Metalworking for Dummies

It's more than a drill press...

The biggest danger of searching for "how-to" advice on the internet is running into advice from people who only googled the topic and transcribed what they found. If they already know at least something about the topic, they probably don't do much damage. If they'd never heard of the topic before typing it into the search box, well, the chances are pretty good they didn't know enough to recognize when they'd made mistakes. People in the know have long derided the self-described go-to howto website, eHow.com, for publishing wa-a-a-a-y too many articles written by people ignorant of the topic in question; people like journalism major and beauty expert Dawn Quinn, who somehow decided she was qualified to tell everyone "How to Machine Hardened Steel."¹ Hint: she wasn't.

If by "machine" the OQ simply meant "drill," Dawn managed to spit out some more or less on-topic copy; though we suspect it was merely reworded from far more authoritative websites (and perhaps an instruction manual). However, it's apparent from the get-go that she is talking through her hat, given that she says rubbish like

"Hardened steel is designed to be resilient and tough to penetrate and is used in the design of items such as safes, locks and car parts for that reason."

Not only does Quinn use the word "design" twice in one sentence (got a thesaurus, anyone?), she misuses it both times – hardened steel isn't "designed" to be tough, and you use it in the manufacturing process, not during the "design" stage. There are also lots of better examples than "car parts," but that's merely a quibble. 

Where Dawn goes completely off the rails is in her instructions, which we've summarized here: Place a carbide drill bit in the chuck of a drill press (44 words of detailed instructions!) Mark your spot Clamp the workpiece in place Drill the hole (49 words, beginning with "Turn on the drill press"!) Remove the "hardened steel piece" Yeah, that's it: drill a hole with a drill press. Hell, she doesn't even get that right: no mention of drill speed, no mention of lubrication, no mention of clearing chips – just "Press the lever down forcefully..."

Perhaps if Dawn had taken shop classes in high school instead of Introduction to Cosmetology, she might have learned that the term "machining" covers a heckuva lot more than just drilling holes in pieces of metal. She doesn't even mention any of the words commonly associated with machining metals, words such as mill, lathe, tool, cutter, grind, tap, die...

Nope, this is just one more example of an eHow "contributor" who grabbed a couple of bucks for doing some slapdash "research" on a completely unfamiliar topic -- and one more reason why the contributors to that website collect more Dumbass of the Day awards than any other...

¹ The original has been deleted by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was   ehow.com/how_8672830_machine-hardened-steel.html

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