Bob La Londe wrote:

Part of my routine the last several months is to watch YouTube machining
videos on the big screen in the house while I have my morning coffee
before
heading out to the shop to get to work. I have noticed a lot of guys
(some hobbyists and some not) seem to be using blue Sharpie markers as a
sort of layout out "fluid" for some types of jobs.

Is there something inherently wrong with this if it works? I kind of have
the attitude if something produces a satisfactory result and causes no
harm its ok, but even though I do machining everyday I still consider
myself a hobbyist.

I can see where it probably would not work out very well for marking from
a surface plate to scrape a flat surface.

Do you use a blue Sharpie in your shop? If you do are there times when
you use Dykem instead?
Hopefully, the days of laying out stuff with Dykem are over! At one time I
would use Dykem to avoid mistakes when manual machining. I didn't cut to
the lines, but if I was merrily cutting along and got really near the lines,
it meant I was cutting to the wrong dimension. Stop and re-read the drawing.

Thankfully, in 1996 I moved up to CNC, and have never looked back!

Jon