Toys to Tools: Learning not to make stuff.....

savarin said:
I think the kids of today should play with the cool toys we had to play with.
https://www.orau.org/ptp/collection/atomictoys/GilbertU238Lab.htm
https://www.orau.org/ptp/collection/atomictoys/chemcraftset.htm
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Agreed !!!. Here is what i liked.

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Also
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Who knows.


Who knows what "cat Whiskers" are / were. ?





. And if you know you know what these are.
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I wont give away the cat Whiskers.... I will post a picture of the two set's I have
after someone else guesses what you talking about. I made one set. The other
was my Grandfathers...
 
Weren't cat whiskers for a crystal radio?
 
You could have some kind of contract with the company that you apprentice with. Leave in two years you pay back 80%, five years 50% and so forth. There are many ways you could make apprenticeships work. I would have gladly paid a company to train me in my craft with a contract that after one year of OJT I would start making some money and they would agree to keep me for an agreed upon time after a short trial period. Or you could do no pay for a year. I had no pay for two years at tech school and paid a lot of money with zero guarantee of a job, inf act we were lied to by some teachers. It is a business and their goal is to fill seats. Having said that there are some programs out there that value the training of the students more that filling seats but I don't think that is the norm.
One thing that is a great value in school is learning the fundamentals and the requirement for general studies has its value as well.
 
Yes with a crystal of IIRC gallium arsenide (sp)
 
ddickey said:
You could have some kind of contract with the company that you apprentice with. Leave in two years you pay back 80%, five years 50% and so forth. There are many ways you could make apprenticeships work. I would have gladly paid a company to train me in my craft with a contract that after one year of OJT I would start making some money and they would agree to keep me for an agreed upon time after a short trial period. Or you could do no pay for a year. I had no pay for two years at tech school and paid a lot of money with zero guarantee of a job, inf act we were lied to by some teachers. It is a business and their goal is to fill seats. Having said that there are some programs out there that value the training of the students more that filling seats but I don't think that is the norm.
One thing that is a great value in school is learning the fundamentals and the requirement for general studies has its value as well.
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In the 70's there were job training programs that paid half your wage and I was in one for a couple of years. Growing up in the Central Valley of CA where 95% of the work was AG work was always seasonal, low pay and no unions. Job hopping was they only way you could eek out a living. I never stayed anywhere for more than 5yrs and those two that I did stay for 5yrs one sold the franchise to an idiot so I bailed. The other had been sold to a foreign competitor who was basically laundering their image until the big bosses son was put in charge and he quadrupled our health co pay to where half the month I was paying for health insurance. Neither had anything more than a crappy 401k.

In contrast my dad worked for the same company for 36yrs which changed corporate owners 4 times. Each time they gutted the company pension and tried to break the Teamsters union he was in. They went out on strike every time and the longest was 6wks. But the union was the only thing that took care of him and he ended up with a good pension. But not because of the corps. So there is no simple answer just a matter of viewpoint.
 
I had a Mecano set, a number 5 with a wind up motor and a gear set. My poor parents must have really scrimped to pay for those. They were expensive. My rich American cousins past a Erector set on to me. The English Mecano sets were for building machinery, the Erector set was more designed for buildings. I ended up a millwright, chuckle.

For my sons I made a block set, a cross between an Erector set and Tinker Toy . Work benches with real woodworking tools, small ones though.
For their first cars, I got them a Hayes manual and a socket set. One is an electrician and the other a millwright
 
KBeitz said:
I wont give away the cat Whiskers.... I will post a picture of the two set's I have
after someone else guesses what you talking about. I made one set. The other
was my Grandfathers...
Click to expand...


Yes crystal radio. I still have a few somewhere in the attic. Sorry for the derail. :)

.
 
I have a 19 year old son, bought him a used Camaro for his 16th birthday,that car sat in the driveway for a year before he got his license, I have 2 Harley's because he refuses to ride, I bought the little 03 FXD I have for him after he took his MSF class, doesn't heart my feelings got my touring bike and my play bike. Fast forward to last week, he had mentioned a wood lathe one time when he decided to break free from his mothers and come visit us. Since we hadn't seen him but maybe 2 times since memorial day we didn't know what to get him, so I bought him a wood lathe. It has been a week since his birthday, he finally decided to come out to the garage yesterday evening and join me. He made his first decorated stick, and actually enjoyed it. I have tried his entire life so far to get him to turn a wrench or learn something mechanical. This was my first success.
 
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