Need many more like this on all types of work.

Times and methods may change, but the timeless message is that it is important to do the job right and quality matters. It is the craftsman who has the skill. The stuff he uses are called tools, and do not have talent in themselves. That point is missed by too many these days.

There is nothing more important than actually having done something before, and if you have some knowledge, failing just makes you learn faster.

Well, there is that! And it's just a nominal size hole, too! Taper reamers are rare and expensive as you probably know.

I'd much rather use a roll pin than a taper pin nine times out of ten. At least roll pins will take a while to fall out whereas a taper pin is either perfectly seated or totally useless. Depending on the job of course.

a necktie would be unsafe - it could get caught up in the reamer and suck your head in. ;-)

Thomas LaMora Big difference between a Windsor knot tie which is suicidal ly stupid in a shop and a bowtie. Do you not understand what a bowtie is ?

What a slob man. I wear a tux to the shop every day. Gotta keep it classy.

What is the modern alternative?

Newer is not always better. It's just newer. I have all kinds of equipment that was built in the 30's and 40's that still hold better tolerances than a brand new machine.

@assassinlexx I'd take fixing the keyway over fighting with the remnants of a sheared taper pin.

At the museum, we have on display, side by side, a blueprint and the pencil drafted drawing which was the source for it. Young folks are amazed to realize the original was hand drawn. I use the display to explain the "garbage in, garbage out" principle. The drawing needed to be accurate in every way needed to physically create the described machine. Any error would cause the machinist to fail in his work and the project would also consequently fail. Any engineering changes would require the draftsman to create a new revised drawing.Today, an engineering change is easy and cheap to implement with the amazing tools in the CAD world. This still doesn't exempt the engineer or machinist from knowing what they are doing. Perhaps an ignorant person may be able to blindly follow a cake recipe and still make a proper cake. But if they don't understand what they are doing, they are incapable of catching and correcting any error which may occur along the way, and the cake fails. Ignorance also prevents innovation. Modern tools should advance productivity and innovation. They are no excuse for us to become ignorant or indifferent to what we create.

@nick f Except when more than one print of the drawing has been made and the QA process doesn't have tight control over version numbers. It's the exact same issue as with multiple copies of the computer files. The problem isn't one of paper versus digital file, it's one of inadequate version control. The manual *or* digital machinist has to be given the exact version-control information, and he must make sure he's working from the latest approved version. In the paper-only era, plenty of wrong stuff got made from drawings that weren't properly checked and released. In fact, we used to say, they weren't released at all . . . they "escaped." We had to forbid the at-will making of whiteprints (the reverse of blue prints but the same process). Only an authorized QA technician was allowed to make and distribute prints, and they had to have logged serial numbers. All released serial numbers of already distributed prints had to be collected up and logged back in before new version drawings could be released. Only by rigorous enforcement of these rules were we able to keep screw-ups to an acceptable level, and this process became much easier and more certain when we finally employed digital methods--whether the part was to be made manually or by CNC.

@nick f We use a file management system called Perforce. It forces you to check a file out in order to make any changes to it, and then to check it back in when you're done. Each time the file is updated, the version number is incremented. All previous versions are saved so if needed, the file can be reverted. Permissions are assigned such that only authorized people can update the files, while others only have read access. Perforce is designed to prevent the very problem you've described.

@Charlie I'd be interested to know why you think this is the case. Did you read an article about how machinists are trained these days? I know a few young (25-35 years old) machinists who do exquisite work refurbing old machine tools. They definitely know how to do benchwork of all kinds and do it well. I know at least two of them graduated from our local community college machine tech program.

i find no one fills out revision columns.... this 'perforce' sounds like a saviour for my particular situation!