[Closed] Lost skills

I come from a family of Thames lightermen and there's none of them left now.

squirrelking - Member
Can/could run a marine diesel 'on the sticks' (entirely manually without any telegraph) and could get it to just about run without any auxy blowers* (but really upset the bridge when black smoke was belching out everywhere). Dunno if that's a lost art as such but with everything becoming electronic I'd hazard a guess it probably will be.

Even better when the chief is breathing down your neck and the compressors can't keep up with the slowly depleting pressures of the air bottles.
......and blown lightbulbs in the telegraph, so the bell rings, but you have to guess what manuovre the bridge wants.

I start engines now with a double tap on a touchscreen panel.

I can mix actual records instead of just pressing the beat match button.

I also use a traditional light meter for photography with the camera in full manual mode and sometimes using a camera that has film in it.

Hand sheer a sheep badly.

Use a brush in such a way that a clean floor is produced.

Handtools people are kind of amazed when i'v made the cut with no need to tidy up while they're still setting the jig up.

Handbrake turn thats gotta be a dying art with the buttons?

I'll throw in counting and mental arithmetic

When by motorbike engine started acting up, I bought the bits (some new, some second hand) and fixed it. Then overhauled the cards and got it running sweet.

Setting tappets on the OHV car engines - change bucket shims too.....
Setting points clearance & adjusting timing with a strobe timing light.
Changing clutches (on rear wheel drive cars)
Building bikes; doing your own servicing & setting up gears properly....... But I'm sure we all still do this - donr we?

Handwriting. With your hands, and that. That must be a generation, tops, from being obsolete.

The only time I even write my signature these days is when the postie arrives with a consignment from CRC his little plastic box/sensor thing. I can feel my tongue slip out of the side of my mouth while I vocalise the syllables of my name.

I don't live on the coast anymore but do individuals with rowing/small boats still do - overnight long lines, clam dragging, glass box flounder spearing etc

repairing kettles (and other components)

speaking to each other .... lots and lots of labour saving devices yet we have less and less time for each other

My boy has a variety of toy cars with sound effects, a recurring sound effect used is the whirring noise of an engine failing to start. This is a noise from my childhood that he will never hear, it means nothing to him. As a 12yr old I had mastered the lost art of balancing the starting process of an Austin Maestro without flooding it. Particularly tricky on a freezing cold morning.

That and remembering phone numbers (quick dialling on a rotary dial as well), used to know loads, only know my own now.

Setting points clearance & adjusting timing with a strobe timing light

and to add to the missing skills list - waiting. Everything has to be done and dusted now. Even our magazines seem to arrive three months before the date on the cover.

Morse code - my dad spent the war years as a radio operator on obscure pacific islands - but as a kid I remember him tapping away on the morse key of huge amateur radios "chatting" with people all around the world

Managing to navigate to a location using road signs and a sense of direction and, if required, having a look at a map before setting off.

[s]Satnavs can piss off, hateful things.[/s] Scratch that, idiots that blindly follow satnavs can piss off. The devices them selves can be useful when combined with the above.

Nunchuck skills, Bow hunting skills, computer hacking skills.

Well played sir.

Embracing new technology. Our ancestors managed to tame fire, train animals and understand seasons to grow crops, allowing them to create an excess that has enabled our level of technological advancement.

I can build a pretty good set of jumps with a spade, seems to be a lost art with the kids around here.

Managing to get to navigate to a location using road signs and a sense of direction and, if required, having a look at a map before setting off.

If the Garmin sat nav in my car is anything to go by the use of paper maps is a skill Garmin seem determined to preserve (I would have more faith in my 5 year old son to chose a sensible route)

bike trails in north kent nr whitstable?

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One advantage of everyone using Garmins for walking and cycling is that there are loads of OS maps in charity shops and people give them away.
There is no technological tool that is better than having a huge paper map out on the floor and "seeing" the landscape through the contour lines. You can see so much countryside in one go in front of you in such detail it's amaZing.

My stack of OS maps is now a metre high. And THEY ARE ALL MINE Ok? :my precious:

Starting a car using a manual choke has got to be a dying / dead art, I'm almost sorry my lads won't have to learn it 🙁

Map reading is a key one, I love using a map and compass, as soon as No. 1 son shows an interest he'll be learning.

I agree manners are a dying art (I still hold doors open for other people, especially the laydees, my Dad would (if he was able to) clout me if I didn't), mostly I get genuine thanks, although a few look at me as though I'm a serial killer

In my previous job I was a high speed cinematographer for want of a better description. I can't imagine there is anyone left now using 16mm film, all the high speed filming has gone digital. It wasn't all that efficient really, a 400ft roll was gone in just over 2 seconds at 10,000 fps and the all but a couple of feet of the film was just black, the event itself lasting just milliseconds.

Starting a car using a manual choke has got to be a dying / dead art,

You know, I was just thinking the same thing when Pictonroad mentioned cars earlier. I'm just old enough that my first car had a manual choke which could've doubled as an anti-theft device in winter.

Not just cars either, of course. I'm too young to have any direct experience with things like the old petrol lawnmowers than I used to watch with fascination as my granddad fettled about with various levers and things to try and get started, I bet there's not many people who can still do that nowadays.

I agree manners are a dying art (I still hold doors open for other people, especially the laydees,

Years ago I once held a door open for a woman going into M&S, and she called me a sexist pig for it. Er, eh, would you rather I flung it in your face?

The l'espirit de l'escalier conclusion I came to was that I wasn't holding it open because she was a lady, I was holding it open because I was a gentleman.

People are weird.

So avdave how did you get into documenting the sex life of stwers?

I can use a rake to clear leaves quietly from the garden. I don't feel the need to blow them around with a 90 dB 2 stroke motor.

I used to be a service engineer. As a result I had a requirement to carry gaskets. Loads of them, and still never had the right one when required. Ditched the lot, got a few rolls of material and made sure I had my trusty ball pein hammer. When my van was inspected, audited my manager was disappointed that I had no gaskets on board (box ticking exercise) I was delighted to demonstrate how to make any gasket. He had never seen it done despite being a good 20 years older than me.

I'm changing the colour of my trousers. A dyeing art.

The ability to park in small spaces without beepers*

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* [i]Parking Sensors[/i]

My job as a 'made to measure' curtain maker is a dying skill. I have to be able to cut patterns and pattern match.
I also cut and hang wallpaper.

Sadly in my line of work, young women just aren't interested. They want to design or earn big money. Curtain making is physical work and they'd rather sit down all day.
At the start of my apprenticeship I was on a pittance and that was for a couple of years.

Apropos of manners, I once stood up for a woman on a tube train. As I did so, I realised she was not expecting but was rather a fierce looking woman of a particular sort with a beer belly. Deary me, if looks could kill I certainly wouldn't be here to tell the tale. All a bit unnecessary really.

young women just aren't interested. They want to design or earn big money.

How dare they!

Flaperon - Of course why shouldn't they?
However someone still needs to make up the designs into clothing, curtains etc.

Edit Not everyone is brainy or can get degrees. Some are better with using their hands or skills elsewhere. Payment for this is at the botttom scale and youngsters today don't think about starting at the bottom and working their way up.
I have my own small business from starting off small, getting the skills and working hard.

I'm not sure it's young people not wanting to work. I think it's that they want the big-time fantastic jobs, rather than everyday mundane ones (not saying yours is mundane Bunnyhop!).

We're constantly told that we can achieve great things, and our dreams can come true.. so can you really blame kids for being disappointed when they find out their job is going to be tedious...?

Bow hunting is quite popular in the US, by the way.

Yeah I hear the chicks love it

Sadly in my line of work, young women just aren't interested.

Unless you want to take on staff then thats they way you should want it - better than being be-devilled by younger, cheaper competition. 🙂

Can we just have

"Dealing with shit cars?"

Singlehanded jumpstart in the rain.
double declutching a knackered gearbox
knowing precises how to stir the gear stick to find third
changing a wheel with a wheel exactly the same size.
knowing precisely which cable to waggle to get something to work
hammering your seized drum brakes so you can set off
keeping up with traffic in a 750cc fiat panda.

Once when our car wouldn't start (early 90s), my Dad went through this long ritual of spraying this, pulling the other thing off.. all standard procedures in the 60s. Started itself in the end - dirty petrol or something, so his skills weren't necessary.

I can set and read an OS map, tie knots, build bivouacs, use a felling axe and could teach scouts all manner of good stuff they wouldn't let me these days. I can use a linotype machine and the new photoelectric ones, I know how to kern type. I once wrote a print estimating programme in Basic then those new fangled spreadsheets came along. My typewriter is now rusting away as is my shorthand notebook I had to use in journalist college.
I can judge distance and take photographs without a rangefinder on a plate camera and judge exposure without a meter, develop and print film.
In fact other than write bollox on internet forums all my skills are now unnecessary, I am useless in modern society so should now die off. 😉

"Dealing with shit cars?"

.... with the wrong tools

I had a problem with the carburettor on an old petrol transit. It was sucking in air from somewhere it shouldn't. I'm not a mechanic but I found that if I pushed the body of the carb in a certain direction it worked so for lack of anything else to hand I hammered a wooden wedge between the carb just to get me home.

it then got me to work again, and home again for a few weeks before it rattled out. So I made half a dozen more wedges and kept them in the glovebox. Occasionally at traffic lights I'd have to pop the bonnet and jump out, hammer a wooden stake into the engine like Van Helsing and be ready to drive away before the lights changed.

I can judge distance and take photographs without a rangefinder on a plate camera and judge exposure without a meter, develop and print film.
In fact other than write bollox on internet forums all my skills are now unnecessary, I am useless in modern society so should now die off

If I remember correctly George Eastman's suicide note read simply "my work is done" 🙁

BUT there is absolutely no way I am going back to slide rules and log tables either.

I used to love log/sin/cos tables when I was about 9 or 10. Barlow's 5 figure tables was my favourite......

Bunnyhop - Member
youngsters today don't think about starting at the bottom and working their way up.

maybe they might, if it was still possible to "work one's way up".

old people don't die anymore, they just carry on, earning a ****ing fortune.

and once, just once, in a blue moon, when an old giffer retires. who is chosen to replace him/her? - the patient youngster? (who's been diligently learning the trade, building relationships with suppliers+clients)

no, it's some other old bastard, earning even more money than the last one.

(i'm assuming they just swap jobs)

We are installing a new piece of signage outside our building incorporating a TV Screen, the difference in price between the standard outdoor and the superbright one to cope with direct sun was £5K! So I had to work out the angle of the sun and whether it would shine directly onto the screen, it took me 20secs on google as I didn't have an almanac to hand, and then 5mins with a map and a protractor to do this. Except some people in the office didn't believe this could be done at all never mind that I could do it.

Loved this

hammer a wooden stake into the engine like Van Helsing and be ready to drive away before the lights changed.

Handwriting. With your hands, and that. That must be a generation, tops, from being obsolete.

Hell yes. That was the biggest shock when I entered teaching several years ago; I was appalled by the state of kids handwriting, spelling and grammar - literacy in general.

I think I am correct (not my subject) in saying that pupils can gain a National qualification (N3..?) in Scotland using 'text speak'.

I really, truly hope that handwriting never become obsolete.

Darning socks... hah try asking her tell me what she says.. 😆