Quote Originally Posted by Robin Hewitt View Post
On the American sites there is a sort of Guru mentality, you ask your question and await the great man to put you straight. He might be wrong but you are not allowed to question him. Swarms of his acolytes surround you to make sure you toe the line. Americans always want to be told what to do, perhaps teh ones who can think for themselves are in short supply, kept too busy to hang about on forums.

Over here we have the Model Engineering forum where real retired Enginers hang out. They will tell you how to do anything. They know every tool that has ever been available and have opinions on every supplier, past andpresent. There is no point arguing because they are always right. It may be new to you but to them it is stale and boring. They know you won't listen, they know you will fail and come crawling back with your tail between your legs. It is always the same.

On Facebook, YouTube there are some real characters, I spend hours watching, most entertaining.

One of my favorites is the welders. They have a notion that given a picture they can recreate any machine tool from sawn and welded box section. A horde of schoolboys leave encouraging comments as the structure grows. You have to wonder where these impressive irons end up, I cannot believe anyone actually uses them.

Sorry, I become tedious.

Robin
Thanks Robin

I have to disagree with you though on the Americans, they have some amazing Youtube woodworkers, that take woodworking and carpentry to the next level.

But even the local guys have enormous workshops with kit most UK professional carpenters shops would love to have in their arsenal and most are just hobbyists.

I think the main thing with the Openbuild platform is that nearly all the machines are based on the same platform - extruded aluminium.

To be fair, without adding ball screws and linear rails, there is not that much further that they can take their machines.

Without going to the next level - of the semi industrial type and upwards.

UK engineering has always and always will be some of the best on the planet.

But, I am building a hobby machine and not something that will be cranking out kitchen doors on a production line

WoodKnot