Mechanical ability ..... what are you like

[Altivar]

I have an uncanny ability to fault find machinery or anything of a sort i spose.
Cant get enough of how things tick, it rocks my boat.
Would go to work hoping for shit to happen .... or not and at least id have something interesting to do.

with age my home tinker stuff has taken over my shed. got a habit of acquiring something of interest, pulling it apart for a look see, understand what i want, then just put it somewhere.
usually I've had idea floating round in the noggin of how i could use it for such and such and Will keep it. ..... for sure I'll do it one day.

With that also i find Im good with my hands.
To me, i break things dwn to small levels unit i get it.
Once banked in the mind i find usually i can repeat the action reasonably well.
i seem to come back to things i find satisfaction in .... like wood.
if i had even more tools i could do so much more.

But like all else i enjoy the variety of tool and odds i have now is huge.
wife gets a bit shitty but gets also Italy me and i have the need.

wondering on other people similarly. thoughts.

 

[Cognisant]

Learned to code with Delphi6 in highschool, before that I had done a little modding with the elder scrolls construction set (for Morrowind) but didn't really know what I was doing so it was only in highschool that the thrill of making a computer do whatever I want really hit me. After that I did web design, so HTML, CSS, JavaScript, some dreadfully boring database stuff, and although we were taught to use Dreamweaver I preferred doing everything in notepad, being able to make and host a website from practically nothing was really appealing.

Well web design went nowhere for me (better pay in retail) and ever since I had that epiphany with coding I'd been thinking about AI, it's a fascinating topic, downright philosophical, now I've got some exciting theories I'd like to test but for that I'll need some serious hardware.

Which brings us to my current project, a quadcopter like thing made of balsa wood and thin aluminium sheets, it won't be enough to test my software ideas but if it does what I want it to do I might make some money out of it. More importantly it's a step-up project as I teach myself how to wire everything up, woodworking, metalwork, not to mention buying tools and learning how to use them.

It's daunting but as long as I'm making progress that's all that matters.

 

[Ex-User (5841)]

I'm not as much of a fault-finder as I am a circumventor/jury rigger.

I've never really had to use much mechanical ability before last summer when I led a team of delinquent urban youth (it was a long summer) through some traditional construction projects. [Building a foundation, shed, and porch without stock lumber or power tools, i.e. "There's the tree person X cut down. If we all work together (<-LMFAO) we can split it by the end of the week."]

Otherwise my mechanical ability centers around trapping and fishing. I'm also a wicked dissector, so I assume I'd be good with some smaller stuff as well.

 

[WantonNoodle]

...and Will keep it. ..... for sure I'll do it one day.

lol

I relate to the whole OP. I had thousands of dollars of legos. When I was just old enough to form sentences, my catch phrase was "I fix it" (I could not yet). I took everything apart. Eventually I started fixing them. My father was a tool junkie. I dabbled in mechanics, electronics, metal and wood work. Anything hands on.

I was a compulsive parts hoarder. Always stockpiling for future projects. The projects were always in mind, but I rarely got to them. This has always bothered me.

I get a deep satisfaction from gaining an understanding of machines, devices, and systems. Now I study physics. The universe will be my lego set.


From my limited understanding of the MBTI, I believe the trait responsible for this is Si?

 

[lucky12]

I have an uncanny ability to fault find machinery or anything of a sort i spose.
Cant get enough of how things tick, it rocks my boat.
Would go to work hoping for shit to happen .... or not and at least id have something interesting to do.

with age my home tinker stuff has taken over my shed. got a habit of acquiring something of interest, pulling it apart for a look see, understand what i want, then just put it somewhere.
usually I've had idea floating round in the noggin of how i could use it for such and such and Will keep it. ..... for sure I'll do it one day.

With that also i find Im good with my hands.
To me, i break things dwn to small levels unit i get it.
Once banked in the mind i find usually i can repeat the action reasonably well.
i seem to come back to things i find satisfaction in .... like wood.
if i had even more tools i could do so much more.

But like all else i enjoy the variety of tool and odds i have now is huge.
wife gets a bit shitty but gets also Italy me and i have the need.

wondering on other people similarly. thoughts.

Started with bicycles, then atv's, then dirt bikes, now I'm into diesel trucks from the 90's. My shed? I have 3.. plus one 2 car garage, and my neighbors have a barn they let me use a garage port in. My grandparents have a car of mine in their garage. My dad collected a lot of shit before he died, but he never used it. I think he meant for me to have it, he knew how much I loved to pull things apart.

This year I discovered slide hammers. Very useful.

I've never felt like a natural mechanic. The challenge of familiarizing myself with stuff I've never even heard of/seen before is just so much fun.

I worked in a bike shop for awhile.. my first day I probably knew more about bikes than my boss (we worked in a department store.. I just hate admitting it lol). I didn't know how to fix anything though, I learned through reading the park tools blue book. Nobody cared what I was doing there (no manager for me) so I got to learn whatever I wanted. I fully disassemble customer bikes and replace everything (mostly bearing cups because cheap bikes have them allover) lol never told them.

I have a friend who is a strong sensor type, the two of us trying to work together is dumb. I usually can't work with anyone actually, I always get tense. When I worked at the bike shop the cute girls I worked with would be peaking over my shoulder cause they thought I was a pretty cool dude, that never helped.

It seems like sensors have a very different approach to solving a problem.. It would seem that they just "do work" or expend physical energy until something works. I do lots of research, which isn't even applicable until the tools are in my hand because shit happens. Soaking up lots of information comes in handy as you go, I try to read a week before. It also helps to talk smack so people will just leave you alone (my family always doubts how I can know how to do stuff).

I've become really confident this year. I think I want to start welding, my eye has been on this big turbo I want to put in my truck except I will need to do some rearranging of stuff under the hood for it to fit. Depending on money.. cause I don't have a summer job yet.. I'll also try to start using vegetable oil/diesel mixture. It would only work in the summer though. One day I will get into wood, not yet.. I have no need to really. I do have a bunch of wood to use though, I imagine I'll be building another shed in the next few years A paint booth would be extremely useful.

wife gets a bit shitty but gets also Italy me and i have the need.

Say what?

 

[nanook]

i can take things apart and understand how they function (did that excessively as a child), but i am not too good at putting anything together again. i would invent and assemble toys from given parts, but my skills fail me, when you have to fine-craft the parts yourself. i am clumsy with matter and my hands are a bit cramped and i am very impatient or lazy about details.

i would rather draw things on paper, fashion or mecha-design. for me functionality is like one aspect of design and i am interested in such functional design, not in functionality without design. i build some models, i liked creating the vintage coloration of rotten items the most. for a while i made some of my own clothing, but i was very lazy about the seams/details. i was very unrealistic about seeing ahead detail-related requirements and I realized only halfway through a project, well halfway through destroying other things in order to get materials out of them, that i just won't get together some of the needed materials for what i wanted to assemble. it actually felt like a mini-manic-depression.

i never clean up my room. if i would own any tools or assembly-parts, they would be flying around everywhere, it would be mess. my place can only be tidy, when i practice extreme minimalism - when i don't own anything.

when i look at things, like bodies, any object, i always feel into how they function, their geometry, tensions and drives and so on, but i foremostly look at them from an artistic symbolic & subjective point of view, i guess thats Ni/Se.

in computers i used to like shell(explorer)replacement, customizing and configuring and skinning and putting together bits of software to work together, shell related script languages. intuitively navigating user interfaces is easy for me. i can't do serious programming with math like problems like vectors, because i am too slow. it's like my brain has to do four attention cycles for one attention cycle to be math-related and productive at that - the other cycles are about drifting of and having a hard time remembering where i was, what i wanted to do next. i need visual elements/operators to connect my functional and strategic thinking. my intelligence (on the pratical+worldy side) is mostly visual/spacial, not logical. in a shell-scripting language every verb represents an action that can be visualized. but somehow i was never able to visualize things like vectors, with all the numbers inside of it - i think it's the numbers that escape me - i cant seem to visualize values.

 

[Crazythinker1]

Yeah, I used to a lot of that when I was younger. I would take apart watches, radios, lawn mowers and other stuff just to see how it worked, and in the process I became a fairly talented fixer of odds and ends.

 

[Dapper Dan]

HA! CAUGHT ALL OF YOU!

Each and every one of you is an ISTP! Admit it!

 

[lucky12]

Nah, your just jealous.

 

[Ex-User (5841)]

Dapper can keep the skydiving and drag racing all to himself. I claim the explosives.

 

[Altivar]

ISTP...... well who truly knows.
Yeh for sure can relate to that to a degree, but also can relate to 3 others.

As mentioned in another thread ... the complexity of a human mind and resulting behaviour cannot be boxed into a fa simple square.

I asked the primary question above to identify with a group of people my thought pattern has great similarities with. To think, let alone assume there as a measurable value of people the same as me.
maybe not as good lookin but of same wave.
Looking around at the age of some of the younger folks i find it interesting they are so decisive they are an INTP. Basing so much assessment on a mind that has only just let a schlong become warm at night without a

But hey..... what the hell would i know .... i just asked a question.
Where the fuck is the pause button for my head !

 

[Altivar]

Typing posts on a phone is painful

 

[EditorOne]

I have an uncanny ability to fault find machinery or anything of a sort i spose.
Cant get enough of how things tick, it rocks my boat.
Would go to work hoping for shit to happen .... or not and at least id have something interesting to do.

with age my home tinker stuff has taken over my shed. got a habit of acquiring something of interest, pulling it apart for a look see, understand what i want, then just put it somewhere.
usually I've had idea floating round in the noggin of how i could use it for such and such and Will keep it. ..... for sure I'll do it one day.

With that also i find Im good with my hands.
To me, i break things dwn to small levels unit i get it.
Once banked in the mind i find usually i can repeat the action reasonably well.
i seem to come back to things i find satisfaction in .... like wood.
if i had even more tools i could do so much more.

But like all else i enjoy the variety of tool and odds i have now is huge.
wife gets a bit shitty but gets also Italy me and i have the need.

wondering on other people similarly. thoughts.

Yes, sounds familiar. I am a hoarder of material and machinery and possibilities and treasure the epiphany that suddenly creates a path of dots between something I've got on a shelf somewhere and a new need that just made itself known.

 

[shrub77]

I always take apart pens instinctively in school.

Once I took apart my mother's vaccuum so I could build a robotic one out of legos..

It didn't work out and the vaccuum parts were all over the house, and after yelling at me for a week to put it back together, I did it while she was holding my PS2 out of a window.

I was 8.

 

[pjoa09]

I was too scared of pulling anything apart. Unless if it was simple. Often I find myself going aw fuck this isnt going to come back together again is it? fucking robots.

 

[PhillyFanWA]

I don't really like to take apart things unless I'm forced to, but when I'm pushed I'm surprisingly good at learning how things work and how to put things back together (if I bother to repair it)
I remember as a kid that all my toys are taken apart not because I took apart toys, but inevitably new toys would get broken and I would take them apart to learn how they worked.

 

[EditorOne]

I always take apart pens instinctively in school.

Once I took apart my mother's vaccuum so I could build a robotic one out of legos..

It didn't work out and the vaccuum parts were all over the house, and after yelling at me for a week to put it back together, I did it while she was holding my PS2 out of a window.

I was 8.

Now there's a great mental image. I take it she found you to be quite a handful.

 

[Solitaire U.]

I don't think I'm naturally mechanically gifted, but I'd rate my working mechanical ability as above average, mostly due to hands-on experience gleaned from over 20 years of driving tow trucks and working in other mechanically oriented professions.

That said, I think I like the repair manuals more than the actual repairing.

 

[JayRay]

I'm the same way. As a kid I would take apart TV's, VCR's and even my dad's motorcycle. At first it was just to satisfy my need to see how they work. But with experience and learning I became better at diagnosing. Tried to be a mechanic but was fired because I would over analyse and just take too long completing tasks. Plus once I had a boss looking over my shoulder it stopped being fun.

Today I satisfy my mechanical need by keeping my car in tip top shape doing my own repairs. For this reason I would rather have a older car that I could work on than a brand new car under warranty that I wouldn't be allowed to touch.

My biggest emotional barrier in being a mechanically inclined INTP is finding a job where I can be the scientist and mechanic at the same time. I thought of being an engineer but they are at their desks all the time and rarely get their hands dirty.

Mechanically inclined INTP's are rare but we are out there.

 

[Philosophyking87]

HA! CAUGHT ALL OF YOU!

Each and every one of you is an ISTP! Admit it!

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing.
I don't really have any mechanical skill whatsoever.

But I did take toys apart to see how the operated when I was a kid.
And I did try to create my own speakers from random materials (as the idea of sound reproduction never failed to keep me fascinated). But yeah, no mechanical ability at all. Just fascination with invention.

 

[Peripheral Visionary]

I despise dealing with anything mechanical.

However, when it's been forced upon me, and I make myself focus, I can usually figure it out. Afterwards I feel a huge sense of satisfaction and efficacy.

However, it is apparently not lasting enough to make me overcome my loathing of dealing with mechanical things.

 

[xbox]

I hoard shiny things

 

[lucky12]

My biggest emotional barrier in being a mechanically inclined INTP is finding a job where I can be the scientist and mechanic at the same time. I thought of being an engineer but they are at their desks all the time and rarely get their hands dirty.

Mechanically inclined INTP's are rare but we are out there.

@JayRay

Were we separated at birth? I'm in mechanical engineering right now, I'm determined to make that my reality.

 

[Ostriker]

Sorry to hijack the thread, but OP's question reminded me of an issue I've been having recently. I'm wondering if anyone can relate:

Whenever I am asked question about myself, such as "are you a mechanically inclined person?", I have trouble coming up with a response. It's all relative really. Unless I can know how it feels to be someone who is not mechanically inclined (which is impossible, assuming that I am) or someone else who is very mechanically inclined, I can never be sure of where it is I fall in the spectrum. It's an impossible question to answer it seems.

I am running into this problem everywhere lately, mostly because I'm a senior in high school and I have been thinking a lot about my interests and what to do with my life once I graduate. I think this problem could be rooted in the fact that I don't have many strong interests. I'm on the fence with a lot of things.

 

[Dapper Dan]

Sorry to hijack the thread, but OP's question reminded me of an issue I've been having recently. I'm wondering if anyone can relate:

Whenever I am asked question about myself, such as "are you a mechanically inclined person?", I have trouble coming up with a response. It's all relative really. Unless I can know how it feels to be someone who is not mechanically inclined (which is impossible, assuming that I am) or someone else who is very mechanically inclined, I can never be sure of where it is I fall in the spectrum. It's an impossible question to answer it seems.

I am running into this problem everywhere lately, mostly because I'm a senior in high school and I have been thinking a lot about my interests and what to do with my life once I graduate. I think this problem could be rooted in the fact that I don't have many strong interests. I'm on the fence with a lot of things.

You'll fit in just fine.

 

[C.J_Finn]

I'm not very good at anything mechanical. I'm much better at working things out on paper and then telling someone else (with mechanical abilities) my ideas so they can figure out how to actually apply it so it can be useful.