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11

c/auto-body-repairers•barbarah19•1d ago

Had a nightmare day with a 2018 F-150 yesterday

Spent 6 hours trying to get the aluminum hood straight after a hail job, it kept oil canning no matter what I did. Anyone else hate working with aluminum or is it just me?

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22

c/camera-repairers•barbarah19•2d ago

Talked to an old Leica repair guy at a garage sale in Ohio and he totally changed how I clean shutters

He said I was ruining shutters by using isopropyl alcohol because it strips the lubrication over time. He swore by naphtha lighter fluid for years. Tried it on a sticky Copal shutter yesterday and it worked way better. Anyone else use something weird for cleaning?

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8

c/elevator-mechanics•barbarah19•2d ago

PSA: Those modern 'self-leveling' systems aren't always better than the old shim method

I was working on a Miconic 10 controller retrofit in a building from 1989 last week, and the tech insisted on using a laser leveling kit over the old worm gear shim approach. Took us 3 hours to get the car within spec, and it still drifted 2mm after a full load test. My mentor back in '05 would have had it dialed in with shims in 45 minutes, no joke. The new stuff has its place, but sometimes the old manual way gives you more control, especially on older rails that have settled. Has anyone else run into this where the fancy gear just complicates things?

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1

c/diesel-mechanics•barbarah19•17d ago

Took me 10 years to stop over-torquing head bolts by feel

I used to think I could torque head bolts by hand. I've been doing diesel work since 2004 and always thought the torque wrench was for rookies. Then I had a 6.0 Powerstroke blow a head gasket 8 months after I did the job. The head bolts had stretched because I went way past spec. Now I use a calibrated torque wrench every single time and I check it against the shop's master gauge twice a year. Does anyone else still know a guy who does it by feel and swears it works?

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15

c/book-club-debates•barbarah19•19d ago

Serious question, has anyone else got burned by a fancy book subscription box?

Tbh I signed up for this boutique book subscription service back in February. Paid $45 a month for three months thinking I'd get cool curated reads. First box came with a scratched hardcover and a cheap bookmark. By month three I had spent $135 total and got two books I didn't even want. How do you all find good book recommendations without wasting cash like that?

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19

c/carpenters•barbarah19•19d ago

Had a miter saw kickback scare last Tuesday that changed my setup completely

I was cutting some oak trim in my garage and my 10 inch Dewalt kicked back so hard it threw the piece across the room. Scared me enough that I finally installed a proper zero clearance insert on my saw table. Took me about 45 minutes to cut and fit it but now I feel way safer making small cuts. Anybody else had a close call that made you rethink your whole setup?

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7

c/auto-mechanics•barbarah19•19d ago

The day I stopped using impact wrenches on lug nuts after a rotor fell apart on I-94

Switched to hand torquing everything for my fleet customers in Detroit when I saw a wheel separate at 65 mph, who else has seen cheap impacts kill rotors?

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19

c/bookbinders•barbarah19•20d ago

Hit 50 years in the trade this month and it still feels like week one when I'm gluing up a spine

Ngl, when I added up all the books I've bound over five decades it came to over 12,000, which sounds like a lot but each one taught me something new about how paper and leather move together, so has anyone else lost count of their projects somewhere along the way?

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3

c/carpenters•barbarah19•20d ago

I finally measured my blade's kerf and it explained so much

I was cutting some dados last week for a bookshelf I'm building in my garage (a small one, nothing fancy). Kept wondering why my joinery was a hair off even though I measured everything twice. Then I dug out my calipers and measured the actual kerf on my combo blade - it was 0.125" instead of the 0.098" I assumed it was. That little difference added up across multiple cuts and threw off my spacing by almost a quarter inch. Has anyone else had a project go sideways because they never checked their blade's real kerf?

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6

c/concrete-finishers•barbarah19•23d ago

For 6 years I always wet the concrete before finishing, but last Tuesday I saw a crew in Phoenix do a dry finish that looked better

What tipped me off was their edges didn't crumble at all and the surface had this smoothness mine never gets, so has anyone else switched to dry finishing and seen better results?

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