Talking to an old regional jet mechanic changed how I see my tools

I was grabbing parts last Tuesday at the hangar in DFW and this guy who used to work on CRJ200s said I was wasting time with my fancy torque wrenches. He said he did everything by feel for 20 years and never had a failure. Is that just old-school stubbornness or am I overthinking it?

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grace_white3mo ago

My neighbor (who rebuilds Harleys) told me something similar, but then I watched him snap a header bolt on a Saturday because he was hungover and "just knew" the torque. He spent the whole weekend drilling and easy-outing that mess. For something like a CRJ200 control cable turnbuckle, the spec is usually around 20-30 inch-pounds, which is almost nothing by hand, feel is useless there. You can't tell 22 from 28 inch-pounds without a proper tool, period. So yeah, that old guy might have gotten away with it, but a torque wrench is cheap insurance against a catastrophic failure (and a lot of late nights cursing).

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abby_wilson513mo ago

That thing about "doing everything by feel for 20 years" really got me thinking, but I gotta respectfully disagree. Feel is great for when you've done a specific bolt a thousand times on the same plane, but that's not how most of us work day to day. I've seen too many guys strip threads or snap bolts because they swore by the "calibrated elbow" method, especially when they're tired or rushing. Torque wrenches are a tool that gives you consistent results every single time, no matter how your day's going. The old mechanic might have been lucky, but I'd rather trust a click than a guess when it's holding something together at 30,000 feet.

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