How old are you?

How old are you?

  • Total voters
    132
mickri said:
Maybe the better question would be is your lathe older than you are. I joined the ranks of the independently poor (retired) many moons ago for health reasons and miraculously my health immediately improved. Don't miss working at all. I think that I am older than my old craftsman lathe. Not sure on that. Could be a push one way or the other.
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Ooh, good one.
I’m 65. My lathe is only 46 :)
 
pontiac428 said:
After seeing the poll graph, I'm worried that H-M won't be around by the time I retire. Manual machining will be a lost art by then, I suppose. More so than it already is. I'm good at tuning and rebuilding carburetors, too... Whatever shall I do?
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While it is an interesting graph, I think it probably has more to do with who has time to peruse the posts. I don't know what the membership number is currently, but I would guess that the percentage of members responding to the poll is less than .04%.

The bigger issue is the decline of the number of skilled manual machinists in the work force. There is no denying that CNC machining is a more cost efficient method of manufacturing nor that CNC machining requires a completely different skill set than manual machining.

However, even though the demand from industry will decrease to near zero levels. I suspect that the hobby machinists group will grow. There is a certain mystic about being taking a lump of metal and turning it into a true work of art and have it be functional as well. For me, it instills a sense of power knowing that I can rise above my surround environment, providing for my needs and those of people around me, and not being dependent on the world around me. I suspect that is very true for many others as well, based on the posts on this forum.
 
I guess I should have said I was 7 yrs old when my two 1950 Willys trucks were made and 3 years old when my 46 Willys was made. I was born in 1943
Dave
 
My lathe is 32 years older than me! See post #20, pg 2
 
Yes, there is probably a financial bias with who has a Machine Shop in their garage. Many younger folks are just starting out, and don't have thousands to invest in shop equipment. For many, peak earning years are in their 50s and 60s. Usually, they have most of their bills paid off, and have more discretionary money floating around.

The lathe and mill in the garage are "infants", but some of my hand tools (Starrett level, Browne and Sharp combination square, etc) are older than my father.

In the trade I work in, I am considered the "old man". But then, Information Technology and Engineering has a lot of youngsters in it.
 
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I have no " shop machines" that are older than me. The closest is my Atlas/Craftsman 6 x 18 which was made when I was a teenager. All other shop machines were purchased new. However, I do have some old iron. The oldest documented is my 30" sheet metal shear which is badged 1893. In addition, I have several post drills, leg vises, and multiple anvils which almost certainly were made more than a century ago and likely in the 1800's.
 
@addertooth and @RJSakowski, you guys are probably right. I'm comfortably in my 40s, but I've been doing this a long time. It's because of my dad. He had me in the shop at a very young age, teaching me and letting me play with metal. He helped me convert a cargo container into a shop (while I was living in a mobile home), gave me a Millermatic 35 welder, a drill press, a plasma cutter, and later a RF31, all around the very beginning of my 20's. Before he retired, his job let him stumble into used equipment for a favor or a deal. He still does things like that, I got a tapmatic with a full set of collets in the mail from him last fall. He built a tapping jig table, so he figured I'd get more use out of it. I feel lucky, because now it's a lifestyle to tinker in the shop and do what others can't on a whim. Long live H-M!
 
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