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Appreciation post: the old timer at the Tulsa hangar who made me redo a safety wire 3 times
Back when I was a green A&P in Tulsa around 2009, a guy named Dale made me cut off and redo the same safety wire on a Cherokee's oil filter three times in one shift. Third time he leaned in and said 'twist it tight enough that it sings, not so tight it cries,' and then walked off without another word. At the time I was mad, but I still hear that line every single time I pick up my twisters, 15 years later. He never explained it, just made me feel it in my hands until I got it. Any of you have an old timer whose one dumb saying still lives in your head on the floor?
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joseph5298d ago
That line about singing versus crying is gonna stick with me now and I've never even met the guy. I had a similar deal with an old sheet metal hand named Ray who watched me buck rivets on a flap skin and kept tapping the gun out of my hand saying "let the bucktail do the work, you're just the taxi driver." Took me way too long to figure out he meant stop forcing it and let the tool and the bar meet in the middle. The maddening part is they never sit you down and explain, they just stand there and let you wreck a few before it clicks. What gets me is those guys are mostly gone now and nobody trains like that anymore, it's all rush rush and get it out the door. You were lucky to get three tries out of him instead of a write up, that's how you know he actually gave a damn about you.
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