Learn me electrical

I started playing with wires 9 and a half years ago. The biggest thing that I learned is be methodical AND SKIP NOTHING!!!! There is nothing worse than spending 2 hours going over something to realize you should not of skipped that one little insignificant step. Working in my field there are so many variables that it can make your head hurt sometimes (carry ibuprofen). But here is the cool thing, if you learn electricity and relays you can build anything! This just my opinion and I am admittedly biased.

Toyman01 wrote: Shoot me an address, and I'll send you a couple of books I have left from my electricians apprenticeship if you want them. Electrical work is pretty straight forward, you just have to think it through step by step. Practice makes perfect. I also recommend you collect every scrap of information you can find on everything you might work on. I have several meg of scanned service information and wiring directions on my phone that I have collected over the past 15 years.

HEY!!! I never got these when I started and I knew less than nothing!

Granted I dont need them now but still this would of been nice 9 and a half years ago lol.

Rufledt wrote: That's one of the main things i'm trying to learn. The main thing holding me back at this point is just not knowing what all the symbols mean, but i'm picking that up pretty quickly. I also want to know about house wiring and non-appliance stuff, because that occasionally becomes relevant. Just yesterday a problem with a drier ended up being a breaker that had a wire come loose and started cooking itself. I probably wouldn't have guessed that, but my dad knew the problem straight away. He walked straight to the breaker box and opened it, revealing the plume of smoke inside emanating from the melted breaker.

That's the double edged sword right there. When you've got someone "that good" (or "that experienced") sometimes you get straight to the solution without knowing how they got there. Especially with a fault like this make sure to ask about how they found it the first time, what to look for, why they knew what it was right away, etc. I, for one, love to share war stories about how a gripe kicked my butt (and in the end it was a loose wire at the breaker, etc.)

The symbols? Know the basics (fuse, switch, relay, etc) for now, the rest will come. I'm pretty confident that most of the hesitation is just from having a great mentor, and that you are probably ahead of the game

Cheers! -Bill

I wish I could help but about all I know about electricity is that I can't see it & it can hurt, so I leave it alone whenever possible.

Toyman01 wrote:

Rufledt wrote: In reply to Toyman01: Thank you, good sir! PM sent :D

Looks like the PM got lost somewhere. Shoot me an email at toyman zero one five 4 at g mail dot com.

i got some weird 'failed to deliver' thing back in my spam folder. weird. i sent you an emial from a different account

Son_Of_Toyman wrote: I started playing with wires 9 and a half years ago. The biggest thing that I learned is be methodical AND SKIP NOTHING!!!! There is nothing worse than spending 2 hours going over something to realize you should not of skipped that one little insignificant step. Working in my field there are so many variables that it can make your head hurt sometimes (carry ibuprofen). But here is the cool thing, if you learn electricity and relays you can build anything! This just my opinion and I am admittedly biased.

That is a cool thing i'm learning, now. He wired up some auxiliary lights on my van back when it was his van, but not those pairs hooked up to a switch, no no. he wired up 2 banks of 4 lights each (wired in parallel), set in the grill, each bank with it's own 40 amp relay set to come on with the bright lights. Using math from one of the books and a little help from him, i now understand why the first set up got too hot (wires weren't big enough to move the current, causing resistance, causing heat), and how upgrading the 55 watt bulbs to 100 watt bulbs would blow the 30 amp fuses he put in when he wired it all up (4 55 watt lights at 12 volts draw under 30 amps, 4 100 watt bulbs would draw over 30 amps at 12 volts, though i don't remember the exact numbers). Yay for learning!

Hungary Bill wrote: That's the double edged sword right there. When you've got someone "that good" (or "that experienced") sometimes you get straight to the solution without knowing how they got there. Especially with a fault like this make sure to ask about how they found it the first time, what to look for, why they knew what it was right away, etc. I, for one, love to share war stories about how a gripe kicked my butt (and in the end it was a loose wire at the breaker, etc.) The symbols? Know the basics (fuse, switch, relay, etc) for now, the rest will come. I'm pretty confident that most of the hesitation is just from having a great mentor, and that you are probably ahead of the game Cheers! -Bill

Yeah that's a problem that manifests when we are running short on time. Instead of working through it, he'll just spend the 5 seconds it takes to figure out what's wrong, and tell me to fix that thing (or do it himself) and then we move on to the next house. For some reason things are getting busier and busier all the time. It's a good problem to have, but today we talked about getting another truck to have in case we need to split up to get the stuff done faster. he doesn't like making people wait more than a day or so.

He's not above making me figure it out on my own, though. a couple times he handed me the new part, pocketed the instructions without showing me, and just said "here you go, put it on" while he sat back and chatted about cars. (i now see where I get it) He's usually the 'get it done, then explain what he did' kind of guy, though. Making me do it would probably be better from a learning perspective, but time is money and we did work near 11 hours today with hardly a break for lunch.

Rufledt wrote: It wasn't the learning part of hardcore academics that depressed me, i like learning a lot, it was the lack of potential career opportunities, the ever increasing massive debt, the idea that even when i'm not 'at school' i can't stop working on my dissertation so no relaxation, and the endless hours upon hours spent alone while reading/writing that depressed me. Basically everything about academic work, but not the learning. Fixing stuff is fun, i get to talk to people, and i make broken things work again. Also i get paid. All of this happens multiple times per day. Not to mention the fact that when i'm at home i can actually relax. Granted, it's usually a 60 hour work week, but the time flies. it's better than a 10 hour work week.

Curious what your academic field of study was?

Is appliance repair anywhere in your aptitude range?