Every Tool's a Hammer Life Is What You Make It by Adam Savage by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub

imaginable. It is no coincidence that it is the favorite of gueril a fighters and armies

from poor countries the world around.

Close and loose tolerance can also be the difference between expensive and

cheap. One of the main differences between a cheap car engine and an expensive

one is tolerance. High-end car engine parts might be machined with an accuracy

to the ten-thousandth of an inch, while a cheap one might be machined to around

a thousandth of an inch. This sounds like the very definition of splitting hairs, but

in fact the difference is marked. When a pin fits more loosely in its hole, it can

rattle and vibrate. Vibration is an energy vampire, stealing energy, and thus

performance, away from the intended movement of the mechanism to which the

pin is a part. Making the fit between pin and hole tighter al ows for a more

efficient transfer of energy.

This concept of tolerance wil be very important as you learn not just to

engineer more complex objects, but to actual y complete them. For it is essential

that you build a loose tolerance into your process, to give yourself room to mess

up. Something I cal “mistake tolerance”—a term I’m inventing here and now. In

the past, so many of us have been afraid of this idea. We were terrified of screwing

up, because if we didn’t “get it right” then it was a waste. There was no tolerance

for waste—of time, money, talent, other people’s patience. Except this is precisely

where you figure out what something is supposed to be and how best to make it.

If you don’t give yourself enough room to maneuver and to mess up, neither may

happen.

LEARN BY DOING (POORLY)

I often describe myself as a serial skil col ector. I’ve had so many different jobs

over my lifetime—from paperboy to projectionist, from graphic designer to toy

designer to furniture designer to special effects model maker—that my virtual tool

chest is overflowing. Stil I love learning new ways of thinking and organizing,

new techniques, new ways of solving old problems. But I’m never interested in

learning a new skil for its own sake. And the skil itself is rarely the thing I care

most about. It’s often a bonus side effect of my obsession with making, or my

desire for having, some thing. The skil s I have, al of them, are simply arrows in

my mental quiver, tools in my problem-solving tool chest, to achieve that thing.

They are each of them only a means to an end. And I learned each of them

specifical y for that reason. Eventual y, and I don’t know if I was always like this

or if it developed with time, I came to realize this was the ONLY way I could

successful y learn a skil —by doing something with it, by applying it in my real

world.

One of the very first “skil s” that I picked up was juggling. It was my dad’s go-

to when they entertained or whenever there were three apples conveniently

nearby. I desperately wanted to be like my dad, so of course I wanted to juggle,

too. Unfortunately, as someone who was never athletical

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