And Have Burt Ward Wax the Batmobile

I can’t believe how much I rock. Check this out.

That’s the lathe, with a new old light installed, plus a 4-jaw chuck. And I added a couple of new wrenches. I think when you have a lathe, your best bet is to buy a couple of wrenches that fit the things you turn most often and just leave them where you can reach them. It beats running back and forth from the tool chest.

That light is from my old desk; the one I used when I was getting my bachelor’s degree. It was in a storage hole over a closet. Came in handy.

The light is attached to a piece of scrap I bolted to the wall. I had a 4″ section of 2″ by 3/16″ angle iron lying on the floor, so I drilled three holes in it and fastened it to the wall. Then I clamped the lamp base to it.

I also replaced the fine wheel on my bench grinder. Baldor ships these with fairly crappy wheels. It’s not that they’re cheap, although maybe they are. The quality is not the issue. The problem is that they’re not right for grinding lathe tools. I got an 80-grit aluminum oxide wheel from Enco, and I trued it (I think) with a silicon carbide stick. I’ll get one of those star wheel things if I can ever find a place that sells them AND has them in stock.

The spray bottle is WD40, from a Home Depot gallon jug.

I have replaced the worthless gear selection lever the lathe came with, and that white thing on the headstock is Moly-Dee. It is conceivable that I could turn something, if I knew how.

The 4-jaw chuck is mysterious. I tried to true up that piece of aluminum in it, but the weight makes it difficult. If you loosen one jaw so you can tighten another and move the aluminum, the aluminum likes to flop downward at the end and make things worse. Getting it within three or four thousandths of straight seems relatively easy, but I believe you’re supposed to be able to eliminate measurable error with one of these chucks.

I have the electrical parts to pretty up the wiring and put it away. Maybe tomorrow. In the photo it looks like the wiring is near the spinning stuff, but it really isn’t.

This week the insulation for the garage doors arrives. It’s very nice in the garage already, but insulation will probably make it even better.

I have to move the compressor to make room for the mill. That means running conduit over the rafters, about 14 feet off the ground. I can hardly wait! Maybe I should wait until my medical insurance kicks in.

I Laid me Down and Slept

Is this a wonderful morning, or what?

I used to think there were NO wonderful mornings. I had problems sleeping, and it drove me crazy. I had a hard mattress and mysterious on-and-off nasal congestion, and–this is disgusting–hard stuff accumulated in my nose, at the narrowest points in the air passages. The only way to cope with that was to get up and remove it. I woke over and over during the night. Sometimes when I woke up, I felt as if a giant magnet were sucking me down into the mattress. That’s how tired I was. I would get up and literally stumble because my nervous system wasn’t working yet.

I started taking steps. I gave away a $2000 mattress that felt like cement and replaced it with the much nicer, cheaper one I use to use when I lived in Texas. I lifted the head of the bed six inches. I got synthetic pillows, because when I was a kid, a useless allergist told my mother to get them for me.

I got improvements, but not real success. I wondered if the problem was mold or dirty air conduits or pollen. I decided to treat the one thing I could be sure of beating: dust mites. I got a microfiber mattress cover. It doesn’t kill mites, but it prevents them from getting at their food: me. It cut back on congestion to the point where I didn’t need anything to help me sleep. I quit using nasal spray, including that worthless saline stuff.

I still had one improvement to make. When I got new pillows, I saw mite-proof covers on display at the store. I picked one up. What the hell. The pillows improved my sleep, but one of them worked better than the other. One was a memory foam pillow that came with its own cover, and the other was a fake down pillow, which I put inside the cover I bought. The fake down pillow remained problem-free, but after a while, I noticed that I could feel congestion starting whenever I rolled over onto the foam pillow. I realized what was happening. Mites can’t grow in a foam pillow (I am told), but they can grow in the materials covering it. Any new pillow will kill your allergies, but if mites can get through the cover, they’ll grow on the fabric, and the protection will fade. Yesterday, I invested in two more pillow covers. I put one on the foam pillow, and I cleaned one of my old down pillows and stuck the other cover on it.

Last night was perfect. I have no idea when I fell asleep. I remember absolutely nothing that happened during the night. When I awoke, I felt great. And I had a down pillow to help me cope with the fake ones, which really are not as good.

I can’t express the feeling of freedom. It’s like I’ve been cured of leprosy. Poor sleep affects your blood pressure, your weight, your memory, your concentration, your energy, your mood, and your body’s ability to heal and renew itself. It’s a very big deal. It looks like it’s behind me.

If you want to try one of these products, go to Bed, Bath and Beyond and get a Microguard mattress cover and pillow covers. Pay no attention to the way they feel in the store. You can’t feel the fabric’s creepy texture when you use it, and it breathes, so you will not sweat. The only thing I’ve noticed is that the fake down pillow tends to expand like a balloon, because air passes out of the cover slowly. The pillow blows up from its natural loft, and then when you put your head on it, it deflates like a tire with a pinhole. That isn’t a problem with the other pillows.

I can go back to down now, although I want to keep the foam pillow for variety. I want varied pillow materials on hand so I will have choices every night when I engineer my pillow structure.

Next health challenge: I have to resume counting calories. I think the pizza crisis is over, so I won’t be making it every day and ruining my diet. Last night I checked my blood pressure, and it scared me to death. I assume something I had done or eaten was affecting it, because it was behaving strangely. The diastolic number varied between 89 and 113. I got up today, and my pressure was 114 over 76. I don’t trust blood pressure measurements. As a scientist, I can’t believe a gauge as silly as the sphygmomanometer could ever be reliable. How can things like subcutaneous fat, muscularity, and arm position fail to affect it? But I want to be thinner, just in case. I ate unsweetened oatmeal for breakfast today. I guess I could have just boiled a newspaper.

Church was good but not fantastic last night. They had a guest preacher, and he was too much like a standup comedian for my tastes. He started joking about PMS and other things not relevant to Christianity. That’s not what I go to church for, and I don’t want to be encouraged in my own habit of ridiculing people and their weaknesses. He didn’t follow his notes, and his sermon was disjointed and way too long. One of the reasons I left my last church was that the services lasted three hours. Like I’ve said before, there is a thin line between a long church service and a hostage situation. At the end, he asked everybody to give the church a special gift, which annoyed me. They want a special gift next week, for Pentecost. This is too much. I think he knew it. You could see the certainty leave his face when he brought it up. I think he knew he was making a mistake. I guess he just got carried away and then decided to bull his way through. I gave a little something out of respect for his authority, but I felt used. Not a big deal. Good people make mistakes, and I won’t miss the token amount I gave.

I figured there had to be some good things in his message. I don’t think God lets people go to an effective church and leave with nothing, just because it’s an off week. And I picked up some things. I think my prayer life needs a shot in the arm. I have not restored my routine; it comes and goes. So in the morning, I am not always spending time in prayer. He also talked about temptation, and how we are sifted and pulled away from the church. That was a useful reminder.

It certainly beats what I would have gotten had I stayed home, i.e. nothing.

He said Christians screw up by pursuing marriage too doggedly. He claimed that when the Bible refers to “he who finds a wife,” the word “find” means to come across inadvertently. Try to serve God, and wait for someone to show up. That was the message. Maybe he’s right. That’s the way it works with other needs, to some extent. God provided mates for people in the Old Testament. I think of the stories of Isaac, Jacob, and Ruth. Human effort was involved, but it was guided from above.

Mancow and Hitchens Say So

I saw something interesting on the web last night. Looks like Eric “Mancow” Muller submitted to waterboarding and decided it was torture. After six seconds. That’s how long he lasted before giving up and asking to be released. And Christopher Hitchens, who was also waterboarded, agrees. Hitchens won’t even say how long he lasted. He’s embarrassed. Muller was trying to prove waterboarding is not torture. Now he is sure that it is. That proves his sincerity, when he says torture is the right word.

This is not a big surprise to me. What surprises me is that conservatives keep claiming it’s not torture. It is wrong to compare it to certain things our enemies have done, such as lowering live people into plastic-shredding machines, but that doesn’t mean it’s not torture.

A long time ago, I read that the CIA record for withstanding waterboarding was something like 20 seconds. I mean that a CIA employee who was voluntarily waterboarded lasted that long. After I saw that, I was content to agree that it was torture. Anything so unpleasant a serious government intelligence operative (no doubt trying to win a bet and impress his buddies) can’t stand it for half a minute is probably torture.

I’ve joked about how great it was that we were waterboarding the inbred idiots who were trying to destroy our cities, but I never said it in a serious way, because I thought waterboarding was a bad idea. Maybe I shouldn’t have joked about it, but hey, I’m human, and this isn’t the New York Times, and I’m no journalist. This is just a blog. I have joked about cancer and blindness and AIDS and God only knows what else, and so have most Americans. Doesn’t mean anything.

Now conservatives look silly, because people who mean well are using stupid phrases like “having a little water poured up your nose” to describe waterboarding. I can’t understand why waterboarding is so unpleasant. It doesn’t sound all that bad. But it’s clearly a terrible experience, and we ought to admit it.

I remember reading Jacobo Timerman’s books. He was an Argentinian Jew. He as kidnapped by his government, and they tortured him by applying electrodes to his bare skin and cranking up the voltage. I believe this is totally harmless, from a physical standpoint, because the amperage is tiny. Doesn’t sound all that bad, does it? But when he described his response, he said you don’t shout when they turn on the power. You howl. Apparently, the pain is so great, your self-control completely disappears instantaneously. So you don’t have to do anything invasive or disfiguring to torture a person. A little water may be more than sufficient.

I’ve thought about this a little, and it seems to me that the level of discourse on the subject is pretty low. People aren’t saying anything really intelligent. Just “torture bad” or “water up nose okay.”

I’m not sure I would back a total ban on torture. I would have to know more about it. I believe we should consider the possibility that the morality of torture depends on the circumstances. For example, I would not back torturing an enemy soldier to find out where his army planned to hit our troops, even if thousands of lives were at stake. But what about a terrorist who knows which Manhattan address is the location of a Muslim atom bomb? What if you had a few hours to get that kind of information? Would you seriously expect to rely on things like sleep deprivation and insults?

We should probably have one set of standards for uniformed enemies and another for terrorists who target civilians for no legitimate military purpose. We have long accepted the notion that ordinary soldier-to-soldier warfare has rules, even when a nation’s autonomy is at stake. But when an illiterate boob in a khaffiyah decides to roast several hundred thousand civilians alive, maybe he should be deemed to have given up his rights under the usual rules.

Think about this. Imagine you are attacked by a violent criminal, and you believe you’re in danger of serious injury, which, under the law, includes sexual assault. The law says you can do absolutely anything to that person, to incapacitate him and prevent the harm. You can push a knife through his eyeball. You can throw boiling oil in his face. You can set him on fire. You can park your car on him. Anything. His suffering isn’t even a legal consideration. Whatever means you have at hand, you are allowed to use, provided what you do is reasonable and not excessive under the circumstances. Maybe a person who tries to murder or maim a large number of noncombatants should have no more rights than a rapist or mugger.

But if that is true, even then, it is only true when no other methods will work.

Perhaps refraining from torture isn’t the way to maintain the moral high ground. Maybe the reasons we do it are what properly distinguish us from the backward savages who are trying to exterminate us.

Get me Taiwanese!

I got my milling machine puzzle solved. I thought I had it solved yesterday, but it’s more solved today. It is now just a question of deciding which Asian mill to get. I learned a few things that might be helpful to other people who are Googling around, trying to figure out which milling machine is the best buy. This may not be absolutely correct, but it’s close enough.

Forget Bridgeport. Forget all American machines. If you find a great deal on a mill some nutcase bought new and only used as a music stand, great, but generally, American machines are overpriced, and it can be very hard to find one that isn’t pretty worn where it counts. It might be worth the effort if there was something special about American milling machines, but there is not. They are not the best. So don’t bother.

You want a Taiwanese mill. Chinese mills are also okay, but they’re generally not quite as good, and Taiwanese is a safer bet. Sharp and Acer are two brands you can trust. If you Google, you will find a number of experienced machinists who say the better Taiwanese mills are superior to Bridgeports. Not “nearly as good.” Superior. And they definitely have more features. So whatever the truth is, they’re good enough for your garage.

You can get a top name brand for seven thousand and up. Something like that. You will never wear it out in your home shop. It will do anything a Bridgeport can do. Parts are readily available. It is not a risky buy.

There are cheaper Taiwanese mills that are fundamentally just as good. Made in the same factories, to the same tolerances. They may not be as pretty, and they may have fewer doodads on them. But under the bells and whistles…same machine, from the same assembly line, made by the same people, from the same parts.

One example–I may get one of these–is GMC. This is a company that split off from Birmingham. They will put a very nice Taiwanese mill in your hands for under five thousand dollars. They have customer service, but even if they did not, parts for the various Taiwanese mills tend to be interchangeable, because they are THE SAME PARTS.

There is some confusion (in my mind, at least) about where the final assembly is done on these things. I think some are finished off in China. But it probably does not matter.

The mills GMC resells are also sold by MSC as their proprietary Vectrax line. I checked, and these things go for over eleven grand. They come with DROs, but that doesn’t justify a $6000+ price difference. They’re also sold as Precision Matthews.

It ought to be obvious what I plan to get. A reconditioned (not fully restored) Bridgeport with an ancient motor and no warranty will cost around $4500, delivered. Any way you slice it, I have to pay a thousand dollars just to get it here, so that jacks up the price. It will have no DRO and no power feed, and it will be lighter and less rigid than a Taiwanese mill, and it will probably have a smaller table with less travel. The motor will probably be 1 1/2 HP or less, whereas the Asian jobs typically have 3 HP. The Asian spindles are bigger and stronger. A new Taiwanese mill with a warranty, a DRO, a power feed, and pretty new paint will run six hundred dollars more than a highly dubious Bridgeport. The resale won’t be as good (unless the Bridgeport really craps out), but it’s a better machine, and I am not planning to sell it. It’s a lifetime buy. Would you consider the resale value on an artificial hip?

It looks like Taiwanese for me. I might spend a little more and get a better DRO, but probably not, because thousandths are thousandths, no matter who designs the chip that measures them.

Grizzly and Shop Fox (Grizzly in white paint) sell Chinese mills. People seem to like the more recent ones. They’re a little cheaper than a GMC, and Grizzly has great service. But the product is probably not quite as good as Taiwanese, and the price is nearly the same. If you buy a Taiwanese Grizzly, I think they start at about 8K. So forget Grizzly and Shop Fox.

One other good option is the Millrite I saw locally. I can probably put that in the garage for under two thousand, and it probably has very little wear. It has the original paint, it looks great, and Millrites aren’t generally used for production. But sooner or later, it will limit me because of its size. And can you put a DRO or a power feed on a Millrite? I don’t even know.

That’s the summary. There may be little factual problems with it, but I’m satisfied that Taiwanese is my nearly perfect machining answer. I wanted a neat old American machine, but we just can’t compete with Asians any more. We can’t even come close. I bought a 35-year-old American lathe, and it looks like it has been through hell, and I had to replace the motor. I did the “buy American” thing, and I feel like I have been punished enough. I was a moron. Now I want a cheap tool I can actually use.

Also: Milling Epiphany

I had an interesting thought last night.

The general rule in my life has been that the worse things get, the closer I draw to God. But lately, I have been drawing closer to God because things are getting better.

People often ask why God doesn’t treat them better. Why he doesn’t fix their problems, when they have faith and go to church and pray and so on. Maybe I know the answer. If you forget God when things go well, you give him incentive to let you suffer. If you get more excited about God when life is pleasant, you give him incentive to keep blessing you. Doesn’t that make sense? After all, what’s important to God? Your income? Your health? Your peace of mind? Of course not. The most important thing is that you have a close relationship with him and walk in faith. So shouldn’t you expect him to do whatever causes that to happen?

I feel stupid for not seeing this earlier in my life. It should be obvious from reading the Bible. When the ancient Israelites did well, they started worshiping idols and ascribing their success to their own merit. And God withdrew his blessings, and they suffered. Then they returned to him. But God was content to keep blessing them, as long as they were faithful.

Seems to me that the wise thing is to credit God with your successes, keep up with your tithes and offerings and alms, pray and study regularly, live by faith, and get your butt to church every week. Maybe being a foxhole Christian just guarantees that you’ll spend your whole life in a foxhole.

I guess you can try to make an end-run around this kind of thinking. You can say, “If God is all-powerful, he can create a world where everybody is blessed no matter how they act,” or some such thing. All I can say is, we don’t make the rules. The Bible makes it pretty clear that God is not going to magically erase all suffering just because we don’t feel like doing things his way, so I think it’s stupid to fight the house rules. If you want that kind of God, you were born in the wrong universe. Maybe you should be worshiping Barack Obama instead. He doesn’t believe in suffering or consequences. Yet.

Now, what about my fevered search for a milling machine? I finally figured it out.

I don’t want a Bridgeport. The used ones I’ve seen are generally crap, and they have no warranties. It’s a sucker game, and the prices are way out of line with what you get. The reconditioned one I found might be perfect, but it’s too risky; someone who bought one from the rebuilder gave me information that put me off the buy. I might go for the high school machine, if I can get a good inspection.

Best choice: used Taiwanese. These machines are actually superior to Bridgeports, and gorgeous used ones are affordable.

Second best choice: new Birmingham with Chicom body and Taiwan head. I can get this locally and save on shipping.

Third: Shop Fox or Grizzly. People who own recent Shop Fox/Grizzly products say great things about them, and the customer service is top notch.

Turns out the Chaiwanese machines are heavier and more rigid than Bridgeports. How about that?

The puzzling is over, which is good, because my puzzler is sore. Now I have to find a mill I like.

Alert the Media

The quest for a milling machine gets more frustrating, the further I get into it. Ordinarily you expect to get CLOSER to an answer as you work on a problem, but it isn’t turning out that way.

I thought I had the solution. A guy selling “rebuilt” machines. I contacted him and talked to him. He said the machines were not rebuilt. They were reconditioned. That means they’ve had much less work than rebuilt machines, and according to one of his former customers, the reconditioning does not restore lost accuracy. So apparently, most of the money you pay for reconditioning doesn’t buy you any improvement in function. The former customer said he regretted the buy, and that he had to have the head on his machine rebuilt. And he said it privately, because he knew the “America first” crowd would get in his face if he did it publicly.

Guess what a rebuilt machine really costs? Roughly eight grand, plus shipping. So call it $9500. No thanks. I can get a new Taiwanese mill for that.

I started looking at Chinese machines and reading up on them. I’ve only learned one fact for certain: the people who always say you are better off with old American machines have to be ignored, because everything they say is useless drivel. Some of them hate Chinese people. Some are old union guys who can’t accept the fact that the free market proved they were wrong and drove machine tool makers overseas. Whatever drives them, they are all fools, and nothing they say has any value. Some Chinese machines are very good, and most are at least okay. Some Taiwanese machines are better than some American machines. And we are never going to have a big machine-tool industry in America again, so people who are upset about that need to shut up and deal with it.

Grizzly/Shop Fox has a few nice mainland-Chinese mills about the size of a Bridgeport, and some are cheaper than a RECONDITIONED Series I. So I am considering getting one. I’ll have a warranty, I’ll have someone to complain to if there are problems, I won’t have any worn-out parts lurking in the head or under the table, and delivery will be free or very cheap. How can you go wrong with a deal like that? The castings may not be as pretty as the old Bridgeport iron, but what good is a pretty machine that craps out and requires expensive repairs I can’t do? I can’t scrape or rebuild a mill, and how would I find someone near me who could do it? In Miami, you can’t find people qualified to run a weedeater. Seriously, that is no exaggeration. I had to build little shields around the bases of my trees. Skilled labor does not exist here. I think people come here because they are considered unemployable in Guatemala and El Salvador. So I’d have to sell the mill, because buying a new one would be a better deal than shipping it to someone who could repair it.

I wasn’t asleep during my ordeal with the “barely used” 1974 lathe I bought. I paid attention. I noticed that I was miserable. I am not eager to repeat that experience with a more expensive machine.

People are telling me I don’t need to worry about accuracy (i.e., a new or little-used machine), because it will be a long time before I’ll be good enough to take advantage of an accurate machine’s abilities. Does that make sense to you? To me it sounds like, “Spend four figures on a crappy machine, sell it at a four-figure loss, and then spend four figures on a better machine.” I have never understood people who say you should buy “beginner tools.” They invariably turn out to be disappointments, you always lose money when you sell them, and then you have to get used to their expensive replacements. It would make sense if cheap mills were cheap. But they aren’t. A good Millrite or BP clone, suitable for use by a serious home machinist, costs $3000-$4000, and a good “beginner mill” costs at least $2000. And a beginner Bridgeport costs $4000, delivered.

Why spend eight thousand dollars to get a four-thousand-dollar tool? Am I crazy?

I have two table saws. One cost $300, and the other cost $500. I will probably never use the cheap one again. The other one will handle any job I will be able to throw at it for the rest of my life, even if I use it commercially. I have two miter saws. One cost $200, and the one I should have bought in the first place cost $373. Is this a pattern I should repeat, with a decimal point added? Uh…NO.

People are also telling me a good machinist can do great work on a bad mill. Okay, and Jim Thorpe once ran the hundred-yard dash with another man on his back. Generally, though, he ran by himself. I’m pretty sure. Why make life harder than it has to be? Aren’t better tools BETTER? If bad tools are just as good, why do they cost less? I don’t want to do great work on a bad mill. I want to do bad work on a good mill, and then good work on a good mill. The same people who tell me I don’t need a good mill because I have no skills and can’t appreciate it seem to think that once I get the skills to appreciate it, I won’t want it. Does that even begin to make sense?

There is a used Bridgeport in Connecticut that interests me. If I can get a guy to inspect it and report on it for a hundred bucks, I may buy it. I’ve arbitrarily decided I won’t buy a mill that won’t hold five tenths, because I needed a standard, and five tenths seemed right. If the seller opines that an inspection will confirm that the machine meets the standard, I’ll spring for the checkup. If not, I guess it’s time to order Chinese.

Still Kicking

If you follow Mish Weiss’s blog, you have seen this wonderful news already:

There is a slight rise in the white cell count! Doctor cautions that Mish is still critically ill.
What this means is engraftment has begun. Abby’s cells are beginning to grow new cells for Mish.

A day or two ago, Leah put up a post indicating the doctors believed Mish was “slipping away.” I was afraid people would be discouraged from praying for her recovery. Here is what I posted in her comments.

From Numbers 14:

2 And all the children of Israel murmured against Moses and against Aaron: and the whole congregation said unto them, Would God that we had died in the land of Egypt! or would God we had died in this wilderness!

3 And wherefore hath the LORD brought us unto this land, to fall by the sword, that our wives and our children should be a prey? were it not better for us to return into Egypt?

4 And they said one to another, Let us make a captain, and let us return into Egypt.

5 Then Moses and Aaron fell on their faces before all the assembly of the congregation of the children of Israel.

6 And Joshua the son of Nun, and Caleb the son of Jephunneh, which were of them that searched the land, rent their clothes:

7 And they spake unto all the company of the children of Israel, saying, The land, which we passed through to search it, is an exceeding good land.

8 If the LORD delight in us, then he will bring us into this land, and give it us; a land which floweth with milk and honey.

9 Only rebel not ye against the LORD, neither fear ye the people of the land; for they are bread for us: their defence is departed from them, and the LORD is with us: fear them not.

Don’t be too quick to accept a bad report.

There is a peculiar phenomenon we see in the modern church, which is not evident in the Bible. People who pray for things give up while there is still hope. I don’t do that. I pray until there is no point in praying any more. There is nothing to be gained from saying, “Well, it looks like you’re not going to give me what I need, so I’ll pray for something that seems more likely.”

Garrison Keillor once said that if a sheep ever does what you tell it to, it only means you guessed right. God is not a sheep. I don’t try to guess what he’s going to do, so I can pray for it. I pray for what I need, and I try to have faith that he’ll do it. I’m no authority, but I think I’m right about this.

People have a way of trying to guess what’s going to happen, and then shaping their prayers accordingly. It’s a way of making excuses for God. They don’t want to have their faith shaken by failure, so they pray for things that seem easier for God to provide, or which he is more likely to do. So a person might pray for someone like Mish to be healed, and then when things got tough, he might back down and merely pray that she not suffer.

I can’t think of a Biblical example of a person doing that. I can’t picture Moses saying, “Look, if you can’t part the Red Sea, at least give us better working conditions back in Egypt.” There are examples of Biblical figures failing to get what they asked God for, but the general rule is that God provided explanations or at least warnings. Paul wasn’t healed of his thorn in the flesh, but it was needed to keep him humble. John the Baptist wasn’t delivered from prison, but Jesus took the time to inform him that he wasn’t getting out. That’s really not the same as giving up on a prayer and having to guess why it wasn’t answered.

I know people don’t like seeing their hopes dashed, but so what? It’s not fatal. Why is it wrong to continue having faith, through a sick person’s death? What is the advantage of quitting?

Jews say what you do matters more than what you believe, but Christians are different. We think faith itself has power. We think it is the conduit through which God exercises his strength. If you’re a Christian, you have to believe that when you stop having faith, God’s power stops working. So why would you stop believing? Faith doesn’t cost anything. All you risk is disappointment.

We always say we walk by faith, not by sight. But do we, really?

One of the things that makes it impossible for me to deny God is a miracle I received. I decided to join a church, and immediately, I got a flu-like sickness. A severe cold which would not go away. It lasted weeks. I prayed, and I refused to accept the illness, and I always, ALWAYS said I was healed, regardless of how it looked. And one day I saw a dark shape leave my body and exit the house through a door, and I was instantly healed. If I had just gone by my symptoms, that would never have happened. So how can I let myself pray that a sick person has a nice time until she dies? My own experience tells me that guarantees failure.

We’re like the Jews in the time of Jesus. They hadn’t had a prophet in hundreds of years, and they didn’t expect to see God work with great power, the way he did for Moses and Joshua. The Christian church abandoned the Holy Spirit centuries ago, we started substituting man-made rules for true, personal relationships with God, and we started making excuses for the almighty. He won’t heal for this reason. He won’t heal for that reason. Have faith, but don’t actually expect anything to happen. Because apparently, the word “faith” means something other than “faith.” Somewhere along the line, we decided that as long as we were sure of going to heaven, we didn’t need to get to know God or obey him or see his power in our lives. In fact, we tended to persecute people who expected God to behave the way he did in the Bible. As if they were the problem. Yet somehow we still consider ourselves more enlightened than first-century Jews who rejected Jesus.

What’s the difference?

I will not pray for Mish to die happily. She doesn’t need prayer to do that. She can get that from morphine. I don’t pray for God to pass me the salt, when I can reach for it myself. I pray for things only God can do.

I’m sticking to my guns. I don’t know what else to do.

By the way, here is the base I machined to fit my lathe. I’ve been fondling it all morning.

Victory

Man, this is incredible. I finally have a lathe!

I just did the finishing touches on the base for the quick change tool post. Now I have something to mount my tools on, and I guess I can throw my useless rocker post in the trash. Look:

The part I fixed is under the base, in the T-slot. I had to make cut after cut today, to get it in there. Finally, I had to finish it off with a file. I could have used the lathe, but it’s so hard to mount parts in the compound, the file was actually easier. And incredibly, it’s more accurate. I believe the part may have bowed a little when I torqued down the bolt that held it in place. On top of that, sometimes when I re-mounted the part, I didn’t get the exact height I wanted. So the part had some cuts that were essentially perfect, and some that were flawed enough to make it fit badly.

Believe it or not, it looks fantastic now. The file took out the little swirly marks the cutter left, and it flattened the imperfect surfaces.

What a relief this is. I was not able to use the lathe without a tool post. As of fifteen minutes ago, I have a machine tool that actually functions!

The base fits in the slot very tightly. There isn’t any friction to speak of when you shove it in, but if it were ten thousandths bigger, it wouldn’t go in. And if you turn it 180 degrees, forget it. It only fits one way.

Maybe that’s a good thing. I don’t want it wobbling around in there. And I can claim I made it tight on purpose.

If there had been any way to finish it on the lathe, I would have done it, believe me. But the file gave a better result, so I might as well pretend I planned it this way.

I love machining. It is easily the coolest thing I have ever done with tools.

Nothing is Simple

How big a deal is replacing a feed screw in a Bridgeport mill? I have my eye on a mill with a cheesy old power feed, and I am told I’d need a new feed screw if I upgraded to a Servo.

Bad Report

From Mish Weiss’s blog, posted by Leah:

I spoke with the doctors a few minutes ago and they informed me that Mish is slipping away. I am having a hard time accepting this. Even though, I’m sorry I can’t post right now.
Please pray for her.

“Slipping away” means “still alive” to me. I don’t presume to know when another person is going to leave this world. When David’s son passed away, David got up and put himself together and went on with life. But until that moment, he prayed. So I will continue, and I hope you will, too.

Base Taking Shape

I know everyone on earth is dying to know how I did with the tool post base.

I just quit. I have one side of the base completely done, and I have one cut left to do. I’ll be going back soon. The reason I’m not doing it now is that I started having swarf problems. I foolishly chose to wear flip-flops this morning, and I figured I’d change them if the chips really started flying. A few minutes ago, I became aware that if I walked normally, I stood a good chance of driving the collected chips into the balls of my feet and the skin between my toes. So I stopped, got in the shower, and washed my feet.

The lathe is not the world’s greatest mill. If I had a real collet, a milling attachment, and parallels, we might be getting more impressive results. But all I have is one bolt, holding the workpiece down on two pieces of wood, and I’m holding the cutter in a 3-jaw chuck, which can’t be the best possible way to do it. If it were, it would be hard to sell collets.

It’s a real pain, getting the layout lines on the work parallel to the motion of the compound. I have to keep adjusting the work. Also, it’s impossible to repeat a height adjustment precisely. Maybe paper shims or wood blocks deform too much under pressure. Nonetheless, the base will look pretty good when I’m done, and it will work perfectly.

I’m glad I came up with this jig, because without it, I would have to find a machinist…in Miami…who understands ENGLISH…who would take on a miniscule job.

I may start up again tomorrow. Food time is nearly here.

Gonzo Machinist Strikes Again

Raise your hand if you are one of the idiots who took me seriously when I said I was going to quit trying to mill the base for my tool post.

SHAME ON YOU. You KNOW I don’t have any common sense.

Here is the jig I came up with.

I have one tool which I am actually capable of using to make precision cuts, so I used it. I refer to the table saw. I cut two pieces of red oak a few thousandths over an inch in depth. I stuck them under the base. I enlarged a hole in an old piece of steel scrap, ran a bolt through it, and put it in the compound with the bolt pointing upward. I dropped the base over the bolt and added a washer and nut. Then I used a feeler gauge to figure out how many paper shims I needed under the base to get it to the right height. The base was too high as well as too wide, so I had to use the side of the cutter, not just the end.

Base after a few passes:

Final result:

I used a few drops of Moly-Dee (per pass) as cutting fluid, since that was all I had.

I was terrified the whole time. You can imagine what would happen if the cutter had managed to turn the base. I took tiny passes. Probably ten of them, plus a final climb-cut pass.

I know I did this all wrong, but the tools dictated the method. The result is fine. The major imperfections in the cut are from two sources: the sad effort I made the other day, and the sad efforts of the Chinese people who made the base.

I had to rest. It’s exhausting, focusing your attention on a cutter while making tiny, slow cuts.

I have three more cuts to make. Maybe I can find a way to use the dry cut saw to do the final ones. This doesn’t have to be pretty. It just has to fit in the slot in the compound.

If I succeed at this, I’ll have a functioning lathe!

Let’s Have Your Opinions

I’m thinking of upgrading my math software, even though I almost never use it. A very long time ago, I bought Mathcad and Maple. I also got the academic version of Mathematica. Now Mathcad is offering a very cheap upgrade, and if I get it, it will preserve my eligibility for future upgrades.

I am considering getting this software because my old version of Mathcad was fairly intuitive and easy to use, and on the rare occasions when I feel like doing a calculation, it’s a nice thing to have.

I know I have some readers who are scientifically inclined. Do any of you know whether the current version of Mathcad is any good?

I Cede my Place in the Heavenly Chorus Line

Church was interesting last night. No matter what happens there, I always seem to get what I need.

I have a policy of showing up ten minutes late, because I hate rap, and the rappiest parts of the music tend to occur early. I think. After all, my policy makes it hard for me to know exactly what happens early in the service. Last night I showed up at about 6:10, and there was a loud rock band playing. And I had never seen them before, so instantly, I was afraid they were going to be up there longer than the usual musicians. You don’t invited musical guests and then make them sit down after three songs.

Sure enough, they kept going. And going. And going. And they pulled one of my favorite church stunts. They demanded that we all dance, including jumping up and down like kangaroos (they were from Australia).

I think I could build a useful ministry, going around preaching that we have to quit ordering Christians to make fools of themselves in church. I am middle-aged, and I no longer have to dance. Like most men, I have only danced because it was forced on me by society, and I ain’t doing it any more. I am willing to risk going to hell over this. Frankly, I don’t think I’m in much peril.

There are some experiences an adult should never have to have. Being punched by a bully. Being verbally abused by a teacher. Being told you can’t go where you want to go. Being forced to eat things you don’t like. And being forced to dance. I’m all growed up, and I don’t feel like dancing, and I never did, except when it was actual dancing and not the monkey-like, aimless, forced, insincere, self-conscious spasming we have all been doing since about 1960. I have hung up my dancing shoes. Please do not come to my church and tell me to put them back on. If you want to attract gays to church so you can fix them, dancing is a great idea, but I am a fat old heterosexual male, firmly rooted to the earth, and I when I dance, I feel about as natural as Michael Jackson on a visit to Hooters.

I know David danced. He also played the harp. Do I have to play the harp, too? I wouldn’t even know where to buy one. Let’s lay off the transparently self-serving David references. They prove absolutely nothing, except that people who like to dance will torture scripture in order to force other people to do things they don’t want to do. Here’s a little news for ministers and musicians all over the US: there is no rule that says every Christian has to do everything every Bible figure did. If I have to dance, you have to build an ark, eat locusts, and part the Red Sea. And by the way, David’s dancing annoyed people. Nice God-fearing Jews, I mean. Not dirty old ignorant Philistines. And I notice it didn’t catch on. I guess everyone but David went to hell.

Show me where Jesus danced, or SHUT UP. Some dancing Christians think that deep down inside, everyone feels exactly the way they do about everything, and that if people aren’t dancing, they must be uptight or bound by demons or something. But people are different, and they don’t all have the same drives. Listen, I know someone who doesn’t like chocolate. If you can lack the desire for chocolate, which is nearly universal, you can definitely hate dancing. The love of which is only universal among women and homosexuals.

So anyway, I was not all that happy about the way things were turning out. It was like drinking castor oil for thirty straight minutes. But I resolved to be a good sport and try to get what I could out of it. Without dancing. You can’t expect a church to put on the kind of program you yourself would design, every week. If they did that for me, we would all be lying in recliners during the sermons, eating pizza with both hands. Regrettably, other people and their needs and desires matter. I felt like I was crouching in a hole, waiting for a tornado to blow over, but I’m sure many, many people there were having a great time. And the band served its purpose; maybe God is more in tune with their music than I am. When the pastor got going, the presence of God was heavy in the place, and the drive was well worth the result.

The sermon was about the presence of God, oddly enough. The very thing that has kept me going to this church.

The pastor said a funny thing while he was up there. He said the style of the music might not suit some of us, but that it wasn’t about style. Tell me God doesn’t cause preachers to say things individuals in churches need to hear.

It worked out great. But I am starting to realize I will never like “hip” Christian music. I hate rap regardless of what you do to pretty it up and take the violence and tawdry sex out of it, and I don’t like harsh Christian rock. Those types of music are about pride and rebellion; that’s what made them popular. It’s hard to remove that odor, no matter how many times you remind the audience that you’re “rep-uh-sentin’ the King, yo” or “high on the Lord.” And I worry about my ears; I’m thinking of taking plugs next time I go to church. They need a sound meter in there. Churches don’t need loud music. God isn’t deaf. But the rest of us could end up that way.

It’s funny that we still think of rock and rap as music for young people. Rock has been with us since at least the 1940s, and Rap is over thirty years old. It’s old-people music. Our popular music stopped developing in about 1975. It hasn’t changed at all since then. We have silly genres called “alternative,” “house,” and “techno” and so on, but it’s all rock. We give it new names so we can pretend we’re hearing something we haven’t heard before. Isn’t it strange that young people still look up to rockers who are approaching seventy? The present is the past. No wonder Tupac Shakur still releases albums.

Our culture doesn’t change any more. Not fundamentally. We get trashier, but that’s about it. We are frozen, like Austin Powers. I’ll bet we never change again, in any meaningful way. Society resists many types of change now. I’ll bet I’ll be able to wear my suits and ties until I die, because they’ll never go out of fashion. A few years back, the electronics industry tried to force us to buy new equipment by changing the favored color to silver, and we wouldn’t have it, and now new stereos are black again. New cars look just like cars made ten years ago. We aborted the fashion industry’s Satanic crusade to bring back bell bottoms.

Get on Google and look at photos of cars made in 1960, and then look at cars made in 1965, and then look at cars made in 1970. They’re completely different. That doesn’t happen any more. In fact, we now make new muscle cars intended to look like models we made during the Vietnam War. Weird.

I think feedback is probably the explanation. Our existing cultural ideas are constantly reinforced by TV and the Internet. Most of the TV shows we see now are reruns, thanks to cable and syndication. Watch Cheers some time. The clothes look just like the things people wear today. And a baby born when Cheers started running would be pushing 30. Sam and Diane could have grandchildren by now.

Maybe rap and rock are associated with youth because maturity and wisdom lead you to prefer other types of music. You have to be a little stunted to be 50 years old and have the musical taste of a teenager. It’s kind of sad, if you think about it. Imagine being Mick Jagger. He’s past retirement age, but if he wants to stay viable as a performer, he has to sing stuff high school kids like. I wonder how that sits with him. There is such a thing as being held captive by your audience. How would you like to be a member of the Sunshine Band, singing “That’s the Way I Like It” for the 9 millionth time, in order to make your car payment?

I mentioned disco. Now my day is ruined. But I will survive.

“I will survive”? OH NO. EARWORM! GET GLORIA GAYNOR OUT OF MY HEAD!

I’m going back to bed.

The Jethro Bodine Way

I already hate not having a mill.

I decided to try milling the base of my quick change tool post so it would fit my lathe. Problem: no milling attachment. I decided to do it the desperate way. I used a C-clamp, and I rested the base on top of a piece of oak, paper shims, and a steel bar. I stuck my only cutter in my 3-jaw chuck. And I got a face shield, because I knew I was tempting death.

The first pass was okay. After that, the metal refused to cooperate. The cutter kicked the base out of the clamp.

That’s it. I quit. I don’t want bits of carbide imbedding themselves in my chest. I refuse to spend an entire day doing this badly on a bench grinder. I’m going to find a machinist and pay up.