DIYbanter - View Single Post

-MIKE-

On 2/5/19 2:44 AM, wrote:
On Sunday, February 3, 2019 at 9:29:42 PM UTC-6, -MIKE- wrote:
On 2/3/19 3:14 PM, Leon wrote:

Plastic is not so bad.Â* My Festool drill is mostly some kind of plastic
and it had hit the concrete floor more times than I would like to admit.
Â*As have all of my Festool sanders, 3 of them, and they are all
plastic.Â* I would be more afraid of metal being damaged than plastic.Â* I
make double sure that my Domino does not get dropped.

I still have the first heavy duty circular saw I bought for job use around 1976. It has an aluminum shoe and blade guard, and the height adjustment is metal. The saw motor case, the handle, the adjustment knobs, the trigger, and all the connectors and assembly points are plastic. That saw has been rebuilt 4 or 5 times (new bearings, brushes, lube, a couple of switches, several cords) after about 15 years of heavy use. Plastic parts never failed. Same with my Milwaukee hole shooter, purchased in '75. Both still work, both have fallen off scaffolds, fallen off ladders, been thrown into the back of trucks with other equipment and all the other crap that happens to job site tools with big crews. No cracks, still waterproof, and the plastic still holds the screws like it did when it was new. Go figure.

Anyone who's still complaining about "plastic" is living stuck in the 50s.
Modern plastics are stronger and more durable than metal counterparts,
given the same or less weight/mass. Glass reinforced polymers are
ridiculously strong and heat resistant.

Absolutely.

These are the same guys who still complain about "OSB" but haven't ever
used any modern resin/wax impregnated composite fiber sheets goods.
They used "OSB" 40 years ago and that experience informs their opinions,
today.

Guess I am replying because for the last couple of weeks I have working around a couple of old hard heads that know everything, have seen everything, done everything, and feel like there isn't much for them to learn. They have an opinion on everything and it isn't positive unless they are talking about "the way it use to be". No matter that coming up on 40 years I have had my own business longer than they have been in the trades, no matter that I am about 10 years older than them. In their 50s, they seem to "remember" an awful lot of things that were happening on site in the 50s and 60s.

Your trigger? When you mentioned OSB. There is a manufactured sheet goods product for just about every application. It is rainy season here in south Texas, and I was on the phone looking for water resistant OSB for roof patching on a current project. I was dumbfounded... one of the cavemen actually came to me with a long face and told me he couldn't work with OSB as he "didn't trust it". He very seriously told me of some incident that happened 20 years ago when it was wet for a few days, and scarred him forever.

Thankfully, they are not on my crew, but on the crew of a contractor buddy of mine. I will be glad when I am away from those guys. I readily embrace today's materials, tools and procedures. Some work better than others, but I wouldn't go back to swinging a hammer all day (literally), hand sanding (who could afford a "Speed Bloc"?), yesterday's adhesives, or corded only tools.

I am just realizing how much I can't stand those block headed morons...

Robert

I'm laughing at the fact that they're in their 50s and somehow where
working in the trades from birth. Maybe their moms were carpenters and
they remember them working while pregnant. :-)

We all know guys who's only conversations are when they're complaining
about something... heck, we have that type in here.

You know the saying, "If it weren't for bad luck, he's have no luck at
all"?
Well for some, if it weren't for complaining they'd never talk at all.

--

-MIKE-

"Playing is not something I do at night, it's my function in life"
--Elvin Jones (1927-2004)
--
www.mikedrums.com