When WesleyS had gone off to Fort Worth, I came from Oregon, back to Florida for a while, and worked along side Dad in the machine shop he ran after leaving Honeywell Aerospace. What I saw there as an adult, was a reinforcment of everything he'd taught me as a boy.

Do your best work whether anyone will ever see it or not. Take pride in the skills you aquire.

Don't try to be fast, speed will come with repetition as you do it good. (turned out to be good guitar playing advice by the way)

You can't do bad work fast enough to get ahead. If you're good enough, you'll stand out from the crowd and they'll bring you more work than you can do, and they'll pay you well for it.


Titanium is a contrary metal to work with, and he got a job once to make ten extrusion dies of T. The customer sent 100 blanks for the ten dies and told him he might have to send for more. It turned out to be a "Learning Experience". I think it was his 99th try that finally was an acceptable die. With additional material sent, he finally got 10 good extrusion dies built, and charged the agreed upon price, though much weekend overtime was put in. He didn't complain, whine, or quit, and in the end, the skills he aquired with Titanium led to a lot of commissions coming to the machine shop.

In this sort of diemaking, plus or minus a ten thousandth of an inch was sloppy work. Having him look over my shoulder at work was always nervewracking, but a muttered "Good Job" would make my day. ;^)

Jeff Smith