“Measure twice, cut once.”

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A few of you may have noticed a teeny weeny ‘technical’ bit that I contributed to ‘Kath the Quilter’s blog. It was all about measuring an angle of fifteen degrees. I’m sorry that I may have confused a few ladies (and gentlemen), but these mathematical calculations are an every day  occurrence to us engineers. I was good at trigonometry at school and loved anything mathematical. This is a rather unusual piece of marquetry I did as teenager.

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All made from thin wood veneers. I worked to a published plan, 

so I can’t claim it was my design.

Now days if  I am given an engineering problem in the workshop, I sit down and work it all out on paper first. I then work it out a second time, just to be sure. 

My old woodwork master at school used to say, “Measure twice, cut once.”

I’m sure that could also prove true before cutting out quilt materials?

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A part of my collection of woodworking rules.

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Well today I thought that I had better make amends for all this serious stuff and do one of my ‘light-hearted’ posts, just to prove that mathematics and engineering have a funny side too.

  

Here’s a tale for you.

Once upon a time, three Red Indian squaws who were expecting their first children went to the tribe's Medicine Man for a blessing.

He said to the first squaw: "You must obtain the hide of a buffalo and give birth lying on it".

To the second he said : "You must obtain the hide of a bear and give birth lying on it".

To the third he said : "You must obtain the hide of a hippopotamus and give birth lying on it".

After they'd all had their papooses, the first two squaws felt that the third squaw was more blessed because she'd had twins.

They went to the Medicine Man to complain about the blessing, but he said to them : -

"I thought everybody knew that the squaw on the hippopotamus is equal to the sum of the squaws on the other two hides".

This is of course only amusing to those of you who remember from their school days, that the “square of the hypotenuse, is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides.”

Groans all round I guess?  This is how one schoolboy found ‘x’!

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But seriously, angles can be interesting.

It was in fact my mother, believe it or not, that got me interested in cutting precise angles. In the 50’s with just us three boys, things had to be shared out equally to avoid any arguments and fights. You know the sort of thing; “Aw, he’s got a bigger piece than me.” Well, Mom used to give us a knife and say, one of you can cut the cake up, and the others can have first choice of the pieces!

I promise you that I can, still to this day, divide things into a precise number of pieces.

I can still take piece of wood, and cut it into say three or five perfect pieces without a rule.   

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And some metalworking rules.

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I have to admit that I passed all my Maths papers at O level and A level, but I did start to struggle a bit when studying engineering at university. 

Boy was it hard! No cutting cake into equal segments there! 

I remember one day hearing about these two engineering students who were cycling across the university campus when one said, "Where did you get such a great bike?" The second engineer replied, "Well, I was walking along yesterday, minding my own business, when a beautiful woman rode up on this bike, threw it to the ground, took off all her clothes and said, "Take what you want." 

The first engineer nodded approvingly and said, "Good choice; the clothes probably wouldn't have fitted you anyway."

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Wonderful old bike!

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All engineering graduates just love mechanical things.

That is not to say that there were not other things in our curriculum.

We did manage to find time for ‘liquid refreshment’ of course, but even then, we were not detached from engineering.

You see,

To the optimist, the glass is half-full.

To the pessimist, the glass is half-empty.

But to the engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

But as you can imagine, after a ‘few jars’ of Mitchell & Butlers best, anything could happen. 

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"Oh! Go on! Give us a kiss."

In those days many a good tale was told in the ‘Slug & Lettuce’.

I had an engineering friend on my course, who recalled how he was crossing the Bristol road one day, when a frog called out to him and said, "If you kiss me, I'll turn into a beautiful princess." He bent over, picked up the frog, and put it in his pocket. The frog spoke up again and said, "If you kiss me, I'll turn back into a beautiful princess and stay with you for one week." My mate took the frog out of his pocket, smiled at it and returned it to the pocket. The frog then cried out, "If you kiss me and turn me back into a princess, I'll stay with you for one week and do anything you want." Again, he took the frog out, smiled at it and put it back into his pocket. Finally, the frog asked, "What is the matter? I've told you I'm a beautiful princess and that I'll stay with you for one week and do anything you want. Why won't you kiss me?" My friend said, "Look, I'm an engineer. I don't have time for a girlfriend, but a talking frog, now that's cool.

So here I am today, a garden full of frogs and hedgehogs, a workshop full of angles, tools and machinery and not a ‘girl’ in sight!

Which reminds me, talking of ‘girls & sight‘.

The other day I was coming back up the road from the shops, with a ‘chicken motive’ tie I had bought for 50p from the local Hospice shop, when I saw this glass eye fall from a window above.

I just managed to catch it before it smashed on the pavement. I looked up to see where it came from, just in time to see a young woman looking down.  

"Is this yours?" I asked. She said, "Yes, could you bring it up?" So of course, as she couldn’t see very well, I agreed. 

After puffing up a flight of stairs, she was profuse in her thanks and she offered me a drink. As she was very attractive, I agreed. Shortly afterwards she said, "I'm about to have dinner. There's plenty; would you like to join me?" 

As I was a near-starving-pensioner, I readily accepted her offer and we both enjoyed a lovely meal. As the evening was drawing to a close the lady said, "I've had a marvellous evening. Would you like to stay the night?" 

Of course I hesitated, I had Wesley to feed, so I said, "Do you act like this with every man you meet?" 

"No," she replied, "only those who catch my eye."

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Well by now you must be thinking that poor old Uncle Bernard has gone completely ‘off his trolley’. 

You could be right, but don’t forget it takes one, to recognise one, or so I believe?

But, during my last visit to my  doctor, I asked him, 

"How do you determine whether or not an older person should be put in an Care Home?"

"Well,"  he said, "we fill up a bathtub, then we offer a teaspoon, a  teacup and a bucket to the person to empty the bath."

"Oh, I understand," I  said. "A normal person would use the bucket, because it is bigger than the spoon or the teacup." 

 "No" he said. "A normal  person would pull the bath-plug out!

And, then calmly handed me an application form!

And talking of trolleys, this is what I have been making this last week.

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A super-dooper four wheeled Organ trolley with pneumatic tyres!

(And yes, the handle is/was an old 'rolling-pin.)

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