Got told my cutting torch technique was trash by an old hand off Louisiana

He said I was wasting gas by not feathering the trigger between cuts, so I switched to a light touch and cut my oxygen use by 20% in a week. Anyone else have a dive buddy or foreman call out a bad habit that actually made you better?

3 comments

3 Comments

wendy7225d ago

Are you sure that's the right takeaway though? Ngl, sometimes an old hand is just set in their ways and what works for them doesn't work for everyone. I had a foreman tell me I was too slow with a tape measure because I double-checked my cuts, and he wanted me to just eyeball it. I tried his way for a week, saved maybe 10 seconds a cut, but messed up three expensive sheets of plywood. That's not a win, that's just his preference costing me money. So Tommy's story is nice, but that captain could've just as easily been wrong about the knots and cost Tommy his catch instead.

veramiller25d ago

Heard a story from my friend Tommy who works on a shrimp boat down in Biloxi. His captain chewed him out for the way he was tying off the nets, just doing some sloppy half hitch thing. Tommy got salty about it at first but then the captain made him retie every single knot for an hour until he got it right. Next week they hit a rough patch and his knots held while another boat lost half their catch. He never complained about that old man again.

miles_jones3920d ago

Hold up, did Tommy ever ask him WHY that knot mattered? Like, was there a specific reason for the captain's way, or was it just "because I said so"? The foreman in your story sounds like he was going off feel instead of math. That's a different problem. A captain who knows the water and the gear, he's got reasons he might not bother to explain until you're in the shit. I've seen old timers do that, they don't want to argue, they just want it done right. So yeah, some old guys are just stubborn. But some are saving your ass and you don't even know it yet. The question is, how do you tell which one you got?