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Hot take: an old lead in Wichita told me my wire bundles looked like "spaghetti in a hurry" and it stung enough to fix my whole method
Two years ago I was doing a harness rework on a King Air out at a shop in Wichita and I thought my lacing was fine. The lead walked over, looked at the bundle for about three seconds and told me it looked like spaghetti in a hurry. He did not say it mean, which somehow made it worse. He pulled out a scrap board and showed me how he spaces ties at a fixed interval, keeps every run running parallel, and never crosses a wire unless there is no other road. I argued that it worked and passed checks, and he just said a bundle that is easy to trace is a bundle that is fast to fix at 2 a.m. on a ramp somewhere. Now I lay out the whole run on the bench first with a pencil line and a ruler instead of just pulling wire as I go, and my last three jobs got through inspection with zero rework. Cost me maybe 20 extra minutes per bundle and I have not looked back since. So what is the worst critique you ever got on your work, and did you actually change anything or just nod and keep doing it your way?
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phoenix_moore42d ago
two seconds" is about right, isn't it? A guy who has done it a thousand times can spot sloppy work from across the hangar. My question is about the lead. Did he walk you through the why on each rule, like why the fixed tie spacing means a longer service life and not just a neater look, or did he mostly show you the how? I ask because I had a guy once who told me to change a method but never said why, and I nodded and went right back to my old way the second he was gone. It only stuck when someone took the time to explain the reason behind it.
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