Are people becoming useless

BlowingOldBoots said:
My first motor bike was an old BSA C15 at 16 years old. ... Such simple junk bikes were still available even in the mid 1980s. ...
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"Junk bike" forsooth! A very nice machine of its kind - as my second motorcycle at age 17 (me, not the C15), I simply won't have a word said against it.
 
I guess we could learn most practical skills from family and friends these days.

It does, imho, have a great deal to do with that and how motivated the family and friends are to involve the youngsters and tear them away from

computer consoles.... God help them!

Encouragement and involvement..... parents take note. Unless you'r as useless at DIY as some adults with children are that I know.... :)

S.
 
The valve spring compressor and big torque wrench in my shed will never be used again, but I keep them 'just in case'. I used to do all my own car maintenance because I simply couldn't afford to run a car if I didn't. But then, an A-series engine was straightforward, which was just as well, as it always needed fettling - I wouldn't touch a modern engine, but it's generally unnecessary with modern reliability. Even back in those days, non-mechanical mates would say that it was OK for me, 'as I knew about cars'. I explained that I'd simply taken the trouble to learn - but the process was usually dirty, cold, wet and painful...:(
 
I'm just about of the "cars too new to work on" generation in that I've never owned a car with a choke. Actually I did do all the routine servicing and a number of repairs on my Uno and then Polo, but the need for either was limited due to being modern. So although I've picked up many practical skills from joinery to machine-sewing to welding, I've never been much of an engines man.

However, in the last few days I've thoroughly enjoyed dismantling and reassembling a two-cylinder outboard for the first time :)

Pete
 
Scillyboy said:
The valve spring compressor and big torque wrench in my shed will never be used again, but I keep them 'just in case'. I used to do all my own car maintenance because I simply couldn't afford to run a car if I didn't. But then, an A-series engine was straightforward, which was just as well, as it always needed fettling -
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(Not so much thread drift.... but, perhaps it may go some way to explain how skills are learnt and shared)......

Scillyboy......I remember that time of life ...... I must admit I havn't changed much although I now sometimes recognise when a job is 'beyond my ken' and I have to ask for help so that I can get bailed out or never start

In my youth I used to often get started on projects and then have to go to others for help when I was overcome by the sheer size or complexity of the project I had started. The best of that was to help one another.
Amazing for me..... the bonding made with a couple of buddies has lasted. In one case for just over 60 years, another for 45.

Passing on skills to my kids was fun too..... building a road going (illegally down our country lane) motorised soapbox from pram wheels and an old lawnmower comes to mind. This sort of thing encourages kids to have a go and not to be afraid of failure.... just another problem to try and solve etc...

S.
 
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Most people have always been pretty useless & not had much practical ability or been able to use their initiative in my experience.
Nowadays there is even less call for them to be with 'the consumer society' & a lack of individualism.......more sterile more boring times.Helf & safty anyone?
 
Lakesailor said:
The OP is completely the wrong premise.

All people are useless at first. Then they become useful. Perhaps less are becoming useful.
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Or are becoming useful in ways that the OP doesn't consider to be useful... :)

Example.. I can't strip an engine (yet), haven't cleaned a carb (yet), but I'm still the person my mechanical engineering Dad comes to with a computer problem..... :encouragement:
 
Fantasie 19 said:
Or are becoming useful in ways that the OP doesn't consider to be useful... :)
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Definitely an element of that. A lot of people posting on these forums are barely competent to operate a simple computer, let alone assemble, maintain, or fix one - and in some cases are proud of it! Yet they'll look down on someone who doesn't know about the carburettor that their car doesn't even have.

Buggy-whips :)

Pete
 
Lakesailor said:
Rock climbing? You need an SPA.... Yachting? You need RYA training....Etc etc.

Gone are the days that we just started doing something because we fancied having a go.
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Leading Scottish VS at 13.... Glencoe and Skye.... Snowholing on the 'Gorms plateau in January..... Potting Severe pots in the Dales with g/f and borrowed tatty wetsuit.... Crossing the Channel in a boat I'd fitted-out myself....

Not a KeySkills Sustificate in sight.

How on earth have I survived this long? :confused:
 
prv said:
A lot of people posting on these forums are barely competent to operate a simple computer, let alone assemble, maintain, or fix one - and in some cases are proud of it! Yet they'll look down on someone who doesn't know about the carburettor that their car doesn't even have.
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There's truth in that. By the time my kids were of an age to learn about fixing engines, I'd managed to acquire a company car, so I did very little (i.e. no) work on it. We did have a wreck of a second car, but not much tinkering went on there either. As a result, my son had no opportunity to learn, but could build a PC from a pile of parts. However he has recently stripped the engine of an old van, acquiring the skills when he needed them.

The only bit I don't buy is that todays youngsters don't have the time to learn. They have as much as, or more than, we had, but then we didn't spend our days stuck into social meeja....
 
Fantasie 19 said:
Or are becoming useful in ways that the OP doesn't consider to be useful... :)

Example.. I can't strip an engine (yet), haven't cleaned a carb (yet), but I'm still the person my mechanical engineering Dad comes to with a computer problem..... :encouragement:
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Agree 100%. I can do things that my parents couldn't even imagine when they were young; the job I've spent most of my life doing didn't exist when I was born; I'm older than any company marketing software in the field, and I had to write my own software back in the beginning (late 70s). When I started doing software, there was very little commercially marketed software; you wrote your own using development tools that look incredibly primitive by today's standards!

There is one thing that has changed, I think. Machinery generally lends itself to being dismantled and understood. When I was a lad, I took apart clocks, valve radios and engines, and on the whole I understood their operation and stood a chance of fixing them if they didn't work. Mechanical devices are still the same; if you can get it apart, you can often understand what's going on. And I'm still very proud of the time I analysed a linkage and realized that we didn't need both the electric motors we'd planned on using! But electronics and so on are simply unfixable, without extremely specialist knowledge. The problem is that anything that depends on software is automatically going to be impossible to fix, for a simple reason. We write software in languages that can be understood by humans; I know perhaps 10 or more such languages. But in order for it to run in an electronic device, it has to be converted to a string of instructions that are meaningful within the electronic system, but which are completely opaque to (most!) humans. It isn't (in general) possible to reverse the process, either. So, the innermost workings of nearly all electronics are quite simply not accessible to us; you need to have the human readable version of the software to work on it. Now, Android and Linux and so on DO provide that human readable source code - but proprietary systems don't; it is regarded as a commercial secret. So, ultimately, we simply don't have access to the "workings" of a lot of modern devices. It's as if the cylinder head of an engine was welded on!
 
One of the things about today is that you don't need to have the knowledge that you used to. In the past you had to know exactly what you needed to understand and then form it in such a way that you could get a book from the library etc to learn technicalities. Now all you need is a vague notion and google. It almost always finds out what it is you are looking for or something even better that you didn't even know was possible. You then get on youtube and forums to further refine your knowledge.

I find it massively useful. I am very practical and can turn my hand to almost anything but I need to understand it first. With youtube, forums and google I can get the information I need for any number of projects. For instance, I am replumbing, rewiring my house and have designed and had built a new super-insulated roof that joins seemlessly with the external wall insulation. I am designing a CNC machine for making the mould stations on the boat I am going to build. I am learning how to programme raspberry pi and arduino for some electronics projects I want to do both for the CNC and the boat. I am designing and building my own triple glazed windows.

I could not even think about doing most of these things were it not for the internet.
 
Fantasie 19 said:
Or are becoming useful in ways that the OP doesn't consider to be useful... :)

Example.. I can't strip an engine (yet), haven't cleaned a carb (yet), but I'm still the person my mechanical engineering Dad comes to with a computer problem..... :encouragement:
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prv said:
Definitely an element of that. A lot of people posting on these forums are barely competent to operate a simple computer, let alone assemble, maintain, or fix one - and in some cases are proud of it! Yet they'll look down on someone who doesn't know about the carburettor that their car doesn't even have.
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As I am being told by all and sundry that this is a boating forum let me just suggest that being able to re-partition a hard drive is of little use when the motor packs up as you are being driven to a lee shore :D
 
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GrahamM376 said:
Many people say they can earn more money than a tradesman charges so it makes sense not to do their own work and that's fine but, some never learn enough to cope when a problem crops up, one boatowner asked me where his galley seacock was located in a boat he'd had at the time for 7 years!

I took the opposite viewpoint. By doing the vast majority of my own work on boat, house and cars, my outgoings were/are far less and I managed to retire at 53. If I had payed people over the years for every job, then I would have had to work for more years or, as someone else commented, not have the boat we have. DIY is also a good remedy for boredom although I must admit I don't ever want to scrape the antifoul off back to gel again.
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Had a good week last week, sky blue, sun, 28 deg! Changed the cam belt and rollers, they went in the hold.
S
 
elton said:
Someone on the radio thought the decline in DIY skills was a result of kids leaving home later, expecting eventually to move into a brand new gaff; teenagers getting new cars, that don't require DIY, and when it does, it goes into the dealer's workshop; and so on.

I won't pay anyone to do what I can do myself, and that includes most things. The only jobs I've paid someone else to do, that I can recall. is the MOT on the car and the bike, and a sign off from a Part 2 certified electrician on some work I did.

My dad taught me well, but most of my DIY skills stem from necessity. Because I was sking, I always had old cars and bikes, until I was into my lat 30s, and fixed everything myself. Old habits die hard.
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I can relate to that...
Started with an ancient motorbike. No support whatsoever. Fix it your self or sink without trace!
Rebuild several bikes, learned engines, did the same with cars , then houses then boats.

I have two fairly clever sons.
One a mechanical genius/fiddler.. (first M.Eng also..)

One largely useless with cars/engines ??

Where did I go wrong?

Out of necessity (used to ) come forth invention!

I am sure there is a whole generation out there largely incapable of doing anything much for themselves...

How sad can you get.? I will tackle almost anything.. even now at 60+

I might not always win, but I dam* well will try...
 
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