If You’re Going to Make Something, Here’s How to Make It Robust

The carburetor—the block of machinery that supplies a gas engine with fuel and air and helps to spark ignition—was a mess. It was blocked with thick layers of congealed fuel and dust. Tidy saw the problem and just happened to have some tools nearby and a burning curiosity about how exactly this thing worked and what he could do to fix it. That quickly turned into an attempt “to assemble a kind of Frankenstein engine” out of the parts of many discarded petrol engines. He disassembled the rumbling machine piece by piece until he found the offending parts, then doused the carburetor in gasoline, followed by water and dish soap, then scrubbed it clean with a toothbrush. The carburetor sat shiny and clean on his shelf until he sold it to someone looking for the right part.

Since then, Tidy has continued to feel ...