Cotton's Law

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Cotton's Law

Postby flyguy0609 » Sun May 12, 2024 9:49 am

Cotton's law of home building states that " The purpose of the hobby is to buy tools". The first corollary to Cotton's Law is " The quantity of tools will always exceed the available storage." or "Tool Organization is futile".

Any other observations on home building?
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Re: Cotton's Law

Postby Bryan Cotton » Sun May 12, 2024 10:01 am

Excellent - another one is "it will be done next year." Believe it long enough and sooner or later it's true!
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Re: Cotton's Law

Postby BobDz » Sun May 12, 2024 6:41 pm

You only need 200 clecoes.
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Re: Cotton's Law

Postby WaiexB22 » Sun May 12, 2024 7:05 pm

No matter how long you procrastinate hoping to save on shipping charges, as soon as you place your order to spruce or sonex or jegs or whoever...you will inevitably need something else from there right after you place the order.
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Re: Cotton's Law

Postby DCASonex » Mon May 13, 2024 2:07 pm

flyguy0609 wrote:Cotton's law of home building states that " The purpose of the hobby is to buy tools". The first corollary to Cotton's Law is " The quantity of tools will always exceed the available storage." or "Tool Organization is futile".

Any other observations on home building?


Not enough storage space for tools only means that you next investment will be in a bigger shop. Last three moves, shop has gone from 350 sq, ft. to 850, to current 1,150 sq. ft.

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Re: Cotton's Law

Postby DCASonex » Mon May 13, 2024 2:11 pm

BobDz wrote:You only need 200 clecoes.


Probably adequate if that is 100 each of each of 3/16" and 1/4", for the 1/8" and 3/32" sizes better at least double that.

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Re: Cotton's Law

Postby flyguy0609 » Sat Jun 29, 2024 6:21 pm

To paraphrase from the responses above,

Cotton's Law states:

"The purpose of the hobby is to acquire tools."
1st expansion. The general theory: "Said acquisition occurs in three phases, #1. Purchase of tools to assemble the "hobby". Phase2, Acquisition of tools to create parts assembled in Part 1. Phase 3 Go whole hog, and get the tools used to make the tools used in Phase 2. 2nd expansion, the special theory, states that the tool requirements grow as an exponent of the phase number. Mathematically : F(x) ^n, where F(x) is a function of the complexity of the hobby and n is the phase number.

I'm ready to make the Haj OSH.
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Re: Cotton's Law

Postby flyguy0609 » Mon Oct 14, 2024 8:21 pm

We recently had a death in the family. THe deceased was a 35 year veteran at United Airlines. His tool accumulation is nothing short of epic.

His garage
20240921_124752.jpg


His Basement.
20240921_124522.jpg


This is just a sample, He had so many tools that he didn't have room to work..
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Re: Cotton's Law

Postby GordonTurner » Wed Oct 16, 2024 6:12 pm

“…so many tools that he didn’t have room to work…”

There must be a corollary contained therein :)
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Re: Cotton's Law

Postby flyguy0609 » Fri Oct 18, 2024 5:17 pm

GordonTurner wrote:“…so many tools that he didn’t have room to work…”

There must be a corollary contained therein :)


And when there's a corollary, there's a math function closely followed by an algorithm being chased by a mischief of techies. :)
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