| [GMCnet] Piston rod stretch in the 455 [message #279871] |
Sun, 14 June 2015 09:52  |
glwgmc
Messages: 1014
Registered: June 2004
Karma:
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Senior Member |
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Hi Rob,
I am not trying to push S&J or any other engine builder that has made the investment in CNC production tooling - that is an individual choice. I was responding to the original posters comment about it being hard to find really good machining any more.
I build fine furniture and the same arguments are made any time some one talks about CNC machining of furniture components. On the one hand there is the cheer that goes up for the “highly skilled” craftsman who meticulously shapes and finishes four cabrio chair legs, for example, no two of which are really the same but they work. On the other hand there is the boo that goes up for the production shop which uses a cnc machine to spit out four perfectly alike cabrio chair legs which work perfectly. Which is “better”? And, is there a reason to pay 5x to 10x as much to the “highly skilled” craftsman for that chair? (BTW - that is why I always suggest my customers buy machine made chairs to match my table design if they can instead of paying me so very much more to hand craft the chairs for them. The difference in price really is 5x or more)
For sure there will once in a while be a flaw in a machine made chair, but that happens far less often than it does with the “highly skilled” craftsman built chairs. And, it is the reason that I don’t normally use things like hand planes, hand sharpened lathe tools, hand cut dovetails, etc. I can do those things, but my doing so will just wind up costing the customer more for little or no value gain. My take, anyway. Others may make a different decision, but my objective is to constantly improve the value proposition for my customers by ever improving my efficiency so I can build a higher quality piece of fine furniture, faster, and be able to sell it to my customers at ever lower prices while still enjoying a good return on my time and investment.
Oh, and I don’t use CNC machines myself simply because I do not want to be in the high volume fine furniture business. I get along just fine with my low volume, every customer becomes a friend forever, mode of operation that leaves plenty of time for our GMCing. But, I do use state of the art power tools, jigs and fixtures and carbide over tool steel cutting edges for the ever improving efficiency part. See you in a couple of months.
Jerry
Jerry Work
The Dovetail Joint
Fine furniture designed and hand crafted in the 1907 former Masonic Temple building in historic Kerby, OR
glwork@mac.com
http://jerrywork.com
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Message: 2
Date: Sun, 14 Jun 2015 15:12:02 +1000
From: "Robert Mueller"
To:
Subject: Re: [GMCnet] Piston rod stretch in the 455
Message-ID:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Jerry,
I agree that experience is beginning to show that S&J appear to be building quality engines for our GMC's and I agree "that it is
hard to find really good machine work done manually with worn out tooling."
However, there are lots of small time engine machine shops that can't justify the expense of numerically controlled (NC) machines
whose skilled machinists use properly maintained manual tools to obtain just as good results as the ones with NC machines.
Regards,
Rob M.
The Pedantic Mechanic
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Jerry & Sharon Work
78 Royale
Kerby, OR
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