"Jon Anderson" wrote in message
...
On 7/06/2017 3:48 PM, Gunner Asch wrote:
...
Yeah, I realized by the time I got back to work from lunch that I'd
taken it personal. I wonder how many in the States really appreciate
how good they have it. NOTHING like McMaster here. Blackwoods can't
hold a candle to MSC. I have not a clue at the moment where to buy
6061. Sigh.


There have been many complaints in r.c.m about how difficult it is to
buy tools and material elsewhere. A Brit expat told me that
metalworking as a hobby is considered a sign of insanity in Spain.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_engineering
"Model engineering is most popular in the industrialised countries
that have an engineering heritage extending back to the days of steam
power. That is, it is a pursuit principally found in the UK, USA,
northwestern European countries and the industrialised British
Commonwealth countries."

http://www.popularwoodworking.com/wo...or-a-curiosity
"Whenever I travel abroad, I always ask the locals about woodworking
as a hobby. More times than naught, I hear that building furniture for
fun is about as popular as do-it-yourself knee surgery."

"It is difficult for many of us in the U.S. to truly appreciate what
*doing* stuff does to us. We learn to fix bicycles at a very young
age; we learn to pull engines from cars, and make the animals work; we
even modify them to make them animals of brute force, all at quite a
young age."

A WW2 British account of American commandos in Burma expressed
amazement at the range of skills our common soldiers possessed or
rapidly learned, from handling mules to learning how to use artillery,
neither of which British infantry (he claimed) would touch. Other
armies had to train recruits to become drivers, a skill practically
any American already knew. The Air Corps ordnance company my father
commanded made a refrigeration compressor out of a Jeep motor, to cool
their beer in the New Guinea jungle heat.

I look for evidence that the Industrial Revolution might have arisen
anywhere, the raw ability is worldwide, but was suppressed by social
pressure that gentlemen don't do menial work, or too-frequent wars.
Britain was relatively stable and more tolerant of eccentric behavior.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/only-in-b...entric-people/

Despite the primitive conditions here, the new USA was only slightly
behind Britain in mechanical innovation.

-jsw