Scamping Tricks and Odd Knowledge: Occasionally Practised Upon Public Works, Chronicled From the Confessions of Some Old Practitioners (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Scamping Tricks and Odd Knowledge: Occasionally Practised Upon Public Works, Chronicled From the Confessions of Some Old PractitionersThe following pages have been written with the view to record a few scamping tricks occasionally practised upon public works, and to name some methods founded on practical experience adopted by sub-contractors and others to cheaply and quickly execute work.All who have had the direction or charge of an extensive or even comparatively insignificant public enterprise will agree that it is impossible for a resident or contractor's engineer to know the manner in which everything is proceeding on his division, and in some measure he is compelled to rely upon others; nevertheless, it is quite as important to ascertain that the work is carried out according to the specification and drawings as to elaborate a perfect specification and then have to partly leave the execution to the care of the beneficent fairies.If a finger-post has been correctly pointed in the direction in which a favourable field for scamping tricks may exist, the author's object in writing this book will have been attained.To the less experienced, the incidents and scrap-knowledge described may be more particularly useful, and on consideration it was thought that the conversational tone adopted would best expose the subject and indicate the ethics of somewhat conscience-proof sub-contractors and workmen, and also the way in which their earnest endeavours to practise the science of scamping may be exercised upon materials and under circumstancies not especially referred to herein.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.