Plus a Mysterious Seductress From Taipei

Man, what a great afternoon I had.

My table saw, an old Powermatic 66 made in McMinnville, Tennessee, is on a mobile base. When I moved here, I hired people who were incompetent, and when they moved the saw, they dragged it sideways on the pavement, putting a very big flat spot on one of the wheels. The spot acted like a Denver boot. The saw was very hard to move, because the wheel didn’t turn at all.

Apart from the bad wheel, they broke a little doodad that holds the saw in place when you get it where you want it to be. Also, until last week, I had no 250V sockets to power the saw.

I bought some new wheels and a new doodad, and I got an outlet wired up. Today I finally crawled under the saw to install the new parts.

It was not a great deal of fun. The saw weighs something like 700 pounds, so I couldn’t just lay it on its side and go to work. I had to lift it with a pry bar and work on one side of the base at a time.

Anyway, after somewhere between two and three hours, I had two new wheels and one new doodad on my saw’s base.

With the saw freed from its prison, it was time to make sure the long cord I have on it would reach my outlet. No problem! I can probably move the saw 10 feet, plugged in. That will put me in the doorway of the shop, so I can blow the dust outside.

Final problem: rust. Like I keep saying, while I was caring for my dad, I crawled into a hole and let a lot of things go. I did not protect this saw’s beautiful cast iron table from rust. At first, it wasn’t completely my fault. I didn’t know how badly cold weather would make it rust. In Miami, which sits next to a big salty ocean and always has humid air, things do not rust much. I know that sounds crazy. I figured Ocala’s climate would be less rust-friendly than Miami’s. I was mistaken. When it gets cold, water condenses on steel, and you get rust. We have a lot of cool nights here every winter.

I knew the table was rusty, but I didn’t know how rusty because I kept averting my eyes. I didn’t want to look at it until I finally decided to confront the issue. Today was the day.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that the rust was very superficial. It was a great relief. I was able to use my surefire saw-table rust remedy: grease and a paint scraper.

By “grease,” I really mean, “lubricant.” I invented this method a few years ago. You apply a light lubricant like WD-40 to your table, and you scrape it with a steel paint scraper. The rust comes off like magic. The scraper can’t hurt the cast iron, either. It took me about 20 minutes to get the table nice and clean.

Steel wool and sandpaper are pathetic compared to a paint scraper. You will waste hours, and sandpaper will damage the table.

I didn’t use WD-40. I used mineral spirits and lanolin. This is an old machinist’s recipe for rust prevention. Lanolin is an incredible rust preventative. It’s basically organic cosmoline. The difficulty with it is getting it onto your metal. Lanolin is like thick butter. If you dissolve it in mineral spirits, you can spray it onto things, and the solution will cover your metal completely. The mineral spirits evaporates quickly, and in a few days, all you have is a protective lanolin film.

A year or so ago, I bought myself a chunk of lanolin and a gallon of mineral spirits, and I put the lanolin in the can. I labeled it appropriately. I use it to refill a spray bottle.

The mineral spirits evaporates fast, so you really shouldn’t do what I did. I put about a quart of this stuff in a sprayer, and the sprayer started to collapse as the spirits vanished. Better to keep most of your solution in a metal can and take a little bit out when you need to use it.

I have two bottles of Corrosion-X, which is supposed to be the best rust preventative out there, but I don’t know how well it works, because I can’t use it. The first spray bottle I ordered didn’t work, so I got a refund. I ordered a second bottle. It didn’t work, either. Both bottles are sitting in the shop taking up space.

Once I had the table saw cleaned off fairly well, I did some work on my verticle band saw. Now they both shine. The table saw is not perfectly clean, but it won’t stain wood, and things slide on it easily. That’s good enough. You can also apply Johnson’s paste wax to cast iron tables, but I don’t plan to do that while the mineral spirits is wet.

I fired up the table saw just to hear it run. Glorious. I felt like I was putting down a big weight I had been carrying for two years.

But for the mill and lathe, I don’t lack any important tools now. I can get a lot done with what I have.

I plan to cut down a piece of plywood that came from a shelf in Miami. This will be my first table saw cut in Ocala. I’m going to put the wood on the Harbor Freight base my DeWalt planer sits on. It will provide a place for the dust bag to sit. Having that bag on the ground has been more aggravating than you would imagine.

It’s crazy how much I enjoy this stuff. And I wonder why I’m not lonely. I’m alone nearly all the time, but I don’t feel bad about it at all.

Something to wonder about, but definitely not something to complain about.

If You Squint You Can See Hillary Clinton Dodging Sniper Fire

I keep complaining about TV people who discuss hurricanes lying and exaggerating. The other day I cited the NHC as a better source. Well last night, I saw something discouraging on the NHC website.

When hurricanes approach you, there are two types of alerts the NHC will issue: watches and warnings. I will give you the OFFICIAL definitions of these alerts. A watch means winds of a certain speed are POSSIBLE at your location. A warning means they are EXPECTED at your location.

Those definitions come from the NHC, not my imagination.

If the NHC says your house is in a hurricane warning area, that necessarily means they believe it is MORE LIKELY THAN NOT that you will get hurricane-force winds. If the likelihood is less than 50%, you shouldn’t be under a warning. Obvious. In fact, “expected” should imply a probability near 100%.

Last night, the NHC had much of Florida’s east coast under a hurricane warning. That means they were saying the probability of hurricane-force winds was better than 50%. Okay, then. If this was true, then their wind speed probability map should agree.

I looked at the map. These maps are color-coded. The map showed the warning areas following the border between yellow and light green. Yellow means 30-40%. Light green means 20-30%. These are the very most-imperiled areas in the state.

How can hurricane winds be “expected” if the chance of hurricane winds is at, or far below, 40%?

I don’t see how this could happen accidentally. You would think the people who make the probability maps would be in agreement with the people who make the maps labeling the watch and warning areas.

Either the definitions are wrong, or someone posted watch and warning information which is not even close to right.

Most people aren’t going to examine this stuff the way I do. Most will listen to the TV hysteria, believe everything they hear, and leave it at that. Those that look at the NHC site aren’t likely to compare maps.

I’m not happy with the NHC. It’s unfortunate that I have to root around on the web to find out what’s really happening. When one of the best sources posts dubious information, it makes it worse.

The storm is way out at sea. The maximum wind is about 110 mph, or category 2. The winds are dropping. The storm’s eye is forecast to miss the United States completely. The little “M’s” on the forecast track, indicating “major hurricane,” are now gone. They have been replaced with “H’s.”

This is very consistent with the REAL news I’ve been accessing for the last few days. It’s sad that it conflicts with the histrionics of the TV performers and the beliefs of the people who rely on them.

In other wind-related news, I’ve been looking into air compressors. I have a 5-HP Curtis, which is a very nice compressor for a home shop, but its output is right on the borderline between fail and pass. It puts out 17.3 cubic feet per minute, which is wonderful for most purposes, but there are a lot of tools that require just a little bit more. If your output is too low, your tool will slow down until it’s not working adequately, and then you have to sit and wait for the compressor to catch up.

My compressor is in Coral Gables. I was planning to have it moved to me here, but now I’m wondering if it’s worth it. I can get a 7.5-HP job and sell the Curtis. I would get 23 cfm. This should make for a better experience when using things like buffers, die grinders, and sanders.

I could sell the Curtis and order a 7.5-HP Curtis or Quincy. I would be set for life, pretty much. But then I have to ask myself: what will I do for a compressor in my other shop? I’m going to want the bigger one for metalwork, mainly. I would have to use it for sanding wood, too, so sometimes I would have to move the wood to an area outside the metal shop temporarily. I would need the other compressor for things like inflating tires and air hammering. I could get a small compressor for maybe $500, tax included. I have a small Eaton Chinese compressor already, but it has started leaking oil, and I’m tired of fixing it.

I could also put the big new compressor in the wood shop and run a 1″ PVC line underground to the metal shop.

I guess that was troll bait. People will see “PVC” and get hysterical. PVC air lines explode sometimes, and they throw shrapnel. But it’s okay to run them underground, where they can’t hurt anyone except moles and gophers.

I’m researching it. If you bury air line, water condenses in it. You can blow the water out occasionally, which is annoying, or you can use an air dryer every single time you use the compressor, which is also, but less, annoying. I have a great electric air dryer, but I don’t want to run it every time I use air.

I could just put the big compressor in one shop and the old Curtis in the other shop. It’s going to cost me a certain amount of money to move my machine tools, and adding the old compressor won’t change the figure, so maybe selling it is a bad idea.

I guess I should keep it and consider getting a second machine later.

My most pressing shop-related job is getting the table saw running and mobile. If I can do that, I can reduce the gigantic shelf complex that sucks up one corner of the building, and I can turn the wood into smaller shelves that are actually useful. Then I can store more stuff and get it out of the way.

Here’s hoping the Atlantic doesn’t try to send me any more presents this year.

Dorian Brings Much-Needed Fresh Air to Marion County

The forecast for Hurricane Dorian is looking so good, there is not much point in talking about it. The odds of problems here are dropping off to the point where I should start writing about other things.

Again, never watch the news when hurricanes approach. They will always lie and exaggerate, in order to benefit themselves. Always go to the Internet and look at sources as close to the actual data as possible.

This morning, it occurred to me that Bryan Norcross may be a major reason why TV heads shriek and whimper during hurricane season. Back in ’92, Andrew hit Miami, and afterward, Norcross was the main source of information for many people in the area. He worked as a meteorologist at Miami’s WTVJ. I don’t recall exactly what happened, but I seem to have a dim memory of other channels being knocked off the air.

Before Norcross, WTVJ’s main weather personality was Bob Weaver, a chatty, overweight New Yorker who was more than 20 years older. Norcross was young and thin, and the ladies liked him, so my guess is that Norcross was hired to be a glamour boy. Norcross supposedly didn’t like the ladies back, if you know what I mean. That piece of information popped up long after Andrew.

A lot of weathermen are gay. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because it’s the most flamboyant position in many newsrooms. Weathermen are generally entertainers.

When Andrew hit and people were desperate for news, Norcross took the throne and became South Florida’s premier hurricane guru. He was adored. He was in the kind of situation in which women you have never met mail you their underwear. Media outlets interviewed him. One publication featured a photo of him on the beach in a Speedo.

The stories about his orientation broke a lot of hearts.

After Andrew, his career cooled off a lot, and it never again attained its post-Andrew heights, but for a while, he was big news all over America.

The rise of Bryan Norcross made it clear that hurricanes could make people considerably more famous and, potentially, wealthy. I’m sure other TV personalities noticed. Maybe that partially explains their undignified antics.

To get back to the storm, the projected path is firming up, and it is expected to turn north very soon and head for the general area of South Carolina. The storm is weakening. The top winds have dropped 30 mph, into the Category 4 region. Hurricane-speed winds only extend out 25 miles from the center, so there is a good chance that Florida won’t get them.

The Bahamas really got whacked. It’s astounding. The storm hit Grand Bahama as a 5, and then it just sat there. It’s bad to get hit by a storm at all, but at least they usually move on quickly. I can’t imagine spending an entire day in hurricane winds, especially with the flooding the Bahamas are getting.

The up side is that the Bahamas are sparsely inhabited. The population of Grand Bahama is under 30,000 people.

I have been praying for God to turn the storm north and away from land, and I feel very strong faith for it. I would like to see it move off the Bahamas so the people can get some relief.

I think people forget that hurricanes weaken as they go north. Also, my guess is that the winds generally slow down as storms get wider, due to the conservation of angular momentum. I don’t really know. Maybe Google can tell me.

Wow. Those search results look really boring. Never mind.

Maybe I shouldn’t say this, but the forecast for my area is considerably nicer than it would have been without a hurricane. July and August were very, very unpleasant for outdoor activities, but now we are expected to have strong breezes and considerable cloud cover for a while. I was able to work in my workshop during the last two days without coming back in completely soaked in sweat, and Dorian will extend that benefit and make it easier to wait for the pleasant days of October.

It should be breezy enough to make outdoor work somewhat difficult, but it will probably be very nice inside the workshop with the doors partially opened.

If I were going to stay here, I would get a propane generator and build a new shop. As it is, I’m thrilled to have several days of relatively pleasant weather, with 7 months of cool weather to follow not long after.

I spent over $40 on hurricane supplies. Don’t I feel silly.

This is Why People Move to Tennessee

The Cone of Certain Death is narrowing, and I am sorry to say it’s narrowing around me.

Originally, Dorian was forecast to hit the coast to my east and then move toward me. Then the forecast path took a huge veer to the south, putting the center of the cone over Boca Raton, more or less. This was great news for me, because it gave the storm a long time to poop out over dry land before getting to me. Now they’ve decided it will still travel a long way over dry land, but they insist it will still have 75-mph maximum winds when it’s maybe 30 miles to my east. That’s just barely a hurricane, but it counts.

Wunderground.com is predicting maximum sustained winds of 40 to 60 mph here, for a few hours. I disagree, for reasons I will put forth below.

In prayer, I get very strong faith for no tropical-storm-force winds at either of my residential properties, but just in case, I have pulled out the big guns: Hillshire Farms smoked beef sausage.

I didn’t want to resort to this, but my hand was forced.

I have a lot of propane and butane, and I expect to have refrigeration no matter what happens. That means I’ll be able to grill. The truth is that I grill most hot meals now; I’m very spoiled by the lack of kitchen cleaning. I prefer the grill to the appliances. If I lose power and can’t rely on my electric stove and oven, I’ll go on with life as it is now, blasting everything with propane.

A couple of days ago, there was very little bottled water available around here. I just went to Publix (major grocery chain) and found pallets of purified water, so I got three cases. That brings me up to 5+, and I’m also going to fill a cooler with clean water on Tuesday night, if the forecast doesn’t look cheery.

They had the smoked sausages on sale for half price, so I snapped those up. It was probably a stupid thing to do, since grocery stores will be open next week no matter what, but it made me feel proactive and manly.

I’ve soured on hot dogs. They’re very small, and they don’t taste that great. Smoked sausages and brats are a lot better.

I got myself a wire for the generator, along with a plug and receptacle. The little 30-amp stuff sold out 15 minutes after Dorian was named, but I am a smart guy with a lot of stuff in his garage, so I didn’t need any of that. I can use one of my welder adapters to hook the generator up to a homemade 50-amp cord, and that will allow me to put the generator outside the workshop.

I’m not assembling the cord yet. I don’t think I’m going to need it, and I would like to return the parts to Lowe’s. I’m stuck with the wire, because they don’t accept wire returns. Maybe I’ll use it for something in the workshop. I still need to set up one more 20-amp socket.

I got myself 6 gallons of socialist ethanol gasoline. The station that sells real gas was out, of course, so I couldn’t buy it for my outdoor power tools. I could have gotten 11 gallons of toxic commie gas, but I didn’t want the hassle of trying to put it in my car’s tank after the storm misses us. I figure I can grab some more if things start to look bad.

While I was at Lowe’s, I met the realtor who sold my dad this house. He was buying romex, so I figured he was rigging up a generator. No, he is building a new workshop. His wife took over his existing shop. He talked about how great my property is and how he hadn’t seen anything else like it. He says the value is going up. I hope so.

He isn’t worried at all about the storm. He thinks Irma wiped out most of the loose trees, and like me, he lacks confidence in Dorian’s ability to stay strong after 200 miles of travel over land.

One nice thing about Dorian is that it’s very small. It may look big on satellite photos, but almost all of what you’re seeing is peripheral clouds that don’t amount to squat. The actual hurricane appears to be less than 10 miles wide. That means that if the eye is over 5 miles away, your winds are below 75 mph. Move out to 20 miles, and they’re much lower.

They say the storm will get bigger, but it’s not going to be a large storm. If it doubles in size, it will still only be 20 miles across, so you will have to be within maybe 25 miles of the eye to get whacked. This means most people in the dreaded cone aren’t going to have any problems at all.

If you watch the computer animations, you will see that Dorian isn’t expected to grow. Journalists say it is, but they always get it wrong. It may well be that the pack of weak, irrelevant clouds around it will grow in diameter, but that stuff is all horse manure. There is very little wind in it.

Journalists say the storm will grow. Guess where their information comes from? The same computer models I’m looking at, and those models say it’s going to stay small.

A storm under 20 miles across has to be pretty accurate to hit you with any real power.

Andrew was a murderous storm with winds not far below 200 mph, but it barely covered the lower half of Dade County. It was not big at all. People in Hollywood, a few miles north of the county line, just got a stiff breeze. Dorian is small and also much weaker than Andrew.

The GFS and ECMWF models are predicting something like 25 knots at my house. Even the places where it is expected to be strongest at this latitude are predicted to get 29 and 33 knots, tops.

Things are looking good. I believe God has told me my properties will be fine, and even if I’m wrong, this is a tiny, weak storm which is expected to miss me.

And I have smoked sausages.

If it quits raining, I will probably go out and confirm that my generator is working. That will be my 15 minutes of work for the day.

I see I forgot to write about my generator’s reanimation.

This generator had more than one problem, and that, coupled with my lack of knowledge, made it hard to diagnose. At first, it had a carb clogged by socialist gasoline full of environment-damaging ethanol. It also had gas in the crankcase. This was caused by the design of the machine, or, rather, by my failure to take heed of it. It has a fuel tank situated above the carb, and gravity is always pushing the gas down toward the engine. There is a valve that allows you to shut off the fuel supply, and if you don’t use it, gas can push past the carb’s float needle and into the crankcase.

I am used to modern engines that don’t flood their crankcases with oil, so I didn’t shut off the fuel petcock. Now I know better.

The original carb was also badly cast and machined, so it was hard to seal.

While I was working on the machine, and before I knew there was gas in the oil, I flooded everything by cranking the engine for long periods with a drill. That made the engine less likely to start.

On top of all this, I worked on the engine with the air filter removed. It would be torture to install and remove it 50 times during a repair job. Removing the air filter won’t keep the engine from starting, but I found out it will make it run lean so you can’t operate it with the choke off. If you do this for long periods, the excess fuel can thin the oil so much you get internal damage.

The first carb was a lemon and also full of ethanol crud. The second carb was probably fine until I worked on it. The third carb had no problems, but by the time I understood what was happening, there was gas and fuel in places where they were not supposed to be.

I finally got the engine running last night, and after it died a few times, I learned that I needed to put the air filter on it in order to make it run correctly. As far as I know, it’s fine now.

Using the drill to crank the engine was a stroke of genius. I plan to modify the generator so I can do this without removing the pull cord apparatus. I may just drill a hole in the apparatus cover, large enough to admit a socket and an extension, which would be attached to the drill.

Here is help for people with Honda-clone engines like mine.

1. Do not use ethanol gas.

2. If you use ethanol gas, use Biobor EB to treat it. Sta-bil does not really work.

3. Do not leave any gas in the generator if you’re going to let it sit for more than three weeks. Run it dry, but don’t stop there. Run a little pure Sea Foam through it, or take it apart and clean it with carb cleaner, including inside all the tiny fuel passages, or do whatever else you have to do to keep it clear. Running it dry, all by itself, will not necessarily prevent varnish from forming. I kid you not.

4. If your engine gets clogged, buy a Chinese carb on Ebay and replace it. They’re very cheap, and they’re generally exactly the same as OEM carbs.

5. If you have a gravity-feed generator, put a fuel filter in the fuel line. It’s very simple. It’s amazing that the manufacturers don’t do this.

6. If you have to work on the engine, remove the cover for the pull cord and crank the engine with a drill and socket.

7. If everything looks good, but the engine won’t start, pull the low-oil sensor wire. It’s on the side of the engine near the oil cap. These sensors screw up and give false readings.

8. If you leave your fuel valve open by mistake, check your oil. If it has gas in it, you need to change it before running the engine.

9. Your local car parts store won’t take oil with gas in it, so buy a galvanized bucket and use it to burn the oil outdoors. I didn’t tell you this.

10. Once you get the engine running, install the air filter before evaluating the speed and mixture and so on. The filter affects these things.

You now owe me more than you can ever repay. Good luck.

Reunited With the Band Saw

I keep feeling faith for an escape from Hurricane Dorian, which is good, because I still can’t get my generator working.

I bought a Champion 5500-watt generator in 2017, and I followed the directions. After I used it, I ran it dry to prevent ethanol fuel from gumming it up. It gummed it up anyway, because running a machine dry won’t actually prevent the problem. This is known, but Champion continues to put the same useless advice in manuals.

Generators should run on propane, not gasoline. Either that or diesel. Just a clue for you manufacturers. Propane is not complicated. The generators would last longer, and they would never clog.

When I got it running last year, it surged. That ordinarily means a clogged pilot jet. I used a wire drill to open the jet, but the generator would not run, and fuel leaked out.

I put a new carburetor on it, and fuel still leaked out. I put a third carburetor on it, and now the fuel only leaks out right after I crank the generator. I’m using an electric drill to crank it, in order to avoid a heart attack. It kind of amazes me that generator makers don’t put hex fittings on the outsides of their machines in order to make electric drills the default cranking option.

I know I have a spark. I know the plug gap is right. I don’t know how strong the spark is.

I believe the generator is flooding, and the leaking fuel is just gas running out of a piston that can’t burn it.

Irritating. But for ethanol, which is a leftist scam that has many ill effects and no up side, this machine would be purring away.

In my last post, I poked fun at Heavy.com for referring to the hurricane animation at Windy.com as “live.” It’s actually a bunch of computer projections. There are a bunch of well-known computer models used to simulate hurricanes.

Most people don’t know it, but weather forecasting was one of the driving forces for the development of computers. We had tons of weather data and no practical way to crunch it. Now the machinery is much better, so forecasters are able to provide us with much slicker and faster wrong predictions.

There are three models up at Windy, and I have been enjoying watching them. The scariest one says I’m going to get something like 23 knots. That would be refreshing, not destructive.

I will keep praying. One person’s prayers can change the weather. Elijah caused and ended a drought, all by himself, by praying.

This experience reminds me of the things that make Florida a difficult place to live. It makes me think about Tennessee, where the worst weather problems are sporadic tornadoes.

While I was working on the generator, I needed a two-by-four. I wanted to raise the end of the generator to make sure fuel was getting to the petcock, and I didn’t have the right size lumber. I had four-by-fours.

Yesterday, I got my 250V wiring installed, and that meant the band saw was available for use. This made it possible for me to make my own two-by-for. I took a break from the generator, installed the saw blade, banged out a dent in the motor’s fan cover (little problem from its trip from Miami), and put a four-by-four on the saw table. Zzzzzzzzt. Two-by-four. Nice.

Some lady is trying to sell a Jet band saw on Craigslist. I may buy it. Jet is not the best manufacturer, but it’s Taiwanese, so the basic machine should be very good. I might have to add a couple of bells and whistles.

My current band saw is a 19″ job, which is enormous by most people’s standards. I got a good price on it, so I bought it. It’s great, but I keep a 1/2″ blade on it, and that limits the curves I can cut on it. It would be good to have a smaller, handier saw with a 1/4″ blade. Changing blades takes several minutes, and it’s tedious. If I had the Jet, I would have two blade sizes ready at all times. It’s a 14″ saw, so it wouldn’t be as good for big jobs, but that’s what the big saw is fore.

I haven’t reanimated my drill press yet. I would have done that today if the generator had started. I have to reinstall the VFD and power cord. It’s a five-minute job. I hope. Then I have to put the X-Y table and vise back on. Then I’ll be in business.

I can’t wait to hear my table saw come to life again. A good table saw is a wonder tool. They’re super accurate, and mine has a huge 5HP motor, so basically, I can cut redwoods in half. I already have a job in mind. I need to cut down a piece of plywood so I can use it for a shelf in my planer stand. I can do this with the band saw, but it’s hard to trade off the table saw’s crazy accuracy.

The other day I had to buy a two-foot-square sheet of plywood. That was humiliating. I might as well have gone to Home Depot wearing a dress and ruby slippers. A man should break down his own plywood. With the correct technique and a sturdy saw, breaking down entire sheets of sheet goods like plywood is not a problem. Next time I need a piece of plywood, I should get a sheet and then cut the rest in smaller pieces and keep it. The per-square-foot price of plywood goes up a lot when you buy small pieces.

I have a nutty idea for the table saw. I may turn the wooden table into a workbench for woodworking.

When it comes to “proper” tools, woodworkers have various bugs up their butts and bats in their belfries. You should see how they stress themselves over workbenches. A workbench has to be hardwood. No, it has to be spruce. It has to be an English style bench. No, it has to be a Roubot bench. It has to be this thick. It has to be this wide. You have to have this kind of vise.

You know what? They can’t actually prosecute you for violating the rules.

My table used to be a computer desk. I bought the desk in the 1990’s. I don’t think you can get one like it now. The manufacturer probably figured out that it was overbuilt. It was very hard particle board, about 1.5″ thick, covered with sturdy melamine. The ones they make now are relatively flimsy. I couldn’t get rid of the desk, so I cut the top up and put it in my table saw. It’s crude, but it works very well. I put a router lift in it. If I removed the table top and made a new one from laminated hardwood, I could put bench dog holes in it and use holdfasts in it. I have to think about it.

I could put a woodworking vise on the far end of it. It’s not possible to put one on the side of the table, as you ordinarily would, because the sides are covered by a long Biesemeyer fence made of steel.

It would work. Monsieur Roubot wouldn’t come out of his grave and curse at me in French.

You can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Even if the bench was weird and not ideal, it would be way, way better than melamine with no vise.

Anyway, the computers all say they don’t think Dorian will cause any problems here, and the workshop has suddenly become functional. Life could be worse.

I’m not Going to be Taken Out by Something With a Name Like “Dorian”

Yesterday was an eventful day. I prepared for the arrival of Hurricane Dorian, and I also finished wiring up two 250V sockets for my power tools.

When you don’t know anything about hurricanes (or you have a bunch of kids), you prepare by buying several weeks’ worth of groceries, enough water for an army, a battery-powered radio, first aid supplies, 100 pounds of ice, 25 gallons of gas in cans, and 50 pounds of batteries. Leftists and libertarians also buy a lot of weed. I’ve been through a bunch of storms: Andrew, Rita, Wilma, Katrina, and Irma. Here is what I just bought: 5 cans of tuna, a box of Pop Tarts, two cases of bottled water, and a box of protein bars. I also got gas.

It’s just not worth it to overprepare. Even after Andrew, it was possible to drive 30 miles and buy whatever I needed.

There are some things you really do need to get in advance. I’m talking about chainsaws, mainly. The day after Irma, every chainsaw in the western hemisphere changed hands, and it was impossible to find one anywhere. Also, if you want a generator, you need to buy it at least one day before the NHC discovers the depression that will become your hurricane. Predicting that is a little tough.

Here is what I would need, if a storm got me: two ceiling fans, a refrigerator, and a stove. That means I would need a generator capable of supplying maybe 20 amps. The stove wouldn’t be part of the equation, because I have a butane stove and a gas grill. I just bought my second new Chinese carb for my generator, which is leaking gas out the front. The first new Chinese carb was somehow messed up, so I bet another $22 on another one. Beats paying someone a hundred bucks to take a month to fix the old one.

I have been using my supernatural tools to get God’s help with the storm. Yesterday my friend Travis felt the Holy Spirit call him to leave a college class and pray with me, so he walked out and called me. That was excellent.

The storm’s projected path was right over me for a while, but now it’s down by Tampa, and it’s also projected to make landfall pretty far south. Moving over land will sap its strength, and the added distance between me and the storm will reduce the effects here. I think this trend will continue.

I haven’t watched a single news program. What a waste of time that would have been. They always say the same thing: “Wherever you are, no matter what the storm track looks like, you will have hurricane-force winds, and you will probably die.” In order to improve ratings, they wave their hands and shriek like girls who think Justin Bieber may be nearby. It’s disgraceful.

You know who gets hurt in hurricanes? People who have absolutely no judgment. It’s really hard to get hurt in a hurricane. Stay in a sturdy shelter, and avoid flood areas. Keep a safe distance from downed wires. Do not be under falling trees. Bang. You’re safe. It’s really that simple. To hear journalists describe it, you would think hurricanes penetrate concrete bunkers to kill people who have spent years preparing. It’s like they’re confusing hurricanes with ninjas or the Terminator.

Here’s a story you will never read: “Bob Smith was killed by Hurricane Hillary last night. He was sleeping in his code-compliant concrete block home which isn’t in a flood plain, and he was nowhere near falling trees or downed power lines.”

Actually, in a really nasty storm, you can be hit by a tornado that breaks a concrete wall, but there is no way to prepare for that, short of sleeping in a parking garage. It has probably never happened, anyway.

My impression, based on prayer, is that I’m in the clear. Of course, I am praying for other people, too.

I found an amazing site that predicts the future. I went to Heavy.com because Google said they had hurricane info, and they had a “live” radar animation for Dorian. I wanted this because the NHC has stopped issuing updates every three hours. For some reason, they’re farther apart. That’s probably good news for me, because it almost certainly means the NHC is having trouble predicting the storm’s path. If that’s true, then the storm may be headed even farther away from me than I thought.

According to the “live” video, Dorian is going to hit Boca Raton and then move up the state like a spinning, highly destructive suppository. When it gets to me, it will be a mere thunderstorm.

What a great site. I wish I could zoom in really close and maybe get a shot of a newspaper on a park bench, with racing results and stock market reports for next week.

It would be great for me if the storm landed between Miami and Ocala, because it would spare my residential real estate in both areas. Not great for the Bocans, however.

Click to see the future.

I ate some of the Pop Tarts already.

I am now substantially less prepared.

It’s irritating to deal with people who constantly goad you not just to prepare, but to be upset and rushed. It’s not happening. Don’t waste your time. Worry and hurry are for the flesh. I am not an animal. I’m the patience and peace of God, according to his word. I slept like a rock last night, and I plan to remain in peace no matter what.

Thinking that worry, and worrying other people, are good things is a serious character flaw. It’s toxic. Unfortunately, people who carry and spread worry are usually self-righteous about it. They think it’s a virtue, and that people should be admired for it. They think worry proves you’re a good person. Actually, worry is faith in Satan. Sorry to tell you that. Faith in God IS righteousness, so what is faith in Satan? Sin. You can’t impress a knowledgeable Christian with your righteousness by worrying, and you definitely can’t shame me for not worrying. It’s like being ashamed of being potty-trained.

Being proud of worrying is like being proud you don’t bathe.

Over and over in the Bible, God commands his children not to worry. Where, exactly, does he tell them to worry?

Enough about the weather. The real news is that I got my electrical sockets installed. I wish I could convey the relief I feel. You would think something like this wouldn’t mean much to a Christian who is supposed to be all holy and focused on the things of God and whatnot, but it’s a very big deal. I feel I’m breathing again, after two years of having a pillow over my face. It’s wonderful.

I rigged up a 50-amp socket and a 20-amp socket. I can use my welders, my table saw, my band saw, my belt grinder, my drill press, and probably something else I’m forgetting. Without these things, I’ve felt helpless. It was like being handcuffed. I might even be able to cut thin stuff with plasma.

If you can’t weld, life is bad. If you can’t grind, life is bad. If you can’t cut wood, life is bad. If you have no compressor, see previous sentence. There are some things you just need to be able to do. Good tools change lives. A series of $50-$1000 jobs performed by other people (or abandoned) becomes a series of free jobs performed by you, at your convenience.

The sockets are in my workshop. Now I need a couple in my garage, so I can get my lathe and mill moved up here. Man, that will be nice. God willing.

My friend Mike was asking about my belt grinder. You need one of these. If you’re not financially endowed, get a 1″x42″ grinder for $40. It won’t be idea, but it will do a lot more than you know, and it will still be useful after you get a big grinder. If you have money to spend, get a 2″x72″ job with at least two horsepower and a variable frequency drive. You’ll be able to do amazing things with any material you can name.

Belt grinders tend to be expensive. If you buy one off the shelf, you can expect to blow maybe $1500. I spent $500, plus about $80 for a fantastic 3HP motor, plus maybe $200 for the VFD. I put a little money into a plywood platform and a VFD enclosure. That was pretty cheap, and my grinder will do exactly what a $3000 Burr King will do, except mine has more power and much more versatility. You don’t have to have variable speed. You can skip that, get a 2HP 125V motor (totally enclosed, for protection from grit and dust), and do just fine. Save yourself hundreds and then wait to upgrade later.

Most people don’t have 3HP motors. I have one because it was easier to find than a 2HP motor. I bought a beautiful 2HP Mitsubishi motor, and the Ebay seller packed it in a flat rate box with no support. The Postal Service broke a foot off the cast iron base, so a claim was filed, and I got my money back. The Postal Service did not want the broken motor, so I had to do something with it. I used stainless MIG wire to weld the foot back on, and it held perfectly, so now I have a nice 2HP motor doing nothing. I ordered the 3HP motor to replace it.

If you’re a good (or mediocre) woodworker, you can literally make a belt grinder out of plywood, and it will work as well as any 2×72 made. It will last for decades. Belt grinders experience virtually no mechanical stress, except for the relatively light pressure you put on the wheel or platen while grinding. You just need a rigid object that will hold two pulleys and a tool arm in place. You could build one from scrap for almost nothing. I guarantee you, someone on Youtube has done it. I’ll look.

Okay, here it is. One of many.

As long as those wooden pulleys have metal bearings, they will last a hundred years. Pulleys take very little abuse. The contact wheel is another story, since you have to apply pressure to it.

You don’t understand how badly you need a belt grinder unless you have used one.

A vertical band saw is also a greatly underrated tool. You should be able to find a good 14″ saw on the web for $400 or less. It won’t be quite as accurate as a table saw, and it will throw more dust, but it will do many things a band saw will do, plus a lot more. It will cut curves. It will allow you to turn logs into boards. It’s also much, much safer than a table saw, and it takes up less room.

Now I need to repair the mobile base on my table saw. The movers broke it, and I had to order parts. The movers failed to come through with the papers for an insurance claim, so I decided to stop fighting with them and move on. They were really bad at their job, and I have serious doubts about their honesty.

It’s hard to believe I had a less-than-sublime experience with a business running out of Hialeah, but there it is.

Move up to the Next Level for Under $50

It’s funny how you can’t predict which tools will improve your life the most.

I remember getting my first cordless impact driver. What a revelation. It did everything a basic hand drill would do. It also ran longer, because impact drivers use less energy. It broke stubborn fasteners loose better than a drill. It tightened fasteners much better, with less danger of stripping the heads. It gave me much more control. It put more torque on fasteners yet somehow didn’t twist my wrist like a drill.

I love impact drivers now. Wonderful tools.

I didn’t expect that.

Similarly, I am learning what a splendid tool a cart is.

I bought myself a $49 Harbor Freight 3-tier tool cart a couple of days back, so I would have something to hold tools and other things while I worked on jobs. I coated the bottoms of the insides of the trays with clear Flex Seal, to keep things from scraping the paint off. I stuck a couple of magnetic parts dishes in it. I put the cart together (using an impact driver), and then I tried it out while working on my leaky portable generator.

It was nothing short of amazing. I didn’t have to look around for tools or bend over to pick them up off the ground any more. You wouldn’t believe how much time it saved me or how much easier it made things.

I found out just how much easier it made things, and I don’t mean I found out by using it. I found out how great the cart was when I no longer had it to use.

The cart has 64 bolts in it, and you have to install every one. Naturally, I failed to tighten a few. Twice, I found loose parts lying on the driveway or inside the cart. I had to empty the cart and fix it.

I had to use a box wrench and the impact driver. While I was putting bolts back into the cart and getting them ready to be tightened, I had no place to put the tools. The cart was on its side or upside-down. I couldn’t put anything in it. Guess what I did? I did exactly what I used to do. I put a socket extension in my pocket. I put the impact driver on the grass. It drove me crazy.

As soon as I was deprived of the use of the cart, I understood what a blessing it was.

I used it to move my Kubota’s old battery a hundred feet to my car. That was really nice. Carrying car batteries is an unpleasant job. Mine was caked with crud because it had leaked. The cart made moving it a breeze.

You need a tool cart, believe me. You probably don’t need a fancy one with drawers. They’re inconvenient to load and unload, and you have to move out of the way to open drawers. You probably need a $49 Harbor Freight cart with two magnetic parts dishes.

People complain that the wheels are too far inboard, making the cart tippy. I guess they’re right, although it isn’t a problem unless you load it heavily. Harbor Freight stiffened the bottom tray with two flimsy strips of steel, and in order to work, they had to be away from the cart’s sides. The caster plate bolts have to go through these strips of steel, and that’s why the wheels are so far inboard.

So what? The cart only costs $49. Spend another 15 bucks, put a sheet of 1/4″ plywood on the bottom, and drill new bolt holes farther outboard. Buy 16 longer bolts for 8 dollars. Wow. Was that hard?

You could also put different metal strips on the bottom, for an investment of two dollars. Weld or bolt them on. Yes, welding would mess up the paint. This is why they make Krylon.

It’s worth the investment. It’s the perfect size for what it is, and it has the correct number of trays. It works great.

I’ve picked up some more items that ought to be helpful. I finally bought pry bars. I mean the ones that look like bent screwdrivers yet which are not expensive German screwdrivers (like mine) prying will ruin. Good pry bars have shanks that run all the way through the handles, and they have steel striking caps on the ends so you can beat them between things like chisels. They’re neat tools, because they’re designed to be used in a way that constitutes abuse when you do it to other tools.

I looked around to see who made a decent pry bar, and it looks like Mayhew takes the prize. Snap-On, of course, makes pry bars. Guess what one bar costs? Wrong. It costs $300. You can get them cheaper in sets, but they’re still outrageous. People rave about Mayhew, so I took a chance on a set. You can’t work on things like tractors without pry bars.

I also got a real pedal for my TIG welder. Oops…my AC TIG welder. I have two TIG’s now. My first TIG, an AHP AlphaTIG something or other, is a very nice Chinese machine, but the pedal, while sturdy, is very hard to use. The design is ridiculous. It slides around when you use it, and it’s not that easy to control the amperage.

A company called Nova makes an aftermarket pedal which is very good, so I ordered one. Maybe it will be helpful in my continuing quest to produce one decent TIG bead.

Of course, a guy with machine tools, a belt grinder, a drill press, and welders ought to be able to take the guts of the AHP pedal and build a better pedal around them, but my machine tools still aren’t here, and I am only now getting 250V power to run the other things.

Since I brought up 250V power, I might as well say how my efforts to put sockets in my workshop are going.

I went to Home Depot and stared at electrical parts for maybe 90 minutes. It was very confusing. I thought there were only two kinds of breaker box, and it turns out there are a bunch. Siemens, Cutler-Hammer, Square D QO, Square D Homeline, and God knows what else. I wanted one small box so I could branch my 250V line out to 50A and 30A sockets. I wanted the box to take the same breakers as my other panels, for obvious reasons. I still have no idea whether I got the right product. I bought a Square D QO box, and I’m going to see if it works.

I was going to run conduit in the workshop, but it’s hot, and hanging conduit is a lot of work. I decided to wimp out and go with romex, which is wires wrapped in a rubber sheath. It’s not as classy, but as far as I know, it’s safe and good enough to make code. I got myself a long piece of 6/2 romex, along with a short piece of 10/2 for the 30A branch. We’ll see if it works.

I was originally going to put the sockets on truss chords so power cords would be out of my way, but I decided not to do it. I figure I can put the sockets up high, and after that, if I want, I can hang the machine cords from the trusses. I have to think about it, though. I haven’t gotten very far, so I have time to change my mind.

Right now, I’m being held up by a lack of #6 screws with wide heads. I forgot to buy straps to hold the romex, so I’m stuck with straps I already had, and the screw holes are pretty big.

I also ordered new shelves for my woodworking cabinet. Back in May, I got a steel Husky cabinet from Home Depot, and I put wheels on it so moving it would be easier. It’s bolted to the wall, so the wheels don’t make it dangerous. They’re there to allow me to reposition the cabinet later if I want to. The cabinet is very nice, but they only give you three shelves. That means you’re dividing 72 vertical inches into only four areas. Obviously, that will not work. How many tools do you own that need 18″ of headroom?

Home Depot’s strategy is to sell you a cabinet with three shelves, rated at 150 pounds per shelf, and then leave you to figure out that you need 4 or 5 shelves. Guess what extra shelves cost? About $80 a pair. Okay, Home Depot, you got me. Just for that, I’m going to buy something really expensive and then return it with the box all messed up.

Not really.

I did go to Lowe’s today, however. My, what a nice store that is. And it’s closer to my house.

Of course, your new shelves won’t necessarily hold 150 pounds each, because the 150-pound rating is for a three-shelf cabinet. So 450 pounds divided by 5…let’s call it 88 pounds per shelf, taking the weight of the additional shelves into account. I plan to max out at maybe 50 pounds per shelf, so I can’t say I really care.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the shelf load isn’t closely related to the total capacity. Let’s see…the manual says the box holds 622 pounds. Subtract 10 pounds for the weight of the new shelves, and you get 612 pounds, which, excitingly, is a multiple of 9.

Divide by 6 shelves, including the bottom, and you get 102 pounds per shelf. That will be ample.

Just don’t put 102 pounds on every shelf plus the bottom and then rest your beer on top of the cabinet. You could void your warranty.

The cabinet has pegboard on the insides of the doors, so you would have to subtract the weight of whatever you hang there.

Anyway, it’s a good cabinet, but now that I know it really costs $430 with wheels and 5 shelves, I wonder what else I could have bought for the same price.

I would like to get another cabinet to match it eventually, so I assume Husky will discontinue it right before I decide to do that.

I’m planning to throw out my Rockstar beverage fridge. I keep it in the garage. It’s a counter-height fridge with Rockstar logos all over it. The door lights up so you can see “ROCKSTAR” in the dark. I got it from a tenant who ran off. I thought it was a commercial refrigerator that had been abandoned, but then I found out it was a cheap novelty item. The refrigeration system is built so it freezes over very fast. You can’t really use the fridge, because you have to turn it off every couple of days to defrost it. I think I should go get a real beverage fridge from Home Depot…I mean LOWE’S…and put it on a wheeled base with shelves or something.

The weather should start cooling down in two weeks, so I guess I’ll be getting things done just in time to miss the comfortable working weather. Good planning there.

Hope to get back to my wiring tomorrow.

Workshop Soon to Spring to Life

It is a momentous day. I found out I have 250V power in my workshop.

As an annoying side note, I have decided to write “250V” from now on. It seems like no one can settle on 220V, 230V, 240V, or 250V. It causes problems when you search for things online. Well, guess what? Manufacturers put “250V” on their products, and from now on, that’s good enough for me. It’s also accurate. The voltage here is about 250, and it was also 250 in Miami. I’m also going to say “125V” instead of “110V” or “115V”.

Anyway, I got an electrician to check the workshop out a long time ago, and it looks like he was really inept. He said I had 50 amps of 125V (HA!) service out there, and that was all. I never checked to see. He did some other things that were not bright.

He said that because he couldn’t see where the power for the workshop left the house, he was going to have to dig a new trench for new lines. That would have cost thousands, for some reason he didn’t explain. I don’t understand why it costs more than $200 to dig a short slit. Here’s the thing; no matter where you live, you can call 811, and someone will come out and locate your underground power lines…free of charge. You can look it up online. How could this guy not know that?

I’m assuming he didn’t know it. Maybe he did, and he was just a crook.

This free service is provided in order to prevent unskilled people from ripping out power, gas, and water lines while planting trees or whatever.

He also failed to give me the estimates I needed. I told him I had two jobs, and I wanted two estimates. He combined them. I told him I needed him to break the estimate into two parts. He said he would get right on it, and then he disappeared. He was looking at work worth something like $6000, and he just let it go.

Maybe he was dishonest, and he realized he was taking a risk by trying to fool me. I asked a lot of questions. Maybe that scared him.

Anyway, today I checked the workshop electrical panel and found out I have 50 amps of 250V service. It’s not much, but you can do a lot with it. I can run all three of my welders, my band saw, my drill press, and my big table saw. The only thing that probably won’t work is my plasma cutter. Actually, it probably would work on 90% of the jobs I would throw at it. Most jobs would involve thin metal, and the thinner the metal, the less power you need.

While my dad was declining and dying, I really crawled into a hole. I let things back up. I didn’t do things I should have done. I should never have let the power problem go.

Now I have a plan. I’m going to get some #8 wire, some conduit, three or four receptacles, a junction box, and a box for a 20-amp breaker, and I’m going to wire up the workshop. This will give me back everything except the big machine tools and the big compressor. I’ll install two 50-amp receptacles, and I’ll have a 20-amp breaker that goes to two 20-amp receptacles.

I don’t think I really need a separate breaker for the smaller receptacles. The theory is that if something goes wrong, the 50-amp circuit could send 50 amps through a 20-amp cord without one, but we all have 20-amp circuits connected to multiple items that have cords that are only safe for 13 amps. You have things like that in your house right now, and the fire chief isn’t pounding on your door, waiting to give you a citation.

I don’t know. I may put the breaker in just to feel smug.

I’ll probably pay less than $250 for materials, and once I get started, it will take a day or less.

I could also put a couple of lines in my garage, for my mill and lathe. There is room on the main panel.

I’ve really missed the drill press, the table saw, the band saw, and welding with 250V input.

The belt grinder! I just realized I’ll be able to use the 3HP belt grinder! That thing is MURDEROUS. It will do things to metal you would not believe.

I think I should also go ahead and get an anvil. The mashed grill for my John Deere garden tractor will cost almost $800 to replace, which is ridiculous. The tractor doesn’t even need a grill. It does nothing to filter out dirt. Stuff goes right through and gets trapped on an internal screen. I can beat the old grill back into pretty good shape, but without an anvil, it would be pretty unpleasant work. This gives me a great rationalization I can use: I’m spending $600 instead of $800. I’m actually SAVING money.

Yeah. Saving.

That grill is going to sit around the shop and make me crazy until I do something with it.

I feel like I’m about to come back to life again. The only thing that would be better than 250V juice would be a garage air conditioner.

It could happen.

No More Balancing Wrenches on the Tractor Hood

I am rapidly becoming Harbor Freight’s best customer.

Harbor Freight used to be a place where people bought junk tools and nothing else. If you really needed a chipping hammer, but you only needed it for a few jobs, or you just didn’t have the money to get a good one, you went to Harbor Freight, bought the tool, and accepted the fact that it probably wouldn’t be working two years later. You might have ended up paying 25% of the cost of a Bosch or Makita, and you knew you weren’t going to get longevity or a serious warranty.

It’s a different story now. Harbor Freight keeps adding new lines of tools, and some are as good as the big boys. They won’t save you 75%, but they might save you 33%, and that’s still very good. You can still buy the really cheap stuff, too.

Yesterday I bought my first US General product. This line has been around for years. Maybe it inspired Harbor Freight to add newer quality lines like Vulcan and Hercules.

US General is one of Harbor Freight’s funnier brands. They love trying to come up with product names that sound as Caucasian as possible. “US General” is one of their clumsier efforts. “It’s made in China, so we’ll call it ‘US’ something!” No idea what the “General” is all about.

US General makes a line of tool boxes and carts, most of which are about 85% as good as Snap-On, for about 15% of the money. Really, you have to be high on something to buy Snap-On while US General exists. The products will last just as long, and they will do everything Snap-On does, just as well. If you don’t believe me, you can ask around and watch Youtube reviews.

I needed a tool cart. I finally realized this. One of the disadvantages of coming from a white collar family is that I had no one to teach me obvious things about tools, and it should have been obvious that I needed a cart.

Are you a white collar tool dunce? Let me help you. Remember all those times you carried 35 different hand tools across the garage to work on something? Remember balancing 15 different wrenches on the hood of your lawn tractor, while holding 7 screwdrivers in each pants pocket? That happened because you didn’t have a tool cart. It’s why tool carts exist. They’re not substitutes for tool chests. You need one even if you have a tool chest.

This week, I worked on my ethanol-damaged generator, and I found myself putting tools on top of paint cans and other items not designed to hold anything but dust. It was not pleasant. When I needed the impact driver, for example, I had to ask myself whether it was on the white interior latex can, the utility shelves, the Homer bucket, the side of my lift table, or the generator itself. Naturally, things rolled off of other things and had to be chased down and retrieved. This happened to my bowl float pin, and I never found it again.

My rolling tool boxes were 15 feet away, and it was not convenient to move them or the generator. I needed a cart, and it had to be small so I could move it around easily.

I checked the Harbor Freight website, and they had a couple of three-tier US General carts. The $49 one had three trays, and the top tray was designed so you could put flat things on top of it. Capacity: 450 pounds. The $69 one also had three trays, but the top tray had two annoying tubing handles sticking up from it, where they would be sure to get in the way. Capacity: $350 pounds. Guess which one I picked.

I don’t know if it’s as good as the big US General tool boxes, but it should work for my purpose.

I also got two magnetic parts dishes. You stick these things to steel surfaces and drop parts in them while you work. They will hang onto steel parts pretty well. Better than the top of a paint can.

Now I have to put my cart together. I want to keep the parts dishes in the top tray.

The obvious problem with my plan is this: if I put a liner in the tray to protect the paint, it will prevent the magnetic dishes from sticking. I don’t want the paint to get banged up more than absolutely necessary. It causes rust. My solution: truck bed coating in a spray can.

I’ll use the coating on the insides of the trays. It should be much tougher than whatever is now on the trays. I plan to use a tan coating. I don’t want black because it will make things hard to see. Tan is the lightest color I can find.

I think I’ll put my most-used tools in the cart and leave them there. They come out of the box and go back in, over and over. It’s silly to keep putting them back.

If my dad had been a mechanic, I would have had a cart a long time ago, because he would have told me to get one. I had to figure it out myself.

In other news, I know why my ultrasonic cleaner died. This may be of use to other people who own them. I inherited two cheap plastic cleaners from my mother, and I use them on small carburetors ruined by FILTHY STINKING ETHANOL. The cleaners have two compartments each, and I have been using one compartment at a time. This damages the cleaners. If you have an ultrasonic cleaner, keep it full.

I have decided to get a real ultrasonic cleaner. They’ve come way down in price. Thank you, China. I have learned some fascinating things about using them.

In the past, there were wonderful chemicals that worked wonders in ultrasonic cleaners. They would take just about anything off. Unfortunately, they caused things like birth defects and cancer, so you probably won’t want to use them. So what do you do?

Many people suggest the two most obvious things: Dawn dish soap and Simple Green.

I don’t understand the Simple Green craze. First of all, it’s not a safe chemical. Look it up. It’s the same basic thing they put in Windex, only more concentrated, and it’s not good for you. Second thing…doesn’t work. I’ve used it on a number of things, and it’s grossly overrated. I don’t understand why people keep touting it. It barely does anything, it costs a lot, and it’s faux-green.

Dawn is a wonderful product, but it’s not perfect for everything.

I saw a guy on Youtube, using Gunk carb cleaner in his ultrasonic cleaner. You buy this stuff in gallon cans. It’s very expensive. Each can comes with a little basket. You can put a carb in the basket, lower it into the can, and let it soak. Unfortunately, people say it doesn’t work all that well. They took all the cancer stuff out of it, apparently.

I’m going to pass on the most amazing ultrasonic solution information I have found to date. It comes from a Youtube channel called Steve’s Small Engine Saloon. He uses three different cleaners: Dawn, some kind of corrosive degreaser, and pure gasoline.

I can save you the trouble of watching the video. He says nothing cleans parts like gasoline. It even removes rust. And it won’t oxidize aluminum.

His other genius idea: put your solutions and parts in waterproof containers before putting them in the machine.

This is a tremendous idea. When you use the machine, garbage will fall off whatever you clean. The fluid will be contaminated. Eventually, you have to change it, and you will use a lot of fluid. Even if you just filter the fluid and reuse it, it’s a pain. Also, what if you want to use different fluids? Do you really want to empty and refill the machine several times in one day?

He fills his machine with plain old water, and then he uses peanut butter jars to hold parts and solutions. For example, you can put gasoline and a carb in a jar, throw it in the machine, and clean it. The cleaning action works right through the plastic.

I suppose you could also use a freezer bag.

I’m not going to throw out my mom’s old cleaner, but I’m going to get a real one that holds bigger things. I may use it to clean guns. Cleaning kits are not that great, and they damage gun finishes over time.

So, to recap, you need a tool cart and an ultrasonic cleaner with little plastic containers. Stop doing things wrong. Seriously.

Now I have to get to work.

One of my upcoming tasks is to change the oil in my John Deere 430 garden tractor. This machine is a nightmare to work on. I just found out I have to pull out the 300-pound deck in order to drain the oil. I am not kidding.

The deck is supposed to pop on and off like a party hat, in a couple of minutes, but in reality, removing and reinstalling it will probably take me an hour and 45 minutes. It’s badly designed, period.

John Deere is a cult, and a lot of people lose their minds when you say anything negative about the brand, but this tractor is PACKED with inept engineering. They say the 430 runs forever. Well, maybe that’s because Yanmar made the engine. It’s NORMAL for a diesel engine to last a long time, especially if it’s Japanese.

As far as I can tell, all of my problems have been caused by the junk John Deere connected to the engine. By that, I mean the tractor itself.

Imagine what it would cost me to have a dealer change the oil. First, they would charge for pick-up and delivery. Then they would charge for the deck removal and installation. Then they would charge for the oil change labor. Then they would hit me for full retail on the oil and filter. I’ll bet it would run $300, for something I can do on the Kubota in 10 minutes wearing my best suit.

People say this may be the best garden tractor ever built. That may be true, but then the others may all be garbage.

I don’t know how long it will take me to change the oil, but I’m secure in the knowledge that I won’t be scattering my tools on the driveway this time.

The Air is Full of the Tantalizing Scent of Future Competence

My John Deere garden tractor put me in a position where I needed to weld. I should have summoned my testosterone and used TIG, but I ended up doing something that brought me more short-term joy. I bought a new MIG welder from Harbor Freight. I have already mentioned it here.

I have a Lincoln PowerMIG 180C, which is a small 240V MIG welder. It’s a fine welder, but you can’t run it from a typical wall outlet. You have to use a 240 outlet or a generator. I have no 240 outlets, and ethanol gas killed my generator, so I can’t use it until my new Chinese carb arrives.

Never fix a carburetor when you can buy a new one for a few dollars on Ebay. The quality is exactly the same, and you can be back in action for as little as $11, depending on the machine.

You have to be an idiot to fix an $11 carburetor. Really.

Of course, I have tried.

I got myself a new Harbor Freight Titanium Unlimited 200 welder.

For reasons known only to Harbor Freight itself, the company decided to launch two new lines of welders at about the same time, to complement their really cheap Chicago Electric machines. The new Titanium brand is much better than Chicago Electric (“Chicago” is how Chinese manufacturers spell “Shenzhen”), but it has the same sad 90-day warranty. The new Vulcan brand is a bit better than the Titanium brand, and the warranty is one year.

People are confused by the new welder lines. It seems like Harbor Freight is trying to compete with itself. Anyway, the new welders are about as good as other serious Chinese manufacturers, and the prices are great.

Harbor Freight is now making a number of tools that compete head-on with major manufacturers. In the past, you accepted the fact that your new Harbor Freight tool was not very good and wouldn’t last long, but now you can choose various levels of quality, and some things they sell are very, very good. They’re not as cheap as the lower-level stuff, but they’re considerably cheaper than DeWalt and Bosch.

The Unlimited 200 does MIG, flux core, DC TIG, and DC stick, all for $640 (with the obligatory coupon). It comes with a TIG torch, a MIG gun, and a stick stinger, so you don’t need much stuff to get it running. The one thing it lacks is a TIG pedal, but you can live without that.

I went back and got a cart for it. Welding carts are a problem. They’re generally cheap junk or severely overpriced industrial items. The cart that came with my Lincoln (a prestige brand) was not very good, and I guarantee you, it came from China. I got rid of it and got a better cart from Eastwood. I ended up with two Eastwood carts because they sent me an extra one. That gave me sufficient cart space for the Lincoln, my AlphaTIG, and a plasma cutter, but the Titanium was on the workshop floor. I had to do something.

Harbor Freight has come out with a spectacular Vulcan cart for $90. It beats the pants off my old Lincoln cart. It holds 350 pounds. That means you can put a heavy welder and a 125 cubic foot bottle on it. It comes with a bunch of sturdy hooks for cords. It even has a little plastic toolbox for welding consumables. It doesn’t take up a lot of room, and it’s very easy to move around. I love it. I stuck the Titanium on it, along with the 80 cubic foot C25 bottle from the Lincoln.

The Eastwood carts hold more stuff than the Vulcan cart, but they’re crude and a bit clumsy. You can put two big bottles on an Eastwood cart, which is something you can’t do with the Vulcan.

I used the Titanium to weld my tractor exhaust, and then I decided to get some rods and learn to stick weld with it. My only previous stick experience was not good. I had to fix my bush hog, and the welds I got looked like someone had blown his nose, and instead of mucus, hot steel had come out.

They say that if you want to be any kind of welder, you start with stick, period. MIG is easier, and for many people, it will do everything they want. It will produce very pretty welds. But because MIG is so easy, it discourages people from learning stick and TIG. Because it’s so easy to learn, MIG can turn out to be a roadblock to your progress.

There are some very good things about stick. When you TIG, you have to have metal which is completely bare. It has to shine. You have to grind it or sand it. It’s a real pain. When you MIG, you have to have the metal fairly clean, although not nearly as clean as TIG. When you stick weld, you can–I am not kidding–weld through paint. Stick is the honey badger of welding. You got rust, grease, and three coats of latex house paint? Stick don’t care. Stick welds right through it.

Another good thing about stick is that it requires no gas bottles. Also, the welders are really cheap, because they’re just power sources. You can get a Lincoln (not Chinese) 155-amp stick welder for under $350. My feeling is that if you’re only going to learn one type of welding, it should be stick.

MIG is great, but it won’t weld through rust and paint.

People seem to look down on stick. I think they think it makes crude, ugly welds. That’s not really true. You can make nice welds with stick, and they’re structurally strong, too.

They say that if you want to be a TIG welder, stick will help prepare you. I am a terrible TIG welder. I want to be better at it. TIG can do things no other common welding process can do. You can make beautiful welds on relatively tiny objects. Try using MIG to put a trigger guard on a rifle. No way! People do it with TIG all the time.

If you’re really good, you can weld two soda cans together with TIG, and they will look great. Welders do this to show prospective employers how good they are.

Yesterday I set the Titanium up for stick, and I got out two kinds of 3/32″ rods: Vulcan (Harbor Freight) 6011 and Lincoln 7018AC. I had heard that 6011 was good for thin metal, so I figured it would be good to learn how to use it. It’s harder to weld thin metal than thick.

Man, what a mess I made. I fired up the welder with the 6011, and I couldn’t strike an arc to save my life. Youtube professors say to act like you’re striking a match, but when I did that, the rod almost always welded itself to the steel. When I finally got it going, it stopped and started no matter what I did. I got wide, hideous, low welds that looked about like the mess I made on the bush hog. The metal got red hot, even half an inch from the welds.

I never did get the 6011 to work. I tried the 7018 rods, and while they were also hard to start, they made fairly normal-looking welds. That was encouraging. There was some hope I could stick weld, if only with the limitation that I could only use 7018 rods.

I went back to 6011. More sticking. I even managed to strike an arc on my welding lamp at one point, because I yanked the rod off the metal and waved it over the table without thinking.

I got very frustrated. I had to fiddle with everything over and over, because the rods kept getting stuck. Sometimes I flipped my mask up. Eventually, I did the unthinkable. In my annoyance, I forgot to flip the mask down. I struck an arc and realized I was only protected by reading classes from Dollar Tree.

This is called “flashing yourself.” Your eyes get a big dose of UV rays, and then, if the exposure is severe enough, you spend a day or two feeling like there is sand in your eyes. It’s very unpleasant. Tears flow all the time. One of the worst things about it is that you don’t know exactly what’s going to happen until several hours after you weld.

I turned everything off, went inside, located some painkillers, and waited. Fortunately, nothing happened.

Of course, I used my supernatural tools. I prayed for healing. I commanded injury to leave me. I commanded my eyes to be healed.

I felt things moving around in me. It was very obvious. Some kind of serious battle was going on.

You can tell when demons are upset, believe me. I wish I could say there are no demons associated with me, but they still show up. With God’s help, I fought them for quite a while.

It’s too bad most Christians–the same people who worship a man who believed in demons–don’t believe in demons. They’re very real, and they are messing up your life right now. You don’t have to be an epileptic or a schizophrenic to have demons. Unfortunately, they’re for everyone.

Today I went out and tried to stick weld again, and things went a lot better. I got some advice, and I was told to increase the amperage. The 7018 rods worked so well, I can now say I can weld with them. The beads are almost as nice as MIG beads. I still can’t deal with 6011. The first rod worked fine, and after that, more flat, hot welds and stuck rods.

I’m wondering if Harbor Freight sold me a box of funny rods. One rod should be just like the next.

I found a good cheap metal supplier here, and being from Ocala, the people there could not be nicer. I should invent a project and go get some metal from them. I need to start doing fillet and lap welds with 7018.

I plan to get some new gas bottles. My argon bottle is 125 cubic feet, which is as big a bottle as I am willing to try to move. I have an 80-foot bottle of C25 on the Titanium. I want to get a 125 for the Lincoln, plus a 20-foot bottle of argon for the TIG. If I have a 20-foot bottle, I won’t be caught flatfooted when the big bottle runs out. I’ll just connect the small bottle and take the big one to be swapped. When the little one conks out, I’ll have it swapped. I’ll have to make two drives instead of one, but that’s not a big deal, and it beats shutting a project down for a day.

I might get a 20-foot C25 bottle for the Titanium. One of the great things about this welder is its weight (under 25 pounds). I can put my generator, the Titanium, and a bottle in my truck if I have to. Maybe that’s a stupid idea, though, because I can always use rods instead of MIG.

I may also keep stainless wire on the Titanium and carbon steel on the Lincoln. That would be convenient. Switching wire spools is not fun at all.

I need to get my 240 outlets installed. Guess I should call about that tomorrow.

It’s nice to be welding again. Next, I need to get the belt grinder working. After that, it’s time to get my machine tools moved up here.

Sooner or later, I’ll be up and running at full speed again. That will feel great.

Vexing Tractor Finally Under my Boot Heel

In case the Internet is wondering, my garden tractor is fixed.

The other day, the alternator belt came off, and I discovered that in order to replace it with a continuous v-belt, I would have to remove the driveshaft from the engine. I bypassed that issue by putting a linked belt on it. While working on it, I dropped a part on the mower deck, and I had to remove the deck from the tractor to retrieve it.

The deck weighs over 300 pounds, and it would be hard to remove if it weighed 50. John Deere promoted it as something a woman could remove and reattach in a few minutes while holding a gin and tonic in her left hand, but in reality, detaching it takes 20 minutes at best, and reattaching it goes more like 45. And to do these things, you have to lie on the ground and shove your hand under the tractor and wrestle with the unbelievably filthy PTO shaft.

Took the deck out, and noticed that my muffler was resting on it. It had torn free from the tractor in a bid to escape. It had a big hole in it, so there was no saving it. A replacement would have cost $256, and it probably would have broken off, too, because John Deere designed it badly.

I cobbled a new exhaust together from several parts, and I put it on the tractor using two clamps. It ran fine for a minute or two, and then it fell off. Because of the shapes of the parts I had used, I needed to weld two of the parts together. A clamp was not going to work.

My generator was recovering from an ethanol problem, and my MIG welder needs a generator to power it. I still haven’t had 240 sockets installed here. No generator, no MIG. I had a TIG/stick welder that worked on 120, but I’m really bad at TIG and stick. For a long time, I had been wanting to try a Titanium Unlimited 200 MIG/TIG/stick welder from Harbor Freight, so I decided it was time.

I hooked the new welder up and used 308L stainless wire to weld the parts together. One part was a stainless decorative exhaust tip, and the other part was a mild steel pipe I had cut out of the John Deere muffler. People told me stainless wire was best.

I set the welder too hot, so the welds were not pretty, but I got it done. The welder seems very, very nice for the price. I would recommend it to any beginner. You can use it to learn all three major welding processes. You’re supposed to start with stick and then learn MIG. They say TIG is very hard to learn if you can’t stick weld. I have found that to be the case. I still can’t really stick weld.

I put the new exhaust on the tractor and started mowing. Wonderful! Then I felt a bump, and I saw a green object coming out from under the right front tire. I had run over the tractor’s probably-expensive grill. I was afraid it would go into the blades, so I put the tractor into reverse. And ran over it again

I set the pretzely-looking grill aside and tried to restart the tractor. No joy. I figured there was a safety switch that wouldn’t let me restart it because I had had the blades engaged when I stopped the engine. No, I was mistaken. The tractor’s battery had chosen that exact moment to die on me. Incredible.

Today I put a new battery in, and the tractor ran successfully for an hour with no explosions, fires, engine seizures, reactor core meltdowns, tornadoes, or unexpected teleportations into trans-galactic wormholes.

The web says a new grill runs $750. Cost to produce: probably around $30. I think I’ll see what I can do with the old one. It would literally cost less to have it professionally restored and painted than to get a new one. It amazes me that anyone buys anything made by John Deere.

Luckily, the grill is totally unnecessary. It just makes the mower harder to work on.

If you were to ask me what I did for the last 4 days, I would probably say, “I mowed my yard.” Now that I’ve listed all the things I had to do to get the yard mowed, that answer will make more sense.

I feel like buying some metal and welding something together, for no reason at all. Maybe I’ll weld myself a new John Deere grill.

If only it were that easy.

I should get some metal and see if I can figure out how to stick weld.

Anyway, it would be nice to have a little project that went quickly and didn’t try to suck my soul out of me.

Tractor Pipe Project Nears Completion

I need to go to a car parts store and return a borrowed tool, and it’s raining, so I’m stalling. Yesterday when I picked the tool up, it was raining much harder. I parked 30 feet from the door, and I used a golf umbrella. I still got soaked. I didn’t know it was possible for it to rain that hard, and I’ve been through hurricanes.

I went to a car parts store because I needed a tool to expand an elbow on an exhaust part I bought. I am replacing my John Deere 430’s $256 muffler with some Amazon stuff I cobbled together, and the elbow would not slip onto the tractor’s exhaust pipe. They are both 1.5″ pipe. In order to fit over the exhaust pipe, the elbow has to be expanded. Some online genius suggested using a tailpipe expansion tool.

This tool is made up of a bunch of long steel pieces surrounding a screw. You insert the whole rig into your pipe, and when you turn the screw, the long pieces push outward. I learned something interesting: the Chinese make these from pot metal, not steel. If you buy the Harbor Freight version, you will be lucky if it works even once, because pot metal snaps like graham crackers. You need an American tool, or at least a good Chinese one. Car parts stores will lend tools if you leave a deposit.

The tool did not work for me. It’s supposed to work for pipes as small as 1.5″, but apparently, that number refers to the inner diameter, not the outer diameter. That’s pretty stupid, since pipes are sold by outer diameter. At least mine were! There is no way to get the tool into my Amazon elbow.

I was pretty bummed out when I saw that the tool wouldn’t go in. I would like to visit Tennessee, and I can’t go while my yard is a mess. I guess I could mow the yard with no muffler, but I want to defeat the tractor and make it eat its liver.

People said I should go to a muffler shop, because they expand pipes all the time. I did that. The lady up front said, “of course,” when I asked her about it, but the guy who ran the shop basically said “no” and waited for me to leave. They didn’t have a machine that fit the pipe, and they didn’t know of any shops here that did fabrication. My guess is that he did know, but he was just mad that I came in with a weird job. Or maybe he always looks that unhappy.

You run a muffler shop in a small town for decades, and you don’t know any of the fabrication shops in the area. Yeah. I buy that.

I decided to pray for them when I left, as well as the Haitian lady who was in front of me in line with a bag from a loaf of white bread on her head. Rain, you understand. I could tell right away she was Haitian. A Jamaican would have a nice hat or just let the rain hit her. She wouldn’t put a bread bag on her head.

When I got home, I tried to come up with other answers. I considered heating the pipe and beating it onto a brass bar, but it didn’t sound like it would work.

I needed a short piece of bent pipe made to fit on another 1.5″ pipe, and it had to have an expanded end that would take a clamp. I pondered this as I stood in my shop, near my discarded muffler, which had a short intake pipe that was bent and had an expanded end that would take a clamp.

Eventually, I saw the obvious.

I took one of my 4…or is it 3…angle grinders and cut the intake pipe off John Deere’s $256 can. I ground the burrs off of it. I cleaned it with dishwashing liquid, and then I hit it with my new old buffer, which has an 8″ wire wheel. When I was done, I had what you see in the photo.

Bosch, Bosch, Hercules…I think it’s three.

I made sure I wore a face shield while I used the wire wheel, and after I was done, I realized I had it in the up position, so basically, all it did was mess up my hair. I did squint, however. A popular Youtube tool guy refers to this as “safety squints.”

I combined it with my other parts, and it worked great. Better than the Amazon part would have. Unfortunately, my new Amazon exhaust clamp wouldn’t fit on it.

Here is what the muffler stuff looked like when I tried to put the Amazon pipe on it.

When I first tried to put all this mess together, the clamp seemed way too big. It’s one of those clamps that has a lock nut and a T-bolt. I thought the end of the bolt hung out so far it would make the clamp hard to install, so I cut it off. Now the clamp won’t go around the expanded pipe.

It’s always something.

I felt sort of bad about borrowing the tool from a store where I had no intention of buying anything. I thought their $25 fee was a rental charge, but as I said above, it turned out to be a refundable deposit. Now that I need a clamp, I have a way to reward them. I’ll go in there today and spend, possibly, over three dollars. They will be repaid handsomely for their generosity.

I prayed for the lady at that store, too. I am trying to develop the habit of interceding for random people I meet.

Someone has to do it.

If my new muffler works, I’ll be as happy as a BLM protester watching someone else’s business burn down on Christmas Eve while high on medical marijuana I smoke for stress.

How can it not work? It’s a pipe. It has to be big enough. It’s the same diameter as the 20″ of exhaust pipe that connects to it.

Still can’t believe the price of the new muffler. I can’t believe they still sell it with that design, given that they fall off all the time. It’s like they want to charge me to punish me. I’m trying to think…is there some conceivable incentive to buy anything else, ever, from John Deere? They act like the thought of selling you something is offensive to them. “Okay, we charge four times what the part is worth, plus it will break and knock other parts, also overpriced, off your tractor, so you will have to buy another one later. Cash or credit card?”

If I get a new tractor, ever, I should get a Kubota or an RK tractor. “RK” stands for “Rural King.” They went into the tractor business not long ago, and they undercut everyone else pretty badly. Their tractors are Korean TYM tractors, and they’re no worse than anyone else’s. Supposedly, they lift more than comparably sized tractors from other makers, and that’s a big deal to me, because lifting and moving stuff is a huge part of a tractor’s job. A $20,000 tractor that lifts as much as a $40,000 tractor is a tempting item.

Kubota is about like John Deere, only they can’t charge quite as much for parts. It’s still a cult, but it’s a lesser cult.

I better get on the road. I have to get the tractor running so I can see what will break next.

It’s not Good to be Angry at a Tractor

My John Deere problems continue.

I am trying not to be crabby about the unpleasantness of working on my John Deere 430. When you let yourself get crabby about every problem in life, the net result is that you are crabby a lot. Other than that, the impact is low. It doesn’t make things better in any noticeable way. It just assures that every time something bad happens, you will go into a bad mood.

Bad things are sure to happen, but bad moods are optional to a great extent, so the best thing is to try to opt out. You still have bad experiences, but at least you don’t have the additional burden of intense, prolonged annoyance.

When I was young, it really bothered me when other drivers refused to dim their headlights. They made it hard for me to see the road, and it’s also a little bit painful to be blasted with high beams. One day I realized most of the discomfort of high beams came from the fact that I stared into them. When I learned to look away from them, about 75% of the unpleasantness went away. That meant I, not other drivers, had been causing it. You have to train yourself not to focus on the things that cause you to feel bad.

While trying my best to avoid being crabby, I will tell about my latest John Deere problem.

After I installed the linked belt on my tractor’s alternator and water pump, I had to remove the mower deck. I had dropped a bolt on it. I used a magnetic tool, my hands, and a leaf blower to try to find it, but nothing worked. I didn’t want to remove the deck. I think the manual says it weighs 345 pounds, and while John Deere claims it’s a breeze to remove, the job is very unpleasant because of John Deere’s poor engineering.

I got the deck out, and once it was in full view, I noticed the tractor’s muffler, lying on top of it.

I investigated and learned a few things.

First, the muffler had a hole in it. I thought this was made by a numbskull…I mean a mechanic…who was trying to improve the muffler in some way. I now believe the cheap steel simply tore away from a mount, making a very nice rectangular hole.

Second thing…no clamp. If there ever had been a clamp on the muffler, it was long gone.

Third thing…the muffler had what looked like mounts on the side, and one had snapped off. The steel was very thick, so it had to be low-grade steel in order to do that. Another mount had a little object attached to it. I never figured out what that was, but I think it must be a fragment of a structure the muffler used to be bolted to.

I could not get the muffler back into the space from which it had fallen. Not sure what the problem was, but there was no putting it back.

Eventually, I started the tractor and drove it indoors, and I noticed that it was no louder than it had been when I bought it. I have always worn hearing protection when running the tractor above idle speed. It’s pretty loud. Because the loss of the muffler didn’t lower the noise level, I concluded that the muffler had never been attached. Not since I bought it.

I found out a new John Deere muffler, which is a can with two pipes sticking out of it, costs $256. You can get big mufflers for farm tractors for 50 bucks or less, so I kind of suspect John Deere is gouging just a little.

I also found out that the muffler is a weak point on the 430. They break and fall off a lot. If I blow $256 on a muffler and somehow manage to repair all the damaged bits that it attaches to, it may fall off a month later.

Because I’ve been running the tractor unmuffled for two years, I know I don’t really need a muffler. This engine supposedly doesn’t need back pressure in order to work right. I would like a muffler, however, because a little less noise would be nice, and it just seems less bubba-esque to have a muffler.

I found out it’s hard to come up with a new exhaust solution. No one has found an easy answer. The neatest solution I found was a car resonator. Some guy bought a foot-long resonator and attached it directly to the exhaust manifold on top of his engine. The manifold is on the right, and it points to the left, horizontally, behind the fan. He made a hole in the left side cover of the tractor and ran the resonator through it. He put a shiny tip on the end of the resonator, and it looks great.

The resonator is supported only at the end where it attaches to the manifold, but it’s so light, it isn’t going to snap anything. The guy who did the mod referred to the original muffler as a monstrosity.

I can do what he did, but I would have to cut my tractor’s side cover. I would also have to find or make an exhaust flange for the resonator. Square flanges for 1.5″ OD pipe, with 2″ bolt centers, appear to be nonexistent. I would have to weld the flange to the resonator, and I’m not a great welder. Welding thin metal is especially hard.

I came up with a new idea.

A company named Gibson makes pretty tips that go on the ends of exhaust pipes. They clamp on, so they’re easy to install. My muffler is gone, but I still have a 1.5″-OD pipe beside the engine, pointing straight down. I can put a Gibson tip on it and direct the exhaust out under the tractor. I can get a bent tip to make it go sort of sideways.

My exhaust pipe points down toward some heavy items. The pipe needs to be offset by about an inch. That’s not a problem. I bought a small stainless pipe elbow. I’ll fasten one end to the exhaust pipe and the other will go into the Gibson tip.

What about noise? I don’t care much, because I wear protection, but why not try?

I found baffles that go inside motorcycle exhausts. They’re wide at the ends and skinny in the middle. You push them into pipes skinny end first, and then you use screws to fasten the fat ends to the pipes.

I ordered a short baffle. I can’t fasten it to the end of a bent tip, but I can drop the entire thing into the tip from the tip’s upper end. I don’t have to fasten it to anything because the bend in the tip’s end makes it impossible for the baffle to fall out.

For less than $60, I should have an exhaust which directs gases away from the inside of the tractor and could conceivably make it possible to use the tractor without ear protection.

I just don’t know. Maybe it’s better to spend $256 plus shipping and spend hours fighting with a new muffler, only to have it snap off a month later. I mean, this is a John Deere! Modifying a John Deere with infidel parts is an outrage!

I think it will be fine. In fact, it would be fine if I did nothing at all to it.

The OEM muffler is a spark-arresting design. I had to read up on that. Diesels throw off a certain amount of hot material, and it can cause fires. Hmm…I live in a place where it rains a lot, and I’ve been using my non-spark-arresting tractor for two years without any problems. I think I can forget about sparks. If I sell it to someone who lives in Arizona, I’ll warn him.

They make spark-arresting screens for exhausts. I would have to figure out how to adapt one to my shopmade “muffler.” I’m not doing it today. Ain’t nobody got time for that.

My garden tractor problems have me thinking about a new machine. I can afford it. I know I don’t want John Deere. Other people say they’re hard to work on, and my own experience has been bad, so I am willing to take a chance on something else. Kubota makes garden tractors. They also make subcompact tractors which will mow. My understanding is that the subcompacts are so much better, you should buy one instead of a garden tractor if you can.

I could go for a zero turn (a phrase which makes no sense). They mow better, but having a second tractor is a great thing.

I talked diesel with my buddy Mike today, and he gave me a great idea. If I move to Tennessee, I should sell my Kubota tractor to someone here. I want a bigger tractor, so why pay a lot of money to ship this one and then sell it? I could sell the Kubota and John Deere down here and buy something else up north. Clean start. The Kubota has been fantastic, unlike the John Deere, but there are things you can’t do well with 37 horsepower.

Of course, I could put a finish mower on the Kubota and use it on my lawn. It would be clumsy, though, and I would need to follow up with something smaller.

I’m very happy with my muffler scheme. I don’t like dealing with John Deere at all, and the thought of paying $256 for a can really bothered me, especially when I considered the likelihood that it would fall apart quickly.

I think John Deere is like Snap-On and Mac. You get people addicted to a mythology, and then you can charge them whatever you want. I don’t have to have machines that are all one color in order to feel good about myself. That’s a sign of mental illness, not good judgment.

I’m not the Only One who Deserves a Belt

It seems like every time I try to do a two-hour job on the farm, it turns into a ten-hour job.

This time it was the garden tractor. I wanted to mow the yard. I was putting along on the old John Deere 430 when the temperature light came on. Steam came out of the overflow hose. I stopped and Googled.

I read that you have to clean grass out of the radiator frequently. This was news to me. I cleaned the radiator as well as I could, added coolant, and took off. The tractor heated up again, and the battery light came on.

I started reading about all the things that could be screwed up. The thermostat. The head gasket. The water pump. Thermostats are cheap, but the other items are not, and replacing them would be hard.

My solution was to post questions on forums. I figured other people had run into the same problem. The answers I got were not useful.

Today I took the thermostat out. I assumed that if it had failed in the shut position, it would explain the heat problem. Running the tractor without a thermostat in August in Ocala wouldn’t be a terrible thing, because the tractor was going to warm up no matter what.

God bless the guy who installed the thermostat. Of course, he torqued the bolts down about four times as hard as necessary. Manufacturers and dealers do that a lot. I think the purpose is to destroy fasteners and make products impossible to work on. It forces you to take your machine to a mechanic, and they hope you’ll use a dealership. Of course, dealerships of all types are notoriously overpriced and dishonest.

I had to use a breaker bar to remove the thermostat. A strong impact driver wouldn’t budge it.

I took the mower out again, and it heated up. Frustrating.

Finally, it occurred to me that I needed to make sure I had checked all the belts. Cars (maybe I’m dating myself here) have belts in the front. I didn’t look at the rear of the tractor’s engine. When I checked, sure enough, there was a bare pulley. The belt driving the water pump and alternator had shredded.

Great news, right? I mean, assuming it didn’t shred because the pump or alternator quit turning. You just pop a new belt in there and go.

Guess what a John Deere belt costs. Guess. Here’s a hint. The same belt from Tractor Supply costs 9 bucks.

Wrong. The John Deere version costs $24, and that’s the cheapo Ebay price. Maybe you can get a better price from your local dealer, but I am trying to avoid all contact with mine, for obvious reasons. “You used a ninety-cent Tractor Supply clevis pin on your mower deck? My boy, you’re playing with fire. You need a set of gold-plated John Deere pins, for the low, low price of three hundred dollars!”

I bought two belts in sizes that were likely to fit, and I sat down to work. I got ready to slip the belt in behind the three pulleys on the rear of the engine. Water pump pulley…no problem. Alternator pulley…no problem. Crankshaft pulley…wait…what?

Yes, the pulley went around the crankshaft, and there was no way to install the belt without removing the shaft from the engine. This meant removing the tractor’s entire upper pan, dropping the deck, taking the bolts out of the pulley (surely installed by the same guy who tried to weld the bolts to the water pump housing), and basically killing maybe 8 hours.

A belt, you understand. I have installed belts in 10 minutes.

I should also add that the alternator bolts were just as hard to move as the water pump bolts. You really need 300 foot-pounds of torque to hold a tiny bracket that secures an alternator.

I Googled some more, and I saw that someone out there had used a linked belt. This is a belt made from links that can be added and removed. You can make it as long or as short as you want. One of the big pluses is that if you can’t install a continuous belt because of obstacles, a linked belt can be threaded in without problems.

Guess who had a linked belt on his drill press until about an hour ago?

A long time ago, I put a linked belt on the drill press because the old belt had a flat place in it. It went “whump whump whump” all the time. The linked belt didn’t do that, but it was stiffer and generally not as smooth as a normal belt. I have been planning to take it off for quite a while. Today turned out to be the day.

About half an hour after I sat down to work, I had a running mower. The alternator and water pump turned. I didn’t see any problems. Maybe it’s fixed.

I have the operator and service manuals for the John Deere 430. I should be able to handle anything, right? Well…guess what they say about changing the belt? Here are the instructions: “remove fan/alternator belt.”

I’m not kidding. And here’s the weird part: the fan is on the other end of the motor. The alternator belt isn’t connected to it.

John Deere, like Apple, is a religion. That’s why John Deere is able to charge people so much for parts. Reason doesn’t factor into it. Whenever you use anything not made by John Deere, someone will fuss. I saw some codger on the web warning that using non-John-Deere belts would cause a catastrophe. He didn’t say why, of course, because he had no basis for his warning. It was just doctrine.

People are using linked belts on all sorts of expensive industrial machines all over the world. Maybe they need to switch to John Deere before it’s too late.

Here’s the funny thing: John Deere doesn’t make John Deere stuff. I’m sure they make some of it, but they didn’t make your tractor, unless you bought a huge one. America stopped producing tractors below 100 horsepower decades ago. If you worship at the John Deere altar, you’re really worshiping Yanmar or some other foreign company (which probably doesn’t overcharge for parts).

I hope this belt works out. I see no reason why it shouldn’t, except that it may be a little too fat. The original belt is 1/2″ thick, and I used a 1/2″ linked belt. Maybe I should eventually try a thinner one. We’ll see. I mean, if the pulleys turn, it’s working, right?

What’s the worst-case scenario? Maybe the belt will come off. Oh, boy. Then I’d have to spend half an hour putting a smaller one on. Yeah, that would learn me.

I hate bad engineering. I really hate it. End users are people. It’s not right to put these little time bombs in the products we pay for.

I better try to mow the yard before it gets dark. Here goes nothing.

I haven’t had problems like this with the Kubota. I am going to ask around if John Deere products are generally a pain to work on and buy parts for. I can’t see myself buying another one after this.

Assisted-Living Facility Responds to Government’s Boot in Rear, not Conscience

I finally found out why the assisted living facility which cheated my dad finally came around and tried to make it right.

Background: I sent my dad to a facility for four days. I paid in advance. I started getting bills. They told me it was a computer error and that I should ignore the bills. Then they turned a collection agency loose on me, and the agency, in addition to making huge errors and lying a fair amount, demanded $900 in additional fees. It turned out the problem arose because the facility lost my check, but they and the collection agency did not see that as good reason to refrain from taking $900 from my late father’s estate.

The other day, the business office coordinator for the facility called me and apologized repeatedly. This is the same lady who refused to return my calls for weeks. She told me they would accept a check for the original cost of the stay, minus two stop fees I had to pay on checks they and the collection people lost. She even sent me an email admitting fault and saying they would accept the original charge minus the stop fees.

That email put an end to their hopes of cheating me. She admitted fault and accepted my terms, in writing. I have a new email in which she admitted receiving my final check, so the contract they have made with me is complete. Only a lunatic would take me to arbitration now.

Today everything became clear to me. I think I know why she called. I just received a letter from the Department of Agriculture. I turned the facility in after they tried to cheat me, and it looks like the department followed up. The letter I received today contained a copy of an email from the business office coordinator to the department, saying she would work with me to fix the problem.

It seems clear from the dates of the email and her call to me that she was responding to pressure from the department.

People amaze me. Before I filed my complaint, this woman wouldn’t even take my calls. After she relented and called me, she didn’t mention the complaint. What are the odds that she decided to contact me simply because it was the right thing to do? Slim.

I had considered the possibility that she was simply an honest person who wanted to right a wrong, but it sure doesn’t look that way now.

How do you live with yourself, if you provide assisted living for old people and disabled people and you try to cheat them? How can anyone even consider going into that kind of work?

I’m trying to come up with a benign explanation for what was done to me, but I can’t. I called this woman repeatedly and gave her over a week to get back in touch with me, and she didn’t make any effort until about the time she was corresponding with the department. I can’t see how a decent person would let a call about a billing dispute go unanswered for days, especially since I left detailed information in voicemails.

Do they treat other people this way? Are there weak old people out there with liens on their homes because the facility routinely cheats customers? I hope not. I want to think there’s an explanation I don’t know about.

When I think about disappointing people, I think about Rich Wilkerson, the pastor of Trinity Church in Miami. In my mind, he has become the face of human crookedness. Seems like every time I talk to former members of his church, they have another startling story about his disgraceful behavior.

I’m not a good person, but there are many bad things I can’t imagine doing. Because I’m not capable of doing the things the Wilkersons do, it’s very hard for me to fully absorb the realization of their utter lack of class. I’m always tempted to think, “They can’t really be that bad.” Then someone comes and tells me a new story.

I’ve started praying for God to destroy their ministry and raise up someone better. Some people can’t be fixed because they refuse.

In other news, I soldered my first pipe today. It was quite an adventure. I had a leaking hose bibb outside my workshop. I had fixed the leak in the past by tightening a nut that apparently squeezes the internal washer tighter to make up for wear, but it wasn’t working any more. No problem! I’m a tool guy, right? I would just replace the washer.

To replace a washer in a hose bibb (corruption of “bibcock,” if you’re wondering), you pull out the bibb stem, remove the washer, screw a new one onto the stem, and put the bibb back together. It should take two minutes (literally).

I loosened the nut around the bibb stem, but the stem refused to come out of the bibb body. There was a plate attached to the body, and it had to come out. I tried to turn the plate, but it was seized.

This is a great example of poor execution nullifying a clever design. If the bibb had been installed by a responsible person, there would have been something between the brass bibb and brass plate to prevent them from galling together and seizing. This is obvious to anyone who knows anything about tools. By putting the parts directly against each other, you create an assembly which might as well be welded.

I decided to remove the bibb. I had never used a torch on plumbing before, but I figured I should be a man and get it done.

I got the bibb off, and I mounted it in a vise. Then I put a wrench on the plate that held the stem in the bibb. It was not coming out. No way. In retrospect, it might have been possible to get an impact wrench on it with some difficulty, but it seemed to make more sense to go get a new bibb.

I made the mistake of buying the $3.99 blister pack of flux and solder instead of the tub of flux and spool of solder I really wanted. I tried to be frugal and responsible. I also made the error of buying lead-free solder, which is hard to work with and totally unnecessary in a hose bibb.

When I started trying to attach the new bibb, I had a problem. Water would not stop dripping from the pipe. The pump was turned off. Other faucets were open. Still, the water kept coming out. You can’t solder wet pipes. At least I don’t think you can. The water draws too much heat out of the metal.

I had to drain my pump’s pressure tank. That finally did it. By the time I got around to this, I had soldered the joint badly once, and I had taken it apart and fluxed it again. I had fiddled with it so much and lost so much flux, I was worried that if I blew it again, I’d be calling a plumber at 5 p.m.

I finally got the bibb installed. The solder looks bad. I cleaned the metal until it gleamed, and I fluxed it heavily, but I didn’t get the nice solder flow the Youtube guys get. I assume that’s because lead-free solder is so awful. I was amazed when the joint held pressure.

Before I installed the bibb, I took it apart and put pipe dope on the threads. Now when the washer fails, I have some chance of changing it successfully. I guess this makes me a genius, because it seems like no one else does it. Where is my Nobel Prize? I certainly deserve one more than Barack Obama, who, before receiving his, had done…let’s see…literally nothing.

Personally, I wonder if the fuss about lead solder in pipes is realistic. Before I really knew anything about lead, I used to chew lead split shots while fishing because I liked the taste. I must have had internal lead levels which would have made history, but I never had any lead poisoning symptoms.

A 1/2″ pipe joint contains how much solder? Half a gram? How much of that is lead? A quarter of a gram? How much is exposed to water? Maybe 5% of that quarter of a gram? Seems to me that a joint would have to be a monstrosity in order to expose more lead than that. Nonetheless, lead solder in plumbing is forbidden now.

A split shot weighs at least a gram, and it’s pure lead. And I chewed on them.

If my other hose bibbs have problems, I’m using lead solder. If you come to my house and you’re a snowflake, do not make patchouli tea with water from the hose.

I can’t believe I had to remove a perfectly good bibb instead of changing a 5-cent washer.

Now you know how my day has gone. I accomplished nearly nothing, due to someone else’s irresponsibility. The best way to redeem the evening is to grill a steak.

Off I go.