Chatted with a guy who learned bodywork in the 70s last weekend

He was telling me how they used to hand-mix all their own primers and paints, no digital cameras or scan tools for color matching. Said he could eyeball a shade within 5% accuracy just by memory. Kinda makes me wonder, are we losing the raw skill as we get fancier tools?

3 comments

3 Comments

ramirez.vera6d agoMost Upvoted

Man that's a REALLY good question! I wonder if the old timers actually developed a deeper understanding of how materials behave because they had to touch and smell everything, not just read a computer screen. Doesn't that kind of hands-on knowledge get lost when you're just clicking in a program? Like, do you think the guy could still teach you something that a modern certification course completely skips over?

the_miles6d ago

Watch how a guy like that tests a steel beam by tapping it with a wrench and then later tells you the exact carbon content just from the ring it makes. @ramirez.vera absolutely right that there's stuff a screen can't teach you, like how a certain type of 4140 smells different when you're grinding it versus the cheaper knockoffs. I've seen guys put a drop of acid on a piece of scrap and know the alloy within a few seconds, something that would take a lab three days and five hundred bucks to figure out.

abby_morgan185d ago

Had a painter on my crew who learned his trade in the 80s, could mix any color by memory after seeing it once. Took me months to break him of the habit of eyeballing everything when we got a digital mixing station. My guys who came up on touchscreens can follow a recipe perfect every time but they freeze up if the computer goes down. Kinda makes you think about what we trade for convenience.