Honestly, I was about to give up on a dig site in rural Montana until I tried a simple metal detector trick with a 2-foot grid pattern

Going against the grain on using hot air for every SMD job

Everyone pushes hot air stations for all surface-mount work, but I chose a good pair of tweezers and a fine-tip iron for a recent 0201 capacitor replacement on a phone board. The control was better and I didn't risk blowing nearby components, which saved the repair. Does anyone else still reach for the iron first for small parts?

I finally got that old cedar fence in Boulder to stand straight

The client wanted to keep the original posts, but the ground had shifted so much over 20 years that every single one was leaning a different way. We spent three full days just digging, bracing, and packing concrete to get them plumb again, which was way longer than the one day we thought it would take. Anyone else run into a job where saving the old posts ended up being the hardest part?

Just fixed my 100th broken power supply this year

I was cleaning my bench and counted my repair logs. I hit 100 fixed power supplies since January, which really surprised me. Most were from old gaming PCs and audio gear people brought in. It matters because I used to think these were throwaway parts, but now I see a clear pattern in the common failures. I've gotten fast at spotting bad capacitors and blown fuses. Has anyone else noticed a specific type of device that keeps your repair numbers up?

That time a simple oil change turned into a full engine teardown

Last Tuesday at the regional airport in Boise, I found metal flakes in the filter during a routine 500-hour check on a Cessna 172, which everyone else in the hangar said was probably just break-in wear from the recent overhaul. I insisted on pulling the oil sump and found a cracked piston skirt, forcing a full engine removal and a two-week delay for the owner. Does anyone else think we're too quick to write off initial metal in oil as normal?

Update: The pitmaster at the county fair gave me a rub recipe on a napkin.

I tried it on pork shoulder last weekend, and my family loved it. Do you ever get tips from pros in casual settings?