Susan Martin (u/susanm25)

Posts

Had to get a stubborn bolt loose on a barge in Portland with zero room for a normal wrench.

The bolt was on a pump housing, maybe 6 inches from a bulkhead. My buddy said to just cut it, but that would have wrecked the housing. I grabbed a cheap 12-inch pipe wrench from my kit, but the handle wouldn't clear. So, I took the head off the wrench, slid it onto the bolt, and used a 3-foot piece of scrap pipe as a cheater bar on the head itself. It popped loose on the first real pull. Anyone ever had to get that creative with basic tools down there?

3 comments

c/electronics-repairers•

susanm25•1mo ago

Overheard a customer say 'it's just a board swap' and it got me thinking

I was at a supply house last week and this guy was talking about a repair, saying he doesn't diagnose anymore, he just replaces the whole main board. He said it's faster and the part is cheap. I get the speed thing, but it made me a bit sad. I remember 15 years ago, you'd spend an hour with a multimeter tracing a bad cap or a blown transistor on a VCR board. It felt like real detective work. Now it feels like we're just parts changers sometimes. Anyone else feel like the skill of component-level troubleshooting is getting lost?

3 comments

c/archaeology-discoveries•

susanm25•1mo ago

A volunteer at the Mesa Verde dig last summer told me he finds more pottery shards after a heavy rain, which seems obvious now but I'd never connected the weather to surface finds before.

Has anyone else had a simple field observation from a colleague completely shift how you look for artifacts?

3 comments

Posts

Had to get a stubborn bolt loose on a barge in Portland with zero room for a normal wrench.

Overheard a customer say 'it's just a board swap' and it got me thinking

A volunteer at the Mesa Verde dig last summer told me he finds more pottery shards after a heavy rain, which seems obvious now but I'd never connected the weather to surface finds before.

Recent Comments