OT - the pleasure of hand skills (rambly)
Bill Houghton, Sebastopol, CA
>30+ years ago, I spent a few months doing sheet metal work (no, Coop, I didn't become a journeyman - far, far from it). I worked for a shop doing mostly residential work - heating ducts, rain gutters, etc. I learned a few basic skills, including sheet metal soldering (back then, some of the dingbat shops were starting to use butyl caulk and pop rivets on gutters, but the shop I worked in held to the old standards - I note that soldering is still considered the best way to fasten architectural sheet metal flashings, gutter, etc.).
About every decade since, I've needed to resurrect the skill, and it always takes a bit to come back; but it does return after a bit of practice, and this time, after doing several flashings for our house - window headers and, today, a drip edge with a soldered corner on the weather side of the house - I am reminded how much pleasure simple manual skills can bring. I even love the smell of the muriatic acid boiling off as the hot copper touches it.