There were a couple of other things I wanted to say in my previous (far too long
) post about how to give good advice to potential purchasers of mini-lathes, but I clean forgot.
Firstly, even Quinn of Blondihacks fame (who I respect and admire greatly and is easily one of the best educators for beginner/early-intermediate hobbyists on YouTube and generally doesn't suffer from a '
You don't have a Monarch 10? Pfft!" attitude), is guilty of dismissing the potential usefulness of 7x Chinese mini-lathe as a class of lathes in her "How to buy an import lathe" video.
In fact, most YouTubers using Chinese benchtop lathes, whatever their size, seem to take a slightly rueful, apologetic tone about their machines' capabilities. It's almost like they're ashamed of not having US/UK/European old iron that can hog out tool steel at deep DOCs in a single pass.
That's silly of course. If you can do useful work on a tool and teach others useful skills via that useful work, then that tool doesn't need to be apologised for, and
shouldn't be apologised for, as 'apologising' perpetuates that ambient culture of 'macho' machinist gatekeeping we've seen for years (and one that
this place is thankfully, largely free of
).
The other thing I wanted to do, is explain why I feel giving sensible, temperate, informed advice (and where there are gaps in our knowledge, making those gaps very visible to any potential audience), is not just an optimal thing to do but (and I'm kinda getting into dangerous territory here but eh...this is
my opinion only, I'm
not the boss of anybody else and barely even of myself
) actually an
ethical imperative.
Wait...wait...hear me out.
When we give purchasing advice (whether
proscriptive or
prescriptive) to someone who is likely to lack the knowledge and experience to be able to validate our advice, we are potentially 'spending their money'. Unless we're talking to a millionaire, that's quite the responsibility, and so, the onus really should be on us to take that responsibility seriously, and make sure we are providing the
absolute best advice possible.
That doesn't mean we should be fearful of giving advice, but just that we should be fearful of giving advice that makes hard assertions ("
you should definitely not buy this" or "
this is janky, useless, garbage that has no virtue and is an utter waste of your money" or even "
this is the best thing ever in the history of humanity" type of assertions) that we've not put enough effort into validating.
I do see,
very occasionally, blanket "
dont buy anything from China, it's all rubbish" silliness from a very small number of certain members on here, and that's
bad,
lazy, and by
my standards (again, just to reiterate, I'm so obviously not the boss of anyone, you can see that fact from space!
)
unethical advice.
So, if it feels like I've finger wagged, it's not just for the sake of arguing on the internet (got bored with that a few years ago, although too recently to claim any virtue for it!
), but because I'm
morally judging yo...feeling empathy for the poor rudderless, confused beginner (still
definitely having a foot in that space myself
).
Oh and apologies for another over long post. I'm afraid I suffer from a programmer's fear of being ambiguous and imprecise, combined with a love of words
(particularly my own!
).
2024-02-22_06-49-33 by nessism, on Flickr
