Finding your way
There’s all sorts of ways of learning how to do things – though in the end, you’ll find the approach that suits you best.
Never having had any formal engineering training, most I have learned over the years has been from a combination of reading up, then setting to in the workshop, for some good old fashioned trial and error. While you can progress mightily from merely getting stuck in, sometimes ‘sitting with mother’ and being shown how to do something is the only way to learn some of the trickier techniques.
My dad is to thank for teaching me about repairing metalwork and paint, but when it came to the spanners, he freely admitted that he wasn’t the most gifted in this aspect. Fortunately, over the years I have had the great luck to enjoy the wisdom of two very experienced vintage motorcycling men, that gave freely of their time and helped me immensely when I was a youngster and desperate to restore motorcycles, but didn’t have the knowledge to back up my enthusiasm.
Each was a different character when it came to the technical aspects of mechanical work, and, now I think back, I realise their tastes in motorcycles very much reflected their mechanical attitudes. Although Frank exhibited a penchant for Scotts and Nortons particularly, along with odd veteran models, he had an eclectic mix of machines – indeed, it seemed every time I went into his workshop, there was something different up on the bench being put together. This almost happy-go-lucky attitude towards the sort of machines he favoured showed through in his approach to mechanical work. While he was a modest man, he managed to exhibit an aura of ‘how hard can it be?’ and would attempt absolutely anything at the drop of the proverbial hat – probably, this had something to do with him being a farmer and the necessity of doing literal field repairs to keep the agricultural kit going.
It seemed that there was always something in the back of the workshop that could be pressed into service; I was always impressed with his inventiveness – so, for example, worn out sugar-beet flails could be repurposed into very effective veteran brake blocks. He considered his limited facilities as no obstacle to any challenge that came along. Bizarre set-ups attached to his century old lathe were common. These always put me in mind of John Harrison’s sea clocks, as, like Harrison, Frank had a habit of inventing contraptions of increasing complication to try and achieve the perfect solution, which to be fair, in Frank’s case, they often did! What Frank instilled in me was that no matter how complicated the task, you should always give it a go. As I survey a bust component, I can still hear him in the back of my mind. “Have a go, you’ll not break it any more than it already is, lad…”
My other mentor, Don, was an Ariel man through and through, his attachment to only one make followed though into his attitude towards the workshop being far more considered. His catchphrase (which I may have mentioned before) was: ‘Let me have a think about that.’ He’d never be rushed into a decision, but, without fail, after I had posed a technical question about how to do this or that, a couple of days later, he would usually present me with several workable solutions, often with illustrative drawings.
Don wasn’t much for contraptions – as a successful businessman, he had the wherewithal to buy special tools and often delighted in doing so, but, equally, would always research them thoroughly before forking out. I remember him converting his lathe for some very particular metric screw cutting jobs, his care even extending to buying and fitting the correct engraved plate with the gearing combinations on it. Thorough indeed.
From the preceding description, you might think that Don was a staid sort of fellow; but not a bit of it, as in his day he was a successful and fearless sidecar grasstrack racer on an outfit he had built himself (Ariel of course) and he also demonstrated a delightful level of impetuosity, being well known for jumping out of bed at oh-my-goodness-o’clock, having just worked out how he would do something, then being found at breakfast time by his wife, hard at work on his lathe, still in his pyjamas.
Sitting here reflecting while writing this column I realise what a profound influence they both had on me, especially in the way I tackle jobs. I’d like to think that I had managed to combine the best bits from both of them, a combination of Frank’s ‘can do’ attitude, tempered with Don’s measured approach. Mind you, sometimes it all goes out of the window – last night I had a little chuckle to myself when I was wielding a lump hammer and a brass drift, this as a last resort in order to remove some stubborn valve guides in a cast iron cylinder head. I am certain that they both would have despaired of such a crude method, but, nevertheless, the guides came out without damage and the new ones went in with similar success, which just goes to prove that sometimes you have to plough your own furrow too.
I’d like to think my approach is a blend of my two mentors’ different ways of doing things, a mix of ‘can do’ and measured.