In the previous post I shortened the chain by 2 links,
and every time I do this work
I get hit with this nagging feeling of guilt.
When I was at Silvest Cycle
people seemed to think I was the kind of guy
who wouldn't teach colleagues about
techniques and knowledge and such,
but that's not quite right.
Shimano has a strong recommendation for how to join chains:
"On the underside of the chainstay, the outer link should be toward the front
and the inner link toward the rear."
The image shows exactly that state.
The tool in the image is something I made myself
by bending a spoke—I call it the Unko Harigaane X (Shit Wire X),
and oddly enough I've had the same one for over 10 years without losing it.
When shortening the chain from here,
the manufacturer forbids removing the connecting pin,
so you have to remove pins other than the connecting pin.
If the removed chain link contains the connecting pin,
when you rejoin the chain, the number of connecting pins won't increase.
If you're going to do this while shortening by 2 links...
there's no option but to "remove the pins before and after the connecting pin."
But if you just cut here,
the positions of the outer and inner links get swapped.
So, you temporarily remove the chain and reverse its direction before rejoining it
and you can shorten by 2 links
without increasing the number of connecting pins.
If there was originally just one connecting pin,
to all appearances it looks like "the chain was only joined once from new."
So when I was at Silvest,
I asked another staff member to do this job,
and when I checked the chain later
it had been joined in the normal way with one extra pin.
Of course, whether a chain that's been cut and rejoined has
one or two connecting pins doesn't really affect performance.
The problem isn't there—
it's that if someone can't do the work you ask them to do,
it's too risky and impossible to ask them to do more advanced work.
Yet this same person can't understand or execute this level of detail,
but in other jobs they ask only for the key points,
and when I don't answer, they say I lack "teamwork spirit."
I've tried teaching them all sorts of things, including what I currently call my "meal ticket code,"
but the result was completely wasted.
For example, wheel truing—if you're going to do that, you have to chase down
the radial runout quite precisely.
Because radial runout is basically impossible to fix afterward.
Yet they won't do that, and only want to learn the truing method—
that's the kind of example I mean.
I'm not saying "hear one thing and know ten."
I can't do that either.
But I did have staff who would remember about nine things if I told them ten.
Some of them seemed to learn things more slowly
than a mouse finding its way through a maze.
Among my shop's customers
are people who, as company presidents, support many employees,
and people who are tasked by their company with training their successors
(though I should say I was never put in an official teaching role by any company).
I really think those people are genuinely great and impressive.
It's not that the slow learners were bad—
the problem was surely with how I taught them.
This isn't sarcasm, it's my honest feeling:
I have no skill at developing people.
On the flip side, working alone is easy for me.
That's the memory that comes back to me
every time I shorten a chain by 2 links.
and every time I do this work
I get hit with this nagging feeling of guilt.
When I was at Silvest Cycle
people seemed to think I was the kind of guy
who wouldn't teach colleagues about
techniques and knowledge and such,
but that's not quite right.
Shimano has a strong recommendation for how to join chains:
"On the underside of the chainstay, the outer link should be toward the front
and the inner link toward the rear."
The image shows exactly that state.
The tool in the image is something I made myself
by bending a spoke—I call it the Unko Harigaane X (Shit Wire X),
and oddly enough I've had the same one for over 10 years without losing it.
When shortening the chain from here,
the manufacturer forbids removing the connecting pin,
so you have to remove pins other than the connecting pin.
If the removed chain link contains the connecting pin,
when you rejoin the chain, the number of connecting pins won't increase.
If you're going to do this while shortening by 2 links...
there's no option but to "remove the pins before and after the connecting pin."
But if you just cut here,
the positions of the outer and inner links get swapped.
So, you temporarily remove the chain and reverse its direction before rejoining it
and you can shorten by 2 links
without increasing the number of connecting pins.
If there was originally just one connecting pin,
to all appearances it looks like "the chain was only joined once from new."
So when I was at Silvest,
I asked another staff member to do this job,
and when I checked the chain later
it had been joined in the normal way with one extra pin.
Of course, whether a chain that's been cut and rejoined has
one or two connecting pins doesn't really affect performance.
The problem isn't there—
it's that if someone can't do the work you ask them to do,
it's too risky and impossible to ask them to do more advanced work.
Yet this same person can't understand or execute this level of detail,
but in other jobs they ask only for the key points,
and when I don't answer, they say I lack "teamwork spirit."
I've tried teaching them all sorts of things, including what I currently call my "meal ticket code,"
but the result was completely wasted.
For example, wheel truing—if you're going to do that, you have to chase down
the radial runout quite precisely.
Because radial runout is basically impossible to fix afterward.
Yet they won't do that, and only want to learn the truing method—
that's the kind of example I mean.
I'm not saying "hear one thing and know ten."
I can't do that either.
But I did have staff who would remember about nine things if I told them ten.
Some of them seemed to learn things more slowly
than a mouse finding its way through a maze.
Among my shop's customers
are people who, as company presidents, support many employees,
and people who are tasked by their company with training their successors
(though I should say I was never put in an official teaching role by any company).
I really think those people are genuinely great and impressive.
It's not that the slow learners were bad—
the problem was surely with how I taught them.
This isn't sarcasm, it's my honest feeling:
I have no skill at developing people.
On the flip side, working alone is easy for me.
That's the memory that comes back to me
every time I shorten a chain by 2 links.