[norton]

"The best engineers are those that can also turn the wrench. A wrench man will know a standard thread pitch, while a non-wrench engineer will read in one of his books what the best pitch should be for an application, even if a bolt has to be specially made to comply with his design."

Absolutely and utterly true.

I spent almost 30 years watching book taught engineers go all lame when what was 'supposed to happen' didn't. And (really), creating a huge, SS, nut, with non-standard threads, to solve a perfectly not complex assembly. (He thought it was eligant, it rusted anyway)

My personal favorite was the guy who raised his hand after an hours long design review and shyly announced that "all we wanted was a cherry picker".

[redgolum]

LOL!

My first job as an engineer was with a corn processing facility. The engineer on the other shift was a "book" guy, and refused to talk to the guys on the floor.

Being a farm kid, my first instinct was to go talk to the guys working on the job, and then figure out what is going on. The other guy screwed up a lot of things by just reading the books that I had to fix.