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The end of model-making?


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Not the end, but reduced numbers of those with the developed physical skills. Definite problem for a hobby which depends on a little insight into the functioning of small mechanisms if a working layout is to result. While you can get a carpenter to build the support structure, it becomes very expensive if the model railway element has to be constructed and maintained by a contractor.

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I’d have thought touchtyping on a mobile phone with no haptic feedback required good manual dexterity

Yes, it probably does, but it doesn't develop 'spatial awareness' or the ability to perform tasks that include the 'Z axis', required to perform delicate, dextrous or craft like tasks.

 

Grinling Gibbons, the great baroque wood carver said, that to make a first rate wood carver he liked his apprentices to start the craft no later than 8 years old.

 

"Life so short and the craft so long to learn"    William Morris

 

Guy

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Being a glass half full type of person I would say that this would be a clear signal to the powers that be that manual dexterity is just as important as core academics. Being a realist I suspect it won’t make a blind bit of difference until we are in a full blown crisis. FWIW this can be said to be true on both sides of the pond as practical skills have been neglected here too.

 

Cheers (I suppose)

 

David

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The depth of online obsession among the very young is frightening. I heard today of a 9-y-o who, having downloaded a free online game, has in two months spent £140 on upgrades. He does very well at skool, is a socially easy, happy smiling boy. But £140!

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The depth of online obsession among the very young is frightening. I heard today of a 9-y-o who, having downloaded a free online game, has in two months spent £140 on upgrades. He does very well at skool, is a socially easy, happy smiling boy. But £140!

 

Wait till Dad gets the credit card bill.....

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In the future everything will be 3D printed. The need to wield a scapel, Stanley Knife or saw will disappear. As for things like lathes and millers, these will be museum exhibits. People will be amazed that people use to spend hours filing and shaping things.

Only by people who don't want to enjoy the experience of making their own creations. Why do people still learn to play musical instruments, paint, pot, garden, etc. when they can buy or download music, etc.?

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The depth of online obsession among the very young is frightening. I heard today of a 9-y-o who, having downloaded a free online game, has in two months spent £140 on upgrades. He does very well at skool, is a socially easy, happy smiling boy. But £140!

You could almost buy a OO loco for that!

 

Returning to the OP, I once made a BBC programme around a surgeon who specialised in micro surgery. We filmed him for about eight hours one night replanting an almost severed hand (circular saw- very nasty) which, amongst other things, involved reconnecting as many capillaries and nerve bundles as possible under an operating microscope. On his office desk he had an operating microscope and a little rig with the relevant tubes and incredibly fine sutures so that in odd moments he could practice the techniques which were I guess to surgery what Pendon is to modelling. I can't see that level of skill being replaced by 3D printing anytime soon. The operation was BTW very successful and, despite his thumb and three fingers being almost completely sheared off and hanging by the skin alone, the patient got almost full use of his hand back within about two months.

Edited by Pacific231G
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Things might well be 3d printed and I think there are some body parts that may already be being produced (no sniggering at the back) this way, however, it is the getting in, doing stuff inside, and getting out and closing up that could be challenging, unless some sort of clever glue might be used for the latter?

It is worrying that so many youngsters are just not making stuff during their education or in their spare time. Even I did Woodwork at Grammar School, but that had to go once O Levels came along (Circa 1964).

If some Sci Fi stories are to be believed then Androids would be more capable of taking on a Surgeon's tasks and they would not play so much golf or need huge salaries. OK they would cost a huge amount initially but that investment would pay its' way over time. They may be advised by a very intelligent human with experience of the task to be completed but without the relevant level of motor and physical skills to actually wield the tools for the job; bit like a remote Military Drone Pilot?

I'm sure I've seen film of Surgeons doing surgery remotely through some sort of mechanical, hollow arms whilst looking at a monitor picture of the patient's parts, with robot arms doing the actual contact work? Perhaps i was dreaming that?

I think that assistants often do the sewing up after ops but I've never been awake to notice when I've been involved.

Perhaps there needs to be a lot more dexterity training carried at at Med School, but surely the sewing up bits could be taught to specialist sewer upperers  (Nurses do a hell of a lot of that sort of thing anyway, even in Primary care Centres)?

The last bit of body sewing I had done to me was for a small op to cut out a 'suspicious' wound that would not heal, on my forehead. The person doing the op was a Specialist GP, a Sikh, who had decided he enjoyed minor op work with a view to moving into reconstructive/cosmetic surgery, and had gone on a special training course where they practised on Pigs' heads! I found that out during our chat as he was working on me. At the time I wondered if the Sikh faith allows contact with pigs as I don't know anything about that sort of thing, but he obviously had done it and become very adept at what he did as he made a damn fine job of my cut and shut so that there would be the very minimum of scarring.

There must be a place in a young person's development for making stuff........some schools still manage to do some, but the dilberts in the Dept for Ed are just too obsessed with so called academic success. As for parents, well I have no idea what goes on these days.

I shall be controversial and say this, bring back Technical Education to a much wider clientele, including the academically gifted.

Phil

Edited by Mallard60022
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Something that strikes me about all this is that when you need to develop the manual dexterity and skills to do something then you develop them. For the first time in ages I've been doing some scratchbuilding recently and have been surprised at how my own has improved (from a horribly clumsy start)  just over the course of a single building.

 

More to the point. I doubt whether Peter Denny had much need for manual dexterity or fine motor skills at University and theological college,  nor did John Ahern as an insurance broker nor Philip Hancock as an academic librarian. I suspect that all these amazingly skilled modellers acquired all their amazing modelling skills simply by doing a very great deal of modelling. The visual and aesthetic sense that enabled them to use their modelling skills to create beautifully observed scenes may be another matter but that's not what we're discussing. 

 

We could also of course argue that all this makes railway (and other) modelling a particularly worthwhile way to spend one's free time and one that deserves to be encouraged.

Edited by Pacific231G
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Personally I'd rather work with tactile materials such as metal, sheet plastic, wood and card than have to fool around with digital gizmos which rarely do as they're told and are too much like using Microsoft and mobile phone stuff as one has to for work.

 

In reality, both are required and I appreciate using the results of digital design products, etches, 3D prints etc.

 

My workshop is a digital free zone [no wifi] except for the CD player and recently a DCC console but that is another story..and digital cameras. The microbrewery is entirely old school.

 

Yet in my professional life yesterday I was advocating 'Hub of All Things' [HAT] and tomorrow a workshop on Open Data and much more. So for balance, both are needed. Now off to the workshop for a last glass of craft ale...

 

Dava

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I started back into Railway Modelling 4 years ago in my mid 60s and was drawn towards the scratch building side (of the non-rolling stock variety). Coming to terms with the demands of OO scale took ages and my early jobs look totally clumsy and primitive today. 4 years on my manual dexterity has improved beyond belief and I'm sure for someone younger could be picked up much more quickly.

 

If you've ever seen anyone young typing a message on a smart phone or playing more complex games these days that goes against the line of this story, the rate and fluidity of their finger movements can be awesome.

 

I think this story is just one of those "beat up ideas" that news agencies turn into a story when all else is quiet. Really, 45 years ago, were all my uni contemporaries in Medicine at home in their free time, working on their Meccano / Triang to keep their manual dexterity tuned up or were they down the pub and chasing girls?

 

Colin 

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The depth of online obsession among the very young is frightening. I heard today of a 9-y-o who, having downloaded a free online game, has in two months spent £140 on upgrades. He does very well at skool, is a socially easy, happy smiling boy. But £140!

 

Or to look at it another way, that's roughly 2 Hornby Railroad range locos. Whilst such riches were beyond the reach of the 9 year old that I once was, I doubt if quite as many eyebrows would be raised here about such a thing these days.

 

On topic, it seems to be a perennial whinge by various professions and trades that new starters are a bit useless. Certainly has been for as long as I can remember. Funnily enough, none of said professions or trades seem to be doing any worse a job now than they were a few decades ago. So I tend to put such things down to a modern variation on the old Socratic quote about the young.

 

As far as practical skills taught (or not)  in schools is concerned, I think their importance is rather overrated by some. I'm old enough to have done woodwork, metalwork, sewing and cookery at school for greater or lesser amounts of time. Know what? I was rubbish at all of them, giving up 3 out of 4 ASAP, and just scraping a GCE pass in metalwork. I don't think I could be said to have acquired any worthwhile skills from the exercise. However, I was simultaneously becoming a competent mechanic from the need to fix the family vehicles (we were poor and lived in the country so it was that or walk a lot), and an adequate practical seamstress from repairing my own clothes from quite early on. Since then I've also become a competent joiner and an acceptable cook, also by reading the instructions in a book and then having a go. Basically, I consider myself a reasonably practically competent individual and have become so because of either a necessity or a personal desire to develop a particular skill, not because I was taught any of it at school. Whilst it's not necessarily a route that would suit everybody I do think it gels with the view that, when you need/want to do something you learn how.

Edited by PatB
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I think it is hardwired into human genes that people want to feel better than younger generations, not that I'm a cynic or anything. The media stories bemoaning younger people and telling us the world has gone to hell in a hang basket because it isn't like it was in the old days is one of those perennial stories for the media which always seems to be well received by its target audience. Not that I'm saying all change is good or that I don't personally regret some changes, but equally I see an awful lot of very positive changes and I tend to see a lot more positives than negatives in the youngsters I see and know.

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