Technical Talk

[Dominic Owen]

That sounds more like what we got up to behind the teacher's backs.

One chemistry teacher infamously had to take a six month "holiday".
The one we had after him developed a rather nervous disposition and bad case of the shakes - the poor guy left after one year and went to spend his last two before retirement at a college for refined young ladies. Looking back, it probably hadn't been the best idea for one of the physics teachers to show us how to make gas bombs. It was probably also a bad idea for said chemistry teacher to tell us what would happen if we put a bung in the boiling tube of methanol we were heating and downright foolhardy of him to stand near one end of a sneakily concealed human chain when a van de graaf generator was going flat out at the other.
We realised it might have gone bit far when he tried to take a flake of potassium out of the jar of parafin to place it on a sheet of paper in a large dish of water - his hands shook, he missed the flake and flicked a huge chunk straight past the edge of the paper. Two gallons of water then spontaneously evacuated itself from the dish and relocated to the front two rows, taking the safety screens with it.
The next replacement was a poor sod fresh from university who turned white and nearly passed out when I strolled toward him the middle of a lesson with blood pumping from the back of my hand.

If caning had still been legal I don't think any of us would have made it out of that school alive.

Apologies if that was a bit off-topic

[jonwrightk7]

We had a physics teacher who decided one day to do an experiment to demonstrate "latent heat of evaporation." This involved him placing a small beaker of water in a shallow bowl of ether. the method then, he explained to us, was he would blow through a hollow glass rod into the ether causing it to evaporate. As it evaporated it would cool the water in the beaker eventually freezing it. It evaporated the ether all right! The fumes of which he was then inhaling at a rapid rate of knots whilst trying to explain to us all what was happening to the water. The end result was that after a couple of minutes he was rambling incoherently with a far away look in his eyes, he then decided he needed to go out of the classroom which he achieved by going arse over tit through the open doorway. priceless!!

[rob565uk]

During electronics training, we used to receive practical classes from a wild-eyed and slightly crazy guy who revelled in the name of Gibson Teasdale. He used to keep a row of capacitors on his desk, some uncharged but with the odd one charged to 200-300 volts. If he decided you were not paying his demonstrations full attention, he would select one at random and throw it at you with a shout of "here, catch".... the result of which could be very painful depending on whether the capacitor was charged.....which he always found immensely amusing and laughed uproariously.

He was a good sport though. At the training establishment, there was a small sunken rectangular garden area, around 12 feet by 12 feet, bounded on all four sides by a short flight of steps. One day, about ten or twelve of us picked up his car (An Austin A35, small and light) from the adjoining car park and carried it down the steps into the bottom of the garden, where we neatly parked it right in the middle. Come home time, Gibson went searching for his motor and when he found it his face was an absolute picture until he clocked us watching him and then he saw the funny side. Naturally, we helped him lift it out and but subsequently were treated to more than our usual share of highly charged capacitors for the next few weeks.

The best part was that he was an absolutely brilliant Teacher and we all learned a tremendous amount from him. He had a lifetime of serious hands-on experience and knew how to put it across. The standout quote for me was "The secret of good soldering is to to clean everything thoroughly. You can solder a cat's a#se to a brick wall, provided both are clean"

[Renegadenemo]

My favourite teacher had nothing to do with school. He was actually a big, powerful man called Andy Nesbitt who worked as a diesel fitter for my dad's plant hire company .

It was from him that I learned 'there's no such word as can't'. It was simply pointless to say the word because all he'd do was glance up disapprovingly then carry on with whatever he was doing leaving me to figure it out, which I usually did and still do to this day.

His other party piece was to let me hurt myself. Unless what I was doing was about to result in death or serious injury he'd not intervene then once I was hopping about trying to staunch the flow of blood from my fingers or disperse the circle of tweeting birds from around my newly bashed head he'd smile and say,

"You'll not to that again, will you..."

It was the most bloody infuriating thing he could possibly do to me so I made it my mission to not give him any opportunity. Other than that he taught me a million and one ways to make, fix or cobble bits of machinery to keep them going. A splendid man.

[Piston Broke]

The one I remember from Bill that I think came from Andy

when you're strugling with a siezed part

" There's a difference between sh1ting and riving your ar5e "

roughly translates to use your head and not your muscles

[Andrew453]

" There's a difference between sh*ting and riving your arse "

Riving your arse, eh? How on earth do you that...whatever it is? Not that I want to, mind!

[Piston Broke]

Duly noted and amended

[trisaki]

its a shame my dad is no longer with us , he could answer all the questions about the special paint used on bluebird , and all the hassle that went with it , he was one of the guys at lancing west sussex that painted it , BERNARD (JIM ) NETLEY

[Renegadenemo]

Ah yes, that's when the bullet was on the front of the engine so we know there was a big air leak still going on with the delivery duct to the starter and as we were only able to get 10bar out of the PRV at the time it's also 60% down on power in that vid. Must do a new one...

[Dominic Owen]

Must do a new one...

With or without talc?