Perception Training
At the age of 24, I started study in McPherson College Automotive Restoration System, the first class was welding. I was hesitate to light acetylene since I hate fireworkd at childhood. In the end, I was able to get the highest score of 102 in the History of Design class, but barely passed the welding test from same instrator. When I part-time worked in school, every time I did spray painting work, it was not smooth either. While my teammates at age 17 picked up a spray gun for the first time, as if they were born to do it. The American boys surprised me.
After my wife pregnant, I back home and missed the term of painting clss. In there, you will paint a brand new ride-on Chevy with 5-7 classmates. It is different from the actual need of “treating the rough body and spray ” to me. So, can I do a paint job? In the repair industry, the income of mechanics is lower than painters, which is regarded as entry-level. The requirements for perception are not that high. If you can’t read workshop manuals, you can watch videos, and just repeat with your body. But there is no good textbook or video to teach sheet metal and painting, even a living teacher cannot guaranteed you could got it.
Persian Kitty gave me an opportunity, initially I didn’t plan to repaint him since over half are still original paint. But during the interior work, I found more and more faults. In line with the principle of preservation, I turned to a famous paint shop, who stated “if we are second in the industry and no one could be the first “until they said that my requirements were too complex and could not be met.
Low-defect Methodology
Before important move, first calculate the possibility and consequences of failure. On the car side: the PDR-ed sheet metal is fine, not a complex job; I didn’t pay a lot, therefore if something goes wrong, the loss is limited. On my side: I have almost zero foundation, even not good at aerosol; my psychological quality is passable, and I hope I will not be depressed.
Theoritically, painting can be learned by myself, but the efficiency will be low. It is best to find a one-to-one instructor. It is rather important to find the right person, that depends on the main indicators. Maybe we have many disagreements in areas other than painting, but that’s not the point. Modest is a rarer quality. As an apprentice, I have to adjust my mentality before learning. I can’t treat the instructor as a retard because he’s not good at other things, but I might should treat myself as a retard in painting. The ancients said, don’t challenge other people’s jobs with hobbies.
Once I’m prepared myself mentally, it’s time to prepare physically. The college entrance examination is a person sitting on a desk and chair and writing with a pen. Almost every family can meet the practice requirements, so it is very fair. Unfortunatley, writing exam won’t help the real ability. Painting is a behavior full of non-monetary risks that requires a lot of money to buy tools and is harmful to health, is destined fail to be part of the college entrance examination.
The mystery of the tool world is no less than that of the painting itself. If I’m too devoted, not only Chinese, English, mathematics, physics and chemistry involved, but also have to put all financial resources and tolerance into it. If the instractor recommends whatever he’s using, it might be expensive but don’t doubt it. Maybe he has personal intentions and wants me to get something new to try in by the way, but what does that have to do with the learning goals themselves.
He did recommend a few high-end products that he has never touched. In order to couraged me to try, he even said “with , with__, even retard can__ “. I don’t admit that I am retard, but I also bought it. I want to increase the probability of success. However, what is considered to be compatible with efficiency is usually not money. However, there are two kinds of things that are expensive. One is something vanity. No matter how expensive some things are, no one will want them after they are used. The other is investment. No matter how cheap something is, as long as it can earn money, it may become more and more expensive.
As a result, on the first day, the high-end products doesn’t really help. For example, the Festool vaccum sanding block benefits efficiency, but not gonna help the skills. It is worth remembering that the efficiency of money can be so low if you don’t go to class immediately after paying the English tuition
The possibility of perfection
I made a memo on my phone to record the working hours, sometimes I summed up things I learned. After learning some experience for a few days, I tried to write a plan. Being able to estimate the workload and timeliness is the basic requirement for success. If I can’t meet this point, I can’t rely on this craft to make a living.
In terms of progress, I was slapped in the face until the day the study ended. After working for two weeks, I estimated that there were still two more weeks, and then I kept procrastinating, and the closer it was to the end, the worse it was. It was late Fall when the work started, and it was already Spring when it was assemblied.
Even so, I knew I wasn’t doing my best. The problems I can see have not been fully resolved, and there must be more problems that I can’t see. The strongest impression is that those cars that can be painted from the beginning to the end in a week, how sloppy are they?
Mental workers, or college students, basically don’t have overtime pay now, that’s the result of mutual affection between labor and management. For manual workers, let’s just talk about auto mechanics. If you don’t talk about the price, talk about overtime, and people will ignore you. Manual workers, even if the paint is flawed, they have to pay for a discount, and they must be rewarded if they pay. This is the theory of surplus value. Mental workers don’t really believe in causality, know that overtime may be free, and agree with performance.
How do two groups with different philosophical foundations compete? I said that my things are 90% cheaper, but I didn’t say that the quality is only 50%. He messed up and I said I only charged him 10%. He said he lost 50%, I think he made 40%. Those who believe in the theory of surplus value win the land.
But even if the workers calculate according to “life = time = money”, they may still lose money. After all, money cannot be exchanged for time, even if it can be exchanged, such as paying someone to spray paint for me to save my life, what is the exchange rate?
When people are alive, the passage of time is a kind of loss, and emotional satisfaction is a kind of compensation. That is to say, the reward for working hard does not have to be money, as long as you can keep having fun, money may not be important. After earning money, and then exchanging the money for coolness, this process also has an exchange rate, and there are many things that cost money and suffer.
If the paint is sprayed on, no matter how it is , most people really can’t cure it, can they tear it off? Do you want to save 40%, or lose 50%, or lose 100%. So, there’s really no need to do it well. I want to do well not because I have obsessive-compulsive disorder, nor because the car will dream, but because I believe in powers other than causality, such as Thomas Aquinas’ five-way proof of the existence of God.
How many dirty spots and needle holes have been sprayed on, God can see it better than me.
The goal is to get closer to the visual effect of the year on the basis of surpassing the old paint. This goal is kind of deceptive. I have never seen what it was like back then, so I just like to say what I like. It’s a pity that the definition of high-quality goods can be infinitely raised in the mind, and the possibility of perfection can only be continuously reduced in practice. Before picking up the spray gun, I thought the high level should be like that. After putting down the spray gun with a dare to God mentality, I found that my highest level may be like this.
I wish the orange peel were bigger as the factory did. It was -11°C on the day of painting, and my sweat still flowed out along the mask, dripped to the paint and there were pits everywhere. In the end, I had to grind it hard, all orange streaks were gone.
It is not written in the sky that “there should be no flaws”, nor is it written that “if there are flaws, it can be made up for”, so it is right to write it? It is “it is natural” to spray it well, and it is “should be” if it should be sprayed well. No matter how you think about it, it is what it is.
Similar results
Language may be convenient to describe how well the nail polish is painted, but it is inefficient on a complex cube of 10 square meters. The difficulty of car painting is “big”, so big that language can’t describe the problem. If it is too big, it will not be “flat” (even). The basic principle is that the image is formed by a plane mirror. The larger the mirror, the larger the image, and the magnified image also magnifies the flaws of the mirror itself. Cars often appear outdoors, and the large space always forms a telephoto segment.
If the tolerance of a few microns appears continuously within a distance of 20 cm, waves can be formed, and even smooth things seen from a close distance are flawed when viewed from a distance, such as glass. For the flat body with almost no creases of 140, the process is like walking a tightrope while blindfolded. I often splash water on the car to check the smoothness of the reflection, and only after touching the spray gun did I find that the leveling of water and paint is completely different.
During the whole painting process, I did not completely rely on my own perspective or rely on the instructor to make decisions. When hesitating whether to spend time in a place that others cannot see, there will be a third-person “superego” existence, we have a dialogue, and then make a decision together.
” Only I know what it looks like in this place. I may never see it after installing it. I will forget it by then. It is equivalent to not existing”
“But your children may see it in the future. Will they proudly say in front of their classmates that this car was painted by my dad?”
Calmly finding an alter ego in an emergency is impractical, but in long cycles of slow progress one needs a friend. It can be a friend in reality, guess what he will say; it can also be another self, after all, I don’t have a friend who can paint.
When I saw Persian Kitty for the first time, I entered the SA codes that I could see one by one, searched and eliminated, and my heart beat faster step by step, and found that it was actually a Persian Kitty. But I just bought a CL 600 of the same color, and I don’t allow myself to buy another car with the same color. On the day it was sold, I could only sigh. Later, I met again at a special opportunity, without much thought, only a strong desire to get back together, eager to make up for what I thought was a mistake.
In the end, it looked better, but the thrill of seeing it for the first time more than two years ago has faded with the years.
Compensation is really the beginning of disappointment, so human beings use time to make up money, money to make up feelings, feelings to make up true love, true love to make up faith, faith to make up hope, hope to make up for despair, and finally all perverted.
Spray painting is that flawed methodology plus perfect possibility makes up for similar results to the past.
2 Comments