Low Tolerance

2025-12-29

I like to fix small things around the house. The basics like replacing light bulbs, batteries, hanging up pictures and shelves, etc. To the more advanced, like oil changes, fixing electrical issues, fixing plumbing issues. And I am not expert in any of these things so I mess up and fail all of the time, I would say my success rate is 75%.

When our upstairs bathroom had some issues with the sink draining I replaced it with a pop up style drain, it took a few days and numerous trips to home depot, but eventually the drain was fixed and everything flowed nicely. On another occasion our drain in kitchen sink was clogged, I tried to take it apart to inspect it and I even snaked it with a tiny hand held drain snake that I have but I failed. Later that day I called a plumber and he snaked it and then everything worked well again. These are my examples.

And so recently, well not so recently now, we were giving away our Snoo, it is a bassinet for a baby that rocks on its own. Our youngest has grown out of the bassinet and we gave it to a family friend since they were expecting. You only use it for ~6 months so it is nice to give it to others after you kid grows out of it. Anyway, right before we give it away we notice is makes a little noise, squeaking. So I google a bunch of things and open up the mechanics of the bassinet and realize two things, one is that it is very dirty, and two that some of the o-rings have worn out and need to be replaced. On this bassinet there are two sizes of o-ring that need to be replaced. So I get out a vacuum and clean up the bassinet, and then I google the o-ring sizes, order a kit that looks like it should cover the sizes.

Eventually the o-rings get here, I replace them the best I can, reassemble the bassinet, and send it off. The next couple, our family friends, complains politely about some noise but it seems to work for them. After they are done with it they give it to my sister in law who is having a baby. She uses it and finds out it no longer rocks automatically at all. So I offer to help, we take it apart, clean it a little, and I look at the o-rings. There are two sizes of them of them look great and are functioning well, and the other are destroyed, shredded, and no longer functioning. And this is the root cause.

We looked on Amazon for replacement and the exact ones we need are like 4X the cost of the o-rings that I bought.

But it is in this moment that I realize, although o-rings are cheap to make, they have super low tolerance. I cannot buy something that mostly fits and expect the machine to work well. I feel there are other machines where you can get away with this. If you need to have 0w20 oil but you have 5w20 it is going to work just fine, at least in California. If you need to glue some plastic together gorrilla glue is probably going to work. But with o-rings, no substitutions are accepted.

-Gary