That time an old timer showed me a rope hitch trick I still use 12 years later

I was swapping out a governor rope on a 1982 Otis in a downtown Atlanta building last Wednesday, and this retired mechanic happened to be there visiting his grandson who's the building manager. He saw me struggling with the splice and just said 'you're overthinking it, treat it like a shoelace not a knot.' Showed me this simple figure-eight loop that holds tension way better than anything I learned in school. Has anyone else picked up a weird trick from an older mechanic that you never see in the manuals?

2 comments

2 Comments

nathan8517d ago

That line 'treat it like a shoelace not a knot' is the kind of thing they never teach you because it's too simple to write down. It's the real knowledge you only get from someone who's been doing it since before manuals took over.

matthewp527d ago

Yeah that's a good point but I think there's actually a small thing missing there. The shoelace thing works great for basic knots that just need a little loosening, but if you're dealing with something that's been tightened down hard or has corrosion, trying to treat it like a shoelace can actually make things worse. You gotta know when to switch from that gentle wiggle approach to something more direct, like heat or penetrating oil. It's kind of like knowing when to be patient and when to just get aggressive with it.