Slick Dimnel's father was the finest steam engineer in Sto Lat, a man who believed that any problem could be solved with the correct application of pressure, brass fittings, and a wrench applied firmly to the right place. His mother was an accountant, which is more or less the same thing but with numbers.

Young Dimnel built his first ticker machine at age nine from a grandmother clock, a mouse trap, and what he described as "borrowed" copper pipe from the Assassins' Guild plumbing. The Guild was not amused. The ticker, however, worked flawlessly, which Dimnel considered the more important point.

After a brief but educational apprenticeship at the Ankh-Morpork Royal Mint (terminated following an incident involving a steam-powered coin sorter that could sort faster than the Mint could print, raising uncomfortable questions about inflation), Dimnel established his workshop above the Mended Drum.

His philosophy is straightforward: a tool should do what it says on the brass plate. If you want it to do something else, that's a different tool. If you want it to predict the future, that's not a tool, that's a religion, and he doesn't do those.

The workshop has exploded twice. Both times, the tools survived intact. Dimnel considers this proof of quality engineering. His insurance company considers it proof that they should have read the application more carefully.