> On Dec 16, 2025, at 4:59 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
>>> It is a sad comment on our society that there could be a need to tell
>>> people.
>>> Are there really people who were not taught that the first time that they
>>> encountered a threaded fastener?
> On Tue, 16 Dec 2025, Carey Schug wrote:
>> i guess it is such a sad comment. at 76 years old I was never taught that,
>> including in shop class in high school.
>
> It is interesting, and a little horrifying, that it wasn't taught.
> Surely it wasn't that the shop teacher didn't know to do it?
> Or, maybe it was so deeply ingrained that it didn't occur to mention it?
>
> My mother (farm raised) told me.
> Even my father (city boy from NYC, "call the super"), who didn't even know
> that there is more than one size of Phillips screwdrivers, told me.
I have a $10 set of 100 screwdriver bits, including some quite odd ones like
"triwing".
> But, for half a century, I have been saying that the demise of erector sets
> (or equivalent in other countries) after they changed from a motor with a
> whole bunch of gears to a plastic battery motor, means that mechanical
> competence is going, going, gone
Yup. I fondly remember my childhood Meccano set, green strips of metal and
little screws with square nuts. The motor was a spring powered mechanism.
> (Likewise, modern kids don't all know what "CLOCKWISE" means! (reasonably
> mentioned about Jake in "Two And A Half Men".))
>
> ("When you are standing on your head, and seeing with a mirror, to know which
> way to turn the drainplug, imagine a watch face on it.")
Eek. But do you know why clockwise is the direction it is? My father referred
to it when he used as a synonym "with the sun" (in Europe, that is).
paul
