people do so.   I love my stuff, and usually assume that these consultants are simply obsessive-compulsive people who have figured out a way to make money by spreading their neat-freak approach to life.

 But am I an historian?  Definitely not.  I read what I can about these devices, their application, and the people who make and use them, but as one of my historian friends gently told me, “historians work from original sources—you are an antiquarian”.  My answer, was “why should I spend time looking for original sources, because historians turn them into books, that organize the material and present it in a more easily readable form?”.  I prefer reading books under a tree with a beer in my hand than searching through archives and stacks of papers to find what I want.  My wife, incidentally, was born and trained as an historian and loves to do such things.  She agrees I am not one.

 Collectors are often historians.  I consider myself an acquirer, rather than a collector.  I have veered in that direction a few times, but seem to always become sidetracked by a new interest.  Leo Keoshian, a retired hand surgeon and my friend who gave me the parts for the orchard sprayer does qualify as a collector, because for many years he has collected and restored vintage vehicles (Ferraris, Bugattis, etc.) and agricultural equipment. He leans in the direction of historian.  He learns everything he can not only about the products, but the people involved, the environment in which they were used, and so on. Once I accompanied him on a cross country trip  which he was making to pick up a small rare tractor on the East coast,  and he insisted we go  out of our way to pass through Cleveland Ohio, because the archives of the Cleveland Tractor Company, which at one time had made the one we were trailering, was there.  He happily spent the day in the archives, while I happily checked out the town. But Leo lacks one attribute of most of the historians I know —he doesn’t write books.

 Another person in the area, who is also a collector (see photo in his shop below) and also a historian of old machinery  is Jack Alexander, who lives close to me in Gilroy, Californa.  He is an  engineer who retired from Lockheed, and does write  heavily researched books about old machinery and the people who produced and used it. He has mastered the full range of historian, collector, acquirer, and thinker.

 I simply acquire things I am drawn to and want to work on, although in the process of working on them I learn a great deal about their background and the people and companies who were involved. 

The photo below was taken in  my back yard and shows a bit of agricultural eqipment.  Even though I know a lot about these beautiful things that I saved from death, ( perhaps more beautiful to me than to my gardener wife who might prefer plants),  I guess one of my main joys has always been not only being involved with designing and building machines but also tinkering with sick ones—diagnosing their  problem, making them the necessary  parts, restoring them to health, and painting them to reflect their past glory.  Perhaps necessary therapy to offset the years I have spent as a professor, during which the expectation was that I would use my head rather than my hands. To me, the key to happiness is to use both.

 

 

Doing vs. Watching

The Sunday edition of the New York Times usually has rather ho-hum articles on the front page, because they are probably prepared ahead of time so that the staff gets some break in their lives.  Predictably yesterday’s edition had an article about Congress, one about ISIS, one about gambling, and one about medicine.  But the main article definitely got me thinking.  The title was “Virtual Games Draw Real Crowds and Big Money”, by Nick Winfield.  I must admit I was oblivious to this major movement.  Turns out huge crowds are turning out to watch champion gamers compete on big screens—11,000 people filling Seattle’s basketball arena, 40,000 expected at a championship to be held in Korea.  And there is the TV audience—apparently more than 70 million people in the world watch “e-sports”, as gaming competitions are called.  A championship tournament last year attracted 8.5 million simultaneous viewers. As the article pointed out, this was the same number of viewers that watched the deciding game of the Stanley cup finals in hockey.  Prizes are large and celebrity awaits the champions.  Businesses are climbing on these events for advertising and sniffing profits.  If you haven’t been following this development, the article is here.

 I am familiar with the draw of computer games, since I have a step son who has spent years at Electronic Arts and grand kids who indeed love them. But strangely enough, I don’t seem to be attracted to them.  I like reality rather than virtuality.  I guess I am an extreme do-it-yourselfer.  I would rather do things poorly than watch others do them extremely well.  I  liked to play sports, even though I was never that good, more than watching the “pros”. I would rather make and repair things adequately rather than hire people who would do such things more rapidly, and perhaps better. And as a further complication, I prefer the outdoors to the indoors—odd for a professor.

 The N.Y.Times article discusses a champion gamer named Peter Dager and his environment as follows: “When not competing in front of thousands of people, Mr. Drager works from his childhood bedroom in Fort Wayne, Indiana.  At the small desk in the corner sit the tools of his trade, a computer with two displays, a webcam, a keyboard, and a mouse”  That is definitely not me.  My hobby of rescuing unloved heavy machinery requires much of my yard at home, a bit of a friend’s farm (barn and open space), piles of swell tools and materials,  loud cursing, forklifts, and such things as sunburn lotion, mosquito repellant, and occasional bandages.  I am starting to realize that my friends and I who do similar things are perhaps a vanishing species, but I like us. 

 I have always wanted a full life of various experiences, good friends, and accomplishments I could look back on with pride.  Oddly enough, although competitive, I have never wanted to be the best in the world at anything.  I look back happily at the way I have spent my time.  Dilletante?  Perhaps.  But the Times article has a short quote from Mr. Drager on how he reached the pinnacle of gaming: “What most people lack, he said, is a singular focus on games, a willingness to clear away all other distractions”.  Later—“I, and many players like me, sacrificed everything. We gave up on sports and friends and school just so that we can play more”.  Mr. Drager is apparently headed toward an income of $200,000 a year, but like most parents, his father wishes he would finish college.

 But selfishly, I have never wanted to sacrifice everything—especially sports, friends, and school— in order to play games.  And I sometimes worry about we homo sapiens spending more and more of our time “watching” instead of “doing”, I believe that as media becomes more powerful, and people in various parts of the world grow more affluent, there will be more and more powerful opportunities to experience life vicariously—television, travel tours, the internet, following the lives of celebrities. But is this consistent with the way we evolved?  We continue to do damage to ourselves (wars, violence) and nature still speaks out (earthquakes, tornados). Are we going to lose our ability to recover from such things?  Are we going to follow Rome and add lions and tridents to professional football?  If we are going to have gladiators, it is probably better to have them computer generated and presented over big screens.  But are we going to up the ante on  professional performers as a result?

 Enough of this.  The day is dawning and I will get busy on my mundane tasks.  In order to prevent nagging, when my wife wants me to do something, she puts my assignment on a post-it note and sticks it on the mirror I use while shaving.  When I can no longer see my reflection, the rules require I complete the task.  Today they read “put Formica on kitchen shelves over stove, fix fire-escape ladder, paint front and back porches, repair drain pipes in front, find a better home for TV and computer wires, fix screen door so it doesn’t bang, water orchids”  Straight forward common acts, but promising  a feeling of accomplishment when achieved.  Perhaps not as seductive as League of Legends, but the weather is nice, and I am capable of doing a high quality job on such things, and I should shave.  And since my wife is walking around the lake country in England with  a few of her friends, I can sneak away, work on my vintage orchard sprayer restoration, and cover myself with sweat, grease, and perhaps glory in the eyes of some beholders.

 

 

 

Tools That Change Too Fast

A couple of days ago, I spent a couple of hours in the morning helping my wife get her computer to do her bidding, and a couple in the afternoon building a new top for the wooden tank on the antique orchard sprayer I am restoring.  The computer problem was somewhat typical.  In the past, she was able to scan text to her computer from her printer, save it as a word document, and then edit it — the miracle of OCR.  Then the system quit working.  The scanner denied that it was connected to the computer (after insultingly telling us that we should check to make sure the USB connector was plugged in —we know that much—and to load an up-to-date driver for the printer).  But if it was working in the past, why not now?  Obviously  because someone was screwing with the software to “improve” it.  Before I did that, I tried a few other things.  Her system scanned  jpeg documents okay and transferred them to the computer.  Why not text in an editable form?

 I could not make sense out of it, so I downloaded the latest driver for the printer, but that still did not solve the problem.  So I phoned an IT friend, and he couldn’t make sense out of the problem on the phone, so he dropped by for a personal inspection.  After what I considered a number of wizardly moves, he found some code in the machine that allowed my wife to scan the text and transfer it to the computer in the form of rich text, which could then be converted to Word and edited.  Two hours of frustration, and my wife was back where she had been in the past. But that did not include hours of frustration for her before she asked me for help.

Switch to making a top for my wooden tank.  The photo shows the result.  About the same amount of time was required to build it as I blew away on the computer problem, with pleasure from the process and pride when I was done.  The difference?  I used a table saw, a radial arm saw, and an electric drill to drill holes and sink screws.  My grandfather taught me to use a table saw when I was eight or nine years old, and they have changed little since then.  I encountered my first radial arm saw in a junior high school wood shop course, and had used an electric drill for many years before then.  True, use of electricity to sink screws was rare then, but the principle can be easily extrapolated from using a screwdriver.  My point is, that the tools did not constantly need upgrading.  It was possible to learn to use them, and then set about accomplishing things with them—not spending time becoming comfortable with the latest release.  And certainly not having the tools lose ability they once had.  Such things as computers and printers are tools.

I quit using Firefox a couple of years ago when it seemed that a new version was coming out every couple of weeks.  The Firefox people seem to have calmed down now, so I am back using it because it is a good browser (assuming they quit telling me that cat videos are a new form of communication —not among my friends!).  I am feeling the same about many aspects of computers.  I  have a computer-sophisticated friend who is still using Windows XP.  He knows the system cold, and it does everything he wants it to.  I am still using Apple OSX version 10.6.8  for the same reason, as I am holding onto applications I have used for years, and will until I am forced to move, at which time I will resent the time and effort I will need to acquire equal facility with the new and “improved”.  Tools that do the work should hold still and let us develop and use our expertise with them.  Think of the hammer!

The Hand, Happiness, and Quality

I am late again on this post, because I was again off of the internet, in this case in Oregon mixing with people who have hobbies that engage the hand as well as the mind.  My non-rigorous study once again concluded that people that have hobbies that require manual skills as well as thinking are happier than those who do not, especially as they age, and understand quality in all of its dimensions.

 In particular, Bill Boller (mentioned in a previous post) and I attended the Oregon Steam Up last weekend (link here), a festival of old machinery, as well as visited a couple of individuals who love to acquire, restore, and preserve old machinery.   I will devote this post to a few photos, to give you a feeling to what some of them do.  I had been to this event before, but this time was so inspired that I am finally going to focus on my Making Fixing, and Tinkering book.  In fact, I will focus more on the interaction between hands, brains, and products in this blog for a while.

 You have seen examples of model steam trains in the post referred to above, but the photo at the  left shows a few beautiful models from the show .  The  photo on the right shows a project that is nearly completed by one of Bill's friends, George Lavacor, an ex Oregon highway patrolman, who lives in the area.  It is a full sized locomotive, being restored essentially by George himself with the help of his friends.  Granted that it has so far taken him 30 years, but he has other activities, such as a family and fire trucks.  And it is a large (in many ways) project. The next photo shows a group of happy people eating lunch by their steam engine.  The last  photos show a few of the objects acquired and restored by Alan Schurman, who lives in Ridgefield, Washington, and is the proprietor of a large machine shop that makes saw mills, and of Tired Iron Ranch (referring to his home).  A link to it is here.

If you don't have a hobby requiring using your hands, you are missing a bet— for instance  throwing pots, wood or metal working, spiffing up  old tools you like, restoring a cast off version of your first car, repairing a ragged tapestry, or otherwise making something old beautiful, do it now.  If you get hooked on the process, you may become less grumpy as you age, as well as less frustrated right now. 

 

 

 

The Internet and Me

I missed my weekly post last week, because I was at my Sacramento valley hideaway, which is not on the net, and I failed to write one in advance.  I could have found wifi somewhere and sent one out, but I needed a computer break, and reaching the Stanford server (due to constant attempts to hack into it) now requires not only a user name and a password consisting of a series of random numbers generated by the server, but also a second password so lengthy and constrained, that people tend to tape it to their computer in order to remember it, which of course partly nullifies the whole attempt at security.

I spent my the time in the valley working outdoors at revitalizing a 1966 Chevrolet pick up and a 1975 Alfa Romero—ex kid-cars, perhaps destined to become grand-kid cars, assuming we aren’t all stuffed into robotic containers (my feelings are nicely expressed by a column by Della Ephron in today’s New York Times entitled "Less Sexy, Better for Sex", which is here.) I also thought about my interaction with the internet, which seems to be taking more and more of my time (although not nearly as much as that of many people I know).

As I hammered, filled, sanded, and sprayed, I could not help but realize how much I was enjoying the work (even though the temperature was sometimes well over 100 degrees).  And also how much I did not miss my computer.  The picture shows me celebrating one morning at Las Maracas, my favorite restaurant in Knights Landing, Ca.  It was taken by Juan Barajas, one of the family that operates the restaurant. The meal on my plate was the first ever serving of “Mom’s Breakfast”, which I am encouraging them to put on the menu— a magnificent combination of biscuits, gravy, fried potatoes, eggs, bacon, and coffee—retro, probably unhealthy, but an excellent way to begin the day.

 I did miss access to some of the information on the internet while sweating in the sun, but not social networking as now constituted.  At my age, I am not looking to build a network of people I do not now know, nor sell myself or my wares.  I still hang around Stanford, which gives me more than enough interaction with people who have the same interests as I do, and am fortunate in having more real (not cyber) friends than I can satisfyingly interact with.   I enjoy writing posts to my blog, since it makes me think, and send notice of them to friends and connections at Facebook and Twitter, but I have made no efforts to widen my contacts, and find I would rather use my time for other purposes.

Clearly the internet will change over time, and it will be interesting to watch the process.  As an example, There is an interesting article by Gordon Goldstein in the July/August issue of The Atlantic entitled “The End Of The Internet?”, which is here. He points out that the internet in its present global form, which is largely an activity underwritten by large businesses, is becoming increasingly bothersome to governments and citizens in other countries, as well as in the U.S.  As you know, people world-wide are increasingly disturbed by such things as surveillance, hacking into “secure” data, general violation of privacy, ever increasing marketing, and material that is not consistent with their values.

In the article Goldstein discusses these pressures and possible new directions for the internet (or internets) which involve more regional and secure networks for various regions and nations.  Something to think about, since many people are.  Obviously such changes would result in more government regulation, less freedom, but perhaps also higher quality of information. 

The internet already is serving separate cultures.  Stanford  students tend to text rather than write e-mail messages, and my older friends still seem to be stuck in e-mail, although they universally complain about the amount of “junk” they receive.  Disagreeing interest groups (for instance liberals and conservatives or environmentalists and global warming non-believers) seem to like to communicate within the group, but not with each other.  People with younger children have different interests in the trips, pets, and parties of those who don’t (and vice versa).  And of course, there is the age phenomenon.  Few of my friends in my age groups are active social networkers.  They seem to want to use their time in other ways.

I am optimistic on the future of the increasingly digital world, although there are obviously lumps in the (driverless?) road ahead.  Predictions of job loss among white collar workers due to digital automation are large, and lawyers, accountants, managers,  and other highly educated and salaried folk are not going to be as quiet as factory workers when they lose their jobs to increasingly powerful and easier to use software. And I do think the fantasy of a peaceful, totally interconnected world population over a free universal system is somewhat like the 1960’s fantasy of a world of “make love, not war”.  I also think that the internet desperately needs more quality control.

We are definitely not living in boring times.

 

The Hand and Product Quality, Part II

As I mentioned in my last post, last week I was to give a talk on the wonders of hands and the rewards of using them at the Museum of American Heritage in Palo Alto.  I did so, and the results were surprising. Full house, rapt attention, and when the audio visual equipment failed (as usual), I was going to go ahead without slides, but the crowd insisted we fix the problem and continue as planned. 

I talked not only about the hands and how wonderfully capable they were in conjunction with the arm and the brain, but also  about my own hobbies (wood work, metal work, rescuing vintage machinery) and  those of a few people I know who are deeply involved in hands-on hobbies (building live-steam model railroad equipment,  gardening, modifying and erecting buildings,cooking, restoring automobiles, tanks, and antiques of all sorts, knitting,  blacksmithing, building airplane propellers , visual arts, and so on),  Afterwards I took questions and some people didn’t seem to want to leave.  I had obviously struck a chord.

 This is actually not that surprising, since most of the people in the crowd were older (probably 50 and above on the average), and living in Palo Alto and surrounding area, probably had not spent their life in manual work.  There is an increasing wave of interest in hands-on hobbies in the U.S. —maybe a reaction against the intangible nature of the "information revolution".  But it seems to be strongest in younger people (the Makers) , and focused in areas where facilities are available (TechShop ) and organized groups with similar interests have formed.  In any case, many people after the talk told me that they have been trying to find the time to do such a thing, but can’t seem to get started.  My advice to them is simple.  Make it your number #1 priority, assume your initial efforts will not be overwhelming, seek out experts for help and advice, but don’t compare your work with theirs.  I used my mother, Jean Adams, as a good example.  When we kids left  home she decided to learn to water color.  She had a background in making clothes, furniture, and other such necessities, but her painting experience was mostly confined to painting the house.

 She took some lessons from a well-known water-colorist in Southern California named Robert Wood, and the two of them got along famously.  At one point he convinced her to enter a painting in a show, which she did, and to her surprise won a prize.  This was not in a region that had a sophisticated art movement going —no galleries, art magazines, professionals, critics, etc., and people liked Mom’s work.  The rest is history.  She ended up with a good local- and-beyond reputation, and eventually won a Califronia state award for her work.  A few of her paintings are scattered around this post.  Had she begun in Boston or New York, rather than in Rialto, California, she probably would have compared herself to world famous painters and given up.

  I think I will spend a bit of time crusading to encourage people to dive into more activities that require the use of both their minds and their hands.  I think they know what they want to do.  They just need to jump into the water.

 

 

 

The Hand and Product Quality

 I am going to give a talk to the Museum of American Heritage in Palo Alto this coming week extolling the virtues of working with the hands, an activity which has been an important part of my life, even though I have earned my income as an engineer and a professor.  But manual work has brought me the pleasure and quick positive feedback that has enabled me to sail happily through the ups and downs of my mental work. And thinking about my upcoming talk is causing me to become even more impressed with hands.

 The other night my wife and I attended a Beethoven recital by Richard Goode, one of the top pianists of the world. I played the piano quite a bit in my youth, beginning with lessons in a small town and by the time I was in high school playing in the region.  I played quite a bit until I was in my 30’s, but more and more for social groups, and finally at one point quit, because I realized I had good hands, but was neither a musician nor willing to devote the time and effort required to become really good.  Goode is really good.  He is a wonderful musician, and has the kind of hands one can develop by constant practice over many years (he is 70).  Since I have not kept up my piano chops, I was amazed at his manual dexterity, and could not help but wonder what would have happened had I had better teaching and kept at it.

 Today I was leafing through one of my favorite books, The Hand, by Frank R. Wilson,(see recommended book list), a neurologist and long time medical director of the Peter F. Ostwald Health Program for Performing Artists at the University of California School of Medicine in San Francisco.  It is a well documented book full of thought provoking information and data about the human hand.  But as a life-long specialist in hands, Wilson does not simply mention that we are lucky to have opposable thumbs.  He goes into  detail about the evolution of the thumb, the arm, the shoulder, and the brain as a unit and a very important one.  As he points out, the opposable thumbs are only one part of the system, and would not be that significant if it were not for the grasping, positioning, and subtle feelings and motions we are able to do.  And he dwells on the sophistication and complexity of the hand (the thumb alone is controlled by 9 muscles entering from the forearm and the rest of the hand) and we seem to control it in its many tasks without even thinking about it.  Spend a bit of time watching yours and other people’s hands (and arms), and you should be impressed.  In one of the chapters in Wilson’s book, he compares the tasks the professional piano player’s hand must do with those of a professional rock climber.  Diversity of function indeed.

 I worry that use of the hand and related parts of the body is losing its centrality in the lives of many people.  Wilson makes the point that the brain and the hand developed together—a duo.   It seems to me that many people who seem to be neglecting one of the duo and making their living with their minds, are perhaps losing something by not building the manual skills that would bring them pride and pleasure.   I also worry  that hands are being neglected in education.  I started out in life by growing up on a farm and being taught a large number of manual skills, planning to be either a carpenter or a tool and die maker until I decided to become an engineer (I still worked in shops in the summer while in college). 

 Hopefully I don’t have to argue that hands-on experience in the basic processes necessary to design and build products gives one a better base to judge what is possible, what is not possible, what is good, and what is bad.  Painting custom antique and custom cars by hand gives one  valuable insights to programming a robot to do so, and working on the factory floor equips one to better supervise others that are doing so.  When I graduated from college, I was offered a job at Warner Swasey, then the premier machine-tool builder in the U .S.  I was quite flattered, because they had never offered a job to a Caltech graduate, and the fact that I had graduated #1 in engineering was not the reason.  They wanted me because I had worked summers in a shop.  And even then, I would have begun my career with two more  years working in their shop.  They wanted to make the best machines they could, and were not interested in engineers that had not served their time as machinists.  The U. S. is not doing such things as much any more, and perhaps as a result, the quality of our products has slipped relative to countries who offer more hands-on experience to their new employees.  In many (most?) cases. beginning at the bottom of an organizational chart results in unique proficiency at the top.  Why people working with their hands are often at the bottom of an organizational chart (except for the fortunate few like surgeons and piano players) is a topic for another post.    

 I have spent many hours in my life doing such things as restoring old machines, maintaining cars and houses,  and making and fixing electro mechanical devices and other things.  I think that without this experience, I would be much less competent at either engineering or teaching.  In fact, I have long had the pleasure of being involved in a growing activity at Stanford called the Product Realization Laboratory, led by Professor David Beach, in which students  design, develop, and manufacture products.  I am happy to say that now people are catching onto the value of such a program.  Once engineering schools gave their students hands-on problems.  Then they went through a long period of becoming increasingly theoretical.  Now hands-on work is coming back.  Good for individuals and for the economy—and for product quality.

 

 

 

Outstanding Products – The Joy of Beautifully Built Scale Model Trains

My favorite uncle, Ed Cooley, spent his career first as a machinist and finally as the shop foreman of Hunter Douglas Co. I worked summers in the shop when I went to school, and was in awe of his knowledge (even though he never finished high school) and ability. After retirement he built custom machines, and even though I was by then an engineer and pretty good at making things, I couldn’t compete with him.

 He had always loved trains, and one of the things he built was an extraordinarily accurate steam-driven model (7-1/2 inch gauge —distance between tracks) of a Pacific locomotive with tender. It took him two years part-time to build it and was accurate down to the handles on the valves in the cab.  It would have taken me five years and would not have been nearly as accurate.

 There is a large track layout in Riverside California named after Joe Hunter, who was my uncle’s boss and also a railroad fan, and each Sunday Ed would take his train to the track and haul carloads of kids (both young and old) around the track layout.  They loved it, and so did Ed.  Ed was certainly not alone. There are many people who have built such things, many track layouts, and even more people who like to ride them (usually free).  I concluded at the time that these trains were outstanding products.  The people who ride them have a wonderful time, and the builder not only has a great time building  and running them,  but also receives tremendous positive feedback from the people who ride them and who watch the show.

 I have been tempted to build one, but have never been willing to devote the necessary time to doing so to the standards I would like.  But I have had a few friends who have done so and I had the pleasure of watching a couple of them in action yesterday on an extensive track layout built by Jacques Littlefield, who was one of my students and who achieved fame by amassing a huge and beautifully restored collection of military vehicles, but unfortunately died a few years ago.  These two people,  who were good friends of Jacques, have built exquisite models and were running them along with trains belonging to a number of people in the San Francisco area who have made or otherwise acquired them. 

 The photo above shows Bill Boller with his locomotive and cars (cover story in Live Steam Magazine) at speed with passengers. The one below shows Peter Mosely with his locomotive.  It was a magnificent day, the Littlefield ranch is spectacular, and I had a wonderful time wandering around, watching the trains, admiring the craftsmanship, talking to people, and saying goodbye to the tank collection, which is going to cross the country and join the Collings collection of historic airplanes.  The result will be amazing, but I hate to see the tanks go, because the collection has been part of my life for a long time.  Fortunately the trains will remain.

 And I had my mind expanded by a person named Ron Siechen, who had a minimalist electro-mechanical driven engine pulling a couple of simple cars.  He unloaded it, put it on the track and immediately began pulling kids around without needing an hour to get the steam pressure up and the skill necessary to operate the steamers.  At first I was not so impressed by it, but it was so simple to operate and he was willing to let other people drive it (he is instructing Dick Denicola, the father-in-law of one of my sons, in the photo to the right), and at the end of the day, loaded it and drove away an hour before the steamers were able to do so.  I realized the joy of simplicity, low cost, and the even greater pleasure kids (once again both young and old) got from being allowed to drive it for a short distance in addition to being able to ride it.

 But if I were to play the game, I would probably go for steam and for scale accuracy.  The results are spectacular, especially if your life span has overlapped the age of steam locomotives.

 

 

 

 

 

Non-Digital Writing Tools

 I have just returned from spending a week at my Sacramento Valley hide-away working on my old machinery, and on a couple of books.  The weather was beautiful (spring time in California), and I am now feeling terrific—partly because I got a lot done, partly because I love to work on old machinery, and partly because I was outside.

  I came to realize some time ago, that screens (as in movie, computer, projection, pad, phone, etc) do not like the outdoors.  The picture is degraded by sunlight and the device forming the picture would rather be dropped onto a carpet rather than onto rocks or into water.   Unfortunately, I like being outdoors, and I do not like trailing long extension cords to power such devices, whether directly or through batteries.  Computers are indoor things, especially if one needs a screen large enough to be able to work on two full-sized pages simultaneously. Therefore I often tend to resort to more vintage equipment, i.e. pencils or pens and paper, because they work very well outside.

 But I use such tools inside as well.  My wife and I have learned to re-cycle our unwanted mail (almost all of it) by keeping  unopened letters in piles in various locations around the house to use for making notes, lists, or whatever. Eventually we re-cycle them like good campus residents. This proves faster and more convenient than constantly trying to remember where our pads or phones are, turning on our lap-tops, or running upstairs to our desk tops.  And pencils and pens are required for certain family traditions.  I lie in bed on Sunday mornings and struggle with the New York Times crossword puzzle.  It is in the rather limp magazine section, the paper is rather slick, and computers are not allowed in the room since due to the time difference, red-hot puzzle people on the east coast have finished the puzzle and put the answer on the web.  Since few people are strong enough not to take advantage of this, computers must be barred.  Due to the nature of the limp magazine and the texture of the paper, high quality pencils are needed, not only to form easily readable words, but because it is often necessary to erase one’s brilliant, but ill fitting entry.

 Unfortunately, it seems as though as we move to computers, the quality of non-digital writing tools is not only not improving, but decreasing.  I have long loved the common wooden pencil with eraser.  But pencil lines seem to be becoming less consistent, and erasers seem to wear out more rapidly and do a poorer job of erasing.  The sample below shows the work of four pencils I picked up from a coffee cup on my desk where I store them.  The ends had has five hard swipes  with the eraser of the pencil that made them. They represented four different brands,.  As can be seen, the lines they made were similar, except for the fourth one, which was fainter, and the success of the eraser went from acceptable to awful.  This is the first time I have ever tried to compare pencils.  The first two were old established brands (Dixon and Faber Castell).  The last two I will not mention, because this is not a scientific comparison.

 The message is that it seems that one cannot simply grab a wooden pencil any more and have it perform as expected.  And in fact, the web is reflecting this by producing much information on them.  See the list of pencil-related web sites here, or just put “pencil blogs” into your browser and ignore such things as eyebrow pencils.

 The situation with so-called mechanical pencils is even more complex because of the many approaches they take to hold the lead (which of course contains no lead – it is a mixture of graphite and clay), feed it, keep it from breaking, etc.  And such pencils tend not to include reasonable erasers. Furthermore good ones cost too much if you tend to lose them and loan them to friends (which I do).  And they are less rewarding to chew and to drum on one’s desktop.

 And then there are pens.  Sharpies make great indelible lines on almost anything, until you neglect to put on the cap, in which case they will rapidly die.  Such is true for most “give away” ball point pens, some of which will come with a retractable feature to protect pockets, and some with a fragile plastic cap that soon disappears.  I am having great luck with a pen entitled Uniball Vision Elite, but it is a bit pricey and tends to run out of ink rather rapidly.  And of course none of the lines from such pens can be erased, and therefore are of limited value for amateur cross word puzzle solvers like me.

 Is the quality of  pencils and pens being neglected as we move toward computers? Is it even going down hill?  A worry to us who like to doodle, make sketches, and work on books in the sunshine.   

 

Stanford Good Products, Bad Products course, ME314, 2014

Winter quarter is almost done, but it does not seem like winter here in California, because the sun continues to shine, and the farmers (including my older son) continue to become depressed.  Perhaps it will never rain again and we will return to desert, where we began before building our immense snow-dependent water system.

 The course good Products Bad Products is also almost done.  The Course outline for this year is here.  But since I discussed the course in previous posts, I won’t go into detail again. If you go to the Categories section on the left of the blog below the Recommended books section, and click on "ME 314 Stanford course 2013, you will get some of it. But the web-site for the students “choose a good product and a bad one” assignments is no longer accessible from outside Stanford. Ashish Goel, who was one of the highly competent Teaching Assistants last year, and was in charge of all things having to do with the internet, was kind enough to put it back on an publicly accessible web site.  The URL is here. If you would like to look at some of the student choices and short discussions, open the URL and have a good time.  If you click on the title of the entries, photographs will appear as well as the complete short description by the student choosing the the products as an example of good or bad.                                      

 The course ends with amazingly well designed media-rich presentations of good products and bad ones based on each of the chapter areas of my books. Stanford students are good at media, and Dave Beach pushes it in the course, as you can see from the outline.

I wrote the book because the issue of product quality is extremely complex, subject to personal tastes and judgements, and in general difficult to define in a sound byte.  But by spending effort judging products and arguing about them, it is possible to become much more sophisticated when dealing with the topic. Try it.

 

The Quality of Work, Computers, and the Mystery of Employment

For some time now, we have been hearing about unemployment, outsourcing, computer-based automation, and such things.  I recently read a book entitled The Second Machine Age, — Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies.  The Authors are Erik Brynjolfsson, the director of the MIT Center for Computer Business, and Andrew McAfee, a research scientist at the Center. It is listed in the recommended books list on the left.  They also were the coauthors of Race Against the Machine.  Both books have gained considerable notice.

 It is packed with interesting information, but I also found it interesting because it contained several different messages.  The first part of the book consisted of raves for the amazing accomplishments of digitization, and all of the things that computers can now do that only humans used to be able to do.  It admits there will be problems as computers become more and more powerful, but miracles will be accomplished and individuals have no choice in going along with this.  The authors also deny becoming technological determinists (if we can think it up, it will happen). But for a while I thought “oh no, not another born again computer book”.

 But societies have choices—there are such things as, regulations, labor movements, legal challenges, revolutions etc., and they are beginning to happen over issues such as privacy and the quality of life—or in other countries censoring the internet. And we hear of autonomous automobiles, but much attention to the  possibility of autonomous trucks and we would hear from the teamsters union again.

Happily, in the second portion of the book, the authors bring up the downsides of digitization, and one of course, is the effect on work (labor and jobs).  And I think we have only seen the tip of this iceberg.

 Most people in business and economics focus upon jobs as a way to move money around, and believe that as computers take over more and more jobs, others will appear.  But will they?  An article entitled “Closing the Gap”, in the Feb 15-21, 2014 issue of The Economist, suggests that the present decrease of unemployment may be due to the fact that the U.S. labor force is permanently stunted by people leaving it for reasons ranging from early retirement to giving up on finding jobs.  I think there is another reason to worry, and that is the quality of jobs.  People who have worked in a highly skilled job they love, are hardly satisfied with any old job.  I have a highly educated friend who is a farmer.  He requires being out of doors and hates computers—period.  He would be a pretty  unhappy tax accountant (a job, incidentally, which computers are taking over).

 Brynjolfsson and McAfee obviously like to think about difficult problems, read scholarly articles, follow the news in the media, and write books.  I do too, but I too am an academic. I don’t think we are typical. I clearly remember being in high school and none of my friends liked to do such things.  Many of my present smart but non-academic friends do much of such things..  Can it be possible that most people are in that category? Do people like a bit of manual labor to use the hands and muscles that have so carefully evolved over time in some context other than a health club?  I grew up on a farm.  The work was hard and the sun was hot, but at the end of the day one could collapse and see what had been accomplished, My father was smart, found farming highly satisfying, and would not have liked an inside job without heavy lifting.  In fact he once wrote me a letter, and it was the only example of his handwriting I ever saw—and he wrote beautifully.  Later I worked in a large machine shop, and it was more fun than farming, and to me even more satisfying.  The people were bright, amusing, and took rightful pride in what they were accomplishing. They were highly skilled, and not only could they see progress during the day, but the output was not something just anyone could do. And they could compete to see who did better work.

 I also worked on a work-over rig in an oil field for a spell.  The crew was high in spirits (emotional and after work alcoholic), full of jokes and pranks, once again skilled (mistakes could kill people), and at the end of the day could see what they had accomplished.  Even farming gave one pride and a sense of contributing when a bit more mechanized, and like farming, oil field work was outside—an important element to a lot of people.  I don’t know to what extent computers are now ”helping” the crews, but it’s coming.  And it is interesting to consider a classic roughneck working in an office, especially wearing a suit.

 Later still, when I worked at GM and JPL, I also worked closely with even more highly skilled shop people, because I was designing prototypes which needed custom parts made extremely precisely often from exotic materials.  I was by then an engineer, but when agonizing over a difficult problem I would sometimes wish I still worked in the shop, because the feedback was faster and the people seemed happier, healthier, and more entertaining. 

 Such jobs have been disappearing in the U.S..  As an example, computer aided design and manufacturing, coupled with very precise machining centers, do not require high salaries and do a totally predictable job. Do you suppose that people who liked doing that kind of work by hand would be fulfilled sitting and watching a number of such machines doing the work while they were being paid very low wages to be bored?

 So it isn’t just the number of jobs.  It is the fit of the job to the person and the sense of contribution and accomplishment that accompanies it.  One problem is that despite the efforts of many people, males are still with an inheritance of competing, showing off, and talking trash (as are women, but they play different games).  Watching a computer, or even running one, doesn’t do it for many.  I had a lovely phone conversation yesterday with a woman who works for A.T.&T.  My land line phone was doing things that weren’t covered in the web site, so I called the number with my cell, and after waiting several minutes while the phone told me the call would be recorded for quality purposes (do you suppose anyone ever listens to the recordings?), that they were receiving an unexpected number of calls, and that I shouldn’t hang up because they valued my calls, all the time playing me crummy music, an actual nice person came on the line, and solved my problem.  After I told her how wonderful she was compared to a web page, we had a long conversation on A.T.&T’s dime and I forgave them.  Had it not been for the human contact, I would have put another notch on my frustration with the company.  The power of real humans! 

 I’ll bet the elders who told you where to find things at Walmart would like their jobs back, and I wish they could get them, but I am afraid we are in a system too much captivated by cutting expenses and increasing profit.  But the backlash will come. I think I’ll go join a union.  And quit buying things over the internet.  And plant some corn in my back yard.

 But maybe nobody knows what’s going on with employment.  In the February 16, 2004 New York Times there is an article by Fred Andrews entitled “The Case for Swapping Roles with China”.  Steven Roach hass just written a book entitled Unbalanced— The Codependency of America and China. I haven’t read it, but he apparently claims both of us are getting in economic trouble, and the only solution is for us to swap roles.  We should go from consuming to producing, and China should do the opposite.  Maybe I can get a job in a shop, while people in China all go to work buying and selling things over the internet and speculating on investments.

 

Manufacturing, Harley Davidson, and Quality Redux

In the  late twentieth century, U.S. industry realized they had fallen behind in manufacturing.  Many companies especially those manufacturing large numbers of products and competing with similar companies in countries with lower wages, learned a great deal from their competition, radically changed their factories and management approaches, and again became competitive in both cost and quality, although outsourcing and the increasing use of technology (robots, computers, etc) allowed a major decrease in employment. 

But not everyone changed back then.  An article in the February 2nd 2014 New York Times magazine entitled High on the Hog, by Adam Davidson,  discusses a noteworthy recovery by Harley Davidson, whose stock fell from $75 to $8 during the recent recession.  Apparently at the time, it was taking 18 months to receive a motorcycle after it was ordered and workers were working at their own pace, with up to 30 percent absenteeism on Mondays and Fridays. The article is here.

 Realizing that if Harley Davidson failed, there would be no jobs for their people, the union went along with a layoff of 1000 people, a dramatic tightening of assembly line discipline, new approaches, and turned it around.  A  new factory was built, in which motorcycles are assembled manually by teams of workers, one every 80 seconds.  Robots are not used on the main assembly line.  There are so many options on these motorcycles, that teams of humans can react to the variation better than robots.  The workers have also been with the company for many years (average of 18), fiercely devoted to the company, very well paid, and unionized.  The union and the workers obviously saw the disadvantages of the major employer in town going broke and are rightfully proud of what they have accomplished in saving it.

  It makes one think about the mad dash to digitally controlled mechanized manufacturing and laying off workers and decreasing union strength with resulting social costs.  I have never been a Harley person, but if I were to buy a big motorcycle at this stage of the game (unlikely - detectable loss of reaction time, balance, and strength), I might buy  a Harley Davidson as a tribute to what they did in Troy.

 

Concept 2 (all kinds of quality), and the Good Products Bad Products Course

The Good Product Bad Products course continues on its way.  I will continue to report on it.  If you want a preview, if you go to the left sidebar, slide down to “archives” and you will find a series of dates. Click on the word “archives” and you will see more, and if you look at posts I wrote during Stanford’s winter quarter (early January to March) for the years 2012 and 2013, you will find information on the course for those years.  This year will be similar. In fact, if you are new to this blog, and have not looked through the archive, you might enjoy some of the other posts that are there.

 The first lecture last week was devoted to the process of doing field research by use of video and the case of a very successful company,.  One guest speaker was Scott Doorley,  who has a large amount of media experience, showed examples, and talked about story telling and use of video.  The second speaker, Peter Dreissigacker, was a student during my early days on the Stanford faculty, and received a master’s degree in the Product Design program , which was at the time my academic home at Stanford.  I remember him well, as a large, happy, talented,  idealistic person, an Olympic class rower, and an obsessive drawer of nice pictures.  Upon graduation Peter, his wife-to-be Bari, and his brother Dick (also  Olympic rower) went to Vermont, and bought an old run-down farm.  These were the hippie days, and moving to Vermont not only placed one in beautiful and not overly-populated country, it was considered a cool thing to do.

 Their dream of working a couple of days a week as bartenders or in equivalent jobs, upgrading the farm, skiing and rowing, was interrupted by the need to make money.  They decided to make oars and sell them.  For  various reasons, they decided to experiment with fiberglass, and after the usual experimentation and contemplation, worked their way up to oars reinforced with carbon filaments, at the time new on the market, but seemingly made to order for strengthening oars.  Their present oars are far beyond wood.

 The result was not only a very successful company, but one that receives an outstanding grade as to be a place to work—as Peter said, if you want to live in a small town and if you like rowing.  Their web page is here.

 The company began as a family company, and still is, although it has 60 employees (a large family).  It provides oars to a very large fraction of the teams competing at international competitions and to top school rowing teams, It also makes perhaps the world’s highest quality ergonometer for rowers and others looking for exercise devices.  The ergonometer has become a feature of well equipped gymnasiums,  It not only provides excellent exercise, but it has spawned a large following who compete remotely and in winter gatherings in areas where it is not much fun to row on top of the ice, using their scores on the sophisticated electronics in the machine.  Finally, they produce exercise machines for competitive skiers, or if you are a skier, for the gym or home.

 Why are they so wonderful?  It is a company built on life-style, not profit or growth.  It is after perfection in its products.  It has kept a focus on its markets and listens closely to its customers.  It benefits from extremely long employment and devoted employees, and Peter and Dick and Bari are wonderful people and take very good care of them.  It is also very proud that although it has only 60 employees (a size where it is possible to operate informally and in which everyone knows everyone else), it provides two or three hundred other jobs in the area by outsourcing to individuals and small companies to produce components for its product.  No China—just Vermont.

  It is always a real upper to me to visit the company, or to have the pleasure of Peter and Bari’s company.  Happily we will get to see more of them, since one of their daughters, Marlo Kohn, runs a lab for “makers” (open to any student and providing tools ranging from 3d printers to sewing machines) at Stanford,  and she is on the verge of  having a grandchild for Peter and Bari.  In the midst of the Silicon Valley with its manic desire for growth and money, Concept 2 looks like a very good business model indeed.  If you are ever in their area in Vermont visit them, especially if you are interested in starting a company.  You might consider basing it on what you love, being patient in becoming wealthy, staying away from venture capitalists, and hiring people who love what you do.

  Peter Dreissigacker is still a large, happy, talented, idealistic person who rows disturbingly well for someone his age, and not only still draws nice pictures, but includes his sketches in his PowerPoint presentations along with text and photographs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Solder—A Good Product

Today I decided to work on my list of home maintenance tasks.  The first one I tackled was to find and repair a leak in our 110 year old iron yard-irrigation pipes. The leak had been going for a while, and had not caused a convenient surface pool, so I spent a few hours slipping around in gooey mud (clay soil) and scraping mud off of my shovel blade.  I found it, but the condition of the pipes was such that I decided we didn’t really need to irrigate the yard until April, so I shut off the yard water, and turned to fixing a nice old lamp that had belonged to my wife’s grandparents.

 The lamp’s wires led to the sockets through sharply bent tubes and various channels through the structure.  I found that wires and sockets alike were either broken or worrisomely used, so I changed all of them. making many connections as I went through it.  But although the connection locations inside the lamp structure were accessible through removable plates and such things, there was not enough room to use wire nuts.  So I twisted them together, soldered them, wrapped them with tape, and bingo—new lamp.  Much better than making ditches in the mud.

 But I realized how much I like to solder.  If the joints are clean and they are at the right temperature, the solder happily flows to cover all surfaces, bridges all gaps, and turns an ugly bunch of twisted wire into a shiny and beautifully conducting electrical joint. And you can do this without spending large amounts of money on equipment and learning esoteric theory. The photo at the left shows the content of my soldering equipment box, and as can be seen, it is old and dirty, but performs very well indeed.

  I was one time involved in the quality of soldered joints while at the Jet Propulsion Lab, and became interested in the history of soldering. I learned to solder from my grandfather, (clean everything and then clean it again— heat the joint, not the solder).   He was a part time blacksmith and sheet-metal worker, did larger scale jobs (tanks, funnels, buckets, ducts, etc.) and heated his irons with blowtorches. I was restricted to tin cans a single iron, and a tin snips, but that was enough to start.  In fact I scored in the second grade because we were studying dairies and had to build a model one.  I made my part out of soldered together tin can metal.

 As far as history, I figured that soldering had been around at least as long as my grandfather.  But I found out that the Romans had used solder to join the pipes in their empire, and that the solder had approximately the same mixture of lead and tin that was being used at JPL.  This was interesting.  Tin helps solder wet the surfaces it will join, which is good.  But beyond that,  a mixture of 63% lead and 37% tin is called a eutectic mixture.  It has the lowest melting point of any mixture of lead and tin, and will go from molten to solid without going through a stage when one solidifies while the other remains liquid —excellent characteristics for solder.  But I don’t think the Romans had metallurgy books that told them that, and through practice they figured it out. And the most commonly used solder these days for manual work is probably 60% lead, 40% tin—shades of the Romans.

 Going backwards, the Sumerians used solder to assemble their swords, the Egyptians for their metal work, and so on.  Soldering has always been used heavily in jewelry. Apparently soldering has been around for at least 7000 years—even before my grandfather’s time. As you might expect, Wikipedia contains a large amount of information on solder and soldering.  It is here.

 Of course there are many types of solder, since the label includes any metal or combination of metal that can be molten and when solidified will hold other metals together.  There are soft solders (what I used on the lamp), hard solders (silver solder, etc.) and brazing metals (copper based).  Increasingly, due to health and environmental concerns, solders used in electronics and for other purposes are no longer containing lead.

 Solder is produced in many forms —wire with or without a flux core, bars (plumbers), and sheets (jewelers).  It is also applied in many ways, ranging from manually (me) to mechanically.  Components with leads that penetrate circuit boards are commercially soldered to the circuitry with what is called wave soldering.  A wave soldering machine  contains a pool of molten solder in which a wave is formed, and the bottom of the boards pulled through the wave. Surface mounted components are attached by a different process called reflow, in which components are attached by a mixture of powdered solder and an adhesive flux, the solder then being melted by heat.

  But all of them produce the same magic—a quick attractive joint that is both electrical and mechanically sound.  Not as strong as a welded joint, in which the parts of the joint themselves are melted, but good enough for many applications.  And it can be produced quickly and at low cost—good for me, good for the electronic industry.

 

Labor Day and a Tractor

Happy Labor Day.  This holiday was inaugurated in 1887 and was originally dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers,  Hopefully  it still is, although the type of labor originally celebrated has been radically changed by machines and computers.  But like most people, I will take any holiday I can get —which seems rather strange since I am retired— but I may be doing more “labor” now than I was when I was a professor.

 As an example, I am presently re-restoring my Best 60 (rated at 60 horsepower) tractor, shown in the photograph amid other projects in my  yard.  I rescued it some 40 years ago, apart and half buried in the Pacific Coast Range, having powered a saw mill after pulling boats out of the water and putting in its time in agriculture and forestry. When I got it unburied and moved to my yard (in itself an adventure, since it weighs over ten tons and needed to move out of the mountains and into my yard 100 miles away) I took it more apart, replaced a few broken pieces, got it running, painted it, and have been entertaining people with it ever since.  But over the years it became tired, lost its compression, quit producing sparks in its plugs, and generally was feeling neglected.

 I have now pretty much done the necessary mechanical work, re-assembled it, and will return it to aesthetic splendor. 

 This is a historical tractor.  The C.L.Best Gas Traction Company (later to be named the C.L. Best Tractor Company) of San Leandro, California, was begun in 1910 and rapidly became the chief competitor to Benjamin Holt Company of Stockton California in the making of continuous-tread tractors.  These were very popular in the logging and construction industries and in agricultural areas with soft or boggy ground, and were used as prime movers in World War I.   In fact, I have a photograph of the building of the original Stanford stadium, showing a Best 60 pulling a Fresno scraper around the field-to-be. 

 Holt had begun a small plant in Peoria Illinois in 1910 under the name of Holt Caterpillar, and in 1925 the two companies merged, named the resulting company Caterpillar, and moved to Peoria.  The Best 60 and its smaller brother, the Best 30, essentially became the Caterpillar 60 and the Caterpillar 30, and proved to be very successful. 

 Why am I spending my Labor Day working on this beautiful hulk?  Because, as I have mentioned in previous posts, I love working with my hands.  In deference to my former professor life, I am working on a book as to the centrality of hands in our evolution, and the benefits of using them even though these days, they seem to often be primarily used to push on computer keys and remote buttons.  I have many friends, who although they may earn their keep with their minds, and have the wherewithal to do what the want in their “spare” time, are fanatically involved in hobbies requiring high levels of manual dexterity and skills appropriate to the classical meaning of labor (not including that involved in delivering babies).  Most of us occasionally are called upon to explain why we do what we do in our free time.  The book will be an attempt to do that, and perhaps encourage others to do a bit more of the same.