To Dust You Shall Return

I have been under considerable stress this week, but yesterday something happened which brought me some distraction and peace. My new blackboard arrived.

I have had a problem with responsibilities slipping through the cracks. I am naturally absent-minded. I use Google Calendar to keep track of a ton of things, but the problem with Google Calendar is that it beeps and then goes away. If it beeps while I’m doing something even slightly interesting, I dismiss the alert and forget about it until I hear another beep. When I do this, I don’t realize I’ve done it. I don’t think I can change. It’s part of my nature.

It occurred to me that a blackboard would help. A blackboard will not shut up or disappear. It sits there, glaring at you, politely but firmly, until you do whatever it’s telling you to do. When you finally get it done, you don’t have to push a lot of annoying buttons on a screen. One swipe of the eraser, and it’s gone.

I also wanted a blackboard because…I wanted a blackboard.

I am a former physics instructor. As a grad student, I taught pre-meds and engineers using big dusty blackboards. Which may actually have been green. But still. I grew to like blackboards a great deal. You write whatever you want on them and as soon as you’re done with it, you make it go away. You don’t have to crumple up paper and throw it out. Another plus: no reading glasses.

I have been fooling with STEM stuff for a while, trying to dredge up, and add to, ancient memories of my forgotten studies. I’ve been learning engineering statics and strength of materials. This week, I received a new (ish) copy of a beloved math text: Redheffer’s Differential Equations. My old copy was eaten by ants many years ago. I read a little today, and I plan to keep poking around in it in the future.

I have been using a clipboard and pencils to do problems. This is not a bad way to go about it, but you get tired of throwing out sheet after sheet of paper, and I don’t enjoy all the tedious pencil erasing. I just bought a bunch of kneaded rubber erasers to make life easier, but no matter how you pretty it up, a clipboard isn’t a blackboard.

Another nice thing about a blackboard: it reminds you of your accomplishments. If you do a STEM task in chalk with some degree of intelligence, and you walk away, you will still see it smiling at you from the wall hours later while you’re watching cats or whatever on Youtube.

I thought I was going overboard when I sprang for a 4-foot blackboard, but now that I’ve used it, I wish I had gotten a bigger one. I like it as much as I thought I would, which is saying a lot, and I can see that a bigger one would be even better.

I may buy a second board and put it on the wall by the first one.

Some people like whiteboards. I prefer chalk. Markers go dry when you need them, and anyway, they’re just not as pleasant to use. Besides, chalk is much classier. It’s ancient. It’s a bona fide artistic medium. Michelangelo could walk into my den, pick up the chalk, and get straight to work. He used chalk all the time, so he would know how to make it do what he wanted. Markers? Forget it.

I’ve never understood the whiteboard concept. My first whiteboard class was ninth-grade biology. On my first day at Miami’s best prep school, I walked into the classroom in the hugely expensive, nearly new Math/Physics building, and I saw greasy-looking plastic boards in front of me. They were still considered unusual back then. We talked about them while we waited for class to start. I thought they were interesting, but I never came to like them. I didn’t understand their purpose, and I still don’t.

What is it that whiteboards do better than blackboards? Is chalk dust the problem? It never bothered me. Classrooms with chalkboards aren’t dusty unless the people in charge of mopping drop the ball. Maybe there is some sort of phobia of chalk-induced disease. Chalkitis. Suppurating Chalkosis of the Golgi apparatus.

I’ll look it up.

If the Internet is any guide, there is no reason for whiteboards to exist. I guess it’s one of those things man chose to create simply because he could and he thought it was nifty.

I’ll bet leftists like whiteboards better than chalkboards. They like changing things that don’t need to be changed. “Ban chalk! Stop whitewashing knowledge! Save the chalk deposits!”

Once I got my board screwed to the wall, I got out my chalk, wrote down some things I needed to remember, and did a quick physics problem using the Lagrangian. I chose something really simple, as a nod to my cankered, vestigial skills. I figured out the formula for the force on a pendulum bob, as a function of the angle. I really enjoyed it.

To be strictly accurate, I derived the acceleration, not the force. Sue me.

Hope I didn’t get anything wrong. The result is correct. Twenty years ago, doing this problem would have been like breathing.

I screwed it up the first time around. Skipped a step and ended up with the wrong formula for the height of the pendulum. I didn’t notice at first, because the error mostly fell out when I took the time derivative, and the final result was correct except for a sign error.

After I was done, I wondered how to get to the result everyone in physics is familiar with: the formula for the period of a pendulum. I looked it up, and I found that you have to use the expansion for the sine of an angle and settle for a first-order approximation. Otherwise, the differential equation is too hard. Wikipedia refers to the expansion as the Maclaurin series. I know the sine series by heart, and don’t recall thinking of it that way, but I suppose it must be true. I remember that a Maclaurin series is the special case of a Taylor series, centered at zero, and you can use complex variables and a contour integral to derive the general Taylor series formula. I think.

Man, I used to know some stuff. All I get now when I concentrate are bits and pieces.

I think I’ll need that second board. Might as well double down. I hope this thing is durable. I would hate to buy two boards that didn’t last.

I don’t know if blackboard paint works. If I trusted it, I could buy a 4 by 8 sheet of hardboard and paint it.

My new board has a steel back, so it accepts magnets. Not sure that will be useful, but it’s nice to know.

I hope this board will help me hold it together. I have no help whatsoever, and organization is not my thing.

Letting Chemistry do the Work

Today I worked on the big oak that fell over in the large pasture to the north of my house. I have had over a year to cut it up, but I made it my lowest priority because it enhanced the property’s privacy. For most of the year, it had leaves on it, and even though it was on its side, it provided a screen that was maybe 20 feet high. Hard to give that up.

I stuck a chainsaw and some other stuff in the tractor ballast box, and off I went.

Actually, that’s not true. First, I tried unsuccessfully to start my big chainsaw. I opened it up and looked at the carb. I did all sorts of things. No joy. I thought I was protecting it from leftist-mandated, CO2-generating, vehicle-destroying ethanol, but maybe I failed. Ethanol will freeze up any engine if you don’t drain the gas during long periods of inactivity. I know of three ways to get around this. First, buy real gas with no ethanol in it. Second, drain the gas whenever you stop using an engine. Third, put a product called Sta-Bil in your gas. It will buy you two years. I have a special gas can for my saws, and I always put Sta-Bil in it.

I had to give up on the 20″ saw and fall back (not literally) on the 16″ job. Frustrating. I looked up ways to de-crud carburetors, and I found an interesting method: dishwashing liquid and water, in an ultrasonic cleaner. I just happen to have two ultrasonic cleaners that belonged to my mother. I think she used them for jewelry. This gives me a strategy.

Gas was making it to the cylinder, but I don’t think it was enough.

Anyway, after I gave up trying to start the big saw, I got to work on the tree.

The first thing I tried was to lift a bunch of branches I cut recently. I learned something new. When you lift something with a tractor’s front end loader, you can turn the tractor over very quickly.

I tried to lift the branches, and the load was mostly on the right side of the tractor. As the hydraulics extended, the right side of the tractor leaned toward the ground. It was disturbing.

I never use the tractor’s seat belt, because I have an irrational fear that it will make an accident worse, not better. I have to get over that. I know the roll bar won’t fold up, but it looks so flimsy.

We are having record heat here, just as I was getting excited about cool weather. The temperature in the nearest town is 93 degrees right now. That would be a little high for August. Last year on this date, the high was 77. Tomorrow the weather is supposed to go back to normal. Not sure why I felt like I had to pick today to work in the sun.

I also wanted to work on a stump so I could prepare it for an application of stump remover, but I ran out of steam. I’ve been applying potassium nitrate (saltpeter) to stumps since August. It’s an amazing product. You drill holes in the stumps, pour in a fairly small amount of saltpeter, add water, and walk away. A few weeks later, you will find that your stump is mushy and rotten. If you put 8 or 10 holes in a stump 2 feet wide, you will find that a lot of the stump AND the roots are so mushy you can cut them up with a maul.

I have tried burning stumps with charcoal, and it will work, but it takes a long time and a lot of charcoal.

I don’t know why it works. I can’t understand how a chemical in a hole an inch wide can rot wood a foot away, but it does.

There is a problem with saltpeter, however. It used to be dirt cheap, and you could buy it anywhere, but now it’s scarce. The best price I’ve found is 8 bucks per pound, at Tractor Supply. Why is it scarce? I’m not sure, but I think it has to do with Islam, the religion of terrorism.

Saltpeter is an ingredient in gunpowder, and it appears that it has been used in other explosives for the purpose of killing the innocent. You can look around and read about a failed terrorist bomb made from saltpeter and one other ingredient.

I don’t know if terrorism is the reason why it’s so expensive for me to dissolve stumps, but it sure seems likely. What other reason could there be for the sudden scarcity of a very familiar product Americans bought in bulk for centuries?

It’s like the disappearance of Postal Service mailboxes. Remember those? We had them before 911, and then they started disappearing. A mailbox is an easy place to deposit a bomb. Not sure it’s any easier than dropping it in a post office lobby, where it will kill more people, but I suppose it’s harder to do that without being identified.

I have not been able to find any references to terrorism’s connection to the disappearance of mailboxes, but it seems obvious, and the government’s own explanation–cost cutting–seems stupid. It doesn’t cost any more to grab mail from a box than it does to take it out of a bin in a post office. Whatever. Thank you, Mohammed, for one more inconvenience.

Timothy McVeigh, one of the left’s hens’-teeth-rare white, non-Muslim terror celebrities, used ammonium nitrate, a popular fertilizer, to blow up the federal building in Oklahoma City. Now it’s hard to get ammonium nitrate. You have to fill out paperwork, apparently.

It’s a wonder we still have access to anything that blows up.

Before I realized someone had choked off the saltpeter supply, I looked all over the web, figuring someone had to be selling big sacks of it. I thought I found a source on Amazon. Someone was selling 5-pound bags of saltpeter for about $20, so I ordered one. Better than paying 50 cents an ounce. Today I found out what I actually ordered is “Chile saltpeter,” or sodium nitrate. People say it’s chemically similar to potassium nitrate, so I’m going to try it anyway. It can’t hurt anything, and it may do the job.

I have read that a lot of other chemicals will soften stumps. Epsom salt and the unobtainable ammonium nitrate have been mentioned. I would not be surprised if sodium nitrate worked and saved me some money.

I had to buy a 1″ wood auger in order to make deep holes in stumps. I also sprang for a decent lithium drill. I can’t believe the amazing cordless drills they make these days. I bought a Makita, and I made sure I checked the torque and ordered a good one. Makita makes like 400 different drills; not sure why. They could cover all the bases with a dozen.

My experience with the drill was startling. Live oaks are extremely hard, so I thought drilling holes in them would be a terrible job. I was mistaken. The auger went through oak like it was cheese. I can’t understand it.

While I was drilling more holes this week, I realized it was so easy, I could get rid of small oaks simply by hollowing them out with the drill.

Now that I know how easy it is to get rid of stumps, I wonder why most people leave stumps in the ground and walk and mow around them.

I have stumps that are sprouting suckers. I hate that. Live oaks refuse to die gracefully. I figure stump remover will put a stop to it. If the wood is falling apart, it can’t be expected to remain alive.

I spent a lot of time Googling stump-removing chemicals this week, and I ordered sodium nitrate, so I’m sure I’m on all sorts of government lists now, as if I hadn’t made them already by joining gun forums, buying ammunition online, and writing blogs critical of Obama and Islam. I know the DoD has me on a hate list; I’ve seen the block page. Nice. Thanks, guys. I wonder if Farrakhan’s website–an actual hate site–is on the list.

I hope the government isn’t wasting much energy on me, because they have limited resources, and there is absolutely no possibility that I will try to blow anyone up.

Of course, that’s exactly what I would say if I were a terrorist.

There is no way to win.

I should have waited until tomorrow to work on trees, but I wanted to get outside. Maybe tonight I can get the big saw’s carb fixed up, and later this week I can wreak some real havoc.

It was hard to be effective today. Work a little, overheat, gasp for air, stop, rest, work a little more, and so on. I was wearing steel-toed boots and jeans with a lot of heavy stuff in the pockets, and I was wrestling branches and holding a saw. The sun was fierce, and the breeze was nonexistent. Overheating took place quickly, and when you’re too hot, you feel physically weak. Your body stops supplying power in order to force you to rest.

I left my chainsaw and pole saw out in the pasture. Time to get back up and retrieve them.

I should have this huge tree cleared away by the end of the month, or, alternatively, I may be dead. I am hoping the tree loses.

That’s all the excitement for today. Be careful what you Google, or you may end up bunking with me in Leavenworth.

Time to Pay the Piper, Little Buddies

Today I had some fun with a new project. I added a spray boom to the utility cart.

You may wonder what a spray boom is.

When I moved to this farm, the seller left me a 25-gallon spot sprayer. This is a contraption with a polyethylene tank and a wand you hold in your hand. You hook it to a cart battery and drive around, shooting various types of poison at plants and bugs.

Last week I started using the spot sprayer, and I saw that it was good. I found a huge jug of concentrated glyphosate in the workshop, and I obliterated a huge number of troublesome weeds. So much better than paying $18 for a tiny jug of Roundup with a wimpy squirt pistol.

Unfortunately, it was a pain to use. I had to steer the cart with one hand and spray with the other, and I could only cover a three-foot swath. I would like to spray my pastures, and there is no way I’m doing it three feet at a time.

I looked into the matter, and I learned about spray booms. A boom is a rigid beam or pole. A spray boom has nozzles attached to it. You attach it to a vehicle, and it will spray a nice, consistent swath. You don’t have to hold anything in your hand.

I also looked into boomless sprayers. A boomless sprayer doesn’t have a rigid support member. It only has one nozzle, and the nozzle sprays out to the sides. With the right pump and nozzle, you can spray a swath 25 feet wide.

A boomless sprayer is better for most people. It’s less cumbersome, it’s cheaper, and it will do most of what a boom sprayer will do. It’s not as good for hitting plants that are behind other plants, however.

I was going to order myself a boomless sprayer, but I decided to hit Rural King today, to see what they had. They stock a two-nozzle boom that will attach to “most” spot sprayers. It was only $49. I didn’t know what to do, so I prayed. I felt like the boom sprayer was the right choice, even though I wanted the other one, which cost over twice as much.

I got the thing home, and I found out it only fits “most” spot sprayers if you do some work on it. It had a strange “return” nipple on it, to return unused stuff to the tank. My sprayer doesn’t do that. It just pushes stuff out. Nothing goes back. I had to find a way to stop up the return nipple. My machine tools are still in Miami, so I couldn’t make a threaded plug.

I decided to plug it from the inside with an old foam earplug. There was no way the pump would be able to push it out, and it would seal the nipple nicely. It worked perfectly.

Of course, the one-size-fits-all struts that came with the boom would not attach to my sprayer or cart. I ended up taking the tailgate off and using Irwin clamps to attach the boom to the rear of the dump bed. It turned out this was an ideal solution. Instead of a bulky sprayer with steel struts on it, I only have to deal with a small boom and two clamps. Excellent. When I prayed for guidance, I felt like the boom was a bad idea, but it worked out great.

I didn’t know what kind of fertilizer to use on my grass. The whole point of buying a boom was to avoid using hobby-grade products that come in tiny packages. I assumed that Rural King would have some kind of soluble fertilizer in big bags, for tractor-pulled sprayers. Unfortunately, they only had one product: ammonium sulfate. Fifty-one pounds for 11 dollars. It’s sort of like ammonium nitrate, only cheaper.

For 11 bucks, I was willing to take a chance. It was way cheaper than things like Scott’s Turf Builder, and because it was soluble, it worked in a sprayer. I wouldn’t have to push a spreader like a peasant.

I mixed 10 or 15 pounds of ammonium sulfate with 25 gallons of water, and I added some 2,4 D just for fun. Off I went. It worked great. Now I have to see how it affects the grass. I hope the yard doesn’t die.

It would take a long time to spray my 13-acre pasture this way, but it could be done, and it would be better than paying someone else $75 per hour or whatever. I would like to get rid of the weeds that are taking over. If I could do that, I might have an easier time getting someone to mow my land for the hay, and besides, it’s not a good idea to let weeds eat a pasture.

I sprayed a little bit of my small pasture, just to see how well the chemicals worked.

I may upgrade my pump and try a boomless sprayer for the pasture. I think the boom sprayer is better for the yard, because it won’t hit shrubs accidentally, but when it comes to larger areas, it’s clearly better to spray 25 feet at a time instead of 6.

I couldn’t find insecticide for the sprayer. That’s not totally true; they had malathion. I want some something better. Maybe I can buy several jugs of concentrated imidacloprid. The yard needs something powerful.

Hmm…Ebay has super-concentrated imidacloprid, cheap. It’s considered safe, and it does a great job on bugs, even underground. SOLD.

We had a lot of problems with moles and/or gophers last year. Today I read that the way to get rid of them is to kill the grubs they eat. Wish I had known that last fall. I’m going to blast the whole area around the house with imidacloprid. I should also soak the bases of the oaks near the house, to kill the bugs that make them fall over.

I really want to get the lawn and grounds under control. I was afraid of spending money last year, and I was busy coping with downed oaks. I was also very ignorant. All these things contributed to the chaos the yard is now experiencing. I think the sprayer will make a big difference, provided I don’t kill everything with it while I’m learning about chemicals.

Maybe I’ll post a photo of the cart with the sprayer rigged up.

With God’s help, this farm will survive me. It just has to last long enough for me to figure out what I’m doing.

I am Short 4 Tons of Metal

It has been a year since I’ve used my machine tools. I am not happy.

I left my tools in Miami. I had enough problems without moving them. Now I have to get it done. I have sacrificed an entire year of machining.

When you have machine tools and you move, you have headaches. It’s going to cost me $4000 just for a rigger, which is a company that moves machinery. On top of that, I have to get some new wiring. My lathe runs off a machine that turns single-phase power into triple-phase, and that machine needs a 60-amp socket. My welder and plasma cutter need 60-amp sockets. My smaller 3-phase tools need 30-amp sockets. Then there are the table saw and band saw.

I’ve been putting off getting the wiring done. There are several reasons. For one thing, it’s hard to decide where to put the machines.

I have a thousand-square-foot workshop, which sounds huge, but I have two tractors I keep indoors. My garage is also large, but I keep two motorcycles in it. I don’t actually ride them, of course, they’re here.

Mixing metalworking and woodworking machines is not a great idea. They won’t damage each other, regardless of what people claim, but life is easier when you don’t have sawdust all over your metal tools. It’s nice to have a fairly neat metalworking area.

Another thing: putting woodworking tools in a garage that shares a door with your house causes problems. Sawdust will find its way into the house all the time. Metalworking tools create chips which stick to shoes and make it indoors, but at least chips aren’t dusty, and they’re a lot easier to sweep up than sawdust.

Today I made a plan. It’s official. It’s carved in stone. I think. I’m going to keep all the wood stuff in the workshop, and I’m going to put the metal machines in the garage. I’ll put enough outlets in the workshop to allow me to weld out there if I want. I’ll need that when I work on farm machinery. Mainly, though, I’ll weld in the garage.

I have no idea what 240 outlets cost. The shop has NO 240 power. None. It has very little 120 for that matter. The shop needs several 240 outlets plus a couple of 120 boxes. I’m imagining four-digit prices. I hope that’s wrong.

The garage will probably be cheaper to work with. It’s full of 240 stuff already.

I called an electrician, and I’m getting an estimate. We will see what happens.

Guess what I did when I needed 240 power in Miami. I installed it myself. The wiring back there was a scandal anyway, so nothing I did could have made things any worse. The Ocala house is different. It’s magnificent. I am not going to hack it up if I can avoid it.

Once the juice is installed, I’m going to have my machines moved. Then I can feel like a whole man again.

It’s terrible, not having a mill, a lathe, a real compressor, a vertical band saw, or a drill press. I wouldn’t wish it on Michael Avenatti. When you’re used to having tools, losing them is like being paralyzed.

I’m not saying other guys who don’t have machine tools are less than men. Of course, it’s true. I’m just not saying it.

If the electrician doesn’t give me a heart attack, I could be milling and turning again in 3 weeks. That would be sweet.

After that, I have to look into air conditioning for the garage and a big fan for the shop. I have to have it. Have to.

I don’t want to screw up my beautiful garage with a hole in the wall. A friend of mine suggested a window unit. That would still be slightly hideous, but it wouldn’t be permanent. I’m looking into it. One problem with a window unit is that it will require brackets on the outside to support it, and they may have to be fastened to the wall. I don’t have a nice, smooth stucco wall. I have Hardie board siding, which is like concrete clapboards.

Whatever; whatever. I have to get this done. Half of me is still in South Florida. That is not acceptable.

I can’t wait to have a real shop again.

Be an Expert Woodworker Tomorrow for $300

My life has been changed.

I have wanted to do woodturning for a long time. I didn’t have room for a wood lathe in Miami. I made myself a toolrest for my metal lathe, and I worked it out so I could use a small 4-jaw wood chuck held in the jaws of my metal chuck, but I didn’t get to do anything once I had the equipment made. I thought my metal lathe would follow me to Marion County quickly, but it hasn’t, so I got myself a little Harbor Freight lathe yesterday. I got 20% off, naturally.

The lathe is surprisingly heavy. It’s around 80 pounds. I expected a wood lathe to be much lighter than a metal lathe of the same size, but the difference is only about 20%. I did not enjoy carrying the lathe from the car to the workshop.

A fair number of Internet monkeys make fun of this lathe and call it a toy, but it’s pretty much the same Chinese lathe you will get from respected companies like Rikon and Jet. I’m sure there are little differences, but the bed is flat, the motor runs smoothly, and all the parts seem to be well-made.

You can turn a cereal bowl on this lathe if you want. That’s about the outside envelope. That’s fine by me. I only got it so I would have something for little jobs. I don’t want to get sawdust all over the metal lathe and my metal shop every time I want to make a tool handle.

I was nervous about turning the lathe on. It comes from the factory fully assembled and ready to go, apart from screwing in one handle, so turning it on is about all you have to do. I did do one other thing: I wiped all the bright metal surfaces with Corrosion-X to prevent rusting. Things rust badly here because of the cold weather. You would think Miami would be worse, but I never had problems with rust there, except for the time I stored muriatic acid in my garage.

I don’t want to talk about that.

I found a round piece of wood which may have been a broom handle at one time. It was about 1-1/4″ thick. I sawed a piece off with my Veritas dovetail saw. It’s incredible, using a wood saw that actually works. I stuck the wood on the lathe and fired it up, and I got out my never-used Ebay NOS Sears Roebuck HSS turning tools.

I don’t know what I was nervous about. Woodturning is for idiots. Comparing joinery to woodturning is like comparing technical drafting to fingerpainting. My training consisted of watching a few Youtube videos, but I did everything perfectly.

I should not say “perfectly.” I caught the wood on the end of chisels three times. Everyone does that, though, so it doesn’t mean I’m inept.

In a few minutes, I had created the shape of a nice file handle. I sanded it down, and I got it ready to part off. Then I realized part of it still contained wood from the outside of the broom handle. That part hadn’t been turned down enough, so it wasn’t round. I went back to clean it up, caught the wood, and tore off a big piece of my file handle. I tried to clean that up, caught the wood again, and snapped the handle at the parting points. I was all done.

The wood was coarse, dry, brittle, and easily split, so it wasn’t an ideal test of my skills. I probably could have split it with my fingers. I didn’t know how weak it was when I put it on the lathe.

This is really cool. Everyone who uses tools dreams of buying a powerful tool and doing great things with it quickly and easily. Wood lathes fulfill that desire, just as tractors and plasma cutters do. I had never turned anything by hand before, and had the wood not given way, I would have made a perfectly fine file handle my first time out.

I’m going to find myself some better wood and see what I can do. Everyone who uses tools has a ton of files, so I have a great excuse for making a dozen or so handles.

If you have the urge to do woodworking, but you’re lazy and cheap, woodturning is for you. You just need a lathe, a few chisels, a bench grinder with quality wheels, some sandpaper, and some discarded wood. You can add doodads if you want, but you can do a lot with the things I just mentioned. You can pick up an unused set of HSS Craftsman chisels on Ebay for under a hundred bucks.

A Youtube woodturning guy says woodturning is woodworking for people with ADD. I could not agree more.

You’ll have to find a way to deal with the sawdust. My suggestion is to put your lathe bench on wheels and roll it outside or to your open garage door.

It’s great when a plan works. If I make anything that isn’t totally stupid, I will post photos.

Forgive me, readers, for I have sinned. My last blog entry was three days ago.

On September 22, my dad the angry atheist prayed for salvation, and later, I reported that there was an unexpected benefit to this startling event: the two of us got along better. I was less driven to avoid him. His frustrating mistakes and deliberate bad behavior tapered off, and when they occurred, they bothered me much less than they used to. I found I needed less solitary time for recharging.

I am here to report that things haven’t gone back to the way they used to be. My dad and I are spending more time together, and life is going pretty smoothly.

I suppose it makes sense that a child of God would look for opportunities to get away from a child of darkness and regroup. Spending time with God is beneficial. When he’s with you, he helps you. He tells you things. He drives away spirits that make you suffer. He may work miracles in your body. It’s only natural that spending time with beings from the other side would wear you down.

Something new is going on. These days, God’s presence comes to me in the afternoon and brings peace. The house starts to feel like a church. I have been in God’s presence every day for a number of years, but he hasn’t always brought peace with him. In the past, it was mainly power.

For years, I’ve been praying for God to make my house a place of peace, where people live in his presence. I hope what I’m seeing is the answer to those prayers.

The children of darkness don’t have peace. They may have money, looks, fame, admiration, and so forth, but it’s hollow because they don’t have the peace God brings. Many of them have to fight constantly to keep what they have. Many have to pay huge prices in order to get the outward appearance of success.

I now believe that if you don’t have peace, you must be under the influence of spirits that are against God. A lack of peace indicates that you have a spiritual issue that needs to be addressed.

God will allow us to have problems. He will allow us to be persecuted. Nonetheless, we’re supposed to have peace. If you feel rushed, worried, or pressured, a supernatural force is trying to control you. God doesn’t use things like anxiety and fear to motivate people who are cooperating with him.

When I think of the worst people I’ve known, I realize they tried to control me by taking away my peace. They tried to scare me. They pressured me. They laid false guilt trips on me. They tempted me to do things I knew I shouldn’t do. Rotten people make you feel rotten. They may not make you feel bad at first, but it will creep up eventually. Dependence on a toxic person is like dependence on drugs or alcohol. The first time you get drunk or high, it feels fantastic. The thousandth time, it’s unrewarding.

The reason it’s so easy for me to cut people out of my life is that I hate being manipulated more than I hate losing people.

Toxic people and toxic spirits are alike, because spirits run people. Spirits that are out to get you may make you feel blessed at first, but once they have control, they make you suffer for their pleasure.

I want God’s presence. I want his peace. I don’t want to worry any more. I don’t want to feel pressured.

If you’re in a close relationship with someone who isn’t on board with Jesus and the Holy Spirit, you need to cut the cord before the ties get too strong. You know better. You can’t say you weren’t warned, and God often closes his ears to people who deliberately do stupid things.

In other news, I’m still fooling around with tools. I think it’s time to move my machine tools here. I’ve decided where to put them. I have to get an electrician to give me an estimate on some 60-amp sockets.

I decided to get some CBN wheels for my bench grinder. CBN is cubic boron nitride. It’s extremely hard. Only diamond is harder.

When I started using machine tools, I learned I needed special grinding wheels in order to shape cutting tools for the lathe. Lathe tools are made from sticks of high speed steel (“HSS”) which is an amazing type of hardened steel that doesn’t soften when it gets red hot. When you shape lathe tools, you can use the cheap grey wheels that come with grinders, but they don’t work very well.

The best moderately priced choice is white bonded aluminum oxide. This is a substance made from crumbs of aluminum oxide held together with resin. A white wheel will shed particles as you grind, and that exposes new sharp edges to keep the wheel cutting well.

I probably spent $200 on a pair of white wheels, and they work fine on HSS. Problem: when you’re a woodworker as well as a machinist, you use tools that are made from tool steel. Tool steel loses its temper when it gets hot. I don’t mean it gets angry. It gets soft. White aluminum oxide wheels will work on tool steel (plane irons, chisels, and so on), but they will heat the metal fast, so you’re likely to burn your tools.

Another problem with aluminum oxide: because the wheels are friable, they change shape as you grind. You have to buy tools that reshape them. The best tool is a stick of carborundum. Diamond tools work faster, but they smooth the wheels too much, reducing their cutting ability. A smooth wheel generates more heat.

Here’s yet another problem: aluminum oxide is ceramic, and all ceramic wheels explode. Bench grinders are extremely dangerous. The wheels can develop cracks (grinding brass or aluminum can make them crack), and then they shatter. Flying fragments can penetrate your skull or your genitals. It’s bad.

Want more bad news? You can’t grind things on the side of a ceramic wheel. I know; I know. You’ve been doing it for years, and you’re still alive. You’re lucky. One day you’re going to get hurt. Pushing on the side of a ceramic wheel will eventually crack it.

Aluminum oxide wheels are problematic, so what’s the answer? Diamond wheels! That must be it. Diamond is super hard, and diamond wheels are made of metal with diamond particles stuck to them, so they can’t blow up.

Sadly, this is wrong. Diamonds are carbon, and carbon dissolves in iron, nickel, and cobalt. That’s why steel is possible. It’s iron with carbon dissolved in it. If you get diamonds hot while you grind a steel tool, they will start to dissolve into the tool. That’s bad for the wheel. Probably doesn’t do the tool a world of good, either.

CBN is very, very hard. When you can’t have a diamond, CBN is a good second choice.

Like diamond wheels, CBN wheels are metal disks with abrasive particles stuck to them. They don’t wear down like aluminum oxide. You never have to dress them to restore their shapes. Because CBN is very hard, it lasts for decades. Because CBN wheels are mainly metal, they conduct heat well. Grinding with CBN wheels generates heat, but they also carry heat away, so it’s hard to hurt a tool steel blade by burning it.

It’s pretty cool.

The only drawback to CBN is this: you can’t use them on soft steel. If a steel object isn’t hardened, the steel will clog the CBN wheel, and then you have a problem.

I’ve been fooling with planes and chisels lately. I have a Stanley 60-1/2 block plane I ordered, and I also have a flat-bottomed Millers Falls #14 plane. Both irons needed reshaping. I got myself an XX-coarse DMT diamond stone, but it’s very slow. I know I said you shouldn’t use diamond wheels with steel, but flat diamond stones are okay. They don’t get hot enough to make the diamonds dissolve.

I have a couple of other ways to fix the irons. I have a belt grinder and a bench grinder. The belt grinder is hard to use accurately with edged tools. The bench grinder isn’t much easier. On top of all that, they both burn tools.

I would like to accumulate more edged tools, but I don’t want to spend the rest of my life using slow abrasive methods to work on them. CBN looks like the answer to my prayers.

I ordered a pair of wheels. One is 180 grit, and it has a flat face and two flat sides. Because it’s not ceramic, it’s okay to grind on the sides of it. That will be very useful.

Ordinarily, you would use something like 80 grit for a coarse wheel, but CBN cuts much faster than aluminum oxide, so you can use a finer grit and get a better finish. BONUS!

The other wheel is 600 grit, and it has radiused edges. It’s crazy. You can use the flat face to sharpen things, and you can do pretty weird stuff with the rounded edges and the sides.

Because a metal wheel can’t blow up, you can take the guards off a bench grinder with CBN wheels. You still have to be concerned about getting caught in it, so you have to apply the relevant safety rules, but it’s not going to kill you.

I’m looking forward to using these wheels. I am not going to mess with any chisels or planes until the wheels get here.

The wheels cost a fortune, but only about 1.8 times what ceramic wheels cost. They will never wear out or explode, and I will never have to dress them. They’ll save me a ton of time, and they’ll do a better job. They’ll do things the ceramic wheels can’t do, period. It’s worth it.

I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that white wheels are obsolete for my purposes. Their only real virtue is price, and it’s an illusion when you consider the fact that ceramic wheels eventually have to be replaced.

What will I do when I want to grind unhardened steel? Simple. Belt grinder.

I’m planning to start using the bench grinder to shape all of my blades. A wheel makes an arc in a tool, so the profile is sort of hollow. It’s called a hollow grind. This gives you a bevel that doesn’t contact a flat stone along its entire length. The heel will touch the stone, and so will the edge, but the part between the heel and edge will not.

When you start a bevel on a grinder and then move to a flat stone, you end up cutting less metal on the stone. Only a small percentage of the bevel touches the stone, and you only have to grind that percentage off. It makes the work go faster.

You can also get a hollow grind on a belt grinder. Belts go around wheels and pulleys, so you can hold your bevel against a rounded surface. You can also buy a platen which has a radiused surface, so it’s like a small segment of a big wheel.

I was thinking I might try to shape a blade on my oscillating belt sander. This is an easy-to-use woodworking tool that moves a sanding belt up and down while it runs on two vertical pulleys. It might work. It’s very controllable. I have this feeling people don’t understand how useful this tool can be. I’m still getting the CBN wheels, though.

The weather is getting very nice now, so working outside and in the shop will be more pleasant. I wish I could have done more last year, but it seemed like I was always reeling from some calamity or other.

I’m also spending time fooling with math and physics. I’ve been doing problems. Strength of materials. Differential equations. Quantum mechanics. Whatever seems interesting. Maybe I can get back some of what the years took away, and adding some mechanical engineering would be great.

My engineering studies started very well, but I ran into an integral that showed me how much I had forgotten. Building up integrals from scratch used to be second nature to me, but I’m having to go back and re-learn it. It ought to go pretty quickly, since I’m just renewing abilities I used to possess.

I bought a new copy of a book I used to have: Amit Goswami’s Quantum Mechanics. I bought it as an undergrad because I hated our assigned text: Gasiorowicz. I left it in storage in Miami, and ants ate it. Made me really mad. I don’t need it, but it always bothers me when I think of the books I lost, so sometimes I replace one just to make myself feel better.

That’s it for today. I plan to sit down and see if I can integrate. if not, well, I’m still reasonably young. I can always take up something less challenging, such as writing legal memoranda or fingerpainting.

A Woodsman has to Keep his Head

Today I tested the axe I hung. I went out and found a particularly hateful and evil tree, i.e. a live oak, and I cut it down. The axe worked just fine, and the head didn’t loosen or fly across the woods. People who advise me have been badgering me to put metal wedges in the axe, so now I feel I have the go-ahead to give them the official thumb-nosing they deserve.

Cutting the tree was a very bad experience in a couple of ways. First, it involved exercise. Second, it served to underscore the total superiority of chainsaws. A one-minute job became a ten-minute job.

I’m not completely sure what I’ll do with the axe in the long run. I just feel like a farm needs an axe. There must surely be jobs one needs an axe for.

It’s really heavy, or maybe I’m just old. Weren’t axes a lot lighter when I was 16? Of course they were. I’m sure of it. And my feet weren’t as far away as they are now. These days, my feet are like grown children who moved to another state. They only visit me a few times a year.

When I was a kid, I wondered why old men’s toenails grew so long. Now I know.

I was thinking it might be good to cut down several small trees per week, just for the exercise. Swinging an axe vigorously is extremely unpleasant, so it has to be good for me.

Live oaks are a pestilence. I am planning to kill every small live oak I see, and I treat little maples as though they bore golden apples. I want the maples to dominate. It’s not my fault people let live oaks grow here in the past, but it doesn’t have to continue on my watch.

I suspect that my small Home Depot Fiskars hatchet will always be more useful than an axe, but I’m still glad I learned about axes. Knowledge and skill are good things to have. Being stupid is not a virtue unless you’re a hereditary Democrat trying to live on the government teat.

I noticed one surprising thing while I cut the tree: I wasn’t immediately soaked with sweat. Three days ago, I would have been. The weather is going to change soon, whether it likes it or not. That will be great. Also, I was not attacked by mosquitoes. As far as I can tell, we have had about 5% of the activity we had last year. I may be wrong, but I seem to remember being scared to go outside in the post-Irma period. I spent a lot of time shopping for mosquito remedies. I haven’t felt the need this year.

There are a lot of things I want to do on the farm, but lately, working for 5 minutes has meant needing a complete change of clothes and a shower. That’s discouraging. You find yourself asking yourself if it’s really worth it to move the branch lying across the driveway. Maybe you can just drive around it…

If the weather is really turning the corner, I’ll be able to make up for some of the shameful laziness I displayed last winter. I treated the good weather like it would last forever, and then it left.

I’m hoping to get more done this year. Right now, I’m trapped in a period of excessive bookkeeping activity, so I can’t do much, but I expect that to pass in a few days, and after that, I may actually be free to get some things done.

I continue to search for a double-bitted axe at a decent price. I have ordered two old ones from Ebay plus a new one from Amazon, and none have been satisfactory. Once I have a double-bitted axe, my collection will be complete. Except for a small axe which is larger than a hatchet. And maybe some other axes.

I’m going to flop on the couch with the birds and drink a small amount of medicinal Scotch. Between the bookkeeping and the horror of ten minutes of exercise, I feel I deserve to be indulged.

If I locate another axe, you will read about it here. I hope someone invents one that swings itself.

The Tools Make the Man

I’m thinking of buying a set of hookaroons.

A hookaroon, also known as a pickaroon, is a logging tool. It’s an axe handle with a pointy steel head at the end. The point is perpendicular to the handle. You swing it at logs, and the point goes in. Then you use the axe handle to move the logs around.

It sounds a little stupid. After all, you can bend over and pick a log up, using gloves. That doesn’t sound so bad, does it? It’s the easiest thing in the world, until you do it a hundred times in one day. Maybe you’re in great shape, and bending over to lift things doesn’t bother you, but most people would feel pretty sore after a day of picking logs up off the ground.

A lot of people use a single hookaroon, but some say you’re supposed to hold one in each hand. They work well in pairs. That makes them expensive.

I ordered another item: log tongs. These come in different sizes. Big ones hook up to tractors. You hold little ones in your hand. They’re like big scissors with points on the tips. When you slip one over a log and pull, the points go into the bark and hang on. The theory is pretty much like hookaroon theory. You don’t have to bend as far to pick things up, and you don’t have to rely on your hands to give you a grip.

If you have big log tongs on a tractor, you don’t have to deal with looping chains or straps around logs. You attach the tongs and take off. I would be a little nervous about tongs flying off and killing me if I applied a lot of tension. I suppose you have to use common sense.

Most people don’t use proper logging tools. They don’t even know what they are. Sometimes that makes sense. If you do very little work with trees, you shouldn’t waste a lot of money on tools. I have a lot of trees, though. I need to do things right.

A cousin of mine lived with his mother on a farm my grandfather owned. His dad’s business failed, and then there was a divorce. My grandfather allowed my aunt and her son to live on the farm rent-free. They relied on a wood stove, so my cousin had to use a chainsaw and a maul. He never learned how to do things right. There was no one to teach him.

I can tell you two lessons he needed to learn. First, he needed to learn that whenever a striking tool or a wedge or chisel gets mushroomed, you’re supposed to grind the mushroomed bit off ASAP before pieces fly off and hit you. He also needed to learn to wear safety glasses.

I don’t have any metal wedges. I have plastic ones. They’re light, they work great, and they don’t mushroom. Also, if the saw hits them, the plastic loses. Won’t hurt the saw. I just paid $11 for two new wedges.

I’m not sure, but I think metal wedges are used for splitting, and plastic ones are used for felling. I don’t know if a plastic wedge could take the pounding a splitting wedge takes, but it will definitely stand up to being hammered into a saw kerf so you can cut up a tree.

One day I was with my cousin while he used a maul and wedge to split logs in his driveway. This is a stupid thing to do, in my opinion. You should use better tools if you can. We didn’t know that, and my aunt didn’t have a lot of money anyway.

I have probably written about this before. My cousin took a swing at the wedge, and then he fell down holding his leg. He looked fine, and the maul hadn’t hit him. He was in real pain. After the chaos subsided, he pulled his pant leg up, and we saw a little lump on his shin. It was a piece of steel. There was a matching cavity on the maul. A chunk of steel the size of a .22 round had gone through his jeans, penetrated his skin, collided with his shin bone, and slid about two inches up his leg.

You’re wondering why I mentioned glasses. What if the steel had flown toward his eye?

We took him to the emergency room in Lexington, and my aunt worked on the insurance forms. She asked me what I would say he was doing when he got hurt. I said, “busting wood.” Days later, she got documents from the insurer, and it listed her city of residence as Busting Wood, Kentucky.

Guess she filled in the wrong box.

My cousin didn’t know which tools to use or what kind of safety equipment to buy, and he didn’t know how to take care of tools, so he got shot in the leg. That’s what it adds up to.

I have no plans to split logs, because I dread using my fireplace. It makes a mess. If I did decide to split logs, I’d use an electric motor with a conical screw on it. They use them in Europe. You bolt a motor to a table, and you attach a screw to the shaft. The screw is pointed at one end and maybe 2-1/2″ wide at the other. When you shove a piece of wood into it, the screw bores into it and splits it. It’s incredible. Looks much better than slow hydraulic splitters.

You can buy a splitting screw that fits a tractor PTO shaft.

I don’t know a whole lot about splitting logs, but the screw looks better than hydraulic splitters. They’re very slow, and they cost a lot.

I’ve also ordered a set of mesh glasses. These are safety glasses with stainless steel mesh instead of polycarbonate. When you work outdoors with plastic glasses, they fog up and fill with sweat. That can’t happen with mesh.

People say mesh doesn’t do a good job of deflecting fine wood dust. My take on that is that anyone who eats a lot of dust needs to learn how to sharpen a saw. Sharp saws make chunks, not dust. I may be wrong; maybe a sharp saw makes enough dust to cause problems. I’ll find out when I try the glasses.

You’re not supposed to use a chainsaw to make cuts above your shoulders unless it’s a pole saw. My guess is that people who shoot a lot of crap into their faces are violating this rule. Held at a safe level, a chainsaw will naturally shoot debris at your right leg or maybe your right side.

They make hardhats with mesh visors and built-in earmuffs. I may get one. I already have a hardhat, but I only use it when I cut things that can fall on me. I’m hoping I can use the mesh glasses with the hardhat and avoid a cumbersome apparatus with everything attached.

In October, the weather will become bearable, so my tree-cutting efforts should accelerate. I look forward to getting more of this crap moved out. Last year, it often seemed very difficult, but then I didn’t have the right tools until I was pretty far into it.

Try cutting up a big live oak without a pole saw. It’s a nightmare. You can’t get close enough to the branches, and a lot of things you want to cut will be above your shoulders. A pole saw really tames a big fallen tree.

I don’t know if I’ll be able to burn everything I cut, but at least it will be on the ground where it will rot quickly.

Studying and springing for the things you need pays off. I’ve been working on the farm for a year without killing myself or even injuring myself seriously. I did burn the hair off my ankles once, but that was an improvement.

I don’t know what else I should get. I’m sure things will come to my attention. Here’s to another year with 10 complete fingers and no disks that don’t work.

Another Sunday at Home

I thought I was going to church tonight. God keeps telling me not to join a church, but when I asked if I could visit, it was another story. I thought tonight was the night.

I looked around on Google, and I found a Spirit-filled place that looked okay. I decided to try their 6 p.m. service. I got a shirt out and started ironing it. Then I looked at a video.

They were singing in Spanish.

I have done the ethnic church thing. I was an armorbearer and all-around slave at a Haitian church, and then I was an armorbearer, deacon, and doormat at a Puerto Rican church. I’m not ready to go down that road again.

I found that black churches don’t just tolerate hypocrisy; they expect it. How you act at home means nothing as long as you jump up and down and pretend to care about God at church. I found out that Puerto Rican churches are full of emotional people who get angry over nothing and can’t accept correction. There was way too much loud music, screaming, and rolling on the floor at both churches. I’m ready to sit among people who are a little less inclined to histrionics.

I don’t want to go to another church where everyone pretends to know the Holy Spirit yet thinks Barack Obama is practically Jesus. I can’t deal with Christians who are so ignorant they think Jesus was a leftist.

I looked at some other websites, and then I decided to let it go. I got up and finished putting the new handle in my axe.

I have to say that I think I did a really good job. I haven’t used the axe yet, but it looks great.

I was considering using a wood-swelling product to make the head stick to the handle better. I even bought some. The chemical in wood-swellers is dipropylene glycol. You mix it with water in four-to-one ratio. Wood-swelling products are very expensive, but pure dipropylene glycol is fairly cheap on Ebay. I ordered a bottle. I also bought a gallon jug of RV antifreeze at Tractor Supply, for $2.50. Some brands contain dipropylene glycol. I thought I might install the axe handle and then soak the head in antifreeze for a while. RV antifreeze is not like the antifreeze in your car. It’s food-safe. It’s used to protect freshwater pipes.

I finally installed it the old-fashioned way. I coated the wedge in wood glue, pounded it in, cut off the excess with a coping saw, and sanded the top of the handle to make it look nice. Here is the result.

I may soak it tomorrow anyway. Can’t hurt, right?

RV antifreeze is diluted dipropylene glycol. The stuff I ordered is pure. I have a second axe head on the way, and I plan to use the pure stuff on it.

Assuming the handle I bought is sound, I think the axe I fixed up today should be very pleasant to use.

It’s nice to know I did it right. Thank God for Youtube. When it comes to hanging axes, the world is full of BS, and the people who spread it make themselves sound highly confident.

They remind me of preachers.

Axe Saga Continues to Breed Suffering

I have some advice. Buy a chainsaw and throw out your axes.

I have been trying to get a decent library of axes for some time now. In the old days, you walked into any hardware store, you bought an axe made in America, and you were all set. American axe companies made great axes. The steel was hardened and tempered carefully. The handles were made correctly. You didn’t have to think much. You just bought.

Today, hardware stores don’t sell American axes. There are exceptions, but generally, you’re going to be buying Chinese. The heads will be soft. The handles will be dubious. It’s a bad situation.

If you want a good American axe, you go to Ebay and buy an old axe head for five bucks, because used axe heads are nearly worthless. HAHAHAHAHAHA. You fool! Try it! A good used axe head will cost you at least 30 bucks, and when you receive it, there’s a good chance it will have a fatal flaw you couldn’t see in the pictures.

I bought a new Council Tool axe. This is one of the few American axe companies that remain. They sent it in a flimsy envelope, and the Post Office apparently dragged the edges on concrete. Back it went. I ordered an old Ebay Collins axe head. It turned out to have a mashed eye a handle would not go through.

I finally got a nice Plumb axe head. It looked fine. It still had wood in it, but that was okay. I had a hydraulic press. Today I bought a handle at a hardware store, and I tried to hang the axe. When you put a handle on an axe, you’re hanging it.

I put the axe in a vise and used a 3/8″ drill bit to waste a lot of the wood so the remaining stuff would collapse easily. I put it on the hydraulic press, and the wood wouldn’t budge. I couldn’t support it in a way the looked totally safe, so I didn’t apply full force, but I applied about 10 times what you would think the drilled-out wood could take.

I took a coping saw and sawed the wood between the holes to weaken the wood more. The blade got stuck in the axe. I drilled and did various things, and finally, 80% of the wood slid out. Great. But the remaining 20% was stuck in the axe.

You would think an axe handle would not stick to an axe, but this one did. It was as if the Plumb people had painted the handle and hung the axe while the paint was wet.

I tried various things, and I used a big punch. Finally, the remaining wood came out, and it did so in a perverse way. One second, it was glued in there, seemingly permanently. The next, it just fell out. Okay.

Now I was ready to insert the handle. Well, not really. There was all sorts of rust and crud inside the axe. I had to sand it out by hand.

Remarkably, things didn’t get any less complicated after that.

You would think hanging an axe would be simple, and that lots of people would know how to do it. You would think almost any Youtube video would be a good guide. That’s not how it works. Because Americans don’t use axes much any more, people don’t know how to work on them. They post videos just the same. Doesn’t even slow them down.

They use wedges wrong. They don’t set the axes down far enough on the handles. They force axes onto handles instead of shaping the wood. It’s like Beavis and Butt-head became lumberjacks and bought Gopros.

I found a couple of guys who appeared to know their stuff, and I can tell you what they said.

You don’t force an axe onto a handle and make wood peel up underneath it. That’s the pea-brain method. You shape the handle and try it in the axe repeatedly until you get a good fit. When you finally have it right, you don’t have to pound anything. You put the axe on the handle, and you bop the lower end of the handle on a piece of wood on a concrete floor. The axe will seat itself where it should, which is just above the little protrusion or protrusions on the handle.

I used a belt sander to shape my handle. It was a little slow, but the result was very nice.

When you get your axe onto your handle, you trim the excess wood above the axe, and you insert your wedge. You can coat it with wood glue, or you can soak it in a product called Swel-Lock, which makes wood swell permanently. You force the wedge into the handle as far as you can without splitting anything, and you let everything dry. Then you trim everything and make it look nice.

I did all this stuff, except for inserting the wedge. For some reason, I don’t have wood glue.

Apart from the wedge, I was done, right? Of course not. Don’t even think it.

Handle makers paint handles with varnish This is bad. If you use a varnished axe without gloves (always wear gloves), the varnish will pull at your skin and give you blisters. Even though I use gloves, I used lacquer thinner to remove the varnish from my handle. Then I sanded it and treated it with paste wax.

After I did all these things, I discovered that I had bought the wrong handle. An axe handle should have growth rings that run more or less parallel to the axe. I knew this, but I forgot to check when I was at the store. My handle has growth rings that run across it. This may not cause a problem, but it’s not what I wanted.

My understanding is that the real problem is grain that runs out. That means you have places where a split between two layers of wood can divide the handle into two parts. I don’t know if I have that issue. I am afraid to look.

I blew $17 on a handle, I researched as carefully as I could, and I still ended up with a handle that may be unusable. I’ll give it a try tomorrow and see if it’s safe.

I can see why chainsaws are so popular. They’re all the same. They don’t have grain that wanders around. And if a part goes bad, you take it off and put another one on. You don’t have to use a belt sander or a spokeshave to change a saw bar. Skill is not part of the paradigm.

Tomorrow I’ll buy wood glue, and I’ll check my handle. If it worries me, I’ll buy another one. I’ll get it right some day.

There was one bright spot in my day. I used the belt sander to sharpen the axe, and it took about two minutes. It was a joke. When it was finished, it was sharp enough to be dangerous. I know. I handled it incorrectly and started to peel skin off a finger.

Look how hard it is to prepare and use simple tools. You know–you don’t have to check–almost no one does these things right. No wonder Americans don’t like hand tools. They don’t know what they’re doing. Hand tools are great when you buy good ones and use them correctly, but that’s not obvious when you walk into Lowe’s with a head full of nothing.

On the whole, I’m more grateful than I used to be for my chainsaws. They haven’t failed me yet, and the learning curve is pretty gentle.

I Sleep all Night and I Blog all Day

I’m kind of drained after visiting assisted living operations today, so I will write some more.

I conquered two of my tool-acquisition problems this week. I think. I won’t know until the tools arrive. I ordered a Pexto brace with a Samson chuck, and I got a good deal on a used Collins axe head.

If you don’t know what a brace is, it’s because you’re a little green sprout who hasn’t been on Earth long enough to know anything. A brace is a drill you operate by hand, without batteries or any other helpful technology. Usually, you don’t hear “brace” by itself. You hear “brace and bit,” but since I didn’t buy a drill bit, what I have on the way is a brace.

It turns out braces are useful for certain things. When you want a lot of control and you don’t want to worry about electricity, a brace can be convenient. They are very handy for countersinking and deburring in metal.

Braces have chucks, and some chucks are better than others. Two types people like a lot are Lion and Samson chucks. These are versatile ball bearing chucks. Lions were made by the Millers Falls company, and Samson chucks were made by Pexto (a contraction of “Peck, Stow & Wilcox”).

Ordinarily, braces take drill bits with weird, 4-sided shanks. I have not tried a Samson chuck, but supposedly, they will work with round drills. I hope so, because otherwise I will have to buy adaptors. Which do exist. You can find adaptors for sockets, hex-shanked tools, and…other stuff I don’t remember.

Braces come with reversible ratchets, so they turn in two directions.

I look forward to checking my brace out. I found one that looked reasonably pretty and didn’t seem too beat-up.

The axe head was an unexpected find. As I said in an earlier entry, modern axes are very badly made, and people are selling rusty old American axe heads on Ebay for high prices. A lot of Ebay axe heads have been sharpened so many times there isn’t much of them left, and many, for reasons I can’t fathom, appear to have been stored with one side underwater. There are a lot of Ebay axe heads that look fine on one side and have a second side which is a vast expanse of craters.

Some sellers wire-brush axe heads until they look nice, but they’re still junky. Also, many axe heads have sledge marks on them. Apparently, old timers used sledges to knock them out of logs. I hate tool abuse. I’m not going to trust an axe which has substantial deformations on it.

There is another problem with Ebay axe heads. Some are burned up. Ignorant sellers will sometimes burn an axe head to get handle fragments out of it. Hardened and tempered steel loses its conditioning when it’s heated too much. A roasted axe head which looks nice due to wire-brushing may be too soft to use.

The axe head I found is a Collins. This is a company that made highly regarded axes. I sent the seller a message and asked how the wood was removed, and she said it was removed with wedges. I think she means drifts. You use a drift to knock the wood out of an axe head. Anyway, it’s not fire. The axe head appears to have very little wear, and no one has beaten on it with a sledge, so I think I’m finally getting a decent tool.

I have to buy a handle now. I plan to try the local stores, but I may end up buying an American handle online.

Axe handles are commonly made from hickory, which is a hard and very springy wood. You can’t just take a hickory four-by-four and cut a handle out of it without further examination. You have to make sure the striations in the wood run more or less parallel to the axe head’s length. You also have to look for cracks or whatever. I have read that there are some pretty crappy axe handles out there. I hope local stores will fix me up, but if not, I can get an American-made handle for $15 or less online.

Once I have the head and handle, I have to “hang” the axe head. This is tool talk for attaching it to the handle. Supposedly, hanging a head incorrectly causes problems when you use the axe, and this is where the expression “getting the hang of it” comes from. This may be Internet BS, so caveat emptor, or if not “emptor”, whatever the Latin word for reader is.

I found a neat resource for axe scholars. Some dude who probably doesn’t date much works as an axe expert up in Montana, and he wrote a long treatise on axes. He tells people how to hang them and so on. I will provide a link to his PDF, in case you want it. And I know you do.

https://www.pcta.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/an_ax_to_grind.pdf

Tools are never simple. I guarantee you, even a putty knife has complexities you would not suspect. I don’t even have to check. I’m sure of it. You can spend a whole day reading about hammers and be amazed when you’re finished. It doesn’t surprise me that axes have substantial lore.

I bought a double-bitted axe head. Some people say they swing better. We will find out, I guess. I learned that double-bitted axes aren’t symmetrical. Not always, anyway. One bit is thicker than the other. The thick one is for splitting, and the thin one is for chopping. How about that? I told you tools aren’t simple.

I’ll have to sharpen the axe. Some people get their axes shaving sharp. I think that’s stupid, because after three whacks, an axe will lose the fineness of its edge. That is my guess, anyway. That will mean that you wasted maybe 2/3 of the time you spent sharpening it. It’s easy to get a blade fairly sharp. Making it super-sharp takes a lot more time.

I suspect that once you get your axe sharp enough to slice bologna, it’s more than sharp enough to cut wood well. Maybe I’m wrong.

We live in a funny country now. We have bad Chinese tools and clueless hipster tool buyers who have no idea why good tools matter. I can’t understand why people continue to buy tools now that they’re bad. Using a good tool is a pretty pleasant experience. Using a bad tool is usually very unpleasant, and often, the tools we buy are so bad they aren’t useful at all; it’s impossible to make them work no matter what you do. Companies manufacture tools that don’t work, and we still buy them and try to use them. Strange.

I may continue to be clueless and unskilled after I get my axe hung, but at least I will have a good tool. And I’m not wearing skinny jeans. Two things to be grateful for.

I guess I’ll get a beverage and a parrot and watch a Fred Astaire movie on Turner Classic Movies. Tomorrow, more assisted living.

Engineering!

My dad’s new primary care practitioner is a busy bee or possibly an eager beaver. He got us lined up with a couple of specialists, and now we have two therapists and one nurse coming to the house every week. I don’t know how much this will benefit my dad, who never remembers anything the therapists teach him, but I believe it will improve my math, engineering, and physics skills, because when I take him to see doctors, I study and do problems while we wait.

A long time ago, I developed a policy which I don’t follow nearly often enough: “Never wait.” Of course, it doesn’t really mean, “Never wait.” It means, “Never JUST wait.” When you’re stuck waiting on someone or something, come up with something useful to do to fill the time.

Waiting-room magazines are horrid, especially in offices where liberals or women choose them. Women’s magazines are sick, shallow, and depraved. It’s strange how no one talks about this. Men have great magazines about things like guns, hunting, mechanical things, and so on. Women’s magazines are about MEN MEN MEN MEN MEN. More specifically, they are about how to out-compete sluts by being a bigger and less sincere slut. If you don’t believe me, read Cosmopolitan some day.

Men chase women, but we don’t sit around reading magazines telling us how to torture and abuse and twist ourselves into woman magnets. Men’s magazines don’t tell us how to starve ourselves, dress like prostitutes, drive women crazy in bed, fool women into marrying us, or get over painful breakups so we don’t turn into stalkers who call their boyfriends’ offices 500 times a day.

Men don’t have long, painful breakups. The first thing a man notices when he dumps a woman is the sudden sensation of freedom, and it tempers the feeling of loss. “I can drive as fast as I want! I can wear the shoes she hates! I don’t have to pretend I like to dance! I’ll never have to watch another movie about cancer! MY GUNS ARE GOING BACK ON THE LIVING ROOM WALL!”

I’m not about to poison my mind with old copies of O or Vogue. I have to have something else to do.

I’ve been working through the Schaum outline on differential equations, but I decided to set it aside because the problems aren’t really suitable for waiting rooms. Some of them require integral tables, and while a Schaum outline is a thin, handy book, adding an integral table to it turns it into a cumbersome package.

My new thing is the Schaum outline on solids. This is an engineering topic involving the way solid stuff behaves when you subject it to forces. I think. The names of engineering courses are confusing. The title of the outline is Strength of Materials.

I really like this stuff so far. It gives me confidence that mechanical engineering isn’t very hard. I know engineers will yell when they read that, and maybe I’m wrong, but so far, it looks a lot less challenging than physics.

I looked at lists of things ME’s study, and it was not like what I studied. I started with courses a lot like the ones ME’s start with, and then things got worse and worse. The material got more and more difficult and esoteric. It looks like undergrad ME’s don’t continue pushing themselves the way physicists do. They go into courses about applying simple first-year physics. Which gear to pick when you design a machine. How much concrete you need to build a strong garage floor.

Maybe it’s like law. Law never gets any harder than it is during the first semester. You spend one year acquiring skills and general knowledge, and after that, you apply the skills to new material.

I’m sure there are ways to make mechanical engineering very hard. I suspect it’s like math. Getting a math major is about one-thousandth as hard as getting a physics major (says a physics major with all but one math major course), but you don’t have to limit yourself to the relatively easy math courses. You can make math as hard as you want if you pick the right things to study, and I’m sure mechanical engineering must work the same way.

There is no easy way through a physics program.

Thing is, I am not interested in the hard engineering topics, if they exist. I just want to feel more competent about building things and so on. Physicists can’t build anything.

I scored a brand-new, highly regarded solids textbook for 21 bucks on Amazon. That was sweet. I used to think a $60 text was expensive, but I see a lot of three-figure prices these days. I don’t know how anyone can pay for college. The Schaum outline was 7 bucks, new. Lectures are free on Youtube. I figure I could become a de facto ME for $200. No one would ever want to hire me based on home study, but I would always know which gear to pick.

I wouldn’t want to work as an ME. My understanding is that they learn all sorts of cool stuff, and then they get stuck in horrible jobs where they measure things all day. I think the only fun they ever have is building things in their garages.

I’ve seen horrifying Youtube videos by disappointed engineers. They think they’re going to build autonomous robots and Ferrari engines. Then they show up for work, and someone hands them a box of parts and some micrometers.

I wish I knew what my Uncle Johnny did for NASA. He was in liquid propulsion back when we had a space program. No idea what liquid propulsion is. I don’t know what he did or whether he enjoyed his career. I know he liked using his skills at home.

He knew a lot of things but he wasn’t really that great with practical applications. I remember he fixed a refrigerator on my dad’s boat. It would tilt when the boat listed too far. He made a crappy little plate and screwed it to the fridge and a cabinet, I think. I hate the term “redneck,” but that’s how it looked. I expected a miracle, because I was so impressed with his credentials, but a guy who fixes lawnmowers every day could have done better. After four years of study, you should be able to stabilize a fridge in a way which is completely seamless.

He’s from Alabama. Do I ask too much?

Maybe I overestimate engineers. Maybe they can’t do do anything, either. Perhaps they’re like physicists. Maybe only the exceptional ones are able to build things.

Maybe Johnny measured things all day for NASA.

“How long is that bolt, Johnny?”

“Fifteen millimeters, plus or minus one tenth.”

“Great work.”

“When do I get my pension?”

“Your eyes are full of hate, forty-one. That’s good. Hate keeps a man alive. It gives him strength.”

I feel like no one who doesn’t have a milling machine and a lathe is serious about mechanical things. You need those tools, a drill press, a belt grinder, and a metal-cutting band saw if you want to do anything with metal. If you’re poor and extremely determined, you can do a lot with files, but I digress.

MIG welder. You need a MIG welder, too.

I guess I’ll do some problems. If I fail, I’ll realize I’m too old and stupid to learn anything new. My biggest problem will be learning engineerspeak. Physicists gave them every basic tool they have, but they had to change the name of everything. Out of spite. This is my theory.

Moment is just torque. Stress is just pressure. Come on, guys. We invented this stuff.

If all goes well, some time next year I’ll be able to pick the correct gears out of lists. That will be exciting.

If I succeed at this, I will be insufferable to engineers. More than I already am. “I learned your stuff in a year. Why do you exist, again?”

If I fail, I’ll just quietly not write about it.

Watch this space.

Tractor = Superpowers

This is a momentous day. I finally got the big rock out of my front yard.

My property has a fair amount of rocks under it. It’s not full of small rocks. You can dig a hole without hitting rocks. The problem is big rocks. Some that have already been dug up are the size of couches.

I have several rocks sticking up in the lawn, and I have hit them more than once. I decided to try to get rid of them. I dug around one with a shovel, and I couldn’t do much with it. I tried the tractor, but all I had were a bush hog and a frond end loader with forks, so I had to come up with a new strategy.

I decided to get a subsoiler. This is a very sturdy hook that goes into the ground. It has a rectangular plate on it at the bottom. The plate gets pushed through the ground, and you end up with a deep, narrow slit. You can use a subsoiler for digging slits for pipes. You can also use it to dig up your existing pipes and destroy them, but that’s off topic.

My subsoiler arrived a couple of days ago, and I installed it today. I hooked it to the rock, and the rock would not move much. It was stuck on various things under the ground. I turned the tractor 90 degrees, and the rock popped right out and slid on the lawn.

It was a little hard to get the hook out of the rock, because I had the hook facing forward. It kept pulling the rock toward the tractor. Next time I’ll reverse the hook.

If I had known what I was doing, this would have been a 5-minute job. As it was, it was probably 10 minutes.

I have guests this week. A couple of large friends helped roll the rock into the tractor bucket, and I moved it to the area of the yard where all the other big rocks have been dumped. It’s not laziness. It’s landscaping. No, really.

Now I have a gaping hole and some torn-up grass. I can fill the hole with dirt from my berm.

This is sweet. I hate those stupid lawn rocks. They are all going to pay. At least the ones that aren’t too large to be moved.

The subsoiler cost about $160, and I’m sure paying other people would eventually have cost a lot more.

I can’t tell you how relieved I am. I can’t stand those hidden rocks. I’m wondering what kind of mess I’m going to see the next time I take the deck off the mower and look at the blades.

I was able to put the subsoiler on the tractor by myself, easily. The Pat’s Easy Hitch made it simple.

The low point of the day was lifting a hydraulic lever too far and dropping my new ballast box on its rear. I nearly squooshed my friend Mike, who was helping me remove the box. The box ended up on its back, and some sand fell out. The paint job I spent two days on is messed up somewhat. Not a big deal, apart from the near-fatality.

I know Mike would want to go out like that.

There is nothing like having the right tool. Always remember that.

More

Got a few more rocks out. The subsoiler is fantastic. I’m not sure, but I doubt I could do better without a backhoe attachment.

To Haft or Haft Not?

It’s nearly impossible to walk into a hardware store, grab a tool, and know that you’ve gotten a quality item. China has done us in.

When I was a kid, I did not realize I was living in the golden age of American tools. We made great tools of all types. Machine tools. Hand tools. Power tools. Most of the stuff sold in stores was made here, and the quality was very high. Now we have stores full of great-looking tools that don’t work very well or last long.

I have a stump near my front door. I want it to go away. I got myself some saltpeter, and I opened the stump up and poured it in the holes I had made. The saltpeter will weaken the stump, and then I’ll be able to remove it with hand tools and so on.

It’s very weird how saltpeter will mess up a stump. Hard to believe, but it works.

I want a good mattock to break up the stump. I want one or more axes, too. No problem, right? You go to Home Depot and buy a mattock and an axe or two. Simple.

It doesn’t work that way.

I have a Home Depot cutter mattock. This is a mattock with one vertical blade and one horizontal blade. The vertical blade is very nice. The horizontal blade is so flimsy, you can twist it while pulling it out of a stump. You could grip it in a vise and put a 45-degree twist in it, easily.

Where was the mattock made? I don’t know, but I’ll bet you three fortune cookies I can guess.

Why would anyone put a non-hardened, easily bent blade on a mattock? It defeats the purpose of the tool. A mattock is for tough digging jobs. It’s for hacking up stubborn roots. You can’t do that with a blade that bends.

I looked into axes. It turns out the American axe industry is nearly dead. We used to have a bunch of great axe companies. Collins, Kelly, Plumb, Sager, and others. They made top-notch tools. You could find them anywhere in America. You didn’t have find a special store that sold to professional lumberjacks. You didn’t have to know a password or a secret handshake. The axes people saw every day in every hardware store in America were very good axes.

Now if you want a good axe, you have to search. You may have to buy something made in Sweden, Germany, or Switzerland. The Aryans apparently have a gift for axe-making. You may have to pay $200 or more. How many Deutche Marks is that?

Wait! You know the answer! Buy a used American axe on Ebay! Yes, you can do that. You’ll be surprised, though. People are selling heavily rusted axe heads for $50 each. They are selling axes that have been sharpened so many times they’re practically sledges. A really good used axe head will run you a hundred bucks or more.

I think I found a decent answer. An American company called Council Tool still makes axes. They claim to be hardened to 1-1/4″ back from the ends, so you shouldn’t have to worry about soft cutting edges.

I found an appealing (new!) double-bitted Council Tool axe on Amazon, and I decided to take a chance. It wasn’t expensive at all, and it’s made out of a real, known type of carbon steel (not random melted Chinese scrap). A lot of people who bought it criticized the handle, but I noticed they seemed happy with the head. Hey, I can buy a new handle. The head IS the axe. I think it’s worth a shot. It certainly beats shelling out $250 for something from Sweden.

An axe handle costs a maximum of about $15. If the Council Tool head is good, and I have to get a new handle, the total outlay will be $75 or less. These days, that is a screaming bargain for a lifetime axe.

I also decided to buy a maul. This is a sledge with an axe bit on one end. I think it will work well on stumps. I got the double-bitted axe for more general axe jobs.

I am not buying my maul on the web. Fiskars makes a maul people adore, and I can get it at Lowe’s. It can’t be all that bad, if over 4,000 people rave about it on Amazon. I hope.

I’ve already bought one Fiskars axe since moving here. It’s a Fiskars hatchet. I had used Fiskars products in the past, and they seemed okay. The hatchet does what a hatchet is supposed to do, but the metal seems way soft. It sharpens very, very quickly. Too quickly. It does not inspire confidence; I don’t know if it’s a lifetime tool. I’m hoping the maul will be better.

I don’t know a whole lot about axes, but I have a great tip for people who use them. When I was a kid, I used one a lot. My parents had a cabin in the mountains, and I loved using an axe. If you want to use an axe without making yourself miserable, get yourself a pair of cowhide gloves and soak them in neatsfoot oil. You should never use an axe or mattock or similar tool without a leather glove. If you like blisters and calluses, go your own way. I don’t like them.

The neatsfoot oil will soften the gloves and make the interior seams less abrasive to your skin.

I used to wear Wells-Lamont Trucker’s Special gloves, with adjusting straps that had little red balls on the ends. It looks like they still make a modernized model without the little cartoon trucker on them. I’d love to have a pair for old time’s sake. But Chinese leather gloves from Home Depot work fine, and they have reinforced palms.

I made the mistake of buying deerskin gloves when I moved here. Deerskin is funny. It’s soft and thick, and it sort of gloms onto your hand in a way that feels confining. The inside is very fuzzy, like a caterpillar turned inside-out. Give me cowhide any day.

I will report on the axe and maul eventually. I can’t wait to see the stump disappear.

How to Survive Internet Shopping

I come from white collar roots. My mom’s father was a judge. My mom went to law school and ended up getting a degree in social work. My dad was a lawyer. His dad was a bookkeeper who later became a sheriff. I know a little bit about some of my ancestors, and I don’t know of any who were tradesmen. Not one.

Because of my background, I don’t have anyone I can go to when I need information on things like metalworking, woodworking, and so on. I rely a lot on Internet forums. They’re very useful.

Today someone on a forum tried to make fun of me for buying a tractor attachment on Amazon, so I shut him down pretty good. I was polite, but by the time I finished explaining my choice, he looked silly. People who make fun of Amazon users in 2018 are like the people who made fun of the first firearms. Not smart.

In case you buy stuff online, which is like saying, “in case you live on earth in 2018,” let me tell you why you should use Amazon, Ebay, and Paypal. Some conservatives hate these companies for various reasons. I’m not going into that. I’m just going to write about the ways these companies can help you avoid being abused.

In 2009, I bought a used metal lathe from a company called Plaza Machinery. It’s now out of business. The owner died, which means that legally, I can’t be sued for libeling him. I will omit his name, nonetheless, simply because I think it’s what a Christian should do.

I wanted a Clausing 5914 lathe. He said he had one. He gave me a price. He sent pictures. He said it had seen very little use. He said it had a 3-phase motor. He insisted on payment by check or money order.

NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER pay for anything using a check or money order if you have a choice. Cash is even worse. Don’t do it. Don’t. You’re begging to be cheated.

I paid by check.

When the lathe arrived, I saw that it was a Clausing 5936. This is a pretty stupid lathe, for various reasons. It had a single-phase motor. It was beaten up. It had been used for decades in a prison, as a teaching tool.

When I complained, the seller was nasty to me. He made some feeble efforts to fix things. He sent me an ancient 3-phase motor. He said he would take the lathe back if I paid for half of the shipping. That’s a hefty three-figure sum, and I’m not the one who caused the problem.

He cheated me. It’s that simple. He may also have committed fraud. If he knew the lathe was the wrong model, and he misrepresented the condition, then it was fraud. Would an established machinery dealer know the difference between two lathe models? Would he be able to tell if a lathe had a lot of wear on it? Draw your own conclusions.

He eventually refused to communicate with me.

I could have sued him, but because of my religious beliefs, I chose not to. I made do with what I had.

Why did he refuse to accept credit cards? I don’t know, but I know that if you pay for something using a card, you may be able to get the card company to reverse the charge or at least dispute it. I wonder if he thought about that when he formed his policy.

It’s just possible.

Anyone who refuses to take credit cards is probably a crook. There is no other solid reason for refusing. Credit cards are convenient. They result in higher sales. They allow for easier bookkeeping. In order for a businessman to choose to forgo the profitable practice of accepting cards, he has to have a very powerful motivation.

Was the guy from Plaza Machinery a crook? Judge for yourself. I’m not taking a position. Maybe he was simply demented, and he really thought he was doing the right thing.

Plaza Machinery. Remember that name. They may resume operations. Put that name on your list of companies to think about if you ever buy machinery. I’m not saying you should reject or endorse them. Just think about them.

Personally, I would not buy oxygen from them if I were suffocating. It would probably turn out to be chlorine gas, and my estate wouldn’t get a refund. You have only yourself to blame if you step in the same anthill twice.

Because I paid with a check, had I wanted to take action, I would have had to go through the aggravation of suing. That would be easy for me because I’m a lawyer, but it’s not easy for most people. It’s a painful process, and it’s slow. Collecting is not fun, either.

Now let’s talk about the tractor attachment I just bought. I could have ordered it through various sites. I chose Amazon because I knew Amazon would make some effort to look out for me. I knew the dispute process would consist of writing a few emails instead of going to court.

NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER buy through a little backwater website when you can buy the same product from Amazon or using Paypal. If you want Lulu’s Famous Patented Eyebrow Tweezers, do not buy them from Lulu’s site unless she offers Paypal. Use Amazon, or put yourself at Lulu’s mercy.

The tractor attachment was beaten up when I received it. I complained. The seller took it back. They sent me another one which was beaten up. I complained again. They would have taken that one back, too, but I was tired of the process, so I accepted their offer of a discount.

Why did they do all that? Their company has a dubious reputation when it comes to customer relations. Why did they do so much for me? Simple. The power of Amazon. They don’t want bad reviews because they kill sales. They don’t want Bezos down on them.

Had I bought the same item from a small website, they might have told me to go get bent. Because I used Amazon, I had some leverage.

I’ve bought a lot of things off Ebay. I always use Paypal. When I have problems, I do NOT NOT NOT use the Ebay resolution process. It is completely useless, and it wastes days or weeks. NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER use Ebay’s resolution process.

When I’ve had problems with Ebay sellers, I have ended up using Paypal’s resolution process. It’s faster. It works. Paypal favors buyers, as they should. Most of their customers are buyers, not sellers. Paypal has stuck it to sellers for me. There was nothing the sellers could do. They had to eat my problems, as they should.

Why is it that some Ebay sellers don’t accept Paypal? A cynical person would say that it’s because they enjoy cheating helpless buyers. I’m not a cynical person, so I won’t say that.

No, no. I won’t.

If you’re shopping on the web, and you see something you want, your first move should be to look for a way to get it on Amazon or pay with Paypal. If you can’t do that, use the biggest, friendliest site you can find. If you have to use a crappy Wix-based site the seller’s nephew put together, make sure you pay using American Express, which has a fairly good system for helping customers. If you can’t use American Express, accept the fact that you’re dropping your pants for the enemy and hope for the best.

Last year, I bought some mulching blades on Amazon. I learned something interesting. While Amazon claims to have a great guarantee, every seller has variations on it, and in order to know what their policies are, you have to locate an obscure page where it is laid out. I found that out after I bought the blades. Think about it the next time you buy something there.

I’m getting off track.

I bought the blades, and then I found out I couldn’t use them. The seller wanted me to pay a very high restocking fee (also known as a “BS fee” or “customer abuse fee”). I sent the blades back, and then the seller didn’t acknowledge it.

I complained to Amazon. Guess that they did? They gave me a 100% refund. The seller had to eat a big plate of festering crow. I was out clean, but for the cost of return shipping. I’m not sure I even paid that.

What if I had bought the blades from the seller’s Homestead or Tripod site? I would probably still have them, or I would have a Priority Mail receipt and no money.

Why am I so pro-buyer? Simple math. Internet sellers cheat buyers all the time, day in and day out. It probably happens 30 million times a day. It’s much less common for buyers to cheat sellers. It’s not easy to cheat a seller. Once you pay, you’ve done your job. Your money can’t be defective or disappointing the way a product can.

Read this carefully, and remember it: when you shop on the web, do your best to use Amazon or Paypal. Never use a check or money order. Always use a credit card. If you read this and don’t do what I tell you, you will suffer, and you will bring it on yourself.