Spencer Heath Archive

Item 444

Taping by Spencer MacCallum from conversation with Heath

1955?

They couldn’t use the simple tools at hand because they had a very elaborate, beautiful mechanism with which they were enamored. But in the propeller works, I had no elaborate machine shop, so I got myself a simple drill press which seemed to do very well. But later on, when I had a fully equipped machine shop, it was almost impossible to perform a single operation without building elaborate tools and pressing them into service. Mainly because my mechanics had become so accustomed to the elaborate facilities, they found it difficult to use simple ones, even of the same kind.