The apprentice who questioned my crimp tool choice

Last Thursday, this new kid named Marcus asked me why I was still using the old ratcheting crimpers instead of the hydraulic ones. I gave him some grumpy answer about how I've been doing it 15 years and it works fine. But then he showed me his test results from school where the hydraulic tool had way less resistance variance, and honestly I can't stop thinking about it. Has anyone else had a younger tech make them rethink an old habit they thought was set in stone?

2 comments

2 Comments

campbell.david1mo ago

...and the thing nobody's saying is that the real problem isn't the tool choice, it's that we get stuck in a mindset where experience equals right. Marcus isn't just proving the hydraulic tool works better, he's showing that training methods and tech have moved past what most of us learned on the job. I'd bet half the guys in our shop would fight against any new crimper because it feels like admitting their old way was wrong. The good news is that kid's testing data puts a hard number on the difference, so it's not just opinion anymore.

mary_kelly1mo agoTop Commenter

@campbell.david nailed it with "experience equals right" being the real hangup.