Thread: How it's made

To be fair it was a 5 min brisk walk through the process. Had the entire show been about straight razors Im sure that there would of been much much more pertinent information given to us. As it was, it was generalized, glazed, and made easy to follow by the audience its targeted at.

Originally Posted by debay

To be fair it was a 5 min brisk walk through the process. Had the entire show been about straight razors Im sure that there would of been much much more pertinent information given to us. As it was, it was generalized, glazed, and made easy to follow by the audience its targeted at.

I am sure you are right, debay, but that doesn't excuse errors like:

'lead adds strength' - it doesn't, it is used in tempering the steel because it holds heat well and quickly brings the parts up to the required temperature and maintains it. The process does not make the steel 'stronger' - the reverse if anything because it makes it less brittle and relieves internal stresses, making it less 'hard'

the 'blades catch fire' - technically they don't, the oil in the oil-tempering bath flames off

asphalt lacquer is used so the engraving is crisp - no, it is used primarily to blacken the steel because the laser beam bounces off shiny surfaces (scattering the beam and potentially damaging the laser) and to provide a resist when placed in the gold bath. In laser/acid etching, the laser burns the coating (asphalt) away in precise areas and the remaining asphalt acts as a resist while the object is placed in an acid bath.

They are only small points, true, but they are wrong and didn't need to be. Long-winded explanations were not necessary, just a few right words would have sufficed.

Regards,
Neil

To think I was listening to them now I know, mainly I just like to watch the process and with the general even off description helps.

Originally Posted by insanity

To think I was listening to them now I know, mainly I just like to watch the process and with the general even off description helps.

Me too. But if they get some of the small details wrong that bother those of us who do know...how will I know what small details they got wrong about some other interesting subject that I'm not familiar?

No question that such things get people talking about the show, and any press is good press for ratings.

Where I'm going to have problems, say trying to help someone understand heat treatment, is they will believe that lead baths are the only way to go, and my job overcoming the poor information is that much more difficult. The poor information breeds and gets out of proportion over time.

I LOVE How It's Made. I was actually about to post this and figured someone probably beat me to it. Glad I searched beforehand. Cool segment.

In regards to the show's inaccuracies as mentioned above... people who watch a 5 full minutes of a television program and walk away thinking they're now experts clearly have an exaggerated opinion of their opinion. That's part of the problem of this day and age. When I watch How It's Made, and they make a comment like "the molten lead hardens the razor" I know that it's a very simple explanation for what is obviously complicated engineering using even more complicated physics. However, I at least know more about something than I did before, which for most of the stuff they show is very little to nothing.

I suspect that for most things they can be accused of being simplistic, perhaps even to a fault. I don't think I would call them inaccurate, but what do I know; I'm not the kind of person who would think that what I saw on television is even remotely like reality, even if I saw it on the Science channel.