Learning by Necessity

So I got my shop smith set up today at my in-laws (since Tami convinced me that my neighbors would not appreciate me using it so close to them).  After finding a good branch to turn into a candle stick holder I started it up and started going to town. After about 15 minutes or so I found that it was having a few problems.  Then the completely stopped spinning. Not only am I brand new to using a shopsmith I never have done anything with motors or even much anything electronic.

So over the next couples hours I had to learn how to take it apart, how everything fit together and how to fix it. Once I got the drive belt off the motor I was able to diagnose the problem that the motor itself was the problem. Looking inside I was able to see that it was all clogged up with sawdust. After cleaning it out with a can of compressed air I found that the motor was running just fine again, maybe even a little better than when I bought it.

Out of all the ways to learn, this is not my favorite. It is stressful not knowing what you have to do to solve a problem and not really knowing where I could learn the proper thing to fix the problem. I much prefer learning something and then doing it, not doing it and then learning.