I have always seen this saying to mean, a bad workman will blame it on anything but his own abilities. I believe this to be the case, as anyone that is good in what they do, can do a great job even with the poorest of tools.
Look at some of the historic wonders of the world, we have the best tools going now days but can not it seems reproduce what they did with the most primitive tools that had to work with.
But this saying can relate to anything in life that you appoint blame on something else.
So for me I see it as a cop out clause.
I agree that you need decent tools to do a decent job but good tools won't make a bad workman better. And crap tools just mean that a good result will be harder work. I might get Mr Stuff to pop his forum cherry on a response to this :giggle:
To me it is an idiom that suggests that humans struggle to accept their own inadequacies and will instead blame something else for their inherent failings.
My M-In Law is a prime example. I have lost track of the times I have fixed her "stupid computer", "stupid camera", "stupid television", "stupid video". And I've found all four of these items to be perfectly fine and the operator entirely faulty.
I take it to mean someone blaming their own shit work on anything but themselves
I think you are right on the workman maxim Benrumson.
The devil is in the detail usually comes up when, for example, two people agree a deal in outline knowing that they still have to agree the details. If they say that the devil is in the detail it means 'we've done the easy bit by agreeing in principle - now sorting out the detail is going to be the difficult bit' - hence that's where the devil lies.
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Dontcha think Res that a bad workman always blaming his tools or a good workman never blaming his tools can both be interpreted either way?
And yes language is lovely.
And no I dont want your babies.
A lot of those sayings are employed without a true understanding of what they mean and imply. But everyone nods agreement, when someone says them. Or winces painfully at them being the most obvious and unecessary thing to say.
There is a vague sense of what they mean, but not a very accurate one.
i once heard an immigrant fellow talking in a shop. His english language was not so good. But he had learned dozens of such phrases and nearly everything he spoke about involved using them in some way. Some quite incorrectly, but nonetheless he managed to get things done quite well by using them.