What are your jeans doing today?

[Maynard Friedman]

I can’t admit to understand it all Neal but it looks incredible and far more rewarding than creating meaningless spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations as, ahem, some of us around here probably do for a living.

[Double 0 Soul]

Thanks Martin.. at least you know where your next PowerPoint is coming from..

 

The pattern making industry is in ruins.. nobody makes patterns this way anymore apart from me.. folks invested heavily in cnc / robotic arm type pattern machinery which are programmed to cut this kind of thing out of modelboard with zero practical skills.. but a couple of £100k machines +£20k every few years to keep the software package up to date takes a lot of funding so those machines need to be running 6 days/wk.. to pay back the investment.

 

alas, there isn't enough pattern work around anymore in the UK.., it's usually done in China or India for a fraction of the cost..  we still need the components but we can meet environmental targets by shipping castings across the ocean.. somehow?

 

Folks only call me when they're up shit creek and they need a component like.. yesterday, or they have issues with accuracy / tolerance or QC.. This is the first pattern i've made for ages but atleast with my machines being stuck in the 1980s and valueless i'm not going bankrupt while they're not getting used.

[MJF9]

14 minutes ago, Double 0 Soul said:

.. at least you know where your next PowerPoint is coming from..

... though AI is here and progressing fast... human's still needed for Powerpoints, for now at least... 

Great job Neal btw!  Proper workmanship...  

Out of interest, I asked copilot (what is no-doubt a badly formed high-level question!) to see what it could produce for creating a Powerpoint on the topic... presumably a low base but AI Powerpoints are coming Martin...    

 

[Double 0 Soul]

My god! .. essentially, that's what i wrote on the previous page but without the pictures

Fk this shit.. it took me hours to compose..  i'm using copilot for my sufu posts in future..

[Dr_Heech]

Copilot is Skynet

Edited March 2 by Dr_Heech
To make mote sense

[Maynard Friedman]

We use perplexity.ai at work. I don’t ask it to create the PowerPoint decks, just the content, which I then rewrite and insert into whatever templates we feel are best suited! 😆

[Double 0 Soul]

I can almost feel the sense of job satisfaction emitting from the screen

[Maynard Friedman]

3 hours ago, MJF9 said:

... though AI is here and progressing fast... human's still needed for Powerpoints, for now at least... 

Great job Neal btw!  Proper workmanship...  

Out of interest, I asked copilot (what is no-doubt a badly formed high-level question!) to see what it could produce for creating a Powerpoint on the topic... presumably a low base but AI Powerpoints are coming Martin...    

 

6. Do not ask OO Soul to do this as he takes ages and charges a small fortune 😆

[MJF9]

4 hours ago, Dr_Heech said:

Copilot is Skynet

I had to look that up Doc - missed the boat there!!

3 hours ago, Maynard Friedman said:

We use perplexity.ai at work

Doesn't that just make it more complicated and difficult to understand - maybe that's the aim 😆 

[Double 0 Soul]

Typical Sunday for me..

Rode up to Burbage

Hoped over the road to Stanage

Ahhh! Noooooooooo

Boulderers out in force enjoying the sunshine.. they had frizbee and everything

Up to Stanage Pole and down to Redmires

..around the reservoir.. up to Lodgemoor, through the Mayfield Valley and home

..cleaning my bike with a can of Ting, featuring mud splattered JMC sweatshirt

Edited March 2 by Double 0 Soul

[chicote]

Looks so beautiful @Double 0 Soul!! I’ve met several hardcore mountain bikers / bike tourers / messengers while in Mexico and have definitely been getting my interest piqued speaking w them … seems like a more peaceful and involved way to get out to the country than braaping around on a 180kg dirt bike, although that can be fun too

Thanks for sharing photos of your work as well, always really inspiring to see. Did you have to go to engineering school to learn the skills for your work or had you been a woodworker prior, or something else? It seems like such a specialized job with so much prerequisite knowledge required, I can’t imagine where you’d start!

[Double 0 Soul]

When i was around 14yrs old.. my dad had a Pools round, he would go around the neighbourhood collecting Pools coupons.. (folks gambling on the results of football matches).. one of the guys who played the Pools was a master pattern maker, my dad was always fascinated by his work, one day this guy asked if i would like a Saturday morning job in the patternshop, sweeping up, fetching the sandwiches, painting / finishing patterns.. Did I ever!.. I got paid £6 for 4hrs work and a pay rise to £8 for 4hrs Saturday morning in year 2... It was awesome!.

 

When i was 16 i did work experience there and the guy who owned the business offered me a 6yr apprenticeship as a master pattern maker when i left school.. i did go to tech college 1 day/wk for a short period but due to my experience, my abilities were probably a bit too advanced for the course.. in hindsight, i should have been a dentist

 

There was 8 other master pattern makers in the workshop all with different skill sets / fields of expertise.. one was a master woodcarver, i worked alongside him for the first 12months as his apprentice, we carved restoration work after the fire at York Minster, mainly the decorative bosses wich fit between the roof trusses in the ceiling..  I think this was their way of familiarising me with hand tools..  These were old school gentleman patternmakers who would arrive at work in a shirt and tie, hair immaculate, waistcoat and jacket, their sandwiches in a briefcase.. (a bit like the faux instagram woodworkers you see today)  .. they would hang their jacket on a coat hanger, roll up their shirt sleeves and wear a brown smock over the top.. they were doing it to keep their clothing clean / make it last.. unlike me, i never wore a smock.

 

...anywho, during my 6yr apprenticeship, i worked alongside each specialty craftsman for 1yr.. we made pattern equipment for JCB and Tarmac, I worked for the MOD, i made tank tracks and prototyped all the cast parts for the Typhoon Eurofighter.. i made cast iron street furniture (i still do) i even made a keel for a racing catamaran

 

In the days before 3D computer modeling, i did a lot of product development modeling, where i would make an exact copy of a Morphy Richards toaster for instance from 3d drawings, before funding for the upcoming product range was made available, they would have a tactile representation of their product made, people could make decisions regarding aesthetics at this stage.. I also developed the Black & Decker Mouse, I spent a year learning how to make fibreglass car body panels and fairground rides.. Topographical model making and such.. but 60% of our work was traditional pattern making / engineering products.. stuff for petrochemical, offshore drilling, pumping systems. The only guy there who didn't wear a brown smock was Tom, who wore a blue boiler suit... he'd previously worked in a foundry as a methods engineer, which is where i get my metallurgy knowledge regarding runner systems / feeding castings.. (nowadays it's all modeled on the computer) at this time i was in the heart of Sheffield's bustling industrial quarter surrounded by Braun Medical, Stanley Tools, Record Ridgeway, Eclipse Magnetic..ect

 

When i finished my apprenticeship, i was the youngest fully time served Master Patternmaker in South Yorkshire.. and 30yrs later, i still am.

 

The company i did my apprenticeship for.. moved into larger premises owned by a multi-national engineering company (Holtec) it meant we got 100% of their work while remaining an independent mastershop.. it was a good move.. but as the older patternmakers approached retirement, the company owner was diagnosed with cancer, his only daughter was in the banking sector so i always thought the business was coming my way.. (so did he) alas, it wasn't to be, Holtec aggressively took over, there was nothing i could do.. they said it was always their plan after the owner retired, it was their premises, 70% of the work was theirs, they offered me a managerial  role so i decided to take the remaining 30% of our customer base and left.. within 3yrs the UK arm of their operation was closed.

 

Since 2011 i've been part of a project, to upscale and fully automate a process which was traditionally small scale lab work, it's a means to extract, impurities from crude or natural gas, recycle the impurities while purifying the product.. it was so successful they got a Kings award for innovation, the production is vast.. i started by building single person pneumatic work stations, it worked so it's been upscaled into large scale factory format.. my part of the project was to develop a way of producing the shapes, their part of the project was to upscale so the product is now produced by the tonne and shipped worldwide instead of by the bucketload..

 

The first meeting we had in the boardroom, it was me and all their hierarchy..  the owner of the company stood up, pointed around the table and said "I can do all of your jobs (stopped at me and said) but i can't do his, which is why he's here" ..

Edited March 3 by Double 0 Soul

[Maynard Friedman]

What a great story Neal, it’s really impressive. We should do a job swap for a day. How’s your PowerPoint?!

[chicote]

Wow, that’s such a great story, thanks for being willing to write it all out. Have you met any younger people who’ve entered this line of work at all? Or anyone who you’ve considered taking on as an apprentice yourself? I know computers and automation and AI are being hailed as the replacements for everything, but I’ve always thought that attitude a bit hubristic.. there will always be a need for some of this knowledge to be retained by humans, as your contributions illustrate very well!

[julian-wolf]

@Double 0 Soul Your go-to loop looks absolutely prime; every time you post new photos I enjoy looking through them even if it’s much of the same subject matter

Around half of my favorite climbing “content” comes out of the Peaks District, so (overall great aesthetics aside) it’s really interesting to see some shots from a different perspective. Would love to make it out there some time in person

[smoothsailor]

Great read @Double 0 Soul pretty cool walk of life.

i wonder if young people can move up the ranks like you did in modern tech design world. Where it (to me ) seems all corporate.

 

[Thanks_M8]

Not as exciting as Double0's story, which actually got me thinking about learning a craft at almost 30, but still fun nonetheless. 
Last year my wife & I built a greenhouse for our balcony. We only keep citrus in it, at the moment, might put our pomegranate in there as well one day. 
Since we got a share in a garden plot end of last year I got into grafting fruit trees & trimming them to keep them healthy, so this is the greenhouse with it's post winter haircut. 
From back left to front right: Citrumelo, Nasho-Daidai, Yuzu, Sanguinello Blood Orange, Satsuma/Mandarin hybrid (2x), Ichang-Orange & Yuzu (4x, seed-grown). 

This was after the harvest of our last "bloody" oranges from the big Sanguinello plant, beginning of february, seen here. 
Those were great, especially considering we are in a newly classified zone 8a, as of December 2024, and not 7b anymore, which get's a bit colder. 
Usually these are grown in zones 9b upwards, but the greenhouse & mild winter did a great job. Just had to heat it on 3-4 nights, when it got below -7 °C.

 

With all of this, I pulled the trigger on a few rootstocks for propagating of my collection, maybe even put one in the garden plot. 
I got some trifoliate orange rootstock, put it near the window for a few weeks and waited for the leaves to sprout, meaning it got out of it's winter hibernation. 
Then yesterday after work I got out my grafting tools and tried my hand at grafting, let's hope it works out. 
Tried my hand at grafting 1 Citrange & 2 Yuzus, maybe I will try a cocktail-tree in the future. 

Edited March 4 by Thanks_M8

[Double 0 Soul]

Looks amazing.. my mum is trying to grow lemons.. sadly they still look like small nobbly limes

5 hours ago, chicote said:

Have you met any younger people who’ve entered this line of work at all? Or anyone who you’ve considered taking on as an apprentice yourself? I know computers and automation and AI are being hailed as the replacements for everything, but I’ve always thought that attitude a bit hubristic.. there will always be a need for some of this knowledge to be retained by humans, as your contributions illustrate very well!

 

Sadly not, i'd love an apprentice to pass my knowledge onto.. but i would never recommend it as a career choice.. there is no future in pattern making, 70% of everything i learned during my apprenticeship has next to no modern day application.. and probably 50% of those skills are non transferable to other sectors.. it's all dependent on a buoyant industrial sector and there is hardly any industry left in the UK, even here in Sheffield, the spiritual home of steel making.

Just these last few months, British Steel (which incidentally, is a Chinese company) stopped producing steel while they transition from a polluting blast furnace to a more environmentally friendly electric arc furnace, this can only be a good thing but due to lack of planning, they've closed the site resulting in 2800 job losses, the new arc furnace will not be operational till 2030..so we're not producing steel, we're buying it in.. the knock on effect of this has devastated their suppliers, some of whom were my customers, good 3rd generation family businnesses .. it's just been a steady decline since the outsourcing of the 90s / victims of globalisation... few got richer, many got poorer.

 

Secondly.. I've been quoting against machines for the last decade which has  driven prices down so i have to work more hours to make the same amount of money..

 

Lastly, whatever time i spend training someone is time away from my job, when there are 8 other people producing work for 10hrs/day, if one of them spends 5hrs/day training an apprentice, the cost to your output as a company is negligible, but when you only have one person, that 5hrs/day will result in a 50% loss of production.. i'm not making enough money to shoulder it.

 

 

4 hours ago, julian-wolf said:

@Double 0 Soul Your go-to loop looks absolutely prime; every time you post new photos I enjoy looking through them even if it’s much of the same subject matter

Around half of my favorite climbing “content” comes out of the Peaks District, so (overall great aesthetics aside) it’s really interesting to see some shots from a different perspective. Would love to make it out there some time in person

Ikr.. it's a 20min ride from home so many folks take the Peaks for granted.. when they're out there, they say "my god! this is incredible, we should do this every weekend.. 6mths later "we should go out to the Peaks we haven't done it for ages" ..

I could watch boulderers all day @julian-wolf .. folks think it's just about slapping some chalk on your hands and climbing up a rock.. but they'll arrive, with numerous books, they'll find an unoccupied rock, pull out a book, sit down and study routes, pull out field notes and start making notes and sketches of where holds are.. then mime it out.. this is before they've even pulled on rock shoes

 

[Double 0 Soul]

Amazing sky this morning on my ride to work..

Last part...

.. i got the runner system and the pattern finished, this is the top half, the exothermic sleeves will fit over these locators, all of the flanges have a machined outer face, so the heads can be cut off and the remnants will be machined away, the only head which needs a bit of grinding / shaping will be the small pad over the body junction.. but better safe than sorry.

I've put some padding behind the flange so the head can feed through the flange and into the body, there is no reason why this bit of padding can't be part of the finished cast part..

..there are fancy equations to calculate the modulus but in layman's (is layman an anogram of maynard?) terms, you're fitting imagined spheres into what will become the casting.. so something like this (it's actually more like a compressed tennis ball shape) the center of the largest sphere will remain hot / be the last part to cool, so this will feed the casting, the neck has a similar volume to the flange, the sphere in the exo sleeve is smaller but the sleeve should keep it equally hot..

this boring ass mofo explains it a bit better..

Thanks for the interest everyone.. so who's next to explain what they do between sufu posts..?

Edited March 5 by Double 0 Soul

[CSL]

Last weekend a great honor was bestowed upon me. I was crowned 'musician of the year' at the Monterey Jazz Bash (an event I've been performing at for about 25 years). The ceremony was a solemn and serious affair, as the photos below illustrate.

 

[MJF9]

@CSL Congratulations!! Looks like you enjoyed the formalities!!

[Double 0 Soul]

Pfft!.. amateurs, you’re our ‘musician of the year’ .. every year!