Last night, I bent a sewing needle while pushing it through some tough material when I was reattaching a strap to my son’s camping tent. While thimbles are awesome, it pays to be careful.
Pa needed an ashtray. Usually, he’d send me to fetch one. I don’t remember what he/we were doing. We were out in the yard, I suppose, and Pa was maybe a couple beers into his evening. I remember him taking a beer can, squeezing the center flat, folding it in half, and then bending the can back and forth until the can separated into two parts. Then, he took the bottom half of the can and straightened the ragged metal into a cup. In a final step, he bent a section of the metal edge down towards the inside to hold his cigarette.
I was really excited by this turn of events. Whatever we were doing, my part stopped. I had to try that can thing. I begged him. Pa handed me a folded can. I started bending it back and forth. When I finally got the can to separate, I was thrilled.
I was young, I don’t know what age, but I couldn’t get enough of bending cans in half. After a can or three, Pa registered some alarm at my interest. He begged off preparing more cans for me. Ma was a little alarmed. Pa told her that he thought I would give up before I managed to get the can to separate. Steel cans take a lot of folds to separate.
Now, I had to do my own prep. I had to figure out how to crush the can in the center. Today’s aluminum cans are much much softer than the steel cans of the day. I was persistent. Soon enough, I could do almost exactly what Pa did. I’d crush a can in the center by stepping on it with a stick underneath. Then, I’d repeatedly bent it back and forth enough times to break it in half. After enough bends, I was always the proud owner of two half cans. For a short time, this became my thing. I was curious about what would happen each time I bent a can. It was always a little bit different. If the fold was too flat it would do one thing if it was just right , it took fewer bends. This was fascinating. It was metal after all, and metal was strong.
Sometimes I wonder what it was like for Pa to have a little mini-me copy things he did. As parents, our kiddos were unlikely to copy what we did. It’s a mystery.
That very first time, when I was through, I recall Pa noting that the edges were sharp. Despite that, when I messed with the broken can halves, I cut myself on a sharp edge. I was sent into the house for a bandage and instructed to throw the can halves away. Then I was told to keep any can like that away from my younger sibling, who would probably cut themselves, too. Last, I’m sure that I was essentially instructed not to bend any more cans in half. Yeah, right.
One thing I wanted to know about bending cans was why what happened, happened. Pa was never shy about answering. With a very hard-fought and barely-won degree in applied physics, he spat out the blunt truth. That’s low-cycle fatigue. If you bend it less sharply, it’ll take more bends.
If you go back in time far enough, “old school” becomes truly old school. Pa’s instructors were prone to teach named phenomena, often without much explanation. Students were expected to remember the arcana. Even when something was poorly understood, having a name and description made it easier to talk about.
Having this kind of no-bullshit parent can be a blessing in some ways. Once in a while, he’d say, “I don’t know.” Sometimes, he’d find me an answer after an “I don’t know.” What I quickly learned was that, for these kinds of facts, all I needed to do was remember what he said, and later, I’d come across the situation again. By then, I’d know more about it. Over time, slowly, my understanding of the world started to fill in and connect.
Armed with this kind of knowledge, as I got older and ventured further out into the world, sometimes I’d see something interesting, neglected looking, and possibly unimportant. If it was attached to the rest of the world with a piece of metal, I’d try to bend it back and forth until it was freed. More than a few times, the bending got harder to do after a few flexes. When I asked Pa about it he said, “That’s work-hardening.” He elaborated, "When you bend something, especially metal but sometimes other things too, the crystal structure in the metal or the molecular structure in other things will change. Some things will do this more, some less." I also discovered that work-hardened metal would break in fewer cycles if I could manage it.
I wasn't quite finished sewing the strap on when I bent the needle. I managed to finish a few more stitches, but it was slow going with a bent needle. I could have cut the needle off the thread and re-threaded the already doubled thread, but I wondered if the quad thread would mess up the tent material. I gave up for the night.
Having that same no-bullshit parent could be tough on my friends. My friends’d have an idea and I’d say, that won’t work or some other discouraging noise, an instant bummer for them.
I’m sorry y’all, it wasn’t your fault.
But often enough I’d say yeah, let’s try that. Trouble was sure to follow then. Always. Trouble with friends could be extra dodgy. If I was at a friend's place, I’d get punished there, maybe even losing the chance to see my friend, and I’d be saddled with whatever punishment was meted out at home, too. That was a lose-lose, except for learning some interesting and occasionally, dangerous things.
I’ve carried that no-bullshit ‘tude through most of my life. I get tripped up frequently. There are limits to my partner’s, my friends’ and my co-workers’ patience. Being a know-it-all was signing up to fall flat on my face. When I did fall, all the people close to me used to revel in the mud on my face.
I don’t like bullshit. Unfortunately, I get excited and run off the rails like so many do. I bullshit. Catch me if you can. Despite my best efforts, it is still possible to go one extrapolation too far and step into the shit. Like everyone with a more than modicum of knowledge in some areas, I fuck up more where I know the subject less.
I do this, and you do this. Someone will be talking away, and we let them go on a little too far into a space we actually know. Don’t we love it when they do? The most fun is if they catch themselves right before they’re caught. The look of awareness when someone self-owns is priceless. I sometimes fuck that up too. I get impatient. I jump in. Did I mention that I’m a jerk?
I’m working on it.
I should know better. We all should, but only the overly timid and smug refuse to play the edge-of-bullshit game.
I wanted to try something I knew could go wrong. I decided to straighten the needle. I was curious if I’d succeed. I’ve tried this a couple of times in the past with mostly poor results. Sewing needles are made out of very hard steel. Very hard steel can work harden to brittleness in a few bends. I got the needle almost straight in three or four reverse flexes. I made one more flex to fully straighten it, and it snapped. I was bummed. It was so close to perfect! Next time, I will try to use only one or two flexes and leave it at that. Rethreaded through a new needle, the quad thread was hard to pull through the rain-fly fabric, but I only had a few stitches to go. I managed.
Metal alloys containing iron also have a miraculous property. If you don’t bend them too far, they can bend and flex a nearly infinite number of times. Aluminum alloys will always break when flexed. The smaller the stress, the greater the number of times they can be flexed. For important stuff, engineers working with aluminum alloys make sure that the part will survive a number of flexes is high enough that the object won’t fail for say 100 years or 200 years of hard use. The technical term here is overdesign, and yes, I’m pulling a number out of the air. The engineers always have a sane number to design with. That number will have a lot of safety margin for a critical part made of an aluminum alloy.
Iron (steel and stainless steel) and titanium alloys are easier. Engineers pick a working stress that is below the cycle limit and the part lasts practically forever. If you doubt me, think about a piano string. They last (vibrate) for billions of cycles. Parts made of those materials generally only fail if there is a defect that starts a crack or if they get corroded (rust).
We have traveled to the edge of bullshit.
I love the edge of bullshit. I love it when reason gives way to the hard unforgiving facts and vacuous emptyness that lie at the edge of understanding. When someone comes up to the edge of bullshit, we get to see what they know and what they don’t know.
What did you learn and carry with you?