If you live with someone engaged in the home-shop machining hobby, and you are responsible for any domestic duties involving clothing, you have no doubt found swarf in the laundry. Just the other day, I shook out one of my husband’s sweaters he had worn in the shop, and a cute metal corkscrew resembling a tiny clock spring (no, my husband’s chips don’t always come off in perfect “9’s”) bounced on to the floor. Our children thought it was cool. We then examined a knit sweater that had been worn in the shop and noted several metal chips embedded in the weaves. The next 15 minutes were spent scouring the house for magnets to see if we could pick-up the sweater. It didn’t work, but the exercise ranked higher than our children’s 1 hour allotted TV time for the day.
I could start to nag at my husband for all the chips he is tracking in to the house via socks, sweaters and hair, but have thought better of it. I have observed that the machining hobby has provided an interesting (and even productive) outlet for my husband’s creative energies and stress, while also providing many learning opportunities for our children, and even myself.
The video documentation of this hobby and its results via YouTube has also provided interesting learning opportunities for our family. Its cute to watch the children excitedly bring other family members and friends to the computer screen to show them what Daddy is working on in the shop right now. Our son has even started making his own videos with his V-Tech video camera of his Lego constructions. This has been a great lesson to my husband and I to never underestimate the impact you’re having on those little eyes watching you.
Yes, it would be nice if I could park my car in the garage and Band-Aids weren’t a standard weekly grocery item. But for all its benefits, I guess I’ll put up with the swarf in the laundry.
Megan is the wife of Justin. She has the pleasure and the pain of dealing with a manufacturing gearhead on a daily basis.
Justin – RE: 5C COLLET CHUCK VID – thanks to you & Megan for background music which, although it adds nothing to the info content, saves me from the instant ‘Delete’ which my right little finger hits the instant I hear the hoo-yah banjo music that seems to have become obligatory for many youtube machining hopefuls. Not all of us are neanderthals. I’d like it a lot if classical music became easily transmissable and catching.
-Marty-
thecogwheel 
Justin – RE: 5C COLLET CHUCK VID – thanks to you & Megan for background music which, although it adds nothing to the info content, saves me from the instant ‘Delete’ which my right little finger hits the instant I hear the hoo-yah banjo music that seems to have become obligatory for many youtube machining hopefuls. Not all of us are neanderthals. I’d like it a lot if classical music became easily transmissable and catching.
-Marty-
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