If you've never run a tap through 1/4" stainless steel...

...then you're missing out on a large part of what it means to be human.

Sounds like a weird, twisted kind of thing to say, but it's true, for
several different reasons. For one thing, there's a deeply sensuous -
and by that, I mean involving all your senses - experience in tapping
through thick metal; the hyper-sensitivity that you need, and that is
focused like a laser while you're doing it, that's necessary to keep
that tap from breaking. Call it "mechanic's feel" or what you will, but
there's an amazing aspect to slowly applying torque to that tap,
watching this hard but frangible, desperately-thin metal rod *twisting*
under the load, right up to the breaking point... and believing, based
on nothing more than that feel, that it's going to turn - *please*, you
damn thing, *turn!* - before it breaks, shattering into spiky little
pieces and ruining your whole project (you can't re-tap that hole unless
you can manage to get out that broken tap... and that's very, very hard
metal.) And that's just the beginning - because you have to extend that
"feel" even further, so you can sense when it's _not_ going to turn, so
you can back it out a turn or two, enough to clear the metal chips from
the flutes, or maybe even back it out all the way and relube it - and
then, restart again. Or maybe feel it enough to realize that the metal
you're tapping is being a little too grabby (due to temperature,
perhaps, or some alloy that's particularly adhesive), or that the tap
isn't quite as sharp as when it was new, and you have to drill the hole
a couple of thousandths of an inch larger.

And *all* of this information comes to you through your fingertips, as
you twist, hard - in that indefinable moment before it either turns or
breaks. It's beautiful, it's powerful, and it's humbling. And it's one
of the pinnacles that we humans have achieved - because the old
Archimedean principle of the inclined plane, translated into a screw, is
what holds the majority of the civilized world together. This, and
welding, are deep, gritty, powerful, magical experiences for that reason
- and for the inextricably-coupled amazing experience of being able to
interact with metal, the thing that is held up as the acme of solidity,
as a malleable thing, something that you can shape, control, change - or
make run like water.

Some people go to church to experience that kind of uplift. Me, I pick
up a tap or a welding rod. Or heave up my anchor and hoist my sails...
but that's a post for another day.