Curing my Dryer’s Asthma

I have been writing about my wonderful new eco-hostile washer, and the news has gotten even better. I got my old dryer to work correctly.

My old washer was a $1300 LG. The dryer matched it. I don’t know what it cost. I’m sure it was not cheap. It has all sorts of unnecessary programs on it.

I hated the dryer because, just like the washer, it lied. The timer would say my “normal” load (whatever that is) would be dry in 41 minutes, and it always came out damp. I had to run things through twice or use the heavy duty setting.

At some point it occurred to me that there might be a venting issue. Maybe lint had gotten past the filter and clogged things up.

The other day after I installed my washer, I realized it was time to quit behaving disgracefully and attack the dryer. I researched a little, and I learned two things.

1. Dryer ducts clog with lint even when the filters work.
2. Dryer duct clogging is one of the main reasons for house fires.

This was my first dryer duct. I should add that. I’m used to holes that lead directly to the outdoors. You can’t get much of a clog in a passage 9″ long. I had no idea dryer ducts needed maintenance.

My current duct is a 4″ PVC pipe maybe 15 feet long, with several bends in it. Not a pushover, as dryer ducts go. I read up on special tools made for the job.

They make plastic rods that attach to each other end-to-end like Bangalore torpedo segments. You put a brush on the far end, you connect the near end to a drill, and you shove the rods and brush through your duct. They will bend and go through 90° bends just fine.

When you’re done, you have a huge collection of loose lint you have to get out of your duct.

I read about this stuff, and I thought, “I have a leaf blower. Why would I pay for a tool I don’t need?”

I moved my dryer out and disconnected it from the tube leading to the duct. I shoved my electric leaf blower’s nozzle into the tube. I ran it for a while. Then I went outside and discovered I had made it snow in my yard. Lavender snow. A fair amount of lint had come out, but I knew it wasn’t enough to get the job done.

I gave up and bought a duct-cleaning tool. I ran it through the system from both ends and used the leaf blower again. I used another special drill-mounted brush to clean the PVC fitting on the external end of the duct.

When I ran the dryer, miraculously, it dried clothes in 41 minutes.

In a couple of hours, I can go through three big loads of laundry. They come out mold-free and dry. If I could remember the last time things worked this way, I would probably have to reach back to 2005.

I don’t know why I’m such a bad home maintenance engineer. A lot of things have jumped up and surprised me. People aren’t born knowing about dryer ducts.

Another project awaits. Water heaters have sacrificial zinc anodes to retard corrosion. These are long rods (sometimes jointed) that you lower into a water heater through a hole in the top. The hope is that the zinc will dissolve and your steel will not. You’re supposed to change these rods regularly. I never knew they existed until maybe 2019. I don’t know if my anodes are worth changing. Maybe my tanks are made of pure rust now. I plan to find out.

I’ve also learned that it’s important to connect hoses to water tanks and drain the sediment. I haven’t done that yet. I’ve never known another person who mentioned doing it.

I heartily suggest you check your dryer ducts. I don’t know how an electric dryer could cause a fire, but you might as well be safe and have a dryer that works. The tool is between 30 and 40 bucks at Lowe’s.

When my water heaters are fixed, maybe it will be time to replace my awful oven. It blows its own thermal fuse every time I run the clean cycle. The clean cycle is not a luxury. It’s a must. You can’t clean a baking stone any other way. Fortunately, I have a Harbor Freight hydraulic cart, so I can remove and install ovens alone.

I’m very happy with my laundry machines. They look very different, but sometimes interracial marriages work out very well. I almost hope the old washer is somewhere being punished.

Are You Really a Maker if You Buy Stuff?

I am still overthinking the business of procuring a new welding table.

To re-cover old ground, I thought I might buy a Fabblock table, which is a box made from 1/4″ plate, supported by transverse ribs welded to it on the underside. Then I thought maybe I should buy an Arc Flat table, which would be two or more cast iron boxes that could be bolted together side by side. Then I considered making my own table from a sheet of plate. After that, I thought maybe I should buy strips of plate, mill them flat, and bolt them to a table side by side with 2″ gaps between them.

I would like to have a fairly flat table. My current table has a 1/16″ crown in the middle, which means it’s pretty flat. I don’t want anything wavier than that. The biggest challenge in welding is putting things together square and flat, and the flatter your table is, the easier it will be.

I was getting to the point where buying strips of plate seemed like the way to go. Then I saw another sales pitch. It came from Texas Metal Works, a company that makes box-style steel tables.

TMW, as I will call it out of laziness, has a page where they defend their tables. One of the problems with choosing a table is the fact that a lot of the most detailed information comes from people who are trying to sell you things. It makes the information hard to trust. You have to dig around and try to determine how sound it is. Anyway, TMW’s page attempts to debunk a video made by a company called Fireball Tools.

Fireball makes inventive tools, including cast iron panels you can attach to a frame to create your own table. You can’t make tables of arbitrary size, because the panels are 12″ by 24″. A panel costs $125, and it requires a little machining, which I can do easily. If I made a 24″ by 54″ table, which is as close as I could come using Fireball products, the panels alone would run me $650, so figure $800 for a table which would be smaller than I want.

Fireball criticized Fabblocks. A standard Fabblock is made from 1/4″ steel. You can get thicker tables, but 1/4″ is where they start. TMW makes a table which is nearly the same thing, so when Fireball criticized Fabblocks, TMW had a dog in the fight.

Jason Marburger, the Fireball Tool guy, took a Fabblock and stuck a clamp into one of its fixture holes. Then he put about 1,000 pounds of force on it. When he was done, the hole had a burr around the edge. The clamp had a round post that went through the hole, and it worked by catching on the hole as pressure was applied. This only works because holes allow round rods to lean slightly. If they stood straight in the holes, they would slide right out. Because they lean over, there is friction.

I thought the Fireball video showed that 1/4″ steel was a bad idea, but TMW makes some good points.

1. No one in his right mind puts 1,000 pounds of force on a welding clamp. I agree with this point. If you have to put that much force on a clamp, something is wrong, and when you weld your joint, it will have an internal stress trying to open it, just as strong as the force you had to apply to close it.

2. Some welding accessories are made to work with 1/4″ steel, and if you make it thicker, you can get compatibility issues.

3. TMW is only too happy to make thicker tables on request, and they make more money from them, but they advise people to go with thinner tops instead.

4. TMW makes welding tables in a commercial environment, they can make new ones for very little, and they use their own 1/4″ tables to make the ones they sell.

TMW put up photos of one of their big tables hanging from two clamps, and they showed that the damage to the holes was so slight, they couldn’t be sure the clamps did it.

So we have two companies duking it out. Both make expensive products, but only TMW advises you to buy cheaper ones.

TMW says you can’t really get extreme, lasting flatness without spending several times as much money. Other companies try to make it sound like their lower-tier tables are extremely flat. For example, they’ll say the plates are cut on laser machines that have tolerances of a few thousandths or ten-thousandths of an inch over long distances, but they don’t point out that the tolerance of a machine isn’t the tolerance of a product it makes. Once the cut plate comes off the machine, things can happen to it in the assembly process.

Here’s a quotation:

All providers cut parts for welding tables on industrial CNC lasers, which are built to very tight tolerances. For example, a Baileigh Fiber Laser quotes .0004? per foot of repeatability, and ~.005? minimum cutting width. And while these numbers are impressive, they have absolutely nothing to do with the quality of fabrication of a finished product coming off them! They are products on their own.

Of course, that passage comes from a page in which TMW is comparing its own table to a truly flat one costing much more, so caveat emptor.

Making a table would validate my existence as a welder/fabricator. A lot of welders deride people who buy tables. On the other hand, zillions of professionals buy tables, so it’s probably more accurate to say that a real professional buys instead of building.

I figure I can make a decent table for under $800, whereas an assembled 5′ by 2.5′ TMW table could be sitting in my driveway next week for $1700. A 5′ by 2′ Fabblock kit, unassembled, would run $1250.

To make things more complicated, a guy just told me flat tables don’t stay flat once you use them. Does he know what he’s talking about? I don’t know. He’s a random guy on a forum. For all I know, his metal-bonding experience consists of several adventures with a Radio Shack soldering iron.

At least I’ve come to a tentative decision regarding table size. I was thinking of 3′ by 4′, but now I’m thinking 2.5′ by 5′. The square footage is nearly the same, but I would get an extra foot of length, and I think that would be much more useful than the 6 inches of width I would lose.

All this cogitation is based on the premise that the rapture isn’t coming this year. Still not sure what to think about that. I have never “predicted” that it would, but I keep having strong impressions that it will, and then there were the two Christmas-related rapture dreams I had. Also, other people have had rapture dreams involving Christmas. In my dreams, I found myself singing “I’ll be Home for Christmas,” and a lady who heard about these dreams said she had found herself singing that song in her dreams, too, and that it made sense to her after reading about my experiences.

If the rapture is upon us, there is no point in buying or building a welding table. On the other hand, if I place an order or start working on a table, and the rapture comes, my trying to get a new table won’t cause any problems.

When it comes to expensive tools, you need experience in order to know what to buy, but if you never buy anything, you aren’t likely to get experience. I guess I should make a decision and jump in. It looks like a maximum of around $900 is at stake, since I have to spend around $800 no matter what, and an assembled factory table would run around $1700.

Rodents Fall Victim to Improved Technology

Today, I tried out my new shooting bench, and I also did some rimfire research. I tested two rifles in my pasture.

As covered earlier this week, I built myself a massive square shooting bench. I welded it together from 2″-square steel tubing, and I put two-by-sixes across the top. It has two wheels so I can move it around.

Yesterday, I moved it to the pasture. I would have done it sooner, but I needed to have forks on my front end loader, and they had been removed so I could move dirt. My forks are held on by chains with big turnbuckles, and I learned that some bubba in the past had ruined one of them. I had to fix it before I could put my forks back on.

A turnbuckle is a tube with internal threads on each end. One set of threads is left-handed, and the other is right-handed. You screw threaded parts into each end, and these parts are attached to cables or chains. When you turn your cylinder, the threaded parts move into it, and you tighten your chain or cable.

Some master engineer had apparently used Vise Grips to hold onto a couple of my turnbuckles in order to get a grip so he could turn them. This compressed the tubes slightly. When you compress a threaded tube, you make it very hard to screw things into it.

I had to buy a 1″ tap and fix one of my turnbuckles. The other one isn’t all that bad. I put the turnbuckle in a vise, used a breaker bar to get the stuck part out of it, ran the tap through it, greased the daylights out of everything, and reassembled it. About 99% of tractor owners would have been lost, but because of my hobbies, I knew what to do, and I had all the tools I needed except for the tap.

I intended to fix this a year ago, but I forgot. I ordered and paid for a tap, and it never arrived. I didn’t check on it, so I’m out five bucks.

Anyway, I attached the forks to the tractor, put moving blankets on them, and lifted the bench. Moving it was no problem. I scuffed the paint while backing the tractor out, because I dropped the forks and forgot about the lower crossmembers in the bench, but I can fix the scuffing in two seconds, literally.

I put the bench by my shooting platform, 100 yards from my target area. Today I was shooting rimfire, and I wanted to see what the guns would do at 50. I lifted one end of the bench and rolled it forward. No problem. It was not light, but I was able to balance it on the wheels so I didn’t bear the weight.

I used a Home Depot folding chair. It was okay, but I need a higher chair or a board to put under the chair’s feet. I need to be down low, and the chair’s feet sink in the ground.

The bench was excellent. Like shooting from a boulder. It was also spacious. Lots of room for junk.

I shot my newish Savage A22 and my friend Mike’s old Marlin Model 60. I have a Nikon Prostaff II scope, and he has a Tasco which looks like it came from a drugstore. The Nikon is pretty nice for a low-end scope. Both guns are semiautomatic.

I wanted to try these guns on a rest, because I have been thinking about trying “precision rimfire.” I use quotation marks because I’m not sure “precision” .22 LR exists, for people who are not willing to rob banks in order to finance their shooting.

I have a Ruger Precision Rifle which will shoot 0.5 MOA, no problem, consistently. I saw that Ruger had come out with a Ruger Precision Rimfire rifle. The purpose is to give people a practice gun to shoot at shorter ranges, with cheaper ammo. I got all excited. Most .22 rifles won’t beat 2 MOA at 100 yards. In fact, 2 MOA would be much better than average. I figured if Ruger was willing to put “Precision” in the rifle’s name, it ought to shoot sub-MOA.

I watched some videos, and boy, where they disappointing. The reviewers who made the videos squealed like little girls. They were thrilled with the accuracy. And how accurate were the rifles? Maybe 1.5 MOA, at 50 yards.

I figured I could do that with a cheap semiauto, so I wondered why anyone would pay a lot more money for a “precision” .22. What were the reviewers excited about? Were they just bad shots?

I went to a sharpshooting forum and asked questions. I learned some things.

There is one well-known brand of .22 rifle that will shoot sub-MOA, and you can expect to spend close to $3000 for one. This is what the forum guys said, anyway. I was also told I would have to test the boxes of ammunition I bought. So I would be spending maybe 30 cents per round for post-coronavirus ammunition, testing boxes, and throwing out the ones that didn’t pass. Basically, I would end up paying 6.5mm Creedmoor prices, or more, to shoot a .22. Actually, I would pay more, because the rifle would cost over twice as much.

If I can shoot 0.5 MOA at 500 yards, why would I pay the same money to shoot 1 MOA at 50 yards? It seemed like a stupid idea, so I dropped it.

The company that makes the accurate .22 rifles is called Vudoo. After giving up on precision rimfire, I read that Anschutz and Lithgow (an Australian company) made cheaper rifles that would do nearly as well. You can get a Lithgow rifle for about a thousand dollars, which is not totally out of the question. This renewed my interest in accurate .22 rifles. I decided to find out what the rifles I already possessed would do.

Today I got out my dwindling bucket of Remington Golden Bullets and a box of CCI Mini-mags. I refused to use expensive ammunition, because it would make the test pointless.

With Golden Bullets, the Model 60, its 20-pound trigger, and its claw-machine scope annoyed me by outshooting the Savage. It shot around 2.5 MOA, and the Savage did slightly worse.

I wouldn’t wish the Marlin’s trigger on a mass shooter. It’s like lifting weights. At one point, the pull was so heavy I thought I had the safety on, so I checked. Nonetheless, it was accurate when I concentrated. The Savage has a very nice Accutrigger, but I had it adjusted too low, so it was tricky. You don’t want a rifle to go off before you’re ready.

I kept shooting, and I moved to Mini-mags. Both guns liked them better. What I found was that these guns, with this ammunition, in my hands, would shoot 1 MOA 5-shot groups, or similar groups that were ruined by one flyer. My best guess, which is only a guess, is that both guns will shoot 1 MOA most of the time at 50 yards, if I fix the triggers and practice a little.

That’s not bad. If I can shoot 0.5″ groups at 50 yards for a few cents a round, it’s worth it to do it regularly. All practice is good, and cheap practice is better.

I can’t be sure of my conclusions yet. I was not completely consistent. The trigger issues may explain that. A really good marksman who was used to these guns could work around bad triggers, but I was not able to make them behave 100% of the time.

I’m wondering if I can improve my accuracy by working on the Savage. I can’t hack up Mike’s rifle, but the Savage is all mine.

I’ve read that one reason the Vudoo shoots so well is that it has special magazines that make sure bullets don’t get damaged on the way to the chamber. Cheap .22 rifles don’t have features like that. My Savage has a crisp chamfer on the lower side of the chamber mouth. If a bullet hits the upper edge wrong, it may to get scraped, and this could cause it to fly crooked.

I’m wondering if I can put a smooth radius on that edge and make my shots more consistent. I looked it up, and I read that other people have already thought of this. They do it to pistols and some centerfire guns. I’m thinking about trying it. If I ruin my barrel, it’s not a big deal. Savage barrels can be replaced with simple tools.

If I can turn this gun into a 1-MOA rifle, maybe I should put better glass on it. I have an MRAD 4-14x scope which is gathering dust. It would make it easy to spot my own shots. It might work for hunting, too, since small animals suitable for rimfire hunting go well with high magnification.

I doubt this gun will ever break 2 MOA at 100 yards, but if it will get to 2 MOA, it will still be pretty great for a .22.

I feel like I should see what I can do with this gun before looking at other options.

The bench is great. The rifles and ammo are better than expected. I expect to do better with a little gunsmithing and practice. That sums it up.

If not, there is always Lithgow.

Dinner Destroyed by Transcription Error

You’re never too old to learn something obvious.

This week, I got a craving for kung pao chicken. I have yet to find decent Chinese food in my area. I learned how to make my own kung pao chicken last year. I have a bunch of non-perishable ingredients on hand. Yesterday I bought chicken and some vegetables, and today I cooked.

It’s a big, big job. Something you don’t want to do every week. I cut up green onions, ginger, chicken, and so on. I minced garlic. I measured stuff out. One of my ingredients was Sichuan peppers. I bought them last year, but I didn’t use them. I figured peppers were peppers, so I used something else.

Today I looked at my ingredient list, and it called for three tablespoons of Sichuan peppers. I decided to use the real thing. I thought they smelled odd, but I figured the Chinese knew what they were doing. I ground some up and added three tablespoons to my sauce.

When I tried to eat the food, it was disgusting. My tongue got numb. I put the whole batch down the garbage disposal. I thought the Chinese had poisoned me, the way they poisoned American pets with melamine and the way they poisoned American houses with bad drywall. I wondered if I would die. I decided that if I lived, I would take the rest of the peppers to the health department and rat out the Chinese grocer, who probably didn’t know she was selling tainted merchandise.

Then I looked at my computer, and I learned two things. Sichuan peppers are not peppers, and I was supposed to use three teaspoons, not three tablespoons.

Sichuan peppers are also called Sichuan peppercorns. They have a chemical in them that causes numbness, especially if you eat three times as much as you should.

Now my dinner is in the septic tank, and I am full of pecan twirls. I had to eat something.

In other news, I feel like I know what to do about getting a new welding table. I have been thinking about buying a factory-made table, but I have also been thinking about saving money by building my own. I just built a 4-foot-square shooting bench from steel tubing, and it’s nearly the same thing as a welding bench, so I know I can do the job. Before I built the bench, I was afraid of the welding job, and once that fear was put to rest, I was only put off by the difficulty of buying steel for the table top.

You can’t just go to the mall and ask for a 12-square-foot piece of 3/8″ steel with a precision-ground surface. People who live in the Rust Belt are lucky (in one way, anyhow) because they are surrounded by businesses that sell tools and materials. If I lived in Pittsburgh, I could probably walk out of my house and throw a rock and hit a place that sold steel for welding tables. Florida is different.

Today, through the magic of Google, I located a business that sells precision-ground plate. It’s in Tampa, 90 minutes away. I emailed and asked if they could help me. Haven’t heard back yet.

This is not the only encouraging information I got. I learned that the density of steel is 0.292 pounds per cubic inch, so the type of top I’m thinking of buying would weigh 188 pounds. Before doing the calculation, I had no idea what a decent table top would weigh, so I was afraid I’d be trying to work with a monumental object. I can deal with 188 pounds. For that matter, I could go up to 1/2″ steel and deal with 250 pounds. Drilling fixturing holes would remove something like 58 pounds from a 3/8″ table and 76 pounds from a 1/2″ table.

The steel for the frame would come in at maybe 100 pounds, which is not bad at all. It wouldn’t be like I was buying a gigantic piece of metalworking equipment I could never take with me if I moved. It would be more like buying a rolling toolbox.

I’ve seen smallish welding tables that weigh 400 or more pounds. I didn’t want to deal with that. Now I’m inclined to think they’re overbuilt. Men who like tools have a weakness for things that are too heavy. They think you can’t have strength or rigidity without lots of iron. This isn’t even close to true. It’s pretty much what the Soviets used to think, and it’s why they built machinery that was way too heavy. It’s poor engineering, based on ignorance.

I’m no engineer, but I used to be a bad physicist, and I can look at a table of figures and tell you don’t need a 300-pound frame to hold up a small welding table. The tubing I used for my bench will deflect 1/16″ if you hang 500 pounds from the end of a 4-foot stretch. That’s assuming you only use one tube, the weight is all on one point at the end, there is no thick steel plate attached to it to add rigidity, and there are no struts or legs under it to resist deflection. Add a few companion elements to your tube and refrain from putting tiny 500-pound objects at one end of it, and you should get, essentially, no deflection.

I should be able to use the exact same 2″-square tubing I used for my bench. I think it would be better to use 1″ by 3″, though, with the long sides oriented vertically. The vertical parts of the tubes would be the parts that resisted deflection, so a 1″ by 3″ tube would be a lot more rigid. It would also fit nicely between the fixturing holes on the table top. I would want 5/8″ holes on 2″ centers, so a 1″ tube would fit between holes without obstructing them.

Based on figures I’ve seen from overpriced online metal dealers, I may be able to get a 1/2″ ground plate for around $400 if I pick it up myself. The tubing would run another $100, and then I’d need paint and about $50 worth of casters. So $550, plus $30 for an annular cutter and the price of renting a magnetic drill press long enough to put holes in the plate.

It sort of looks like I could have a really neat table for maybe $700, along with bragging rights because I designed and built it. Compare that to $2000+ for a factory table.

If only I had a big welding table to build my welding table on.

Anyway, things are looking good. I have not been poisoned, and I may be able to create a nice welding table at a reasonable price. Hope your day has gone well.

I have a Shooting Bench

My latest creation is finished. I put the top on my new shooting bench, planed it, sanded it, and put more sealer on the wood. It’s ready to use.

I thought I was done with the metalworking yesterday, but then I realized the bench had no feet on it. The tubing on the rear side had nothing to prevent it from sinking into the ground. I fired up the dry saw and plasma cutter and made two 3″ by 3″ squares of 11-gauge steel, I ground the paint off the ends of the tubes, and I welded the squares in place and added truck bed coating. Done.

I also finished cutting wood for the top. I would have been done two days ago, but I had to go buy another two by six. I applied water sealer to the wood and left it out all night to dry, and today I was ready to assemble the bench.

I used 5/16″ by 3″ lag screws with big washers. I laid the wood out on a tarp, and I rolled the bench over on it so it was upside-down. I located and drilled pilot holes in the wood using the holes in the frame as guides, and I inserted and tightened the screws.

After this, I righted the bench. This was not fun. New pressure-treated wood is very heavy, and I had 36 feet by 5.5 inches by 1.5 inches of it to lift.

I got out some hand planes and made the top and edges of the bench a little friendlier. I sanded it lightly and rounded off the sharp corners. After that, I applied more sealer to the top, and I was done.

I’ve very happy with it. My welding got better and better as I worked, so there are a number of very pretty welds on it. The paint looks great. It’s very strong. I stood on it and jumped up and down, and it was not unlike jumping on a concrete driveway.

I have not gone through with my plan to add a way to pull it behind my cart. I’m thinking it over. It may be best to pull it by the bottom brace instead of the top brace. When the bench is tilted upward on the side with feet, it takes the weight off that end and puts more of it over the wheels. It would be easier to tow this way.

I was thinking of taking that strut off because I installed it by mistake, but now I see that it makes the bench much easier to move. You just lift so the strut is at chest level. All the weight goes to the axles, so you don’t have to hold the bench up. It’s like a balanced wheelbarrow.

This bench is very, very nice. It makes me regret buying a stainless table for my barbecue area. I spent well over $300. For maybe $150, I could have had a much stronger table set up just the way I wanted. It wouldn’t have been stainless steel, but truck bed coating and pressure-treated wood work very well outdoors.

There is no reason why I couldn’t build a less-robust patio dining table. I could use 1″ tubing and 1″ lumber. When you’re having lunch, you don’t need a table that can hold a ton. Of course, I’m assuming the wood wouldn’t warp like crazy. Pressure-treated wood comes full of preservative fluid, and it eventually evaporates, causing shrinking and warping. I guess I could use wood that isn’t treated, though. My outdoor dining area is under a roof.

I’ll try to put the bench in the pasture and try it out later in the week. If the cattle touch it, I’ll have them deported.

More Evidence for my Antifa Tribunal

My new shooting bench is taking shape.

Today I put the remaining pieces on it and finished the welding. I was thinking about getting a new welding table, and I can now confirm that I need one. This afternoon, I had to take the shooting bench off my table and stand and sit inside it to weld. This was the first time I had ever had to get inside one of my projects.

Everything went well. I have a couple of lumpy welds I decided to grind down, but generally, I did an acceptable job. The table doesn’t rock when I put it on its top on the driveway, so it can’t be all that warped.

Once I was done with the welding, I put the wheels on it so I could roll it out for a photo. Then I shot most of a can of truck bed coating onto it. I figure I’ll need one more can to finish it.

I went to Home Depot and picked up some wood for the top, and I also bought deck sealer. I got the cheap kind. Pressure-treated wood may resist rot and bugs, but it soaks up water and swells, and it gets moldy. Maybe sealant will slow things down.

I’m hoping I can use the bench without paint. There may be times when I don’t want a slick surface. It probably doesn’t matter, but I’m playing it safe for now. I can always paint it later.

I’m considering making a cart attachment so I can pull the bench around with my EZ-GO. If I drill one big hole in the bench’s frame, I can come up with a way to attach it to the cart later.

The bench seems very low. Without the top, it’s low enough to sit on without jumping. The wood will raise the height an inch and a half, though.

I have to keep it low in order to do proper recoil management. If you’re going to go to the trouble of making a bench, you might as well make it correctly instead of making an amateur bench no serious shooter would want.

It’s very sturdy. If it were overloaded to failure, the axles on the wheels would probably collapse before the wood and metal box would give. An online calculator estimates that each of my steel crossmembers will deflect about 1/20″ if a 500-pound weight is suspended from the center, and I have three crossmembers with two by six lumber on top. I need the bench to be rigid, so it made sense to build it too strong.

I’m very excited about this project. Should be a great addition to the shooting area. I just hope the cattle don’t take a liking to it.

Two-day Project Expands Predictably

My daily adventures are finished, as far as I know, so I am writing to unwind.

I spent several more hours on my shooting bench project. I thought I would be done with the metalworking today, but as always, I decided to complicate things, so I lost a couple of hours.

The bench will probably weigh the better part of 100 pounds, and I would like to be able to move it easily so I can shoot at different distances. I don’t think it’s a good idea for old people to drag heavy objects across pastures. My obvious and hypocritical solution: wheels.

Why is this solution hypocritical? Because I’m using wheels I labeled trash a while back, claiming they were useless.

I bought a handtruck and turned it into a propane cutting cart. In the process, I took the pneumatic tires off and replaced them with solid ones. I have had bad experiences with pneumatic tires on things like handtrucks and wheelbarrows, so I don’t trust them. I have the feeling China is involved. It seems like small innertubes all leak these days, and that was not the case in the past. When I was a kid, I didn’t have to inflate my bike’s tires every time I rode it, but the last two bicycles I dealt with had to have their tires inflated over and over, just like handtrucks and wheelbarrows.

Maybe China has the only Schrader valve plant on earth, and it makes garbage.

When I took the pneumatic tires off the propane cart, I reviled them publicly, and I tossed them in the garage so they would be close to the car when I loaded up to go to the dump. I never took them, because it seemed wasteful. I had an idea that I might take the tubes out and use them for head pillows while watching TV.

When I got the idea to put wheels on the bench, I thought of the tires. They were here. They were free, sort of. Most amazingly, they were still inflated.

Maybe the Chinese got these innertubes right. I am willing to take a chance.

My bench has 2″-square legs. Instead of a big long axle running through two of them, which would require a long drive to my metal dealer, I decided to use junk I already had. I took two pieces of 3/4″ round bar, turned parts of them down to around 5/8″, drilled holes in them for cotter pins, chamfered the holes so the pins would go in easily, and cleaned them up for welding. I drilled 3/4″ holes through my bench legs, pounded the axles through them, and welded them in place.

It was a great deal of fun, and I saved a trip, although I want to get one more piece of steel for the bench, so okay, I didn’t save a trip at all. But for a while, I thought I had, and that illusion of success had a certain amount of value to me.

The really sad thing is that I had enough 3/4″ bar to make a solid axle. I found that out after I got started. Still, why use up metal when you don’t have to? It’s not free.

I’ll post a photo of my bench’s legs.

As of this morning, the bench had one leg, which made it okay for milking cows but not very good for shooting. I got two more legs welded on, and I added the final horizontal member.

Adding the last member was not what I would call a breeze. My table is 2′ by 3′, and the bench will be about 4 feet square. I can’t get all of it on the table at the same time. I have to make clever, or what seems clever to me, use of clamps to make it work. I have to set up one corner of the bench at a time, hoping everything will still be lined up when I weld the other corners. Of course, this did not work. I had to cut some tacks on a piece I put in place yesterday. It had turned out to be about 1/8″ too long. I had to shorten it. I had a fine old time getting the bench on the table so I could weld the piece back in.

Yesterday, I started looking at welding tables. I realized I had outgrown my second table, and I was wondering whether I should build a new one or buy one. I thought the only reasonable choice in a factory table was a Fab Block, made by Weldtables.com. These tables get great reviews, and they’re inexpensive. The problem is that “inexpensive” means about $2100 for a 3/8″-thick table.

While I was looking for answers, I found a company which had done what I had been hoping someone would do. They were offering cheaper tables to compete with Weldtables.com. I don’t think a small welding table is worth $2100, even if it has wifi and a built-in espresso machine. I think industrial tables are incredibly overpriced, and I suspect that when Weldtables.com decided to offer a less expensive alternative, they didn’t have much incentive to be all that much cheaper. They had no competition on the low end.

A company called Langmuir now makes “Arcflat” tables aimed squarely at the Fab Block. They’re cast iron. They’re basically iron boxes with supporting members inside. They’re covered with regulation 16mm holes for fixturing. They’re 3/8″ thick, whereas the default thickness for Fab Blocks is 1/4″. Here are the two best parts: they come fully assembled, and a 2′ by 3′ table only costs $650 plus shipping.

Fab Blocks have to be welded together. You get a really heavy box of parts, and after that, you’re on your own.

Arcflat tables are ground flat before you get them, so you don’t have to worry that your poor welding skills will ruin one during assembly.

Why would I want a 2′ by 3′ table, since I already have one? Simple. Arcflat tables are modular. You can buy two tables and clamp them up to make a 4′ by 3′ table, which is what I want.

I’m not all that excited about welding on cast iron. When you weld on steel, you can tack things to it to hold them in place, and you can grind the remains of the tacks off afterward. You can’t crack or snap steel, either. If you gouge it, you can weld new steel into it very easily to make it like new. That could be tricky with cast iron.

There are good things about cast iron, though. It’s rigid, and weld spatter doesn’t stick to it very well. There are high-end industrial tables made from cast iron.

Like Fab Blocks, Arcflat tables have vertical side panels with fixture holes. Those would have come in handy yesterday.

Based on what I know right now, I can forget about a Fab Block. I see no reason to buy one if I can get a bigger, thicker table, fully assembled, for less money.

Langmuir also makes a $3000 CNC plasma table which is really tempting. I already have a plasma cutter. Best not to think about it.

Yesterday, I thought I was going to finish my bench today. Today, I think I’ll finish it tomorrow. I wonder what new features I can come up with to drive me into next week.

It’s looking really good. I look forward to trying it out.

…your Shooting Bench Costs Five Times as Much as Your Dinner Table

Work on the shooting bench is going very well.

Today I attacked the steel I bought yesterday. Most pieces had very little rust, and that was a rare blessing. I removed spots of rust from the shiny pieces, and I gave the rustier ones more effort. Then I started drilling holes.

This bench will have a nearly square upper frame with a crossmember bisecting it. When I put wood on it, the boards will lie across three pieces of steel tubing. Screws will pass through the tubing from the bottom, into the wood. That means there have to be lots of holes.

I used 2″ tubing, so I set my square to 1″ and used a carbide scribe to mark the centers of the tubes where I needed holes. I used a tape measure and a Sharpie to locate the holes along the lengths of the tubes. I used a punch to make dimples to guide my drills. I drilled through the tubes with a #35 bit, because I happen to have a whole package of them. I followed with a step bit, which opened the holes up to nearly 7/16″ and deburred them.

Using a pilot hole makes drilling go faster, because it gets rid of the hardest part of the hole to drill: the center. A drill’s flutes move very slowly near the center of a hole, so they don’t do much. It’s worse with big drills, because the flutes don’t go all the way to the center. If you drill the center out with a small drill, which has flutes that come much closer to the center of the hole, you get much higher RPM’s, you move fast, and you remove the metal which slows down bigger bits.

Once I had holes on one side of each tube, I was able to use the drill press to put holes in the other sides. I dropped oil through the existing holes, onto the areas where I was going to continue drilling. I used the existing holes as drill it guides. I ran a big drill bit through them, and the existing holes located the holes on the other side. When I was done, I deburred the new holes with the step bit.

I can’t say enough about step bits. Unless you’re drilling deep holes, they’re totally superior to ordinary bits. They cut much, much faster. You have to get good ones, though. Cheap ones just spin in place.

Once I was finished with the holes, I had to figure out how to weld a nearly 4-foot-square frame on a table measuring about two by three feet. I had to use all sorts of clamps, including wood clamps. You can weld metal with wood clamps. You just have to take them off before the pads melt!

Right now, enough of the capital B is tacked together to make an A, and one leg is tacked in place. Tomorrow, I plan to install the other legs, finish the welds, and get started on painting. I should be able to use the bench in about three days. Sooner, if I don’t insist on painting the wood first.

While I worked on the bench, I thought about my plan to upgrade my welding table. I don’t know if I want to deal with a project this big again on this small table, and a new table would be similar in size to this project.

I keep going back and forth: put my own table together for maybe $400, or buy one for around $1300?

If I were to build one, I would have to make somewhere close to 300 16mm holes in it, through 3/8″ steel. Every hole would take at least two minutes to drill. Ten hours of drilling? Seems like a lot.

If I were to buy one, I’d go for the 1/4″-thick Fabblock from Weldtables.com. The 3/8″ table is too expensive. So I would lose rigidity and durability.

Also, I would make a shopmade table bigger, since it would cost less. I would go for 36″ by 48″, whereas I was looking at a 36″ by 42″ Fabblock.

Welding tables have to be very flat, and welding makes things warp, so the pitfall to making my own table is obvious. Making welded objects flat is not easy. I would hate to spend a lot of money on metal and then end up with a bowl instead of a table.

As dilemmas go, this is a good one to have. I could be trying to choose between paying the rent and buying winter clothes.

I will put more photos up as I go. Can’t wait to put this table to work.

Meat-Eating Weirdo Builds Scary Shooting Bench

Recently, my friend Mike visited, and we shot in my pasture. I have a very nice roofed shooting platform which I built from pressure-treated lumber. You have to lie down to use it, and that didn’t work well for Mike. He used a Home Depot folding table.

The platform is a joy, but I can see that it won’t always work for guests, and it probably weighs 350 pounds, so moving it to different distances is not practical. I can do it on rare occasions, but I’m not going to keep the tractor next to it all the time. A bench will be easier to move, it will be easier on guests, and it will be nice when I want to shoot from a seated position.

I learned some stuff while I was planning the build.

1. Real sniper wannabees do not build benches with cutouts. A cutout will encourage you to sit beside your gun, not behind it. It will also make it too easy for you to sit upright. These issues will cause problems with recoil management.

2. A proper bench is low. I thought a tall bench would be nice because it would be comfortable. I learned that you need a low bench so your back will be nearly horizontal where you contact the gun. The idea is to make bench shooting like prone shooting. Again, recoil is the reason.

3. A bench should not have built-in seating. Every time you move your rear end, you’ll move your point of aim.

In order to see your own shots land, you need a muzzle that doesn’t jump or move to one side. To get that, you need to be directly behind your rifle, not beside it. You also need your body to be a good backstop, and that means you want to lean forward. It all adds up to a low bench with no cutout.

I never liked cutouts anyway. I always felt I had to strain to get behind the gun.

I’m building a simple table about 4 feet square. The height will be about 29 inches.

I thought about materials. First, I thought of wood. I decided against it. A strong wooden bench will be heavier than steel, it will require more ingenuity to put together, and it will require big, thick parts that are likely to get in the way when shooting. A steel bench will be lighter, and it won’t incorporate a bunch of two-by-sixes that make for cramped positions.

Today I went to my metal dealer and spent a hundred bucks on 2″ square tubing. I also bought a bunch of hex screws and washers. I plan to weld a metal frame and screw two-by-sixes to it for a top. I’ll put the screws through the tubing from the bottom. They won’t go through the top of the wood, so no hardware will be in my way.

I made a mistake by choosing 1/8″ steel. It’s pretty heavy. It will be much, much stronger than necessary. I guess I added 30 pounds to the bench’s weight. I couldn’t lift it even if I made it with thinner steel, though, so it’s not like it will be a problem. I should come up with a way to add wheels so I can pick one end up and move it.

The bench will be one solid weldment with a wood top, so it won’t break down. That will be a problem if I move. I can cut the legs off with grinder, though. If I did that, I could move the bench in pieces and weld it back together somewhere else.

I should be able to do all the welding tomorrow. Cleaning the metal to paint it will take a while, but it won’t be bad, because the steel they sold me is very bright. Once it’s welded, I’ll need a day or two to put truck bed coating on it, and then I can screw the top on. I think I’ll paint the top with farm implement paint. I just need a slick surface I can wipe down to get rid of mold or whatever.

I’ll need a mat for the bench. My prone mat is not suitable because it’s made in 4 flat sections. You can’t just unroll half of it and hang the rest off the front. I have a couple of very thick bath mats I don’t use for anything. They would be perfect.

It’s nice to have another welding project. It’s nice to know I’ll have a fantastic bench. If I couldn’t use tools, where would I be? Factory benches are not very good, and they cost a fortune.

Three Lemons in a Row but no Jackpot

I guess I’m now the world’s leading critic of the Marlin Model 60 .22 rifle.

I bought a Model 60 in 2018, I believe. It shot 4″ groups at 50 feet. Not yards. Feet. I sent it back, and Marlin gave up on it and sent a new one. I shot that one, and the feed tube fell off.

My buddy Mike wanted another .22, so naturally, he settled on the Model 60. I told him he couldn’t be my friend if he bought one, but he didn’t listen. He bought two. He bought an old one, and he also bought a new one. He liked the old one because it had a bigger magazine and a longer barrel.

This weekend, he brought the old one down, and it stovepiped about 50% of the time. A stovepipe is a failure to eject. The spent casing sticks out of the action, and it looks like a pipe.

When he left, he left the gun here. He was having issues with his gun case, and he figured he would be back soon.

Today, I decided to try to fix the gun, which came from Gunbroker. I have never been cheated on Gunbroker, but it looks like Mike drew the short straw. His gun had been modified several times by a master gunsmith. It was modified in the same sense that what puppies do to carpets is modification.

The Model 60 comes apart when you remove two takedown screws under the stock. Mike’s gun had three screws. The forward screw was normal. There were two screws at the rear. One went through the trigger guard. The other was set in a very nicely drilled hole in the stock, to the rear of the trigger guard.

I removed the middle screw, and it turned out to be a wood screw which didn’t fit tightly. It probably came from Home Depot. The top was black, but the rest was zinc. Apparently, the unknown master gunsmith took a Sharpie and painted it.

It ran into a pot metal or aluminum (Marlin, so probably pot metal) block at the rear of the action. The threads in the block didn’t look too hot. The factory screw is probably a #8 machine screw, and the master gunsmith used a #8 wood screw, so there was conflict.

I went to Numrich and looked the part up. They had a reproduction part. The price was great, but…fake part. I found the real thing on Ebay for $8.75, delivered. Consider that ordered.

I considered the possibility that the loose-fitting stock contributed to the stovepiping issue. It seemed worth checking.

I took the corresponding screw out of my 2018 Model 60 and tried it in the old gun. It fit, even though the threads had been abused. That told me the new Ebay screw would work.

The far-rear screw was in a blind hole. Explain that. Someone took the time to do a very good job drilling a hole that went nowhere.

Maybe the rifle stock was snapped off at some point, and the screw was inserted to add strength after it was glued in place. Of course, this would be a stupid idea. When you put wood back together with good glue, the joint is stronger than the wood was to begin with, and drilling a hole would make a weak spot.

I don’t think this is what happened, because I can’t find any sign of a split.

The gun still stovepiped when I was done, so I looked for answers online. People said Marlin 60 ejectors tended to need adjustment.

The Model 60 does not have an ejector, really. It has a cheap spring which is consistent with the low-grade engineering found elsewhere on the gun. If the spring gets bent, which it does, you have to fix it. I opened the gun up again, removed the action, and found that the master gunsmith had put a totally unnecessary S-curve in it.

I took the curve out with pliers, and then I did what is known as the penny/nickel trick. You can find it on Youtube. You fix the spring so the distance between the end of it and the cheap feed throat part is between the thickness of a penny and a nickel. It’s easier than using feeler gauges.

I put 5 rounds in the gun. Four shot just fine, and the last one stovepiped. I opened the gap on the spring up slightly, and I tested it again. It shot perfectly. For a Marlin.

Now Mike has a gun that works, and he owes me $8.75. I told him he could put a new roof on my chicken house.

If you’re wondering how to take the action out, there is one pin at the rear of the receiver, and you can push it out with your finger.

The best way to get a gun labeled “Marlin” to shoot correctly is to buy a Savage, a can of spray paint, and a stencil. Actually, I saw two messed-up Savages this weekend, so let’s go with Ruger.

The Marlin 60 is junk. There is really no way to defend it. It looks good, it shoots well when it shoots at all, and it’s light and handy, but Mattel has made sturdier, better-designed products.

But enough about the AR-15.

ZING. Rimshot.

I thank God the problems with this gun were easily fixed. Now I just need to convince Mike to quit buying them.

Shortage Preparation Goes Well

Today I did something really great, and I’m here to share it. I modified my apple-peeling machine and improved it tremendously. It only takes about 15 minutes, but you have to have a tap.

The world’s most popular peeler/corer is a Chinese contraption made of cast iron. They run around $25. They look like they could not possibly work, but they’re excellent. You can peel, slice, and core an apple in around 10 seconds, including putting it on the machine and taking it off.

The machine has a screw, and on the end of the screw, there is a fork. You jam your apple onto the fork and turn the screw. The screw shoves the apple toward a stainless blade with a hole in it. The core goes through the hole, the blade spiral-slices the apple, and a second attachment removes the skin.

It’s not perfect. You will usually get a core that’s cut off-center, so you will often need to cut little hard bits out of the slices. If you think that’s a big deal, spend an hour coring, slicing and peeling apples without a machine. You will sing a different tune when you’re done.

The big problem with these machines is that the stainless blades move around. They’re held in place by a single screw, so the blades can rotate when the apples hit them, shoving the core hole off to the side. The solution? Drill a second small hole in the blade beside the hole for the original screw. Drill a corresponding hole in the cast iron of the machine. Tap the hole in the cast iron and run a small screw through the blade and into the machine.

Now you have a blade held in place by one big screw and one little one. It will never move again.

I modified the machine because I’m drying apples.

People who think they hear from God are predicting food shortages. I’ve written about it before. I don’t plan to try to become self-sufficient, eating bugs and worms and whatever for the long term, but as I have said in other posts, I think it can’t hurt to have enough food for a month or two. Dried apples are high in calories, they taste great, they can be used in things like fried apple pies, and they will keep you regular. In a big way, if you overindulge.

It would be hard to get the yellow transparent apples my grandmother used to dry in Kentucky, but Granny Smiths are somewhat similar, and they make fantastic dried apples. Forgive me if I repeat myself. I am too lazy to go back over what I’ve already written. I made a batch of dried apples yesterday, and I have a bigger batch in the dehydrator. The ones I made yesterday are so good it will be hard to leave them alone.

I should learn how to make fried pies. I have an excellent, authentic Eastern Kentucky cookbook, and the recipe is probably good. If not, I can use it as a starting point and improve it.

Fried pies seem to last forever. I know they will go at least a week in a covered container.

I now have protein bars, a jug of whey protein, corned beef, beef for jerky, lots of oatmeal, a good deal of flour, extra sugar, all the caffeine-free Coke in the county (they quit making it “just until the pandemic is over”), and two big jars of grated cheese to go with my many pounds of dried pasta. I now think getting through a month will be a breeze, as long as I have electricity. I won’t stop gathering, though. I want more nuts.

Here’s hoping this all turns out to be a huge waste of time.

No Let-Up in the Forecast

Tropical Storm Eta is oppressing the Southeast. How long has it been out there? It sat on Nicaragua for days, and now it’s finally stumbling around the gulf. The NHC thinks it will be around until at least Friday!

I wouldn’t care, but I think it’s killing the cool weather that should be here now. We’re under pre-hurricane-style clouds, and the air is warm and a little stuffy.

I’m used to seeing storms get it together or vanish in a few days. This storm is defective.

I can’t help wondering if it has supernatural significance. Storms vary in duration, but this seems crazy, and God has taught me that unlikely events can have supernatural origins.

Many people thought Katrina was a message. The name means “catharsis,” and the storm did great damage to an area full of sinful, unrepentant people. It killed people by flooding, and the strange thing about that is that the dead let themselves die. They could have escaped easily, but they chose to stay home, in areas that were likely to flood. A commonly held theory says they stayed home because they thought they had to be there in order to receive their government checks. I don’t know if it’s true, but it would make sense. Leftists who are addicted to welfare suffer from something called “learned helplessness.” Things that don’t faze conservatives devastate them.

I’ve noticed this in my dealings with friends who come from government-dependent cultures. They can’t do anything. They can’t fix their cars. They don’t know how to fix their credit. They can’t do home repairs. They always need advice with regard to simple matters other people don’t consider challenges. Maybe the War on Poverty is the reason. When you’re used to sitting at home waiting for handout checks, the police, and social workers, you don’t have much motivation to become capable. If anything, you are rewarded for weakness and passivity.

“Eta” doesn’t seem to mean anything. It’s the name of a letter.

An imaginative person might say it seems like Eta is hovering over us as a sign that there is a lingering battle among supernatural beings over the election.

The other day, I said the only earthly entities that could end the election and resolve the matter for good were Donald Trump, Joe Biden, and the courts. I forgot the electors.

Electors have traditionally had the liberty to vote as they pleased. It may disturb people to read it, but when you vote in a presidential election, you’re not really voting for a candidate. You’re voting for a representative, and your vote is a strong recommendation, not an order. It’s like Congress. Because of past electoral defections, many states have passed laws making it illegal for electors to go against their mandate. Not all states have done this, and at least some of the laws have no enforcement provisions. At least one law’s enforcement provision is so weak, it would not provide much discouragement.

When leftists say they want to abolish the Electoral College, it’s not a small thing. In fact, it’s revolutionary, in the sense that they want to accomplish a leftist revolution by destroying a Constitutionally created representative body. Leftists are the Antichrist’s children, and they want revolution, not mere change. Sadly, Americans don’t hate the notion of revolution. Our country was born in a revolution, and somehow that has persuaded many of us that revolutions are good things. There are a lot of Chinese, Cuban, and Russian people who feel differently.

The more I think about it, the more I think the American Revolution was a stupid, counterproductive act that has brought curses on us. People think we wouldn’t have been free had we not rebelled. Oh, really? So we would have been put in gulags and death camps, like Canadians and Australians? I admit, Canadians and Australians have lost a lot of freedom in recent years, but they have done pretty well for most of their history.

I now believe kings are better than mindless electorates. Putting ignorant, dishonest, selfish people in voting booths is a practice that has to lead to destruction eventually. Hitler came to power in a fair election, as did Daniel Ortega. I think deposing or killing or rebelling against a monarch is something Christians should only do in the gravest of circumstances. Eighteenth-century Americans were not miserable or desperate.

America was established as a leftist enterprise. We shouldn’t be surprised if leftism increases and destroys us.

Trying to abolish the college or nullify its purpose is not much different from trying to abolish Congress. It’s a gigantic power grab intended to turn people who don’t live in blue states into slaves who lack representation in the Executive Branch.

People who hate the Electoral College should also hate the Senate. It works the same way. The House of Representatives provides representatives for each area depending on its population, and that’s how leftists think the government should work. The Senate gives Alaska and Wyoming the same number of senators as California and Texas, in order to prevent low-population states from being enslaved. If the Electoral College is evil because it gives rural citizens more power per capita than urban citizens, then the Senate is much, much worse.

Will the Senate be slated for destruction when the left is in charge? I don’t see why it should not be. It should be a pressing goal for the revolutionaries. I’m sure they would be willing to give up Hawaii’s disproportionate power in order to conquer red America.

I don’t know if it matters, because I expect Skynet–the Internet and the wireless web–to overcome and replace the world’s government. Future human beings will be like the Borg, if God doesn’t show up and prevent it. Elon Musk is even trying to hardwire IT devices into our brains. The likelihood that such devices would not be made Internet-capable is zero.

People think the election is over, but it hasn’t been held yet. It won’t be held until the electors meet. A lot of things can happen during that time. Biden could be exposed as a criminal because of his China ties, he could die, or the press could “suddenly” discover his dementia and make such a big deal out of it electors would feel justified in abandoning him. Or the left’s astounding, proven campaign of voter fraud could be exposed so thoroughly, electors would be unable to make themselves vote for Biden. Maybe electors will switch their votes simply because they dislike the man.

This is a crazy year, so expect more crazy things to happen.

Like Tropical Storm Eta, the election fight hovers over us, spoiling the atmosphere and refusing to let us rest.

Biden didn’t lose his mind during the campaign. He has not been right in the head for a while. I can’t help wondering if it’s because of his two brain surgeries and his plastic surgeries. Many experts believe there is a strong link between receiving general anaesthesia and developing dementia. Is this why Biden is a shadow of his 2018 self? Is there any possibility that the condition that gave him two aneurysms has produced other abnormalities that would explain his reckless behavior and uncontrolled outbursts? These are things I think about.

Biden has hair plugs, and he has had work done on his eyes. I don’t know what else he has had done. Plastic surgeons say he has had a facelift, and there are scars in front of his ears to prove it. He also appears to be on botox, and he is famous for his bleached smile.

Trump’s first wife claims he had a scalp reduction, but as anyone who has seen a Trump rally can tell you, he is as sharp as a tack. He may be eccentric, but he knows where he is and what’s going on, and he can talk at great length without a teleprompter.

A shocking Trump resurgence would fit in beautifully with the rest of the 2020 perfect storm. This year seems to have been designed to infuriate the Antichrist’s children. We have a mild pandemic the press has convinced us is a major crisis, and the left is using it to control and imprison people. They have also convinced them it’s Trump’s fault. We have a president leftists hate with insane fervor, for no good reason. We have a 6-3 Supreme Court, thanks to a confirmation leftists wrongly believe was illegal, and that court has ultimate jurisidiction over the election results. If Trump had won handily on election day, it would have angered leftists, and riots would have ensued, but it wouldn’t be as provocative as a false Biden victory followed by events that put Trump on top before the electors met. Such a scenario would likely plunge us into immediate, widespread chaos and violence. If we are supposed to have a future of chaos and murder, a Trump rebound makes much more sense than a relatively clean election day blowout.

Pastor Dana Coverstone had some famous dreams about this season, beginning months ago, and he said he saw foreign troops on the ground here. He said he expected food shortages, too. As far as I know, none of the things he expected have been proven impossible. They keep coming true. Can it be that he really is a prophet? He doesn’t make that claim, but he’s doing as well as a true prophet could hope to.

I’m still working on emergency food. I dug out my food dehydrator, and I dried Granny Smith apples. The problem with them is that they taste too good. It will be hard to leave them in bags until I need them. I’m not positive my first batch is as dry as it should be, so after I removed it from the dehydrator, I put the apples in a bowl in the refrigerator. If that doesn’t dry them out, nothing will. I sometimes wonder why people don’t use refrigerators as dehydrators. They seem to do a great job of dehydrating things we don’t want dehydrated.

I should make a bigger batch today. It takes 4/3 of an apple to fill a dehydrator shelf, so I’ll do the math and work it out so I don’t end up with partial loads.

My apple peeler is a great help, but the sheet metal part that slices and cores moves around. It’s held steady by one screw. I may drill and tap and add a second screw so it can’t go anywhere. Or maybe I should look for a better machine.

I don’t know if homemade jerky is cheaper or better than the store kind. I’ll find out.

I keep praying for the rapture to come fast. I believe the WAP world is so rotten, it’s time for the tribulation. I want a better atmosphere, and I want to be with people who are like me. I want to be somewhere where I know I’m at home. That will never happen on Earth.

I Work for the Board of Labor

A few weeks ago, I ordered myself a chalkboard for my kitchen. I needed something in front of me to remind me of things I needed to get done. Amazon screwed up and sent me a whiteboard. I hate those things. I sent it back. Michelangelo and Da Vinci used chalk. Head start teachers use whiteboards.

I put a list of nagging tasks on the board as soon as I screwed it to the wall. There must have been 20 things on it. I’ve been wiping them out ever since. I highly recommend chalkboards.

Today I arranged for gutter companies to come by and give me estimates on some roof improvements. I also sold one of my old welding carts, and the buyer also bought my old 80 cubic foot C25 tank. He got a great bargain, but I had to get it out of my workshop. That put me in a position to knock another item off my list. I drove to Airgas and bought a 125 cubic foot tank. It’s on the new cart now. The cart is ready to work. I can still make little changes here and there, and I haven’t transfered all my welding paraphernalia to it, but I can pull it up to my table and start welding.

I wore my MAGA hat to Airgas. I’ll wear it until the fat lady sings. If a 74-year-old man who just got over coronavirus can do several rallies in different states every day for weeks, I can wear a hat. It’s not much of a gesture.

Things don’t look as bad as the MSM would have you believe. Trump seems certain to win Pennsylvania. Biden’s anti-fracking crusade really put a dent in his numbers. We are now learning that Arizona was called early. There are 400,000 votes yet to be counted, and there is a good chance they’ll put Trump over the top. North Carolina and Georgia look good, Alaska is a sure thing, and Trump is suing in Michigan and demanding a recount in Wisconsin.

If he gets Arizona, Biden is in trouble. If he gets Michigan or Wisconsin, Biden is in trouble.

My feeling is that God is making Trump sweat because of his pride. It’s not pure imagination. It’s a strong feeling I get during prayer. But a strong feeling is not a prophecy.

Of course, if I’m right, we will be up to our armpits in rioters soon, and it may be even worse than the riot routine we’ve gotten used to.

I’m sure they’re rioting somewhere today. They always are. Riots used to be unusual. Now they’re like rain. It may be dry where you are, but it’s always pouring somewhere. After Trump wins, we should expect heavy-duty simultaneous riots in as many cities as BLM and Antifa can afford to attack.

Maybe they won’t be able to riot everywhere. After all, George Soros and Hollywood celebrities aren’t made out of money.

The riots will be Trump’s fault, according to the MSM. Everything is Trump’s fault in Bizarro World. Hurricanes. Forest fires. A fat lady became Youtube-famous for claiming Trump made her obese. He really gets around, in the fantasies of the Antichrist’s children. In sane times, people would be amazed to see grown-ups blaming a Republican president–who isn’t allowed to send help–for terrorist riots performed by leftists. Now, it’s normal. Up is down, men are women, and blizzards are proof of global warming.

“Trump made me do it.” Flip Wilson should sue.

Trump reminds me of Jesus Christ. They are the most lied-about people in history. They are hated without reason by more people than any other figures I can think of. They do great things for others. The blessings are undeniable. Somehow, they are given no credit, the blessings are characterized as problems, and problems other people create are blamed on them.

The Antichrist’s children remind me of my sister, who appears to be one of them. The more you do for her, the more she hates you. Helping certain people is like playing war games with the WHOPR. The only way to win is not to play.

This is the only country on earth, apart from one outlier with a gigantic oil field, where large numbers of people pushed for socialism during an economic boom. It just isn’t done. You’re supposed to go socialist out of desperation. You don’t do it when unemployment is at a record low and the stock market is at a record high. It’s like demolishing a house because it looks too nice.

That blackboard is really something. It hangs there, silently disapproving of me. It motivates me to do things so I can erase items from the list. It does what nagging wives wish they could do, without the misery and dreams of divorce.

Here’s hoping Trump wins Arizona. I’ll write another item on the board: “Lie on face for three hours, thanking God.”

Things to do While America Tries to Kill Itself

It has been a pretty stress-free day. I woke up at 7:00, which was way too early because I was up past midnight. I prayed and so on, and when I woke up again, it was nearly 11. Not bad!

I had a strange dream. My grandmother was still alive, and she was driving me and another grandchild to Lexington, Kentucky. She was old, but her mind was clear. Nonetheless, her driving was scary. I kept suggesting she let me drive, but she said her doctor had told her driving was good for her.

We had to stop at a government facility where everyone emptied their pockets and set the contents in baskets on conveyor belts. I didn’t put my carry piece in the basket. When I got to the other side, my stuff didn’t come through. I remember longing for the good old days when Americans could get in the car and drive from place to place without stopping to be searched. Apparently, in the world of my dream, those days were over.

I don’t know if the dream means anything. My mother generally represents the church in my dreams. Who, then, does her mother represent? Catholics? The Jews? You would think it would be a body that gave rise to the modern church.

Last night and today, I received nice packages that gave me something to do.

I don’t want a bulky, expensive grill that costs $2000 and does nothing a cheap grill won’t do, so I have a turkey fryer and a small stainless Pit Boss Grill. For a long time, I’ve had them on the patio on a cheap Home Depot table. The heat did a number on the plastic, so I ordered myself a stainless prep table. They sell them on Amazon for a little over a hundred bucks, but the Amazon jobs use thin steel, and their lower shelves and legs are galvanized, so they will rust. I decided to splurge and get a real commercial table with stainless shelves and legs. It’s very sturdy. I should be able to clean it very easily, and any rust should be negligible.

I also got a stand for my smoker. They cost a lot, but it’s no fun putting meat in a smoker that sits nearly on the floor. I now have a much more convenient height, and the stand has wings for things like BBQ tongs, sauces, and seasonings.

I had to assemble everything. Putting the smoker on the stand was quite a job.

I’ll post a photo. Yes, there are shovels on my patio. I’m still not done removing the stump from the poolside planter.

I haven’t bothered getting a real patio table. I looked around, but I didn’t see anything good on the web or at the local consignment place. I don’t want to blow $1500 on a new set. It doesn’t matter. My plastic folding table is very practical, and no one seems to mind.

Tomorrow, I expect to receive a wireless BBQ thermometer with two probes, and it should be accompanied by some other items.

I installed an induction stove a while back, but I did’t get nonstick pans, and somehow, a couple of my saucepans didn’t make the trip from Miami, so I ordered two induction-ready skillets and some replacement saucepans. I have several pans I should get rid of because they don’t cooperate with induction. Time to visit the Salvation Army, I guess.

The thermometer will make barbecuing easier.

The runup to the election has been unpleasant. I would hate to see a great president who honors God and puts his country first put out of office by witches, terrorists, a corrupt and vile press, the Chinese, and a lying, demented hack no one in his own corrupt party respects. Now that there is nothing to do but watch and pray, I feel better. If Biden wins, it won’t harm me personally. God looks after me regardless of what happens around me. Other people won’t fare so well, but they will be getting what they chose, and I don’t have the power to control their actions.

I will try not to watch the returns, and I hope I can sleep without help. I don’t want to find myself staring at the computer at 3 a.m.

I hope I won’t continue watching the news after today, apart from occasional glances. I hate reading the news. Smith Wigglesworth wouldn’t allow newspapers in his house, and he did just fine.

It’s nice to have pleasant projects to pass the time during what could have been a rough day. Hope everyone who reads this has peace. Don’t forget: our president isn’t the source of your safety and blessings, so there is no reason to despair if a man the Democrats rejected for three decades somehow wins the prize. Like all hard times, a Biden rule would be hardest on people who don’t know God.

Absence Makes the Heart Grow Harder

I have to point out that there is nothing as great as living in the South. It’s like a big playground for adults. If you’ve ever watched Ducky Dynasty, you’ve seen exactly what I’m talking about. You may think that show is all fantasy, but the truth is that it shows exactly how Southerners live.

If you’re jealous, take heart. You can always move. My Uncle Jim was born a yankee, but he moved to Kentucky, and in a few years, he was totally healed.

Today I went to the heterosexual barber shop where I always get my hair cut. I wore a MAGA hat, and I thought I might stand out among the customers. A couple of guys who only spoke Spanish were in the chairs when I arrived, and they kept quiet. Soon afterward, another man arrived.

The barber said, “It’s Mr. Trump himself.”

The man was about 5’11” tall and weighed maybe 135 pounds. He was wearing a MAGA visor, the sides of his head were cut close, and on top of his head, he had a puff of orange hair that looked like a pom-pom.

Best of all, he had a Bush tall boy in his hand. And no intention of getting a haircut.

I told the barber I didn’t realize alcohol was allowed, and he asked me if I wanted a beer from the fridge. I turned it down, but the gesture warmed my heart.

I could not drink; I had to drive to Harbor Freight. Also…Busch.

Mr. Trump told us about the rallies he had been to. He said there was one in The Villages–the giant retirement complex to the south of me–drew over 10,000 golf carts. I don’t recall the exact figure. Golf carts! How Southern is that? And of course, he had a story about an idiot who grabbed someone’s Trump flag and ripped it. The perpetrator ran off in a pickup, but his triumphant escape was cut short by a traffic accident. Remarkably, no one in the shop gloated.

Only one person–another quiet individual who could have been Mexican–wore a mask. The rest of us criticized coronavirus hysteria and talked about the horrors of a Biden administration. The barber said if they tried to lock the shop down or pull any more shenanigans, he would just go to jail instead of cooperating. Of course, jail is one of the few places in this county where you’re highly likely to catch the bug.

If Biden wins and the rapture doesn’t come this year, at least I picked a great place to die.

By the way, Harbor Freight has a 15% coupon on tool chests. That’s pretty rare. It expires tomorrow, so strap one to your golf cart and take it home.