I’ve had the pleasure and honor of working with and learning from several older machinists over the years. The knowledge they’ve given me has been invaluable of course, but sometimes their sayings and bits of wisdom have been even more useful! A few examples:
“Look, there’s a lot of ways to do things in machining; some people do things my way, and other people do it wrong.”
“I’m no stranger to hard work– I’ve seen it done!”
“No matter how many times I cut this, I can’t get it long enough!”
“If he wasn’t afraid of burning his fur, I could teach a monkey to MIG weld.”
“It’s a CNC, not a microwave. There’s no magic wand in the spindle.”
“Some guys, the best day they have at work is when they aren’t screwing anything up.”
I know there are a lot more, I just can’t remember them all off hand. I’ll try to add to this list as they come to me.