Internet BS a Formidable Hindrance to DIY Electricians

I didn’t have much time to work on the workshop today, but I got some good things done.

I want to get my remaining machinery moved in, so I need to have 250V outlets in various locations. When I moved here, there wasn’t a one. I slapped a couple together, along with a new subpanel, right before Hurricane Dorian passed by, and since then I have replaced that subpanel with a better one and added a number of outlets.

Today I put 50-amp and 20-amp outlets up, just below the subpanel. These replace two outlets that were attached to the old subpanel. They will give me more flexibility in tool placement.

I now have one 50-amp outlet by the west garage door and one about halfway down the north wall. I expect to move my welding operations all the way down the wall, so I don’t think I’ll have much use for the new 50-amp outlet once all the wiring is done, but I will need it until I get the ones farther down installed, and I may drill through the wall and connect it to a new outdoor outlet, to connect to a generator. Besides, it never hurts to have another outlet.

I’ve decided what do to about the south wall of the shop. I’m going to run 6/2 Romex across the trusses and down the wall to a junction box. From that box, I will make one run to my table saw, which will get 50 amps, and another run to the general vicinity of the band saw, which gets 20 amps. If I need more 20-amp outlets, I can connect them to the band saw’s outlet. That type of outlet permits you to connect several in parallel.

The last circuit will be 50 amps to the southwest corner, for a compressor. I could get by with 20 right now, but I may want a bigger compressor later, with a 7.5-HP motor. I don’t think a 7.5-HP compressor really needs 50 amps, but it’s usually a good idea to run big wire when you have the choice. I can always add new outlets to the same circuit if I want.

I may run heavy wire to a 20-amp receptacle for the compressor and connect it to a 20-amp breaker instead of using a 50-amp breaker. The compressor already has a 20-amp plug on it. If I move to a bigger compressor later, I can just change the breaker and receptacle.

It’s funny, but people say two things which are very inconsistent. They say you should always go with a big circuit breaker and heavy wire, and they also say you shouldn’t plug a machine into a socket that supplies way more current than it needs. Obviously, you can’t have it both ways.

People like to say that if you put, say, a 20-amp machine on a 50-amp circuit, you risk having a fire downstream if there is a short in the cord or machine, so you should use a smaller breaker. Well, then…if that’s true, why would you have a practice of using large breakers to play it safe? It makes no sense. A large breaker will permit more current to flow. If the breaker is supposed to protect the machine and cord as well as the wiring, you want the smallest breaker that will run the machine.

The purpose of circuit breakers is to protect wiring, not electrical devices. If you’re worried about your machine burning up, you should put a breaker on the machine. This is why many products come with breakers and fuses built in.

There is nothing safe about a big breaker. The bigger a breaker is, the less safe it is.

The purpose of heavy wiring is to reduce heat due to resistance caused by high current draw. The purpose of a breaker is to limit current draw and, therefore, heat in the wiring. The machine is on its own. Our houses are full of stuff that can fry at 125V on 20 amps or even 15, yet we don’t run around unplugging everything at night. If I had to think about a machine’s size every time I moved it down the wall to a different outlet, I’d be redoing circuits all the time. No one does that. Maybe OSHA or the electrical code people require it in commercial shops. I don’t know. But it’s impractical in a home workshop.

Sometimes I think I should never ask anyone for advice on the Internet. They come up with a lot of bad ideas.

You have to have a big enough breaker to supply your machines, with wire so heavy it won’t overheat at the breaker’s operating limit. You don’t need giant breakers and wires like garden hoses for all your 250V outlets.

Here is how I see it: big wires are never a bad idea, unless they’re too thick to install. Big breakers can be a problem if the wire isn’t matched to them. If you’re worried your machines will burn up, you should have some kind of protection built into each one instead of relying on your building wiring to do a job it was never designed to do.

I think this is right, and I plan to govern myself accordingly until someone gives me a good reason to change my mind.

I think the best protection I can have is to shut off the juice to the machinery circuits when I leave the shop. I don’t think I’ll do it, though. I don’t really see my band saw, for example, bursting into flame at 2 a.m. for no reason.

Tonight I bought 125 feet of 60/2 Romex. I’m sure 8/2 would have been fine, and I wasn’t planning on using more than 65-70 feet right away, but I decided to err on the side of safety, and 125 feet of prepackaged wire was about the same price as 70 feet of cut-to-order. I feel like I got 60 or so feet for nearly nothing. I was only planning to do the run in the table saw area this week, but now I have enough wire to do the compressor run as well.

Maybe I’ll hang the Romex tomorrow. That will tell me how much conduit to get. I don’t look forward to using the ladder, which is heavy, but it will be nice not having to run much conduit. Going over the trusses with bare Romex will be a lot less aggravation.

This is where things stand tonight. I think I deserve a couple of hours of Youtube.

Big White Box Installed on Wall

Today I hung my phase converter on the workshop wall. This is one of the last major steps on the way to getting my machinery moved here.

My lathe has a 7.5-HP 3-phase motor, so it has to have a phase converter or variable frequency drive (VFD). A VFD that will run a motor that big is very expensive, and I don’t trust VFD’s all that much. I’m willing to spend $250 on one, with the knowledge that it may go nuts in a few years, but a VFD for a 7.5-HP motor costs a lot more than that. It’s not something I want to replace.

How do I know the phase converter won’t go nuts? I really don’t, but it’s from a well-known company, and I have not heard anything about phase converters flipping out and dying.

The phase converter probably weighs 50 pounds. Could be more. I had to lift it and slip two eyes on the back over two screws about 6 feet off the ground. It’s surprising how hard it is to do that with 50 pounds.

I must correct myself. I looked it up. It weighs 75 pounds. No wonder lifting it was no fun. I took the door off, so that killed a few pounds.

Now I feel better about my physical condition. I try not to lift anything that could hurt me, and this thing, while not pleasant to lift, didn’t seem to reach that threshold.

The phase converter mission was delayed because I needed to figure out where I was putting my machines. It’s difficult organizing a shop, especially when you don’t want to spend $150 on wire for each new outlet you install. Copper got really expensive when China rose out of poverty. They did a lot of building, and buildings need wire. If I were to redo the run to my workshop in really heavy wire for 200-amp service, the wire–four pieces–would cost over $1300, and that’s from a discount place. I checked out of curiosity.

There are a lot of ways to organize a shop. You can lie down and try to picture things where you want to put them. That’s not very reliable. Grizzly.com has a neat tool that allows you to create a virtual shop and put little machine icons in it. It’s clunky to use, however, and you find yourself trying to make up shapes because Grizzly’s available shapes don’t cut it. You might find yourself making a 3′ by 2′ box and calling it a welder.

The little shapes are not labeled, so that’s another knock on Grizzly’s software. The shapes don’t look all that much like tools.

I read that the Navy uses little paper cutouts to arrange carrier decks. The explanation was that it was faster and easier than using CAD. I decided to try it. I moved little cutouts around on graph paper, and it seemed to work. When I came up with arrangements I liked, I took pictures. I’m pretty advanced.

I want to put two more 20-amp outlets on the wall where the phase converter is hanging, along with two 50-amp circuits. I want to put two 20-amp outlets and one 50-amp circuit on the opposite wall. I want to run a 40-amp circuit to the area where the air compressor will be. After that, I should be all set.

It appears I can get away with using Romex. People told me you couldn’t put it in conduit, and I’ll need conduit to install wires on my concrete walls, but they were wrong. Short runs of indoor conduit are fine for Romex. I plan to run conduit up to the trusses and then send Romex over them. This will allow me to do a lot less conduit work.

The preexisting wiring was done this way, so I should have known it was kosher.

I figure it will be one more week before the outlets are in, and maybe I’ll be able to put my machines in early next month. Maybe sooner. I don’t really need to wait for the wiring.

I’m very eager to get the mill, lathe, and compressor back. You really have to have these tools if you want to get anything done.

Found a Great New Guy to do my Wiring

The workshop is really coming together. Unfortunately, I am the main force making that happen. They say that if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. I keep telling myself that isn’t true and that I should go ahead and pay people to do things, but it seems like they never do things as well as I would have, regardless of their credentials.

I paid an electrician about half a Lamborghini to increase the current to my workshop from 50 to 100 amps. You would think I would have had a perfect installation ready for whatever upgrades the future would bring. Not so. Today I had to install a frame size breaker in the workshop main panel, and the electrician didn’t leave enough slack in the feed wires, so I had to lengthen them.

Leaving excess wire is a fundamental thing for electricians, like not grabbing a wire to see if it’s still hot. It’s very basic. You never know what kind of work a customer will want in the future, and if you don’t leave extra wire behind, you may cause him a lot of problems.

I don’t want to run the electrician down. Most of what he did was great, and he was wonderful to deal with. It’s just that there were little things I would have done better.

I paid for #2 copper wire all the way across the yard. Not cheap. I could have gotten aluminum, but sometimes it has problems, so I paid a lot more than I had to. I also made sure they used a large conduit in case the #2 wires had to be upgraded in the future. I did all that and still had to splice the wires to make the frame size breaker work.

The main panel has 4 spaces for 250V breakers, plus a big space at the top for a frame size breaker. This is a breaker that feeds an entire panel, like a main switch. It’s not for receptacles and so on; it just feeds the panel.

My workshop panel has to have a way of shutting the power off with one switch, for safety reasons. You can do that in more than one way. You can run the power for the shop to a breaker on the panel, and you can also get a frame size breaker. My electrician opted to save a hundred bucks by running the juice to an ordinary 100-amp breaker which took up 25% of the panel’s spaces. He used just enough wire to reach that breaker, plus about 6″. To use a frame size breaker, I needed another 6″.

The company saved the cost of 6″ of wire, which would be about two dollars, and as a result, I had to drive to Lowe’s, spend like twelve bucks, and waste maybe three hours of my time.

I tried yanking the wires to see if there was any slack available, but there wasn’t, and I was in danger of damaging the insulation, so I stopped. I got on the web and found the answer: split bolts.

A split bolt is a hex bolt made from copper. It has a big cavity running down the middle, so it’s forked. You put two wire ends in the cavity and tighten the nut. It smooshes the wires together firmly. Then you put about a pound of various types of electrical tape on it, and you have a code-approved splice.

You can also grease the wire ends. This will supposedly prevent electrolysis which can mess up the connection. Some dude on the web says you can get electrolysis even when everything is made from the same metal.

I got two huge split bolts and two feet of #2 wire. I greased the wire ends with Super Lube grease, which apparently does everything. The text on the tube lists an endless number of uses, including use as dielectric grease.

I put two extensions on the hot wires, cranked the nuts down, and buried the assemblies in two kinds of tape. The connections should last forever. I crammed them back in the panel box, put it back together, and fired everything up. It works. Now I’m sitting pretty. I have a 50-amp plug and two 20-amp plugs coming from the main panel right now. The subpanel will have a 60-amp connection for my phase converter, plus a whole bunch of 250V receptacles.

The frame size breaker is installed, and the work I did looks really good. That’s because I actually thought about it. I didn’t get permits, and I am not getting inspected, because Florida law exempts this type of building from these requirements, but in the end, I’ll have a setup which exceeds code and looks and works better than whatever an electrician would have installed.

I’m using #3 90°C copper wire to connect the 100-amp breaker that feeds the subpanel. It’s rated for 110 amps, which it will never see. I could have used aluminum, but I wanted to do a good job. It’s all going to be in steel conduit, sized correctly. I got myself a new conduit bender so the conduit will be bent around anything that’s already on the walls. You don’t really have to do that; you can lay conduit over, say, a garage door control wire and just let it rest on it, but it’s more workmanlike to put a couple of little bends in your conduit so it goes over the old wire like an overpass.

I have another frame size breaker coming, and it will go in the subpanel. It’s overkill, really. I’m installing a subpanel with room for 6 full-size 250V breakers, and I could have given up one of them to connect the subpanel to the main panel, but I want to be ready for the future. The subpanel will actually be bigger than the main panel, now that I think about it, and it’s close to the center of a wall, so wire runs from the subpanel won’t be nearly as long as they would have been had I chosen to run things from the main panel.

All the hard stuff is done. Running wire from the house to the workshop was a big job for two men. What I’m doing now is comparatively easy, and since I spliced the feed wires, there are now no electrician-caused problems in the shop. Once you get to the main panel, everything is ship-shape.

I have all my woodworking tools in one area now, where the old Corian counter used to be. I painted the inside of my woodworking tool cabinet white so I can see what’s in it instead of staring into blackness, and I fastened the cabinet to the wall by the table saw so it can’t go wandering off. Everything is on wheels, so I can move things over by the roll-up door when I use them. I can open the door and blow the sawdust out.

I made an improvement in my lathe cart. It was a steal at $30, but the casters were unbelievably bad. They have brakes, and the brakes are always on no matter what you do. I worked on them a little and made them work better, but one of the casters is missing a ball bearing and will never be right. They’re made from cheap materials, and the tolerances are crazy, so there was never much hope for them.

I could probably have gotten Home Depot to do something for me, but even if they replaced the caster, I would have 4 awful casters. I decided to get a set of China casters from Amazon. I got the same ones I used on my tall cabinet. The cabinets are made by Husky, and they take the same casters, so all I have to do is screw them in. When I went to look for them online, Amazon had a returned set on sale, so I jumped on it. All told, the cart will now have something like $52 invested in it, plus tax. Not bad, given that the regular price is $70, with bad casters.

I finished up my spray boom mount. I was not able to get the materials I really wanted. I had hoped to have two square tubes, with the one holding the boom telescoping into the other one. I could have attached the boom with a pin, and the mount would have taken up less room when stored. I could not get two tubes in appropriate sizes. I decided to put a flange on the lower mount, with two screw holes in it. When I use the mount, I’ll run two screws through the flange and the boom. It will work fine.

I’m not happy with the paint I chose. I used Rust-Oleum hammer finish paint, which looks great. The problem with it is that it stays soft forever. When I work on the mount, the paint gets marred up. Next time, I’ll use farm implement paint. The part itself is very nice, though.

I need new projects now. I have a shop, so I have to do things. I want to start making wooden bird toys. Store toys cost $18 each, which is insane, and the birds can’t tell the difference. I want to build a battery-charger shelf. I really need that. I’m looking around for things to improve.

I should have the new outlets up by Thursday. After that, there will be no reason to put off moving my big machines up here. Can’t wait for that. Once I have machine tools, welders, a belt grinder, a finger brake, and woodworking tools, I should be hard to stop.

Wire You Reading This?

It is the third of October, and my workshop now has two 50-amp outlets and three 20-amp outlets. I have a third 50-amp receptacle waiting to be installed. When I get that receptacle wired up, I will mount my 10-HP phase converter on the wall, and I will call a rigger to bring my machine tools to Ocala.

After, that I’ll be ready for the rapture.

It has been confusing, trying to figure out the best way to wire up the shop. I have a Square D Homeline main panel and a Square D QO 250V subpanel. They use completely different breakers, and the breakers offered in the QO line are less versatile.

I guess you’re confused now, too.

Main panels and subpanels come with a limited number of spaces for circuits. On top of that, my workshop main panel uses one of its breaker spaces to connect to the main panel in the house. That’s really stupid. I can free up space by buying what is known as a “frame size” breaker. It’s a big breaker that goes above the other breakers and doesn’t use one of their spaces. Costs over $50.

Right now I am relying on a 100-amp breaker to connect to the house, plus two 250V breakers and two 125V breakers. One of the 250V breakers connects the main panel to the shop’s subpanel, so that kills a space.

Because the main panel is from the Homeline…line…I have the option of using what are known as quad breakers. They combine two 250V breakers in one space. I bought two of them. They let me put two 50-amp breakers and two 20-amp breakers in two spaces. I used them to give me a 50-amp receptacle beside the main panel as well as two new 20-amp receptacles in the north wall. I can’t use quad breakers with my QO subpanel, so it’s like having a much smaller panel.

It looks like I made a bad choice when I bought the QO subpanel. I didn’t know what I was doing. It was really cheap, and I figured it would do the job, but I didn’t know the QO breaker options were so limited. I think the thing to do is to go to Lowe’s tomorrow, get myself a bigger Homeline subpanel, and throw out my brand-new QO subpanel and the breakers I got for it. Maybe some of them are still returnable. I guess it’s not a big deal. I could lose $50, all told.

I’m going to run #3 copper wire from the main panel to the subpanel. The main panel receives 100 amps from the house, and I am going to provide big enough wire to send all 100 to the subpanel. I have no plans to use that much juice, but big wire is a good thing. It stays cooler, and heat is what causes electrical fires. Obviously.

That size wire is very expensive locally, but I found a company online that sells it for a little over a buck a foot. It has already arrived. Code says I can use it in 3/4″ conduit, so that’s what I bought.

When I’m done, the phase converter will have its own outlet and breaker, and I can have as many welder outlets as I want. I would like to leave the Harbor Freight multiprocess welder and my AHP TIG/stick machine plugged in all the time for convenience. My Lincoln isn’t as useful, so I see no need to provide a receptacle for it.

I have to put my machine tools on the north wall, and that’s where I installed my woodworking tool cabinet, which is a 72″ Husky from Home Depot. It’s a great cabinet. I put wheels on it, even though you’re not supposed to. It has a safety strap which attaches it to the wall, so wheels are not a safety problem. Today I had to move the cabinet, and that proved I was right to get the wheels.

Since I had to move it, I used the opportunity to paint the inside white. The cabinet is black, and when tools are inside it, they are hard to see. It’s like a cave in there. I bought myself some Krylon white appliance epoxy, and I moved the cabinet outdoors and started spraying. I had to get myself a Tyvek suit. When you spray the outside of a thing, the paint mist blows away. When you spray the inside of a cabinet, the cabinet holds the mist so it tries to settle on you and in your lungs. Frustrating. My $14 Tyvek suit minimizes the damage, and I look sexy in it.

The cabinet is great. I don’t know what they were thinking when they chose to make it black, however.

It’s amazing how hard it is to paint a black object white. I have gone through three cans of Krylon, and I’m not done.

My table saw is now on the south side of the shop, and the cabinet will be moved that way, too. I’m thinking of running a 30-amp circuit over there, just for the saw.

I’m also thinking of modifying the Husky rolling cabinet I got for my wood lathe. I bought a Dustopper for it. This is a special lid for a 5-gallon bucket. You put it in front of a shop vac, and as the air goes through it, almost all the dust falls out. It turns a shop vac into a pretty good dust collector.

I put the Dustopper on a bucket and tried to fit it in the cabinet. It will go, but it’s too tall to attach a hose. I got frustrated trying to think of ways to change it. Then I realized it was sitting on a bucket that cost less than $3. I couldn’t believe it too me so long to see the solution. Obviously, I can cut an inch out of the bucket and put it back together. This is my plan. I’ll put a shop vac inside the cabinet next to the bucket, and I’ll run a hose out to the lathe. I’ll have to cut intake and exhaust holes in the cabinet. Even with the holes, the cabinet should kill most of the vacuum noise.

I now have a 31-foot cord for my band saw. I’m considering using my finger brake to make a bracket to wind the cord on. I can mount it to the side of the saw. It would just be a long piece of 1″ steel strip bent up at the ends. I could weld two short bits of all-thread to it and run them through the saw’s case to a couple of nuts. If I welt all-thread to it, I won’t have bold heads sticking up and interfering with me when I try to wind the cord. Not that they would anyway, now that I think about it, since they would be in the center of the apparatus and the cord would wind around the outside.

Still, it would be slick.

I no longer have any excuse not to move my machines here. Tomorrow I need to call the rigger and get things going. I can’t wait to have them again. There are things I’ve wanted to do that required a mill, lathe, and compressor, and I’ve been stuck. Awful feeling.

I may also get a trailer. I’m considering getting one that holds 5500 pounds. It’s not too big and not too expensive, but I could put my Kubota on it and take it for service. I could also move a machine tool or a huge amount of personal property. The trailer I like has built-in ramps, strong enough to hold a 3500-pound tractor.

I’ll need to put a decent hitch on the Ford, and I may put a better one on the Dodge. Apparently, Dodge puts very bad hitches on Cummins-equipped trucks. I can install these things myself.

I considered making a trailer, and I can do it, but there are some things you should just buy. I might make a small one, though. You don’t always want a 16-footer behind you.

Once I get these things, plus the Harbor Freight lift I have my eye on, it will be hard to think of anything I really need. There will always be little things I can add, but I will have the essentials to do what I want.

Welding table. Forgot that.

Anyway, it won’t be like I’ll be making do, as I have been for so long.

“This Variety Always has Black Bark”

I’m back to writing about my workshop again. Or am I?

Today I wrote about the favor God was showing me. I said it seemed like I couldn’t go to Home Depot without them giving me something for nothing. After I wrote that, I visited the store to get 30 feet of 10/3 power cord for my band saw. The guy who cut the wire made a measuring mistake. I got 31 feet for the price of 30.

Okay, I give up. I surreptitiously returned the last two things they gave me, because I was pretty sure the employees who gave them to me did not have the authority to give things away. This time, I let it go. You can’t give Home Depot back a foot of wire. It was going home with me, or they were going to cut it off and put it in a dumpster. There was no way they were going to go back to the wire area and cut it off. I had to take it.

It was almost as though God were joking with me.

I went to the metal dealer today to get some things I needed. I have a sprayer boom for my golf cart, and I’ve been attaching it to the back of the cart with clamps. That’s no good. I need a support that goes in the cart’s 2″ receiver. I bought three pieces of square tubing to make one.

I also bought several pieces of angle iron in different widths. My Offroad Swag finger brake is a wonderful tool, but in order to make it work, you need accessories. Little pieces of narrow angle iron serve as bottom die adaptors. The press’s bottom die is a huge piece of angle iron which is too wide to work with some things, so you rest small pieces in it to fill up space.

I bought three feet of 1″ steel strip for no good reason at all. I thought I might need some for a plate for the sprayer mount. Screws would go through it to attach it to the boom. I would only need maybe 4 inches for that. I bought three feet because 1″ steel strip is a handy thing to have when you weld. You never know when you’ll find a place where a little strip of steel will save the day.

Scrap is very important. You can’t make anything without scrap unless you drive to the store every time an idea pops into your head. I try to buy more materials, fasteners, paint, glue, and other things than I need, because I know they’ll be useful later.

Yesterday I took some goat wire and stretched it between two shelves on my monster shelf thing. I put it there to prevent long metal objects from falling off the side. I’m using a shelf as a material storage area. The old system of piling it in the corner of the room is no longer in vogue.

Scrap is already piling up on the shelf, making me feel more secure.

I bought 20″ of 2-1/2″ square tube. I made a front end loader support for my Kubota the other day, and it came out great, but it was too short to put the loader as high as I wanted it. The tubing I bought today will become a new support. I could have cut the old support and welded more metal in to make it longer, but I didn’t think about it until I had the new metal, and I don’t know if I trust my welds for a job like that.

When I got home, I cleaned my new steel with window cleaner and paper towels because new steel is always covered with black grime. I deburred the steel using the belt grinder, and I also ground an angle into one of the pieces for the sprayer support so it would project backward from the golf cart when the finished support was in use.

I put 5/8″ holes in the tube that will go into the receiver. There are matching holes in the receiver, and a pin will go through them to hold the support in place. The Silver & Deming bit left huge burrs inside the tubing where I couldn’t hit them with the belt grinder. Enter the Dumore hand grinder.

This is a tool that falls between a Dremel and a die grinder. It’s small enough to use with one hand, but it won’t poop out as badly as a Dremel, and it’s a real industrial tool, so it will last longer than a year. I put a carbide burr on it, reached into the tubing, and ground the burrs out in a hurry.

Nice.

There’s a reason why new Dumores cost hundreds of dollars. Thank God I bought one that was new old stock.

I used a Walter flap wheel to clean up the tubes, and then I used my Harbor Freight MIG to weld them together. It was great. The welds, though imperfect, look better than most professionally done welds. Most pros make ugly welds. Most pros aren’t that good, if you want the truth. It’s a wonder things don’t fall apart and kill people all the time. I was very happy with my work.

The Titanium welder is a joy to use. I don’t know how it will stand the test of time, but for now, I’m thrilled with it. It’s light. It’s easy to use. The Harbor Freight Vulcan welding cart is ergonomically perfect. Zero complaints.

I cleaned the newly made support with a wire brush, and then I sprayed it with black hammer finish Rust-Oleum, using the tried-and-true “hang it from a magnolia tree you don’t mind painting” method. It looks wonderful. There are worse-looking welded products on store shelves across the world.

I’m not totally happy with the tubing I got for the upper part of the support, so I didn’t make that part. I’m going back to the metal place to see if they have something a little wider.

I enjoyed my visit today. The lady who runs the place started talking to me about guns and politics and so on. Of course, she has a carry permit. So nice to live among sane people.

While the paint on the sprayer mount was drying, I started on the front end loader support. I used the dry cut saw to cut one end at a 47-degree angle, which was the biggest angle I could manage with that tool. I then took the plasma cutter and started turning the 2-1/2″ tubing into a C-channel. It has to slip over the tractor’s hydraulic rod, so one side has to be open.

The first time I did this, it took a very long time, because I relied on bad information and didn’t give the plasma cutter enough air. It didn’t cut all the way through the part, so I had to finish the cutting with an angle grinder. This time, I left a few spots that weren’t cut, but severing them only took a couple of minutes.

When I was done cutting one side out of the tubing, I was left with a lot of rough metal on the inside of it. I tried smoothing it with a flap disk, but it wouldn’t really get in there, so I used the Dumore again. It’s terrific. It smoothed and debored everything so a person handling the support can’t get hurt.

I cleaned up the shop and put everything away. The support is waiting for me to come back and weld end plates on it.

I got a great deal done in a very short time. That’s rewarding. So much better than fumbling around and wasting time because I don’t have the right tools or the needed skills.

Welding is a huge blessing. I can make things other people have to buy, really quickly and cheaply. I can customize them. I don’t have to make do with things that aren’t quite right.

I’m planning to build my own welding table. A manufactured table will cost over a thousand dollars, and I just don’t think it’s justified. My milling machine will be here soon, and with it, I’ll be able to make a precision top for the table without paying some company my life savings.

I’ll bet I can build an excellent three foot by two foot table with casters and a fold-out plasma area for $250.

The little Harbor Freight portable table I use now is fantastic for the money, and if you want to weld when you’re away from your shop, it can’t be beat, but it’s flimsy for a main welding table, and it’s small, so it gets crowded.

Maybe if I go to Home Depot tomorrow, they’ll give me a table.

Things are coming together nicely. I almost look forward to spraying the yard.

Christian Content Ahead

I write a lot about relatively trivial things these days. I say “relatively” because they’re not completely trivial. I write about good things that are happening to me because God is blessing me. These things happen because God has taught me important things, and I am putting them to use. That’s not really trivial at all. But I still need to tell other people about the root causes of my blessings, which are much more important than the blessings themselves.

I’ve learned a number of things recently. Perhaps the most momentous thing I’ve learned: I am a god.

I think most Christians would be angry to read that, and that should surprise no one, because the Jewish religious authorities of the time of Jesus, who (like most of our Christian authorities) were servants of Satan, got very angry at Jesus when he said the same thing, which he found in their scriptures, which they supposedly revered.

What do I mean by “god”? Do I mean I get to sit on the throne of heaven and tell everyone else what to do? Do I mean I can create a galaxy if I feel like it? Obviously not. Whatever authority I have comes from the father, and I will always be under his command. I can’t create my own reality. There are kooks in places like California who teach that every human being can create his own experience, without deferring to any higher authority. Celebrities, who tend to think of themselves as higher beings simply because people point cameras at them, have fallen for this nonsense. It’s a lie. Everyone serves someone. Everyone is accountable.

When the Bible says we are gods (“elohim”), it means we are children of Yahweh and that we are above all the creatures that are not. Most people, to put it mildly, are not children of God. They are his creations but not his children. God’s children are those who are truly saved. That excludes many people who think they are Christians. Ideally, a child of God is led by the Holy Spirit. The Bible says, “As many as are led by the Holy Spirit, they are the sons of God.”

In the hierarchy of the universe, we are above demons, fallen angels, objects, unsaved human beings, every inanimate thing, and nonhuman earthly creatures. Jesus died on the cross, and we are heirs to his authority.

Jesus did a number of things religious authorities did not like. He violated the man-made, unscriptural Jewish laws, and he encouraged his followers to do so. He healed people on the sabbath. He also called himself the son of God.

In John 10, Jesus said, “I and the Father are one.” Some Jews who heard him picked up rocks to stone him. This passage follows.

Jesus answered them, Many good works have I shewed you from my Father; for which of those works do ye stone me?

The Jews answered him, saying, For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God.

Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?

If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken;

Say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God?

Jesus referred to Psalm 82, which says, “I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High.”

They continued to try to kill him, but he walked off under God’s protection, as he did every time he was threatened, until he finally allowed himself to be taken. He walked away unharmed because he was God’s son. He was a god, and he was favored above those who were not.

Psalm 82 says God is addressing those to whom the word of God came. Jesus is the word of God, according to his own declaration. The Bible says prophets spoke when the word of God came to them. Jesus speaks to the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit repeats things to men. That’s what prophecy is.

It all makes sense. God created the earth for the purpose of reproduction, and he calls us his children. What do a giraffe’s “children” grow up to be? Giraffes. What do a trout’s “children” grow up to be? Trout. A child of God grows up to be a god. Like God himself, we will live in the highest realm of creation, totally invulnerable to all harm, with all our enemies permanently defeated and confined far away from us. We will have no flaws or weaknesses. We will have no fear of anything. We will never sin or want to sin. We will be gods. We just won’t receive worship.

When Paul and Barnabas showed up in Rome, they demonstrated so much power, people called them Mercury and Zeus. They had to humble themselves and make people understand that the power came from the throne of heaven, not themselves.

The earth is a dirty place (made from dirt), but God, who is completely clean, has chosen to have contact with it for the purpose of reproduction. He uses people in flesh bodies. Our bodies are like the feet of God. In the Bible, feet symbolize human beings who, though citizens of heaven, are here on earth completing missions for God.

When God cursed the earth, he told Satan the seed of Eve would bruise his head, and Satan would bruise his heel. He was referring to us. We are above Satan. Our feet are above the highest part of him, so when there is contact, he can only bruise our feet. It’s as though the faces of the spirits that are against us are our cobblestones. We walk on them.

Psalm 91 mentions this. It says, “Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder; the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet.”

It’s amazing when you see how various parts of the Bible fit together.

Psalm 91 says God’s angels will bear his children up in their hands lest we dash our feet against stones. It refers to the stones of Satan’s temple. We are the stones of Jesus’ temple, and people who are not saved are the stones of Satan’s. Psalm 91 says we will not have our flesh driven into conflict with carnal people.

We’re supposed to have lives of authority and success. We are elite. We are nobility. We are the 1% of the universe, to steal a phrase the envious and murderous children of darkness like to use to describe people who are blessed. The Bible mentions problems Christians will have on the earth, but that’s about persecution, not things like disease and poverty.

There were people in the early church who were not successful in life. They were doing Christianity wrong. The early church was strong and full of knowledge, but it wasn’t perfect. It failed because people still did things wrong. You shouldn’t assume that your life won’t be any better than theirs. You shouldn’t get the idea that they were perfect or that you can’t do Christianity as well as they did.

Jesus said his followers would do greater things than he had. We haven’t seen that yet. The early church didn’t accomplish it. That means it’s still in the future. We should hope to exceed the deeds of early Christians.

Moses did things that were much more impressive than anything Jesus did, and that was under the old covenant, so how can we think we’ve seen all that new-covenant people will be allowed to do?

The apostles made mistakes. People don’t like to hear it, but it’s true. Paul corrected Peter publicly when he tried to Judaize new believers and make them obey the law instead of the Spirit. Paul and Barnabas had a major argument. Obviously, one of them was wrong. We shouldn’t think we can’t do better, and be more blessed here on earth, than the early church.

We are gods already, even if we are stuck to uncooperative bags of deteriorating meat at the moment. We have authority now. We have God’s character and mind now. The Bible says God gave us the Holy Spirit as a down payment here on earth. We have to use supernatural weapons to defeat our flesh, other people, and spirits in order to manifest the power and virtue of sons of God.

Churches don’t teach this stuff. They have turned Christianity into a game show. “Do this for God and get this many points.” “Refrain from that and get that many points.” Add up the points, and maybe you get to heaven. Christianity is not a game or a set of rules. It’s supernatural. A great spirit comes to live in you, and you communicate with him all the time and submit to him, and he gives you assignments and the power to complete them. He gives you a new heart and mind and kills the old ones. He relieves you of the obligation to work hard and fight for everything. That stuff is carnal, and it honors the flesh and insults God.

It’s very important to understand these things, because Satan runs the church, and he has created a system which sets you up for failure and eternal damnation.

I had a very disturbing dream last night. I was in this house, and my dad was still alive. It was dark. I got myself a ham and cheese sandwich. When I picked up the mustard jar, it was empty. One of my dad’s faults was that he would eat things he liked and leave nothing for anyone else. I knew he had done it; he had eaten all of the mustard, like ice cream, with a spoon. I went to my own private fridge for another jar, and that fridge contained an empty, dirty jar with no lid.

I took the jar to his bedroom to confront him and try to help him remember not to eat all the mustard. I was going to tell him it wasn’t pudding. I went into his bedroom and started to talk to him about the mustard, and he interrupted me and said, “To me, it’s like pudding.”

After this, I heard a voice. It was my sister, calling my name. She was in my house. Immediately, I felt my stomach twist into a knot. I have never told her where I live, and I will not permit her to be on this property for any reason. I refuse to go back and be subjected to the presence of someone who abused me and everyone else in the family for years.

The first words out of my mouth, before I even started walking to find her, were, “GET OUT.”

I found her in the kitchen, and I told her to get off my property that instant. I told her she was not allowed to set foot here. She said I had already lost, and for some reason, I said, “I have never lost.”

I noticed a bunch of people were with her. Cops, mostly. They had come to help her move in. One had a cast on his right hand, and he was holding an M16 rifle in front of him, looking around as though he expected someone to pop up and shoot him.

I told them they were all trespassing. I told them to leave. I saw a wall of disorderly cardboard boxes full of my sister’s belongings. I told her I was going to put them off the property and leave them in the open. I told her she knew me and that she knew I would do it.

I started asking who was in charge. I saw a woman at the back. I went to talk to her. I said, “Social worker, right?” I told her my sister’s history of being ejected from rehab facilities. I told her how exceptional she was and how she had repeatedly fooled people like the social worker.

A bearded man with glasses was staring at the house and my things. He marveled because it was such a wonderful house. I agreed. I said, “It’s the greatest house in creation.”

They didn’t seem to be inclined to obey me, so I shouted, “I am a LAWYER, and I am telling you to leave NOW.”

They left, and my sister and the boxes were gone.

I woke up immediately. I felt terrible. I felt as though she were coming back to make my life miserable.

I prayed. I asked God what the dream was about.

My sister represents false siblings who are heavily controlled by fallen angels and demons. These are people who claim to be Christians yet have no knowledge. They think they know better than I do, even though I listen to the Holy Spirit and they don’t. I know a lot of people like this. My word for them is “boneheads.” You can’t tell them anything. You can spend your whole life trying to bless them with useful knowledge, and all they will do is torment you. They persecute, and they waste your time. When you fail to go along with their carnal plans, they start accusing you. You’re heartless. You’re selfish. You think you’re “a little bit special,” as one said to me a few years ago.

My dad represents the leadership of the church. My dad was demented, and most church leaders are inept and very ignorant. They know almost nothing, and what they think they know is toxic and wrong.

My dad was extremely carnal. He loved to stuff himself in front of the TV. Many preachers are just fat sacks that gluttonize on things like money and food. They’re like babies. Everything is about the mouth and the blanket.

Mustard represents the kingdom of God, as it did in a parable. Ham represents gentile flesh (mine). Cheese represents the milk of the Bible. Bread represents God’s word. Ignorant, gluttonous preachers who serve their bellies destroy the kingdom of God for other people. They can’t benefit from it, and they keep us from going in. They eat the mustard, which doesn’t help them, and they keep us from getting it.

The cops and the social worker represent well-meaning people of earthly authority whom demons and failed Christians manipulate to get them to control the Spirit-led.

The other day God showed me something. In Genesis, Satan was represented as a serpent because a serpent has no arms or legs. It controls other animals with its mouth. Even a constrictor begins by grabbing prey with its mouth. Satan has no power of his own. He uses the power of others. He threatens them. He makes deals with them. He offers them bait. He lies to them.

A good Christian controls his own strength and God’s power to get things done. A child of Satan controls other people. Always remember that. Anyone who uses threats, guilt trips, juicy bait, or lies to make you obey is serving Satan. When you obey such people, you obey Satan, too.

To get everyone to leave, I had to use the authority of the law. I had to tell them I was a lawyer. It’s funny that Christianity was not part of the dream. I didn’t pray or speak in God’s name. It makes sense, though, because Jesus spoke parables that had no overtly religious or supernatural content.

God is reminding me not to join a church. I’m not sure why he did it, because the idea of joining a church is repulsive to me. Maybe he did it so I would tell others.

The sense that I was slipping back under the power of evil people and spirits left me feeling very traumatized. After several hours, I am still not over it.

The word says, “The Lord is my pastor; I shall not lack.” That’s Psalm 23. When I was under human pastors, I lacked. They used me. They taught me toxic things that weren’t true, along with a number of helpful things that were true. God is the perfect pastor. He only teaches truth. He doesn’t hurt; he always builds you up.

False Christians will be very prominent in the persecution movement as it ramps up. They already are. They always have been. I have had very few problems with non-Christians. The people who made me most miserable in my walk over the years were preachers, church officials, and volunteers.

I think it’s hard for most Christians to accept the fact that Satan runs the church, but then the Jews didn’t like it when Jesus called them “the synagogue of Satan,” and he was right.

I have much, much less anxiety and stress than I did even a year ago. The closer I get to God, the better things go and the more I succeed. God told me this: “Success brings joy, and joy brings success.” It’s true.

Joy isn’t ordinary happiness. It’s associated with victories and breakthroughs. This is why the Bible says, “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.” It’s why people in the Bible reJOIced when good things finally happened.

These days, I prophesy and interpret tongues a lot. I have been reluctant to to it, because I was afraid I would say crazy things that were wrong, but that is changing. God’s word says he’ll back me up, so I leave that to him. I can’t tell you how comforting it is to hear what he has to say to me. I need to spend more time doing it. After all, the Bible says, “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing, by the word of God.”

He keeps telling me I have nothing to worry about. Worry is something he really hates. He talks about it all the time. He keeps saying he will never drop me. He says he has never left me, and he never will. He says he will lift me above the world. These things are all consistent with the Bible.

Worry is his main issue with me. Not lust. Not pride. Not anger. Not covetousness. Not dishonesty. He barely mentions those things. He talks about worry every time he speaks. It’s very important to cooperate with him and to continue to diminish worry.

Favor is a big deal with God. He really wants to help you, believe it or not. He keeps showing me favor in funny ways.

I have a list of people I pray for, and I ask God to send people to help us. I ask him to cause them to pay us money we haven’t earned, to give us things we haven’t earned, to give us free counsel, to take care of us and all we have so we can spend our time serving him, and so on.

My prayers have been working in an amusing way. I can’t seem to go to Home Depot without getting something for nothing. I tried to buy a circuit breaker. The cashier couldn’t look it up, so she insisted I take it and not worry about it. I went to Home Depot to buy a cabinet, and when I arrived, the exact model I wanted was by the door, selling for half price, and I got it for $5 less. I bought a few things the other day, including a vacuum nozzle, and the cashier was not able to look it up, so she told me it was mine. It’s making me nervous.

I went back later and sneaked the circuit breaker and nozzle back onto the shelves, but I’m not sure God wanted me to. After all, he told the disciples to take a stranger’s donkey without permission.

I couldn’t go to customer service, because the cashiers might have gotten in trouble.

It’s strange, but I never think about the morality of what they’re doing until it’s too late and I’m in the parking lot. That’s when it hits me. I don’t know why.

I went to a metal dealer, and when I told the people there I was learning to weld, they gave me maybe $25 worth of free metal to practice on. I didn’t spend that much on what I bought.

I hired an electrician to improve my shop’s wiring, and his company said they would trace and fix a problem with a socket for nothing. They’re coming tomorrow. It’s not a small job.

I wanted dust collection for the cabinet I bought, which holds a wood lathe. I picked a product from Rockler.com. When I went to order it, it was on sale, and they were offering free shipping.

I’ll tell you about the weirdest example of favor I’ve seen.

I’ve been stretching briefly every night. I want my back to be healthy. I first started a month or so ago, and I was startled to see how stiff I was. I could only get my fingertips to within maybe 6″ of the floor. I kept at it, and over a few weeks, I improved to the point where I could put two fingertips down.

The other day, before stretching, I commanded my flesh to be healed, strong, lean, and flexible. Then I stretched. I put three fingertips on each hand on the floor. I didn’t know what to think. It was astonishing.

I can now put all five fingers on the floor, with a slight bend in each knee. Explain it if you can.

I’m not a prosperity-gospel Christian, and I don’t believe prosperity and other earthly blessings prove you’re doing things right, but I know God’s supernatural favor when I see it. Besides, I don’t give money to preachers, so I know what I get has nothing to do with the prosperity lie.

You need to work on the gifts of the Spirit, and you need to hear from God many times every day. You’re not going to get anywhere by sending preachers money, going to Africa on missionary trips God didn’t order you to take, hitting yourself with a flagellum after you sin, saying Hail Marys, building an unnecessary orphanage, or being the extra-best church volunteer who ever lived. You need to know God personally. That’s what he likes, and it brings results.

What did Jesus say? People would come to him and tell him about all the great things they had done in his name, and he would send them to hell, saying, “I never KNEW you.”

Hell is full of Christians. Accept it. I would be surprised if any of the dead popes are absent.

When I was a kid, my grandfather used to give me money. I didn’t ask for it or earn it. We spent a great deal of time together, and every so often, he would just hand me some cash. That’s how God is. He’s not waiting for you to present a bill for building a cathedral. He loves his children, and he enjoys giving them things just because it makes them happy.

I have no idea how many words I’ve written. Many, I suppose. I will close, and when I come back, maybe I’ll have a new wrench to write about.

More Tools…Must Have…

The last few days were pretty neat.

A while back, I took the ergonomically disastrous giant shelves in my workshop, turned them 90°, and turned them into a tremendous, shop-enlarging asset. The remaining problem was the plastic shelves which had been about 4 feet away from them. They were now maybe 7 feet away. There was a big hole between the two sets of shelves, and it was lost space.

I was not having it. Yesterday, I fixed the problem.

The previous owner of the house had 5 sets of Keter plastic shelves in the shop. These are basically the same as Home Depot HDX plastic shelves, except they are probably made less sloppily, because the HDX shelves are a mess. You get 5 shelves, 20 legs, and some feet and top caps, and you push everything together to make a surprisingly sturdy and useful set of shelves, given how cheesy the whole idea is.

Truthfully, smart people make their own shelves. For the cost of a set of plastic shelves (around $50), I can make almost two sets of wooden shelves which will be stronger. I just didn’t feel like doing it. Setting this shop up is a big project, and I feel like I need to choose my battles. I am reusing the shelves that were here when I arrived.

One set of shelves had a mashed bottom shelf. I don’t know what happened to it. It was before my time. I had to go to Home Depot yesterday and get a new set of shelves to replace the damaged one. The old set was not a total loss, because I was able to remove the bad shelf and turn the unit into a 3-shelf job instead of a 4-shelf. I moved it to my garage, where there is plenty of junk to shove into it.

I put the new shelves together, took everything off the old ones, pressure-washed the crud off of them, and reinstalled everything several feet to the right. Now the plastic shelves are about three feet from the giant plywood shelf complex. Just enough room to go in there and use the shelves comfortably. The gaping hole between the shelf units is gone, and my workshop suddenly seems 100 square feet larger.

I guess it’s really about 60 square feet larger, but it seems like more. That may be because you always end up getting more stuff on shelves if you empty them and refill them. I was able to move all sorts of things to the shelves, and that reduced the clutter.

The plastic shelves have a flaw: they’re not solid plastic. They’re “ventilated,” according to the ad copy. This means the shelves are grids with hundreds of holes through which things can drop. It must be cheaper to make them this way.

I wanted to keep bottles and cans on the shelves, so I needed something continuous. I had a couple of big Amazon boxes I had saved for this reason. I opened them up flat, cut each in two pieces, and laid them on the shelves. They fit almost as though they had been made to go there. Now I have four shelves I can use for small items. If the cardboard gets mangled, I can replace it. Linoleum or something similar would have been better, but I haven’t found a source of free linoleum.

I liberated a tremendous amount of floor. I now have ample room on the north side of the shop for my machine tools. I bought electrical conduit and #3 wire (much cheaper online), and when the wire arrives, I’m going to get the wiring ready for the lathe, mill, and compressor.

I’m thinking I may get a Harbor Freight vehicle lift.

I have a golf cart and a small garden tractor. I have other heavy things I want to work on. I’m not going to continue working on the floor or lifting with my back. I’ve been looking for a good way to raise things.

I thought I had solved the problem when I found the K&L Supply MC655R motorcycle lift. It will raise a ton. You can add panels to it to make it wide enough for a garden tractor. It has wonderful access for motorcycle work. It’s a neat product.

I kept thinking about it, and the Harbor Freight product started to look better and better.

The K&L costs around $3600 when you fix it up with everything you need. They nickel and dime you on everything you have to have to get any real use out of it. It only lifts 2000 pounds. You can forget about putting a car or a real tractor on it.

The Harbor Freight lift would run something like $1800, delivered. It would be about $1450 when there’s a 20% coupon. It lifts 6000 pounds, not 2000. Right away, you can see why the K&L doesn’t look so good any more.

The Harbor Freight lift would need some shopmade accessories to make it hold a motorcycle, and it won’t function as a general lift table for random objects without some additions. So what? For $2150 (the additional money you would pay for the other lift), you can pimp the snot out of it. You can put a portable plywood top on it for general use. You can make a couple of plates so it will hold a Harley. I figure these additions could be done for a hundred bucks or so. Then you pocket the additional $2050 you would have spent on the K&L.

I think the K&L is marginally better for motorcycles, but how often will I work on motorcycles? What about the rest of the time? I can put everything I have except for my truck on Harbor Freight’s lift, and my truck doesn’t need a lift because you can practically walk under it.

Some people are afraid to sit under a Harbor Freight lift because…Harbor Freight. Well, if these lifts were collapsing, we would already know, and Harbor Freight would have quit selling them. People who are familiar with this product and other Chinese products such as the one from Bendpak say this lift is essentially the same machine, except that it has more stops, so you have more height choices. Everyone trusts Bendpak, so I’m willing to trust Harbor Freight.

I’m really considering it. I have the space. It’s not that big. It’s 8’4″ long and 40″ wide. Raised, it’s probably about 5 feet long. Harbor Freight designed it so you can move it using the hydraulic pump as a handtruck, so if it’s in the way, you can roll it aside. To move the K&L, you have to pay extra for a wheeled dolly.

The K&L weighs 500 pounds, and the Harbor Freight weighs 850. You can’t pick either one up and lean it against the wall, so I don’t think the K&L has any portability advantage.

I don’t know if I want this thing on my floor, but if I use it as a shop table, it won’t be a big flat object I’ll have to step over. It will be a useful flat surface where I get stuff done.

I have to think about it.

It’s wonderful to have the tractors outside instead of cluttering the shop. It was a good decision. They don’t need shelter. Tarps protect the seats and other vulnerable parts. With the tractors indoors, I had no shot at a decent shop. They were in the way, and they left manure, sand, and leaves on the floor.

I have a new layout idea for the shop, and I think it will be great. I just have to see if the lift is a viable component for it.

Two Days of Favor

I didn’t blog yesterday. I started to, but I did not publish what I wrote. I will paste it here now and add today’s news.

09-25-19

I’m getting a ton of things done today. I had to quit and have some food so I didn’t get burned out.

I had to get rid of the L-shaped Corian counter in my workshop so I could have my machine tools moved here. Today was the day.

I didn’t know how to deal with Corian. I decided to try the sawzall. I cut several holes in the counter with a drill to make it easier to start a cut.

When I finally got the saw in there, I was surprised. Corian cuts very quickly even though it’s hard. I zipped through the counter in around 20 seconds. I had been under the impression that the counter was an inch and a half thick, but I learned that only the edges were that size. The rest of it was around half an inch.

While I was tearing the whole structure apart, I also took down the weird boards the previous owner had screwed into the shop walls. He put boards up, and he added strange horizontal strips of galvanized steel. There were little tabs that were bent outward into the shop, presumably for hanging tools. I never found them useful, and the boards were in the way.

Once I had the Corian out, I didn’t know what to do with it. It was too big to cut on the table saw with a miter gauge. I decided to fire up the band saw and eyeball it. I cut the ends off sort of square.

In the end, I made a sled from scrap, to force the Corian to go by the table saw blade in a straight line. I made a piece 18″ by 36″ in size, and I plan to turn it into a top for a wood lathe cart. The wood lathe used to be on the counter, so now I need a place to put it.

I may make a cutting board out of the third large piece of Corian. It seems like a good use for it, and cutting boards are ridiculously overpriced.

I got tired of woodworking, if you can call it that, so I decided to take on another project.

Long ago, I made a temporary extension table for my table saw, and of course, it worked so well I never replaced it. There was a problem with it, however. The legs on the end were not supported well. I used two small pieces of wood for struts, but they weren’t fastened reliably. I was concerned that one day someone might put something heavy on the table and the legs would kick out from under it.

I got myself a couple of strips of metal for additional struts. Today I bent them on the finger brake, drilled holes in them, and attached them to the saw table extension. I tried to arrange it so they were in tension, pulling the legs toward the saw.

The brake is not that easy to use. I made one bend that wasn’t right. There were two struts with four bent tabs, and one tab was longer than the others.

I tried to straighten it using the vise. I didn’t expect to do too well, and I was right. It had little bends in it when I was done.

I’ve been considering trying forging, and I’ve been anvil-shopping. I have a big piece of 1018 steel, and my plan has been to use it as an anvil until I get a real one I can trust. The steel is 4″ on a side and around 15″ long. Very heavy. Today I stuck it on a stump and used it to straighten the crooked steel.

I was pleasantly surprised. The hammer didn’t dent the 1018 block at all, and the bends came out of the steel in a hurry. I got everything bent the way I wanted it, and I used the “anvil” to fine-tune it.

I put some holes in the tabs, deburred them, and attached the struts. Now I know the table saw can’t collapse. I really will redo it some day, but this will prevent a disaster while I’m getting around to it.

09 26 19

I’ll tell you about my day, and you can decide whether I have God’s favor or not. I believe we are supposed to live in favor. The Bible says so in many places, so anyone who disagrees is wrong.

After I dismantled my Corian counter, I had a wood lathe sitting on the floor. I had to find something to put it on. I had been planning to make something out of the scrap lumber I removed from my workshop shelves, but I felt like it would take more time than I wanted to invest. I have a lot of things that need to get done before the shop will really function, and that makes it hard to justify spending two or three days on a lathe project. I considered getting a cart instead.

For quite a while, I’ve wanted a one-drawer Husky rolling cabinet from Home Depot. It’s an amazing bargain. For $69, you get a good-quality cabinet with casters, a locking ball-bearing drawer, locking doors, a pegboard back, and a power strip that has USB ports. You can’t beat that deal. I am on a crusade to put everything I own on wheels, and I thought this cabinet would be perfect for my 8″ bench grinder.

Yesterday I thought of the cabinet when I considered the lathe situation. I decided to go to Home Depot and see if the cabinet looked right. The lathe probably weighs 80 pounds, and the feet are about 30″ apart from side to side, so I didn’t know if the cabinet, which is 27″ wide, would work.

I walked in the store, looked to my left, and saw a product sitting by the customer service counter. It was the cabinet I wanted, with a $35 price tag on it. Someone had returned it.

I got a few things I needed. I bought casters for my heavy pedestal fan, along with some washers and nuts to use for installation. I bought a new hot glue gun. Something–I don’t recall what–had reminded me that I needed one.

A hot glue gun is a phenomenal tool. Imagine glue that sets in 5 seconds, provides a lasting hold, and can be loosened and removed from most things later with little or no damage. That’s hot glue. Now that I think about it, woodturners use it a lot. They fasten blanks to lathe plates with it so they don’t have to use screws.

I got my stuff and went to the customer service area to ask about the cart. The lady who helped me said the buyer had brought it back because there were no keys to the lock. She saw that I was not happy about that, so she added that they could take a little more off the price because of it. I thought about it. There had to be someone on Ebay selling replacement locks for $5. I decided to take a chance.

When I got home, I opened the cabinet and checked it over. Everything looked fine, except something was hanging from the rear of the drawer, inside the cabinet. It looked like fishing line. That looked familiar. The last time I had seen that in a tool cabinet, it had been attached to something. It had been attached to a set of keys.

I pulled the line loose, and a set of keys fell into my hand.

Not bad.

On the way home, I stopped by the grocery. I needed vegetables for breakfast. They had Ben & Jerry’s on sale for 50% off. Last time they did this, my favorite favor got cleaned out before I got there. Not this time! I bought two pints.

I went home to work on the lathe project.

The cabinet had to have a new, wider top in order to support the lathe, and I already had it. The 36″ slab of Corian was waiting for me.

I fired up the router table and put a 1/4″ radius on every upper edge of the Corian so it would be pleasant to lean on and so on. Then I tried to figure out how to attach it to the cabinet.

My big table saw is working now, because I have 250V power. I also had scrap wood. I decided to make several strips of wood of just the right thickness and attach them to the underside of the Corian. The upper surface of the cabinet is like a tray with a lip on three sides, so my plan was to situate three strips so they anchored the top against the tray and kept it exactly where it should be. I also intended to put a fourth strip on it under the front, where there was no metal lip.

How do you attach things to Corian? I got on the web and looked around. I considered wood screws, but Corian is brittle, so it sounded like a bad idea. I considered tapping it for metal screws, but that also sounded risky. Then I remembered something.

I had a brand-new hot glue gun.

I situated the top on the cabinet very accurately and sprayed the underside with Dykem metal blue. This showed me where the top touched the cabinet. When I took the top off and rolled it over, I had Dykem lines to use for measurements.

Using a caliper and the table saw, I cut four strips of wood very precisely, and I stuck them to the Corian. It worked great. I rolled it over, put it on the cabinet, and verified that it was correct. I used denatured alcohol to take the Dykem off the cart, and I was done.

The top and lathe are not attached to the cart. They just rest on it. They are confined on three sides by the cart’s upper lip, and I have faith that the lathe will not suddenly violate the laws of physics and jump in the 4th direction and into my lap. I can always glue or bolt the top in later.

Here is the cart. Not bad for $30. It holds the lathe and all my chisels. The big area in the bottom is large enough to hold a shop vacuum converted to collect dust. You can imagine what I’m thinking. Run a hose out of the cabinet to a dust scoop over the lathe. I already found the product. Rockler sells them.

I guess I’ll also put a cheap LED light on the lathe. I already have one. It’s a sewing light with a magnetic base. I used to use it for welding, but I got a better one. The cabinet’s power strip gives me a good place to plug it in.

Some people criticize little Chinese lathes, but the truth is that they’re very good tools. They’re just small. You can make a lot of very useful things on one. If you want a giant salad bowl, a baseball bat, or a bedpost, you need something bigger, but what percentage of your projects are that long?

I can make tool handles, mallets, and many other useful and ornamental things on this lathe. If I need more length, I can use my big metal lathe. I made a woodturning tool rest for it.

There are woodturners out there bragging about their $7000 lathes with 2-HP motors. Well, my metal lathe weighs 4000 pounds and has a 7.5-HP motor, and in terms of rigidity, it makes an expensive wood lathe look like a limp noodle.

I think I have the bases covered, if I ever decide to turn anything. Which I might, now that I don’t have to huddle in a filthy corner of the shop.

I’m very close to moving my machine tools here. I just need to clear out one side of the shop I might be able to finish by the end of the week. After that, all I need are a couple more outlets. That’s a quick job.

I might pour a little slab and put my compressor in its own tiny shed, just outside the workshop. That would kill most of the noise and save me some floor space.

I think I’ve had a remarkable day and that God is behind it. It’s not his job to be my genie and make everything cushy for me, but he is good to his children because that’s how good fathers are.

I expect to be back at the job of establishing my workshop tomorrow.

It’s Always Something

I am about 4 hours into the installation of improved electrical service in my workshop, and I have run into a terrible snag. The house has no water because the pump has no power.

You hire someone to do a job, you think you’ve thought of every problem that could pop up, and then you find yourself walking into the woods because you’ve had too much Powerade.

I can’t cook. I can’t do anything that might get me dirty. I had to brush my teeth with bottled water.

The installation has gone well, apart from the water crisis. They dug up two sprinkler pipes, but they repaired them, so that’s over with. Right now they’re taking a break because they have to come up with a clever way to get the new wires into my main panel.

I really should have done this job myself, but I was tired of being cheap with myself. I clear all the downed trees here. I do the yardwork. I do whatever repairs I can. I felt like it was time to watch someone else work.

It’s not like I can’t afford it. Still, I feel like God is watching over my shoulder, checking to see if I waste money.

Most people don’t do their own wiring. They pay people. It’s normal. I will concentrate on that. It’s not like I’m an NBA rookie and I just bought my three best friends their own strip clubs.

I think I’m doing it right. I didn’t go for a massive amperage increase, but because someone may build a second shop some day, I made sure the new conduit was big enough for heavier wire than the gauge they’re using today. It seems wrong to cheap out and cause problems for future owners.

The trench was the thing that put me off. Digging over 120 feet of trench, around roots, pipes, and wires, sounded like more work and trouble than I was willing to confront.

The old wire wasn’t in conduit. They just buried it. This is allowed under the code, but it’s not first-class. I wonder if it’s the reason so many bugs got into the box in the workshop. All they had to do was climb up the wires, into the little bit of conduit that goes from the workshop into the dirt.

I have been picking the electrician’s brains all day, in order to find out how to make changes to the circuitry on my own after he leaves. He doesn’t care. He seems happy to give me information.

It appears that running a whole bunch of circuits off the existing box will not be impossible. I just need to get some tandem and possibly quad breakers. The bottom line is that my workshop power problems are done, unless I decide to install a 3-ton air conditioner. I can have some more 125V boxes. That will be very helpful. Imagine, building a big workshop with only 4 indoor outlets. Plug in 16 things, and you’re done.

I can hear him drilling a giant hole in the side of my beautiful house right now. Arggh.

He’s finished.

No, he’s not.

I will be strong.

Crew Arrives Soon

I’m waiting for the electrical crew to arrive to double the amperage to my workshop. Today they’re going to tear up the yard, drill a hole in the side of my house, and give me a big bill. I can’t wait.

This morning, I went out and locked all my tool cabinets. I took photos of everything that was out in the open that a person might want to steal. I went through the garage, where the electrical panel is, and took pictures. I moved several thousand rounds of ammunition indoors. I guess I shouldn’t have had it out there!

I have no reason to think the electricians will steal, but good fences make good neighbors. There is no point in tempting people. Also, if I don’t take measures in advance, there will be problems in the future. Every time I can’t find something, I’ll think they stole it until I locate it.

A relatively expensive fishing rod vanished from my dad’s garage, and I noticed it after electricians did some work. I still suspect them. I didn’t eat it, and it didn’t evaporate.

I think I hear a truck.

False alarm. It was Federal Express.

After the wiring is finished, I’ll get some conduit and wire and fix the workshop up for my machine tools. Then I have to rearrange everything and decide where to put the big guns.

I have an L-shaped Corian counter in one corner, mounted to a wall. The previous owner left it. It has to go. I’ve been wondering if I could cut it and reuse the Corian. This morning I hit it with a sawzall, and it cut just fine. That means I can break it into two big pieces, and then I can trim them on the table saw.

My panel is on the north side of the shop, so in order to avoid running conduit and expensive wire long distances, I may put the lathe, the mill, the compressor, and the phase converter on or by the north wall. That will mean moving…actually, not that much stuff. I’ve been fervent about putting stuff on wheels, so the only thing I’ll have to drag is my workbench.

I’m hoping to put my wood stuff toward the east and south. I want a woodworking bench in that area. It doesn’t have to be fancy. There is a real fever out there for fancy woodworking benches, but I am determined to resist, because they’re unnecessary. Thousands of woodworking factories have come and gone in this country, and what did they use for the most part? Simple plywood tables. I plan to go fancier than that. I’ll want a vise and some dog holes. I’m not joining the fancy-bench religion, however.

I suppose I could make my bench top from Corian. Why not? Better than wood, and I won’t have to plane it flat.

I hate to do it, but I may sacrifice some tools. I have a jobsite table saw and a 12″ sliding miter saw on a stand. Nice tools, but I have a Powermatic 66 table saw with a 5-HP motor and an extension as long as a couch. I don’t see myself using the small tools in the future.

I’m really making this place my own. I used to use my dad’s initials for the name of this PC, because it belonged to him. I gave it that name for him when he bought it. Today I got rid of that. Totally new name. His influence is disappearing. The influence of the people who sold us the house is disappearing. Mine is increasing, along with God’s. It’s wonderful.

I can’t wait to get this over with. I can’t do anything until the electricians finish. Can’t even leave the house. Hurry, hurry, hurry.

Money Out, New Wires in

Things continue to go well.

I had an electrician come out and look at my workshop. He gave me an estimate, and I’m having the wiring upgraded. I’ll be able to run a 7.5-HP compressor and a welder at the same time. I’ll be able to install my 10-HP phase converter. I’ll be able to move my machine tools up here at last.

I considered doing the work myself, and I suppose I could have, but I want it over with. I compromised. The pros will run the wires from the main panel to the workshop, and after they’re gone, I’ll wire up the receptacles on my own.

The people who built this house did a lot of great things, but they were not “tool queers,” as Youtube tool guru Keith Fenner likes to put it. They did not live for tools. Their biggest tools were things like a farm jack. Clearly, there was something wrong with them.

I’m going to have a mill, a lathe, a big compressor, a bunch of welders, and a plasma cutter, not to mention some 250V saws. Just a few things a guy needs in order to get by.

It’s hard to believe what it costs to put two wires in a hole and attach them to a couple of panels. It has to be done, however. I’m not going to continue to live without machine tools. It’s barbaric.

They should have the job done by tomorrow afternoon, and I’ll be able to get the tools moved up here next week. Between the completion of the wiring and the tool move, I’ll have to rearrange the shop. I need 8 or 9 feet of linear space for the lathe, about 7 feet for the mill, and a square yard for the compressor. Which I should leave in Miami. I should bite the bullet and get a bigger compressor.

I’ll have to run air lines up in the trusses. I’m not going to mess around with one air line I drag around the shop. I have to mount my big hose reel on the wall.

The shop has a big L-shaped Corian countertop which sits on a two-by-four frame screwed to the wall. It has to go. It’s a neat feature, but I don’t need it. It sucks up a lot of space, and it’s not flexible. You can’t move it. Maybe someone will buy it and take it away.

I could cut it up and save the Corian for other things. It’s a dynamite work surface. I just happen to have Corian blades for my table saw. I bought it from a guy who cut Corian.

Things are happening fast. It looks like God is preparing me for a pleasant time during the cool months.

My Tractor Completes Me

I had quite a day yesterday.

The people who built my house did a wonderful job in many respects, but they did some weird things, too. For example, their landscaping choices were not good at all. They also made some mistakes with the workshop, which they called “the barn.” They didn’t wire it up with much amperage, and they put a gigantic set of shelves in one corner.

The shelves are four-by-eight sheets of plywood, and there are four of them. That tells you how big and obnoxious the whole structure is. They put the long side against one wall, about three feet from a corner. That was not wise.

There were actually only three plywood sheets in place when I got started yesterday. I will explain that further down.

When you make shelves too deep, you waste a lot of their area. No one is going to reach 4 feet into a shelf to get something. Everything on a shelf that size will be piled up in the first three feet. You end up losing at least half of the storage space you thought you were creating. Things get lost back there. You find yourself doing without things instead of digging for them. It gets dirty in the back because cleaning is nearly impossible.

You should never put deep shelves against a wall. You might as well fill half of the area with concrete blocks. You will have no access to the back of the shelves. If you absolutely have to have deep shelves, you should put them out where a person can walk around them on three sides.

The shelves were an ergonomic disaster, and they also killed a corner of the garage. The little space between the shelves and the corner was so small, it was not useful.

Yesterday, I got fed up. I was either going to cut the shelves in half or turn the whole thing sideways.

I removed nearly all of the junk from the shelves. I moved the giant pile of random things that sat in front of them. I also removed maybe 200 pounds of junk lumber the seller left behind in place of the third shelf. This stuff is probably worth $150 new, but it’s not worth ruining a workshop just to keep it. I put it in a pile behind the shop, and I plan to burn most of it.

I’ll post photos in chronological order. It’s too bad I didn’t take one before I removed the junk that was around the shelves. They were buried.

Sometimes you have to grit your teeth and throw things out. I’m throwing out several rods of rebar, a bunch of lumber, and 5 new steel fence posts. Goodbye! I don’t care what it’s worth. It has to go. I can afford a new two-by-eight if I really need one.

What a mistake it was to keep this junk.

There was also a bunch of 5-gallon paint pails under the shelves, labeled for future use. The colors matched the interior of the house. Call me crazy, but I plan to paint some wood samples with the paint and then throw the pails out. I don’t need the paint. All I will ever need is something the paint people can use to match the colors. A little piece of wood in each color will do fine, and I will be able to put all of them in a drawer.

I looked things over and realized that cutting the shelves in half would mean dismantling the shelves in their entirety. That wasn’t a job I looked forward to. I decided against it.

I could not move them. I guess the whole thing weighs 300 pounds, and it’s flexible, so if you get one leg to move, the ones on the other end bend and dig into the concrete.

I had to think about it for a long time. I could tear them apart and start over. But then there was…the tractor.

I measured, and my tractor’s forks were long enough to go under the shelves. Done deal.

I removed the steel strap that attached the shelves to the wall, cleared a path for the tractor, went it, picked the shelves up, and maneuvered them nearly into position. I got them as close as I could, and then I was stumped again.

But wait! I have a Harbor Freight lift table. It lifts 500 pounds, and it has casters.

I removed the handle from the table for clearance, and then I shoved it under the shelves. By lifting one end, I was able to prevent the legs from gripping the floor. I shoved the shelves against the wall, right where I wanted them. More or less. It might be better to rearrange the whole garage and put them 12 feet farther down the wall, but forgoing that, I got what I wanted.

I strapped the shelves to the wall in two places, sucked the filth off of them with the shop vac, added a new sheet of plywood for a proper third shelf, and put my junk back in. It was amazing. I thought the shop was overflowing, but when I was done, I had a lot of room on the shelves to spare.

It goes to show that what I always say is right: before you build a new workshop, rearrange your old one.

I put things I will rarely or never use toward the back and top. I made an area for metals. One nice thing about such big shelves is that I can stack a lot of bars, angle iron, plate, and other metal items on them.

I stuck my fuel jugs under the bottom shelf in a nice row in the front. I won’t be tripping on them any more. I put the chainsaws and a gas blower under the bottom shelf on one side.

This is tremendous. It’s like the workshop just grew 200 square feet.

I had been considering buying a shed just for materials, but I see no point in it now.

Watching the shop open up as I stored things was a beautiful experience. Every time I put some annoying object in its place, it was as if I felt fresh air entering my lungs.

Because of my oak problem, leaves blow into the shop all the time. The area near the shelves was packed with them. To get at them, I would have had to crawl on my stomach with the shop vac. That was never a possibility. Now I can see the floor again. Magnificent.

There is nothing like a tractor. If you’re a man, a tractor is your best friend. Seems like there’s nothing a tractor can’t do.

Now I have four and a half feet of new wall space, and I can hang yard tools there.

I need to get to work on making more things mobile. There is no excuse for not doing it. The invention of the wheel was not something that happened recently.

Today is going very well. I got rid of my bicycle. There is no place to ride around here. It was cluttering the garage, and I needed room for my machine tools. I kept the bike I bought my dad. The one I sold is a road bike, and it was very uncomfortable to ride. The bike he left me is much easier on the anatomy, and it has spiffy red saddlebags. Maybe one day I’ll live in a place where it will be useful.

I also sold my John Deere Model 15 dump cart. This is a cart you pull behind a garden tractor. When I bought my tractors from the guy who sold us the house, he threw the cart in. I thought it was a great thing, but I soon found out it was useless. I had a golf cart and a pickup truck, not to mention a real tractor, so I never used the John Deere cart. It took up room and got in my way.

I don’t like John Deere. The company treats customers like dirt, and they overcharge for everything. The public responds by giving John Deere something resembling worship. They have the same crazy mindset you see in Apple and Snap-On customers. They don’t just like the products. They don’t just defend the price-gouging. They get very angry if you criticize the companies.

With that in mind, I priced the cart at $500 and put ads up referring to it as a collector’s item.

People laughed at me and sent obnoxious comments. “Did you mean $50?” I told them to make me offers.

I finally lowered the price to $350, and then I considered cutting the cart up and making a John Deere pork smoker on wheels. I thought that would be really funny. The steel was very sturdy, the hardware was first-class, and the smoker would have been bomb-proof. It would also be a good way to express my feelings for John Deere.

Someone contacted me. I told him I was thinking of cutting it up because people were not offering me enough to justify selling it. He said he wasn’t scared by the price.

Today he and his wife drove from Tallahassee and gave me $275 for it. I took his first offer. I think the cart is legitimately worth $250 on Ebay, and Ebay prices are higher than prices on other selling sites, so $275 was a fortune as far as I was concerned.

Now it’s gone, and I will never have to deal with it again.

I wonder what the people who thought my price was funny will think when they see that I sold it.

I feel like going out to the shop and just sitting there, enjoying all the empty air around me.

Plus Hot Metal

Yesterday was eventful and profitable.

I have moved my tractors out of the workshop. I put tarps on them to protect such parts as would react badly to rain. Now I have more room for important things, like plasma-cutting and watching Youtube.

Speaking of Youtube, I tried to come up with a plan to hardwire the shop for the Internet. I don’t want to dig up the yard. I was thinking about it when I remembered that there was a jack on the wall out there. Phone? Ethernet? I had always assumed it was a phone jack, but I had never checked.

I went out and looked. It was a phone jack. That didn’t stop me. I wanted to find out what kind of wire was behind it. I had a couple of things in mind. If it was skinny phone wire, it could act as a fish line to pull Cat 6 wire through for the Internet. If it was something better, maybe I could connect it directly.

It turned out to be Cat 5, which, while inferior to Cat 6 (or Cat 11), is far better than I need. Pretty exciting. I came up with a plan. I would put a Cat 5 port in the garage, and I would find the phone port nearest to the router and turn it into a Cat 5 port. I would disconnect the land line stuff, which is obsolete, and I would have the Internet, wired, in every room where I had a phone jack.

I got myself some tools and went to work. I changed two phone jacks. I went to the computer. I turned it on. No service.

I traced all the wires, and I learned a couple of things. I found out where all the wiring in my house is. I learned that all the Cat 5 wiring was only partially wired up. Cat 5 has 8 wires, and the phone jacks use 4. Even if the wires from the garage had gone straight to the phone box by the garage, only 4 wires would have connected that box to the jacks in the house.

While I was working on all this, I decided to trace the Cat 5 workshop wires as far as I could. I opened a little box outside the workshop. Guess what I found? Cut wires. The jack in the garage was connected to approximately 5 feet of wire which dead-ended right outside.

Now I have two ethernet jacks that go nowhere.

I’m not sure what to do, but it can be dealt with. I just have to decide whether I care enough to do it. It will mean working in the attic, where the fiberglass insulation and wiring are, and I don’t really want to do that until the temperature drops into the low sixties.

I can use the Internet out there already, by using my phone as a mobile hotspot. It’s just annoying.

I also did some welding. I cut some flat steel bar into short pieces and made T-welds (fillets) with TIG and stick.

My TIG welding still needs a lot of work. After I welded, I went inside and watched some videos, and I took note of some fundamentals I had forgotten. I am hoping to do better today.

Welding is not like other tool-related pursuits. You have to keep practicing. People who have welded for 30 years practice. You don’t have to do this with other tools. No one practices using a wrench.

Because the weather is so much better now, welding isn’t a chore. I don’t sit and drip sweat into my helmet now. That means I can practice as long as I want, provided I observe the duty cycles of the machines and I don’t overheat the TIG torch.

Welding is easier with the cat gone. Before he left, I christened him “Heisenberg.” He now resides with my friend Amanda. I think it was a big mistake for her to take him, but apart from the obvious problems of taking in an unneeded pet in a crowded household, he will do an exceptional job of whatever it is that cats do. I’m just glad I can back out of the driveway at full speed again. And when I want to weld, I don’t have to put any animals in cages.

She took him to the vet to see if he had an ID chip, and of course, he did not. I predicted it, because I knew it was very unlikely that anyone around here would buy a cat chip and then throw away the cat and not look for it.

People treat cats as though they’re disposable. No sane person has ever paid for a cat. They’re always free, so a lot of people feel that that makes it okay to dump them beside the road. That is surely what happened to Heisenberg. He has a wonderful personality, but he’s a cat, so he’s an at-will family member who can be discarded at any moment for any reason.

Whoever abandoned him should have either given him away or had him put down, but it was easier to have no spine and toss him out of a car.

If you want to irritate a cat person, say this: “Dogs cost money, but cats are free.” By and large, it’s true.

His picture is on the Internet on sites where people look for lost pets, but no one will ever claim him. If anyone cared about him, I would have received a response by now.

I wonder if his neediness, which I saw as a plus, is what got him fired. It’s unusual for a cat to be bursting with affection. Maybe someone didn’t want to be pestered. Before he left, he was doing things like jumping on me and wrapping all 4 legs around me. That could get old. In fact, it did. He interrupted me repeatedly while I was trying to work.

I talked to my friend Mike about it. He understands completely. He has two cats, and he keeps hoping they’ll die. He feels obligated to take care of them because no one will take them and he’s not willing to take them to a shelter, but they’re not real pets, like dogs. They don’t care about him. I would have taken them to the pound a long time ago. People are more important than animals. You shouldn’t disrupt your life so an unwanted cat can have food and shelter until it croaks. You have more value than that.

God showed me something interesting and very important. There is a correct order of authority in people’s lives, and if you’re not in God’s will, that order will be inverted. When an animal’s desires come before your needs, you have an inversion of authority. We’re supposed to be above animals. They live for us, not the other way around.

My sister is a sociopath and a sadist, but she loves animals. She used to cry and make loud moaning noises every time she saw a horse through a car window. She has a long history of spoiling aggravating little dogs and using them to control other people. She has never housetrained a dog. She forced her dogs’ company on people who hated them. She will sing songs to a dog after it poops on the floor, so it knows it’s a good idea to keep doing it. She has an inversion of authority.

Satan rules demons. Demons rule her pets. Her pets rule her. Through her, they rule other people. To deal with my sister is to accommodate her awful pets. This is why every other person in the family has killed at least one of her dogs. My dad turned one loose. My mother took two to be gassed. I took one to be gassed. I prayed for God to kill the last one because she claimed it was the reason she wouldn’t go to drug rehab.

I don’t know if she has pets now, or even if she’s alive. I’m glad I no longer have to be around animals that are so spoiled they climb on the furniture for the purpose of urinating on it. I’m glad I no longer have to be around my sister. Her main function in life is to take away the dignity of other human beings and destroy their joy. I keep praying for God to keep her out of my life forever. He told me I should not think about her, so I try not to.

When I was a kid, I had a dog. I saw him climb onto a couch and push my sister off so he could stretch out. He did this to an abusive, extremely aggressive person who pushed other human beings around and made them miserable. He knew her proper place. She was below him in the supernatural hierarchy. I didn’t understand this until long after he was gone.

Satan promotes something I call “the alternative righteousness.” It’s a pretend righteousness that has nothing to do with serving God. Sick devotion to animals is part of it. People who are obsessed with animals are not Spirit-led Christians. If you have pets, you will be exposed to these people when you need help, and you will see certain things often. Liberalism. Vegetarianism. Witchcraft. Feminism. These things are abnormal, but on the surface, they look nice. Leftists claim they love the poor because they give them things and reinforce their pathological flaws. Vegetarians think they’re better than the rest of us because they don’t kill their food, even though Jesus ate meat and created the sacrificial system of Judaism; the Torah HAD to be written on the skins of slaughtered animals. Witches always claim they only do good. Feminists…don’t get me started.

A warped adoration of animals is part of the alternative righteousness. It’s probably why Hitler loved dogs and gave up meat. The Nazis were heavily into vegetarianism, environmentalism, and nature worship. You can look it up.

I love my pets, but I bought them in ignorance, and I would not do it again. I wouldn’t buy another animal or accept one unless I had a good reason, such as that it was corn-fed, cut in thick slices, and on sale. I would let a barn cat live here (and stay here after I moved) in order to keep pests down. I would buy a protection dog if I had to. I’m not going to have any more pure pets if I can help it. I won’t even have fish.

Drudge likes to link to stories about people who are pulled out of trailers full of sick animals and feces. “HOUSE OF FILTH” is one of his favorite headlines. Those people are demonized. Demons run them, and the demons tell them to hoard animals. It doesn’t help the animals, who should be euthanized, and it certainly doesn’t help the hoarders or the people they cause to suffer.

The Bible says one person is worth more than many sparrows. That’s just how it is.

Have you noticed how nutcases are filling our stores, restaurants, and airplanes with “support animal” pets? That’s a sign that demons are increasing their power over us. People who are controlled by animals have a demonic desire to extend that control over others. Satan is a conqueror; he never stops looking for more territory.

It’s not enough to carry a pig in a bag and sing songs to it. You have to make other people sit next to it in restaurants while it breaks wind and eats off a plate you might get next week. Like the increasing power of illegal aliens, it’s a sign that America is losing God’s support.

If you’re not full of the Holy Spirit, you won’t understand these things. It’s all true, though.

It’s a smart system, in the short run. Not only do you get to coerce admiration out of other people through your virtue-signaling; you get to put them down and control them by saying they’re less righteous than you are. Most people are so simple, they will buy it. Satan is an extremely accomplished manipulator. He has done his homework.

The point of the alternative righteousness is to convince you that you can be a good person and have a fine afterlife while continuing to enjoy sin and reject God. It works really well. Many people you know are burning in agony and humiliation right now because they fell for it.

It’s remarkable how Satan can degrade you with animals, once God stops backing you up. There is a lady in Florida who forces other people to share airplanes with a horse. Those people don’t even know they’re supernaturally defeated. It’s not just a horse on a plane. It’s Satan, saying, “This is how low you are now, because you reject God. A horse is more important than you are.”

My sister, who is basically a demon apartment building with feet, was always ahead of the curve. She forced her dog into restaurants years before the other children of darkness got the idea. While she lived in filth in a house with walls that were caked with mold and floors that were varnished with urine and feces, the dog ate rib eye steak from Whole Foods. That’s the gospel truth. I am a witness.

If you have God’s favor, you should live like it. A man should have authority over his wife, his kids, and whatever animals live on their property. The wife should have authority over everyone except him. The kids should have authority over the animals. If an animal is running your life, you have a demon problem, and you’re not living up to the potential God REQUIRES you to fulfill. It’s a sign, and you need to take notice and repent.

Now that I think about it, Jewish legend says God withheld the flood until human beings began marrying animals. That suddenly makes more sense to me. It’s about as severe as an authority inversion can get. When you’re having sex with your dog and calling him your husband, you can’t get much lower. You’re signalling your true value, which is nil. If you declare yourself worthless, God may respect your assessment.

He has prepared a place for the worthless.

Fascinating stuff. It’s remarkable that this wisdom isn’t commonly held. After thousands of years, we should all know these things. One generation should teach the next.

I’m repeating myself, but God told me these things: “All strength comes from inheritance. There is no strength without inheritance. Satan hates inheritance.” We are so bad at giving new generations their inheritance of wisdom, we are re-learning things people knew 5000 years ago. Satan has done a great job of keeping us poor. We did all the work for him. He just lied and made us think it was the right thing to do.

Why fight your enemy when you can make him fight himself while you watch? When you kill an enemy, you gain nothing. When you make an enemy destroy himself, you gain a servant and a soldier.

If animals or worthless people are above you in life, you need to get some authority. Your situation is not normal, and it’s not permanent unless you want it to be.

I wish I had had someone to tell me these things when I was young, but my parents didn’t know anything. Maybe this material will help you, though. I certainly hope so.

Blue-Collar Decisions Require Graduate-Level Brains

I’m trying to get my hands on some gas containers for my new acetylene rig.

Propane is no problem. You go to the hardware store and buy a tank. Acetylene is way trickier.

Acetylene can’t be extracted from a bottle at just any old rate. The rule of thumb is that you can only remove 1/7 of the total acetylene from the tank per hour. In very hot places, you can use more than that. Depending on what you plan to do with your gas, a small tank may make your work impossible. Some tasks require a lot of acetylene.

I want to do two things with acetylene: flame-straightening and welding. Propane will be for cutting and general heating. I may want to heat things so I can bend them.

Heat-bending and flame-straightening are two different things, although my guess is that most welders don’t know it.

If I want to bend a wrench to make a special tool, I will heat the entire area of the new bend until it’s red-hot. Pretty simple. This is not flame-straightening, and it takes a lot of gas.

If I have a shaft with a bend in it, and I want to straighten it, I will heat a very small area on the outside of the bend. When the metal cools, all or some of the bend will be gone. This is flame-straightening. It takes very little gas. It doesn’t work well if you heat a big area. It depends on creating a small hot area confined between cold areas.

Some people seem determined to believe it’s the same thing as heat-bending.

I’m thinking I’ll get a 125 cu. ft. oxygen tank, because it’s the biggest tank I can move easily. I’m pretty sure I want a 75 cu. ft. acetylene tank. I think it’s on the large side for what I want to do, and when it comes to tools, you should usually go big when you’re in doubt.

If I get a bottle of acetylene, brand new, it will run me something like $350. That seems like a very bad idea. Oxygen is in the same general ballpark.

The nice thing about welding bottles is that people are always trying to get rid of them online. Very often, you can get perfectly good bottles, sometimes full, for 20% of the new cost.

The big problem with buying used bottles is that they may be stolen. If they are, your gas supplier will know it. They won’t refill or swap them for you. They may confiscate them. This is bad.

People commonly rent bottles. I believe this is a very stupid idea. You save money up front, I would guess, but then you’re shackled to one supplier for as long as you own the bottle. There are a lot of jerks in the business, so that can be a problem. Also, do you really want to load up all your bottles and take them back in if you move? You would lose all that valuable gas.

All my bottles belong to me. I want to keep it that way.

Rental bottles, and any bottles that belong to companies that want to keep track of them, are generally stamped or embossed on their necks. They’ll say something like “Airgas” on them. I don’t know if every bottle that isn’t stamped is free for the taking, but it appears to be the case.

In areas where stealing bottles is a big problem, many suppliers will flat-out refuse to sell you a big bottle. I don’t know what the rationale is. I don’t see how owning your bottle makes you more likely to steal. Seems to me it would make you less likely, since, hello, you own it. But that’s how it is. There must be some rationale. If you want a bottle big enough to be useful, and you live in one of these areas, you have to rent. You may also be unable to get your own big bottles filled, even if you already had them when you moved to the area. Some suppliers are such jerks they won’t fill any bottles that don’t belong to them.

The kink in the owner-bottle strategy is this: bottles don’t last forever. They have to be certified every 10 years. This costs something like $30 per bottle. If you own an old bottle, this can work out well for you. You can take an old bottle in and swap it for a full bottle with a later date. This buys you time. I, on the other hand, started out with a new, empty bottle, and my supplier swapped it for a bottle which was not new. So I lost time.

Apparently, you need to check your dates and try not to let your bottles stick around too long. If you empty one, you need to swap it ASAP.

I don’t know if gas suppliers let you ask for bottles with recent dates. They should, because some people don’t go through gas fast, and if they had to take bottles that were about to expire, they would end up paying twice as much for gas. You might pay $35 for C25 and $30 for an inspection. And your bottle might fail, so you would have to buy another one.

The odds that a bottle will die while you have it are slim, because they commonly last 70 years or more, but it’s possible.

I don’t know how old my bottles are, but I’m going to check today.

I would rather have the freedom of ownership and risk paying for inspections than have someone else’s property here for months or years.

I found some bottles online, and I flat-out asked the sellers if they were stolen. I’m not going to buy stolen goods if I can avoid it.

When you get into something like this, it’s always hard to tell whether you have the right information. I researched as well as I could, so now I’m going to act on what I think I know.

Plus Cat Pictures

Instead of talking about what a great day I had, I’ll just get right into details.

I have to get my tools together and functioning. I have waited way too long. I made an appointment with an electician, and I put a bunch of stuff online for sale to make room.

My acetylene equipment arrived today. That’s wonderful. It will allow me to do a lot of things you really have to be able to do in order to have a decent workshop. Heating, metal straightening, and cutting are the big things, although I could also do some acetylene welding.

I also got some welding practice in. I did both stick and TIG. Things went very well.

Regarding stick, I was working with 6011, which has always given me fits in the past. Today I tried fillet welds, and I turned the amperage down to 40, which was a big step from the 85 I had been working with before. I succeeded in doing two welds. They were not pretty, but then 6011 always makes ugly welds, and I am still not skilled at it. The main thing is that I pulled it off. I was able to keep the arc going, I didn’t long-arc too much, and I could see what I was doing. This is a huge step forward.

This is a great relief, because I had started to wonder if I was ever going to get it. I think I was welding badly because I had the hot-start set too low and the running amps set too high.

As for TIG, I used a Walter Abrasives flap disk to clean two pieces of metal before fillet-welding them. These disks are the only tools I know of that remove mill scale with acceptable ease and speed, without gouging the work badly. They are amazing, and they last a long time because you can peel the old layers off and reveal fresh ones.

I used my new Nova pedal. I just bought it to replace the original pedal. My welder, though Chinese, is perfectly good. The pedal that came with it is an abomination, however. I didn’t realize how bad it was until today. In the past, I created grey welds, I didn’t have good control of the amperage, and things generally went badly. Today I made welds that were either shiny or nearly so, especially after I turned on the gas. Oops. I thought the regulator was ready to go, so at first, I didn’t open the low-pressure side. Turned out it was closed. Oh, well.

This is huge. TIG is the most fantastic kind of welding there is. You can weld little-bitty things without ruining them. Lots of control. It leaves welds that are both pretty and strong.

In other news, I have a cat. Temporarily. A day or two ago, I saw a cat sitting on one of my porches, and I yelled at it, and it just sat there. Today while I was busy outside, I heard a pathetic sound, and I didn’t know if it was a stranded baby bird or what. I went looking for it, and there was the cat.

I figured that was the end of it, but the cat decided to make me the center of its universe. It started following me everywhere. It tried to get in the house. I went inside, figuring it would leave. When I came back out, it was a foot from the door, waiting for me to come out. It did that twice.

When I went out to weld, it followed me and jumped on my workbench, which was not good at all. I don’t want my things broken, and there were bits of sharp metal everywhere.

You can’t weld with an animal in your shop because the light will injure their eyes. This thing insisted on staying within a foot of me, so I didn’t know what to do. My friend Amanda said I could put it in a crate while I welded.

BINGO! I had two travel cages for the birds.

I crammed the cat in a crate, set it outside the shop, and went to work. Very nice.

I was planning to take the cat to the Humane Society, but Amanda says she’ll take it. If it’s still here tomorrow, off he goes. Actually, off he goes whether she takes him or not. He’s going somewhere, because he can’t stay here.

I know it sounds like one of those movies where some gruff old guy finds a puppy and ignores it at first and then falls in love with it, but my life isn’t a movie. The main reason it’s leaving is that I don’t want a cat. There are other issues, though. Cats make houses smell. Cat people always say their cats don’t smell, but they really mean they can’t smell it any more because they’re used to it. Also, cats don’t work with parrots. One scratch from a cat can kill a parrot. They go into shock and die. Some people say their cats and birds get along great. Yes, and you will probably be okay if you drive drunk every day as long as you’re careful, but it doesn’t mean you should do it. Final thing…cats live forever. A dog will usually die at around 11. Cats commonly make it into their late teens. Yow.

It’s too bad, because as cats go, this one is fantastic. It’s extremely affectionate, to the point of needing therapy. I have known it for about three hours, and it’s insanely devoted to me. If I wanted a cat, I would want this one, but I don’t.

It would be nice to have a feral cat that kept the yard clear of moles, but that’s as much cat as I need.

Whatever happens to it, I hope it does well in life. But I don’t intend to become a cat’s servant in order to see to it.

When it’s gone, I will miss it. For half an hour.

I’ll post some photos. I couldn’t resist.

Now that I can weld a little, I’m thinking I need a better welding table. I don’t want to buy one, though. I’m thinking it over. I should have my mill set up in three weeks. Once it’s here, I can buy strips of steel plate, mill them flat, and weld them to a homemade frame. I can use the mill to drill precise holes in them for clamps and so on. It would probably be as good as a thousand-dollar table, and I would expect to spend maybe $150 on steel.

Northern Tool has a crazy deal right now on a fairly good cheap table. It usually runs almost $400, but they’ve cut the price over 50%. It has a 9-gauge top which is reasonably flat, and it has clamps and holes for tools. I’m wondering if I should get one. It would take a few weeks to arrive, because they’re backordered. By then, I would expect to be able to make something myself.

The Harbor Freight table I’m using now works, and for the tiny price, it’s a great tool, but it wobbles, it’s hard to get your feet and the pedal under it comfortably, and there is always the possibility that it will collapse when you put something heavy on it.

I suspect that the super-fancy tables are overkill. People have made a lot of great stuff on plain old steel plate. But I don’t know for sure.

Tomorrow I should get some oxygen and acetylene, and maybe some goggles for the cat. He might come back to visit.

I guarantee you, he is in my garage right now, staring at the door to the house.