I have been trying to get this message over for a few years now on the internet, the people with all the knowledge are dying off, and without their knowledge a lot of 'hands on' experience will be lost. I am desperate to empty my head of all I know before I snuff it, but it is getting harder each passing day.
It is that 'hands on' approach that needs to be saved, that is why I go into so much detail in my posts, it isn't BS, but genuine methods of usually the easiest way to do a job.
Books are OK, but modern ones can be a little long winded and too technical for the layman to understand, especially people new to machining, and having watched most of the MIT vids, I came away really disappointed with the safety and technique side of things.
But on the other hand, I do have a large collection of older machining books in PDF format, mainly from the turn of the last century to about the 1930's. Everything you ever need to know about techniques is contained within, and when I have say a holding or machining problem, a quickie read through one or two sections has my problems solved. There is nothing very new in modern day machining, just old methods brought up to date. There are a lot of old books in the public domain, and are well worth reading through.
As far as I am concerned, most of the youtube videos are from people who have had success in one thing and captured it on 'film', and then class themselves as master machinists. There are some 'greats' on there, but they are few and very far between, and a lot of those are in a foreign language that I can't understand.
I took on an 'apprentice' about 5 or 6 years ago, and taught him how to machine using no more than emails, sometimes, dozens in a day, him asking the questions, me sending back scans of my C-o-C's and lots of text. In fact, I never met him in person until two years after we started, and he was getting on for 70 by then. This is the gent I am talking about.
http://start-model-engineering.co.uk/
So that proves the internet can be used as a good teaching aid. A little out of the ordinary how we did it, but it worked.
If I was in better health, I would do exactly the same thing again.
In all honesty, I don't think what you are proposing about videos can be done easily, mainly because of the ambulance chasing leeches and the official safety brigade (sorry if I have offended anyone in that line of work).
Everything you will be trying to capture will be done by people who use methods that are usually frowned upon nowadays, I'm not talking of dangerous practices, but methods that would have modern day safety experts giving birth to a cow. I have to make sure things I post shouldn't cause a problem with regards to that side of things.
It is OK doing it in our own shops, putting it into the public domain could leave yourselves wide open to all sorts of legal battles.
I am still a great believer in a person asking me how to do something, and then inviting him into my shop for one to one instruction, once they see how it is done and how easy it usually is, the problem is solved in not time at all.
Videos and pictures only usually show one part of a procedure, when a person is standing next to you, his eyes can see each little nuance of what is happening in front of him, so most probably picks up more than ten times the information that is shown by other means.
Why not try to organise mentor sessions, where inexperienced people can travel and spend a day or a few hours in a more experienced person's shop. Previously, I have done this sort of thing, and still do occasionally. I have a personal friend now that comes over about once a month, and learns something new each time he gets into my shop, I show him how to do it on my lathe, mill or surface grinder, then I let him have a go for a time. People are willing to travel a couple of hundred miles for some critical one to one instruction, say taper turning or screwcutting. Once learned, usually never completely forgotten.
John
