Have you ever asked a really stupid question? Is there such a thing? I was brought up with the knowledge there are no stupid questions, only stupid answers. If you think about that for a while, you’ll understand that the person who was teaching me was doing it from a perspective of love and understanding.
My Grandfather (Opa) came to Canada in 1927, with only the clothes on his back. His younger brother and two older sisters followed shortly after. His parents and other siblings were to follow later, however, they never made it. He was 22 years old.
He did what he needed to do to survive and when he died at 100 years old, he had amassed a fortune not in just material things (although he did live very comfortably) but because he had seven kids, 28 grandkids, (sorry, this is where is gets fuzzy) lots of great-grandkids and great, great grandkids. Without the use of common sense he wouldn’t have survived and prospered. That seems to be fading these days along a blurred line. There are certain things you would and wouldn’t do in certain situations, not only to survive, but to increase the quality of life for yourself, your family, and your career.
I was once installing a system in a sawmill and I had to mount a steel inline oil filter and a hydraulic control valve. We’d done this many times before and, in a pinch, to mount the filter, I’d take a piece of flatbar, weld it to the bottom of the filter (to be able to drill mounting holes in the flatbar) and bolt it. We needed a spacer made of the same thickness to put under the hydraulic valve in order for the ports to be on the same plane.
When I handed these two items to one of our Millwrights and explained what I needed, he went off to do the task and I didn’t give it another thought, it was fairly simple. He came back, handed me the filter and it looked great. He then handed me the aluminum body with the steel flat bar welded to it and said to me, “It took a bit to get it to stick, but I got it.”
This is where common sense comes in…would you’ve tried to weld steel to aluminum? As a Millwright, I assumed this was common sense and it wouldn’t have to be explained. Was it my mistake? Should I have explained you couldn’t do that? Because I had assumed this was common knowledge, maybe this was my mistake. Common knowledge and common sense are two different things.
In our sawguide lubrication systems, we removed the air from the systems in order to keep a full pocket of water up against the saw blades. Everyone we’ve talked to about this has told me (in a surprised tone), “That makes perfect sense.” Many other things we’re doing with the systems aren’t complicated, but the results are incredible, especially if you haven’t thought about it yet.
What tells you not to step in front of a moving vehicle and not to stick your hand in a pot of boiling water? You don’t do these things because you know it’ll hurt so is it common sense or knowledge that warns you? If you’ve never experienced these things or been told about them, you might not know better. As you go through life you are constantly learning and the terms common sense and common knowledge overlap and interchange. One of the biggest lessons I learnt was from my Grandfather, who always said, “The day you stop learning is the day you die.”
As we have gone down this road of developing our sawguide systems, I have learnt more from Filers, Millwrights, operators and managers because I questioned everything. I think, in general, there’s a lot of misinformation out there because the guys who have been in the industry, even for decades, have always been told more often why you can’t do something than why you can.
Author: Dean Maier
Dean has been in the automated lubrication business for 25 years, with 85% of that time spent in forestry applications. We are delighted to have his insight with this latest blog.
Industrial Autolube International Inc.
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