Hoony, you are right about the apprentices, my son was doing app' as electrician and was with one of the training centres that put him out to different employers, and they had him pulling cables on industrial jobs or digging trenches on estates, yet a mate of his got on with an electrician who from day one taught the trade too make sure "his apprentice" was a good all round tradesman. There are I'm sure a lot og good tradesman who pass on their skills to apprentices, but unfortunately there are big gaps and a lot of kids fall in and get disheartened or take years to get it right.
I was lucky, left school at 16 and was apprenticed to an old Italian at a Fiat and Alfa service garage, had all the tools and machinery and refused to sublet anything out, we had to do it in house, and on the odd occassion where something had to go out, like welding a cracked ally cylinder head he would send the best mechanic with the job to go and see how it was done to see if we could do it next time. And he made a lot of the tools himself. Alfa would want some stupid price for the tooling to set up the rear diffs, and they were a weird set up, so he made the lot from scratch and of course improved them! He was a great tradesman, Agostino Beninca, sadly the Lexinton ciggies got him. Yep, did not know it at the time but was was very lucky, He told me years later that I got the job because the other applicants were either too big or too small for the well used overalls he had and that by employing me he did not have to buy new overalls for an apprentice that would not make him money for about two years
Ayway, back to making own tools, this is the tool to convert a standard tension wrench to a left hand tension wrench so I can properly tourque the flywheel nut on my Husky
