I absolutely love the sawhorse(s) I built based on this video.
Everything is awesome except being a YouTube thing. I think video is the worst possible way to impart specific data. OK, maybe pheromones and interpretive dance are worse. (The video versus text thing is part of why politics is so weird now. Politics, as practiced now, is almost pure emotion. It’s nearly devoid of facts or logic. That’s why it’s almost entirely communicated by video or memes.)
At the end of the video I expected to find a link to the parts list. Just a quick *.pdf. Heck, I’d pay a buck or two for the *.pdf just to support the nice guys disseminating their excellent ideas. But alas, there was none. (They’re advertising coffee and stuff… I might buy some because I appreciate what they’re doing and like coffee.) As for a text based *.pdf, I was thinking like I’m from a different era; which I suppose I am. Sigh. I’m officially an “old guy”.
I’m GenX. I’m literate. This doesn’t mean I sit in a rocking chair whining about kids on the lawn. It means I have skills I’d prefer to use in a world that has moved on. I’m functionally literate. I happily use the written word to glean information. I can follow that knowledge and do things. It’s as easy to me as shifting a manual transmission to get down the road; pretty much subconscious.
I’m not special but this time is. Reading has been the “go to” knowledge method among learned men since Ancient Greece until what feels like just the last few years. Think about it; a few lucky rich bastards got to listen to Plato’s airy philosophy or Diogenes’ bitching in person. Only a few dozen or hundreds among all of humanity got to meet the brainiacs in person. For the next 2,400 years humanity could only read about it. (If nobody had written their shit down, we wouldn’t know about it. One assumes there were equals to Plato in non-literate societies. Aside from carvings and a legend or two: All those moments were lost in time, like tears in rain.)
It takes a lot of training to read a book and then do the thing. Everyone can do it in theory. Very few do it in practice.
Americans have 12 years of public school and a smattering of whatever follows. That’s more than enough. Sadly, it was invested so deeply in indoctrination that all that schooling usually amounts to jack shit.
If you’re young, say under 30 or so, you’re born to a world where the library has devolved from “repository of knowledge” to “where homeless people shoot up”. So why read? The brightest humans of any era learn from written instructions; often landing somewhere on a spectrum from complicated scientific theories, through garden plant pest identification, to cake recipes. But it’s probably not common to an average person. Maybe it never was?
Without intending to be rude, I suspect the average person tops out at “monkey see, monkey do”. They need to see the thing, not read it. Youth readily do what the cell phone tells them, but they clearly prefer “visual pantomimes” to an essay.
(As an aside, people seem to prefer stories wrapped up in emotion to straight data. Possibly that’s normal for all eras too. I think again about politics where one side will call the others racist, Nazi, shitheads and the other will respond about tree-hugging, Commie, fuckwits. Neither will ponder GDP or capital gains taxes or whatever; because that’s actual facts and nobody wants that. It seems the same thing as one sports team being “bastards” and another being “heroes” when they both play the same sport.)
I not trying to “punch down”. My world wasn’t perfect and no era is flawless. Nobody’s responsible for the era into which they’re born. A 30 year old is unlikely to read and work from that skill as they are to manually shift a 5 speed. Why would they?
As it was when the illuminated manuscript was steamrolled by Gutenberg, it is my task to live within the avalanche Zuckerberg (and others) unleashed. Thus, I had to wade through a 20 minute video to get what I could read in 5 minutes. (It’s a very pleasant 20 minute video. I highly recommend it for pure entertainment.)
I thought about this a lot.
I had to hit pause and rewind a bunch of times to hear the dimensions of 5 pieces of wood (including two angles). I scribbled the details on a Post-It Note, turned off YouTube, and built a sawhorse. It is not that my way of thinking is better, it is that it’s different. Knowing I’d lose the Post-It Note, I made myself a jig that has all the information I could ever want. It has the dimensions of everything, both angles, etc… It’s printed in yellow PLA. I like it.
If it were for sale at the local box store I’d gladly buy. (The only thing I forgot to add to my design is a hole to hang it on the wall.)
I like my jig. I built it entirely myself. I’m thinking thinking about selling a copy to anyone who wants one. If you’re interested, shoot me an e-mail. I’m not trying to get rich. It just feels like a good thing to share the word about making super-sweet sawhorses at $20 a pop.
Below you’ll see my costs for 6 studs and a pound of screws, plenty to make a TWO sawhorses and have some screws left over. You’ll probably get better prices if you live near “civilization”.
If enough people are interested in the jig I’ll see what I can do.
I was going to post a photo of the jig here but my phone is being obstreperous. I’ll post photos later. Does that prove I’m an “old guy”? Shit!
Update: Photos managed.
Don’t freak out over the uneven base. Since it was just a “prototype” I made it with absurdly sparse infill. I’ll add more infill to make a better print if anyone is interested.
Some inside details about 3d printing; there are many ways to embed text into a print but each one is a hassle in its own special way. I tried adding text to the Fusion 360 model and importing the object into Bambu Studio. Bambu Studio uploaded the object and then inexplicably flaked out. As an alternative, I added text using Bambu Studio. That worked but you can’t add two lines to a single Studio object. So what you’re looking at is four objects all lined up.
The moral of the story is that I’m being a dumbass. Trying to embed too much text probably means I’m barking up the wrong tree. (Wait for my next step!)
Regardless, I love my jig. If it had a hole to hang on the wall it’d be perfect… for me. The next step will try to improve it for other folks. Wish me luck.
If it were all about me, the story would end with the jig. However, I began to think even deeper about the idea of “sub-literate” or “voluntarily non-literate”. As a big bad 3D printer guy, why not embrace the idea?
I looked again at my jig. All that text is almost pure math. For people can read but don’t want to, they’re going to lose their shit over a jig that has that much text! What I made looks like the simultaneous equation math problems that nobody liked in high school. Count on me to go several degrees of abstraction deep without thinking about it. It doesn’t look like a sawhorse, it doesn’t smell like a sawhorse, it looks like equations, and it’s fuckin yellow!
Can I communicate “sawhorse” without language at all? I think so.
Stay tuned as I turn the world’s simplest shop project into a three level, 3d printed, thought experiment. (If/when I finally figure it out, I’ll offer one for sale. I humbly think my idea is pretty neat.)
I’m with you on this.
I’m from the last of the Silent Gen. I’m also literate. I’m functionally literate. I happily use the written word to glean information. I can follow that knowledge and do things.
I also have a hearing problem so a You Tube video is worthless for me.
I’d happily buy one. Keep fighting the good fight, your efforts ARE appreciated.
Ok. Two people interested. That’s good.
After a shaky launch I’ve got all the details and an order form ready to go at https://adaptivecurmudgeon.com/sawhorses/
Follow the instructions to shoot me an email with details about what you want and where to ship it.
There’s like 3 links with different ways to pay (and a “snailmail option” for people who aren’t in a hurry).
I hope to hear from you.
I love the jig. I’d buy one.
Then I’ll drill a hole of the appropriate size on the opposite side from the text and hang it on the wall somewhere 😉
I’ll happily add a hanging hole to the design.
I added a hole to the design. I’ve got all the details and an order form ready to go at https://adaptivecurmudgeon.com/sawhorses/
Please follow the instructions to shoot me an email with details about what you want and where to ship it.
There’s links with different ways to pay (and a “snailmail option” for people who aren’t in a hurry).
I hope to hear from you.
The jig can also be used to trim the feet of the sawhorse legs so they sit flat, on a flat surface, if such a thing exists.
Nice sawhorses.
The video explains the logic behind leaving the legs untrimmed. Specifically if you’re outside the angled base helps the sawhorse dig into uneven gravel. I my shop floor cement is cracked all to hell so I stuck with the untrimmed base. I found it works equally perfectly on my crappy cement and dirt outside.
I beg pardon, didn’t watch the vid, those things soak up too much data for too little info. I’m from the “memory is precious” generation, and still programme CNC via hand & pencil tech drawings and Q&M code, line by line. My machines are good soldiers (they do exactly and only what they are told), but not great soldiers that do what you want and can be left alone to figure out the nitty gritty for themselves.
make me one please.
Awesome! Third interested person.
Glad to make you one. I’ve got all the details and an order form ready to go at https://adaptivecurmudgeon.com/sawhorses/
Please follow the instructions to shoot me an email with details about what you want and where to ship it.
There’s links with different ways to pay (and a “snailmail option” for people who aren’t in a hurry).
I hope to hear from you.
Economies of scale: The jig is up and I want one.
As a longtime fabricator of sawing horses I commend and agree with you.
Also, READING:
https://archive.is/7k8A3
Thanks!
Great. I’ll get my butt in gear and figure out details for the jig.
I’d be glad to make a jig or three. I’ve got all the details and an order form ready to go at https://adaptivecurmudgeon.com/sawhorses/
Please follow the instructions to shoot me an email with details about what you want and where to ship it.
There’s links with different ways to pay (and a “snailmail option” for people who aren’t in a hurry).
I hope to hear from you.
It seems funny to me that even before photos were common someone said that “somebody who doesn’t read has no advantage over someone who can’t.” Then after illustrations were a thing, it made it easier to understand what was written. The whole “a picture is worth a thousand words thing”. Now we have people who would rather watch a video than read instructions. Even if the video is of somebody reading the instructions poorly and not clarifying anything, they would rather watch 20 minutes of video (and commercials) than read 5 minutes of instructions. The sawhorse video is a good one, but in most cases, I would rather read what I need.
I know what you mean about the written word going out of fashion. At my age (71 and retired) I started writing two books – the retirement hobby of technical authors. One is about land navigation (I was trained to be extremely skilled at this using map and compass) and one about “leather working for outdoorsmen” (a provisional working title to make knife sheaths, belt pouches and other suchlike items). I ran up against the twin problems of getting them published – the industry is dominated by women – and nowadays as you say, people don’t read and/or study from books. So why bother?
So, yes, like tears in the rain, all that knowledge and skill that I have developed will disappear once I pop my clogs, kick the bucket, fall off the perch, be pushing up daisies or, to put it bluntly, I die. >};o)
I do wonder what will happen when the electronic kit ceases to work and the people are left clueless. Starting to read stuff from scratch so to speak and assimilating the knowledge will take time, time which they may not have. On the job training is all well and good but being lost in winter isn’t the time to start learning “how to do it”.
Still, you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it read a book … or something like that.
Phil B
Please may I purchase three?. One for me, one for my son and one for the prospective son-in-law; Christmas stocking stuffers…..
To whom and where do I send my $$
Differ
Three! Holy cow! That’s awesome. Give me a couple days to figure out postage and order filament. I can cram several in one box so postage for three is probably the same as for one and you’ll get a better deal! I’ll post details as soon as I know them.
I’d love to make you three jigs!
I’ve got all the details and an order form ready to go at https://adaptivecurmudgeon.com/sawhorses/
Please follow the instructions to shoot me an email with details about what you want and where to ship it.
There’s links with different ways to pay (and a “snailmail option” for people who aren’t in a hurry).
I hope to hear from you.