I Know This Will Save me Money Once I Buy Enough Tools

I got my reloading press put back together yesterday. Now I need new shell plates. The new ejection system works off a projection on the lower hub, which projects up into a groove going around the bottom of the shell plate. When the plate advances, a shell’s bottom hits the projection, and it knocks the shell out of the plate. My old plates don’t have the groove into which the projection fits.

I can send the plates to Hornady and pay ten bucks each to get them machined. But where is the danger immaturity terror in that? I have a lathe and a mill. I should be able to do this.

I need to make a quarter-inch slot 0.052″ deep, around the bottom of the plate. I know of two ways to do it. First, I can use the lathe. Second, I can put the plate in my rotary table and do the job on the mill with a center-cutting end mill.

Here is the rub: the plate tests out at about 33 on the Rockwell scale, and I don’t have any small cutters in carbide. I have 8% cobalt, but I don’t know if that’s hard enough. It’s definitely harder than the plate, but I would assume the difference between the plate’s hardness and the cutter’s hardness has to exceed a certain figure in order for the cutter to work well.

I don’t think they cover this in Machinery’s Handbook. They list metal types and cutter types. I don’t think they list cutter choices paired with ranges of metal hardness. I guess I can dig it out and check.

Enco is having a nice sale on carbide cutters, so I may get a few. I can spend less than the cost of a Hornady refit and end up with some nice tooling to keep. The danger is that I’ll utterly destroy my shell plates.

I sold my .40 S&W pistol, so I have a shell plate I will never need. I may try to machine that one first.

I guess I could make my own shell plates, if I had any idea how to make a ball-bearing detent.

The lathe would be good, but how do you make a rectangular slot in the face of a disk, with an interrupted cut? I can’t even guess what kind of tool I’d use. I suppose I could make a rectangular tool from cobalt steel and push it directly into the disk, but I have never seen that done in a video.

I may go ahead and fire up the mill with a cobalt cutter and see what happens. A total disaster will cost me about two bucks.

Mounting the rotary table on the mill reminded me that I need a second rotary table. Mine weighs something like 120 pounds with the chuck installed, so in order to get it on and off the mill without risk of dropping it or chipping the mill, I take the chuck off every time. This means a tedious procedure of dialing in the chuck, whenever I want to use the rotab. I have been planning to get a 4″ rotab and mount it in my vise when I need it. This should kill about 95% of the 10″-table moves.

Finding the right rotab is not easy. Little Machine Shop sells a nice one with dividing plates and a chuck and a tailstock for $300. I can get a Vertex with nothing on it for $139. Then there is Lathemaster. But I don’t know what the specs on the Lathemaster product are.

It looks like Phase II has the best specs in the Chaiwanese market.

Some of these things are hard to mount, because you can’t just use your usual studs and nuts. That’s a consideration. I am planning to put the table on a piece of aluminum and put it in my vise, but sometimes (probably), I’ll want it on the mill table surface.

I guess I’ll figure it out.

Someone asked for a link to a Youtube about upgrading the Hornady Lock-N-Load press to the EZ-Ject system. Here you go.

What are YOU Doing Today?

Sometimes I have a fleeting realization of how weird I am. I am having one today.

I got up and wrote a long blog entry about how the Holy Spirit tells me stuff when I’m visiting museums. Then I realized I had to install an EZ-Ject kit on my Hornady Lock-N-Load ammunition press and see if I could machine the shell plates to make them work with it. I got started in the garage, and then I remembered I also had to freeze a gallon of pizza sauce and try a dough experiment. The dough was especially important. I have an idea for easy croissant-like rolls, and I have to test the recipe.

I got on Youtube, found a video of someone explaining the press upgrade (the way Hornady should have in its instructions). Then I made a big pile of dough, turned it into rolls, and put them on a pan to rise. Now I have to go to the garage and do my repairs and machining while the dough rises.

Who else has a life like this? I had to check four WordPress categories for this one post.

I’m considering writing a cookbook for my church. Not for publication. Just to help people who work in the kitchen. If these rolls work, they’ll be in the book.

I forgot to put chocolate inside them. I better fix that before they get too warm to handle.

Get me Some Camo Jammies

Depending on the breaks, I may be able to take my new .308 rifle to the range tomorrow. Then I begin the unbelievable process of breaking in the barrel. The manufacturer recommends cleaning the barrel after every round for the first 25 shots. Then you have to clean it after every 10 rounds until you get to a hundred. That wouldn’t be so bad if they recommended a Boresnake, but they don’t. They recommend a cleaning rod, a jag, and patches.

Here is what one of their people says on their forum:

For “break in” cleaning – you will need to use several patches of copper solvent, not just oil, to properly remove the copper fouling. Then use your regular gun oil, fire, and repeat. I do single rounds for a while, then go to 3 round group, clean, 3 round group, clean…until I am happy.

I’m not even sure I own a rifle-length cleaning rod. I think I have one in the garage. And I didn’t know what a jag was until five minutes ago. Time to visit Bass Pro, I guess.

He doesn’t say anything about a brush. How can you remove copper without a brush? Is that even possible?

I didn’t do this with my Savage. I wonder if I was supposed to. I don’t know if a normal rod will fit in a .17-caliber barrel.

Patches don’t impress me much. I know they worked great for George Washington’s army, but this is 2010. They don’t provide much friction, they hold very little stuff, and they leave junk in the barrel unless you use a pile of them. I would think a well-aimed can of Breakfree or Bore Scrubber would be much better, since it would carry the crap out of the gun instead of just smearing it around. I would be inclined to use a Boresnake, follow it with spray, and then use patches just to see if the barrel was clean. But I am no expert.

For the guns I own now, I use the following stuff: Hornady One Shot, Powder Blast, a Sonicare toothbrush, Q-tips, paper towels, and a Boresnake. Sometimes I use brake part cleaner, taking care to keep it off plastic, wood, and paint. I think I’m getting good results. I never see anything in the barrels when I sight down them.

I really like the bipod I used yesterday. It’s a Rock Mount something or other, I think. I should look at the package. The legs are nice and long, so you don’t have to be a yoga instructor to get behind the scope. I can’t understand why anyone makes rests or bipods that don’t hold the gun up where you can sight through the scope. I’m sure there is a reason, but I am not familiar with it.

I’ll want a bipod for the .308, but I don’t know what kind to get. FAB makes one that collapses into a foregrip, but a foregrip on a 10-pound rifle unsuited for close-quarters work seems silly. The bipod I have is great, but it will not attach to a rail.

Hold it. I won’t have a rail on the bottom of my new gun. I just checked. It’s a swivel. That will work.

I have a Caldwell rest, but I don’t like it. It’s very low, and it weighs a ton, and it takes up half of my shooting box. It has occurred to me that I have the technology to make a new screw for it. The big screw that supports the bag. If it were longer, the rest would be useful. But I prefer bipods. I can’t get used to the idea of shooting from a ridiculous sled type of thing; it seems like it’s one step away from clamping the rifle in a vise and walking away and firing the gun with a remote.

A bipod requires some amount of skill, and unlike a rest, it’s something you would actually find useful in the field. I know people like heavy rests for zeroing rifles, but it appears that I should be able to get sub-MOA performance with a decent bipod, and that’s good enough for me. That’s all I ever wanted. Besides, wouldn’t a giant Frankenrest move the zero anyway? I’d have to re-zero it with the bipod later.

Yesterday I noticed that the guy next to me was also shooting .17 HMR, and he was using what appeared to be a Savage in a target stock, and he had a giant sled thing that must have weighed fifty pounds. I am surprised it didn’t have a built-in seat and an end table for his beer. He was shooting about 9 MOA. Again, I am no gun expert, but here is what common sense tells me: if you shoot that badly with a rest doing all the work, you need to dump the rest, learn to shoot without it, and then try again. He is clearly doing something wrong, and the rest is probably discouraging him from trying to learn what the problem is.

Maybe he has a medical problem that makes a sled necessary to reduce recoil. I wonder.

I hope I am not going to make sled fans angry by writing this. I know there are people who shoot from those things every time they go to the range. I know a guy who shoots a .45 ACP carbine from one, so the reason is not always related to sighting in the gun. I’m sure these guys like the results, and they are not anxious to admit the machinery is doing most of the work, or that they can’t shoot without them. But these things were never intended to be crutches. Were they? Surely not. Far as I know, you’re only supposed to use them to get your rifle and scope acquainted.

From the results I got yesterday, I think I should be able to do something like .75-MOA, shooting the Savage from a bipod. I believe I should be able to put most of a 50-shot box into a group that big at 100 yards. I have to get my scope moved forward, and I have to work on my grip and my trigger pull and my breath control, but I think this is where I’m going to end up. God willing, of course. If that’s true, a complicated rest seems pointless.

It’s very satisfying, seeing it come together. I don’t get much of a thrill out of shooting all over the target, unless I’m playing around with iron sights. I love having a gun that will do exactly what I tell it to do, when I do everything right. This takes the gun out of the equation and allows me to see my own problems more clearly, and that means I learn more and shoot better. This is why I wanted the .308. If a gun will put 50 rounds into a hole the size of a quarter, it will tell me every time I make a mistake. An inaccurate gun will always make me guess. In a situation like that, I may guess wrong and make “corrections” that actually make me shoot worse.

I have one other complaint about the Savage. The cheek weld is pretty much nonexistent. Hard to believe, from a $10 plastic stock. Maybe moving the scope will fix this. If not, I think I should look for a solution. Given the cheapness of the gun and the fantastic as-is accuracy, I am not highly motivated to get a new stock. Maybe there is a product I can screw onto it.

But…

1. CINNAMON ROLLS READY TO GO IN THE OVEN!

2. MADE HUGE PROGRESS MILLING A SHOTGUN PART!

Face it. My hobbies rule.

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Here are the rolls I threw out earlier, because I failed to add yeast to the dough. I baked them anyway. Eating failed baked goods is a guilty pleasure every cook has experienced. You know how it is. Failed baked goods taste fantastic, but it would be too embarrassing to serve them.

Here is the part I’m machining. I’m using a 1/2″ carbide bit at 1200 RPM. I am now in the process of milling the opening out, using the side of the cutter. I have no idea how much 1045 steel I’m allowed to take in one pass, but 0.030″ doesn’t seem to bother the mill. The cut is 1.2″ deep.

I started at about 800 RPM, but the cutter seems to like 1200 better.

Here is the part I’m trying to copy. Dubious photography, but you get the idea.

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I don’t know how they taste cold, but hot, they blow Cinnabons away.

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The rolls are unbelievable. Ate one, threw out six. They were too dangerous to keep near me.

Unleaded Starts my Day

I think I’m falling in love with decaffeinated coffee. I can get up and drink as much as I want while I start my morning routine, and nothing happens.

A while back, I started feeling I should give up caffeine abuse. I’m attention deficient, and I quit taking drugs about 14 years ago, and when I got to law school, caffeine helped me overcome the boredom and concentrate. It also helped in my practice. But lately it has been keeping me up nights, and I think it makes me crabby during the day.

For a while, I’ve felt like God has been cleaning me up. I had to quit smoking cigars because they kept me awake. Who ever heard of such a thing? But it happened. Now coffee is out. I am a man without vices. It is a strange sensation.

Drugs connect us with the spirit realm, somehow or other. Tobacco was a ritual herb smoked by pre-Columbian heathens. Peyote and psilocybin are used in worship. Hippies used to get high and say they had seen God.

I don’t think cigars and coffee are going to give me visions of demons, but there must be something about them that God doesn’t like, because I really had to quit. I had no choice. Something would not leave me alone, and I think it was God.

Maybe weak drugs are sharp tools Satan uses to open little holes in your temple. Search me.

I suppose this is undeniable: drugs that affect your mind are substitutes for things you should be getting from God. Maybe that’s the problem. God fixes people, better than caffeine ever could. Maybe caffeine was in the way.

I don’t have any reason to think other people should give up cigars or real coffee, but it seems to be true in my case.

Coffee is a comfort drink. If I can’t get up and have hot coffee when I first turn on the computer, my morning is damaged. Decaf solved that problem.

Coffee–even real coffee–is supposed to bring health benefits. So I suppose I’m still getting those.

I have been getting comments about the AR rifle. This has been bugging me lately. I don’t need any more rifles, and I don’t think an AR will change my life significantly, but I feel this nagging urge to get one.

I’ll tell you something weird. I think God is driving his people to arm themselves and prepare for hard times. Over and over, I see it. I’ve written about it before. I have a new friend who works for a religious charity, and she travels the country talking to Christian donors. She says lots of people–and this is not a tea party thing; they’re independently motivated–are getting guns and tools and rural land. She told me she met with two elderly sisters in northern Florida who inherited a ranch complete with a gun range. These women are retired missionaries! They can’t figure it out.

I do not believe God tells people to shoot at the FBI or the mailman or any other federal agent. I don’t think we’re going to have a last stand where we all go down fighting, while Janet Reno watches on cable news and claps her hands. I have no interest whatsoever in shooting people. In fact, I am not sure I’d shoot in self-defense, since a criminal is likely to need time to repent and turn to God, while I’m ready to go. I’d shoot to defend others; that’s a moral obligation. But I can’t swear I’d kill someone to protect myself. Still, I think God is somehow involved in the increasing interest Christians have in firearms.

If we are not intended to use these guns against others, I’m not sure what the purpose is. But I think that purpose exists. I suspect it, anyway.

Getting back to the AR, a commenter says a couple of interesting things.

1. I should get an AR15, because 5.56/.223 is sort of mandatory. I don’t really understand that, but there it is.

2. Good AR15s are “cheap” right now, so I should get a Rock River and then add a Grendel upper later.

I know almost nothing about the AR15. I know there are “uppers” and “lowers.” I think that means the lower is the part we think of as a gun, and the upper is the barrel and some other stuff. But I don’t know how interchangeable these things are, or whether combining parts from different companies is a good idea. And I don’t know what he means by “cheap.” Are prices about to shoot up? Have they been reduced recently? No clue here.

I don’t know why I need a 5.56. I’ve seen people call it a “poodle shooter.” For self-defense, I really like my Vz 58 in 7.62x39mm, which is fairly powerful yet easy to shoot. What are the advantages of the 5.56? Do they really exist, or is it one of those things, like a 1911 in .45 ACP or a .22 rifle, that you just have to have, no explanation needed?

I looked at my PSL last night, and sure enough, the hammer is in backwards. I think the same could be said of my brain. I’m going to reverse it and take the gun to the range, but I’ll need ammunition first. I’m not going to shoot the rest of my 7N1 until the Russians release more of it. I could sell the remaining rounds and buy a Corvette.

I don’t know where I can get cheap accurate ammunition for it now. There is lots of surplus out there, and Wolf is not too expensive, but I would really like something that will do 2 MOA out of an ideal gun. That way, I can work on my shooting without wondering if the ammunition is holding me back.

I guess I could drive over to Samco and see what they have.

The glass for the AR is a problem. The gun itself is not cheap, and I would want a scope which would work well at long ranges. Prairie dog range, in case I ever get off my butt and go varmint hunting. I assume such items are not cheap.

Maybe the urge will go away.

Shooting poodles…isn’t that a public service? Is there some way we could train them to pop out of prairie dog burrows? Just a thought.

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To clarify, I would like an AR in a good long-distance caliber, so whatever I get, I want it to work with a varmint barrel and a good scope. But if I also get a 5.56 upper for shorter ranges, do I have to worry that the original lower will not be appropriate for long-range shooting?

On the Loose

I have free time! I have free time! Can you tell? Was it a clue when I blew up my pizza stone in a pointless backyard experiment?

Mike’s visit is over. I will not be making pizza at church today. I do not have to serve as an Armorbearer tonight. I do not have to get up super-early tomorrow or go to bed late tonight.

I have free time!

I think I’ll hit the garage and try to finish the butt attachment thing for my Saiga 12. Look out for flying swarf.

The Urge to Annoy Nerds Overcomes Me

I guess I’m childish, but I can’t help wanting to poke a hole in the Neapolitan pizza fad.

In case you aren’t up on your fads, Neapolitan pizza is thin pizza cooked at over 700 degrees. The really cool places go a thousand. The pizza is very thin, it’s burned (understandably), and it tends to come with disgusting, silly toppings like goat cheese, arugula, and squash blossoms (I’m guessing on that last one).

Mind you, I’m talking about American yuppie Neapolitan. For all I know, the stuff they eat in Naples actually tastes good.

Pizza nerds cut up their Weber kettles all the time, trying to jack up the heat. It makes a real mess, and it’s a lot of work. When I saw them talking about this on a forum, I asked why they didn’t just go on Craigslist and buy used pottery kilns. For a couple of hundred dollars, you can get a 120-volt deal that will cook a pretty big pizza at 1500 degrees. If that’s what turns you on. They didn’t get too excited about it, though.

Yesterday I got the urge to tinker. Propane burns at nearly 3000 degrees. I’m thinking I should be able to get to a thousand or so by putting a stone on my cajun burner. I’ll need heat from above, too, so I’m thinking I could make a thin steel box to cover the stone (with room for a pizza inside) and hang a second burner above the box, aimed downward. Might work. Heat would go out the sides, but I think a good hot stone and radiant heat from the box above ought to more than compensate. I could put some kind of thin metal deflector under the stone to keep the center from getting too hot.

Will it work? I don’t know, but it would cost about fifty bucks to find out, and it would be fun to prove that you don’t need to bankrupt yourself or make a mess to get bona fide nerd pizza. I should be able to put the box and burner on a shelf in the garage, neatly out of the way, unlike a hacked up Weber kettle full of fire bricks.

I guess the first step is to put the stone directly over the heat and see if it explodes. If not, the project may work. If it blows up, I spent twenty bucks to find out I had a bad idea.

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Okay, let’s file that under “bad idea.”

Look What Happened in Two Years

Here I present more evidence that the Chinese are going to eat our lunch.

I have been cooking in my church’s kitchen. Like most kitchens, this kitchen contains no decent knives. The other day, I took my cheap Chinese cleaver up there to slice pizza toppings. I decided to get a cleaver for them to keep.

I ordered my cleaver a few years back, from The Wok Shop. I probably paid ten bucks. That’s what they charge now. It’s carbon steel, which means it rusts. It sharpens up like a razor in less than a minute. It holds an edge a good long time. It minces garlic better than any American or European kitchen knife. You can scrape stuff with the end. It will cut onions in slices as thin as a business card. You can carry chopped food on the side of it. You can tenderize meat with the dull side. Don’t get me started. It’s a miracle knife.

I placed a new Wok Shop order. Today the new cleavers arrived. I got one just like mine for church, plus a meat cleaver and a smaller (supposedly) vegetable cleaver for myself. All three knives were sharp when they arrived. Two were sharp enough to shave with.

Here’s a photo.

My old cleaver is the one on the left. Notice the crappy workmanship. There are lots of odd dings in the steel. The weird bands of oxidation are irregular, too. It works great, but the workmanship screams “CHINA.”

Now look at the pretty cleaver next to it. The stamped characters are done much better. The bands are even. They’ve made curves on the edge and back. There are no dings in the metal. It looks sort of polished. It’s like the two cleavers came from different planets.

Now, maybe the Wok Shop found a new supplier, and nothing has happened in China. But I don’t think that’s what happened. Chinese goods are getting better, across the board. If you buy tools, you already know this. My old cleaver just turned three, and it’s nothing like the one I just bought.

Incidentally, a lot of people get excited about Chan Chi Kee cleavers. I wouldn’t put much faith in them without trying one first. Back when I got my cleaver, very few people had heard of Chan Chi Kee. Nuts on knife boards were starting to talk about them. They got a lot of publicity over the web over the last couple of years. Now people act like Chan Chi Kee is the gold standard. Maybe it is. I don’t have one, so I can’t tell you if they’re the best Chinese cleavers. I very much doubt it. In China, commodity goods like this typically come from very similar factories, and they tend to be of pretty uniform quality. And Chan Chi Kee cleavers were cheaper before people started asking for them. Maybe there is a physical reason why they cost more now, but I suspect the main reason is PR.

I don’t see how a Chan Chi Kee could be any better than the one I just bought, or my old cleaver. I don’t think the Chinese are lying awake nights, reinventing carbon steel.

Oh. This is disturbing. My old cleaver cost twice as much as the new one. I just looked it up. Same product, better workmanship, half the cost.

Some day, little American kids will think we’re lying when we tell them unskilled union workers used to get $75 an hour. The Chinese will see to that. Some people claim the Chinese will eventually have to charge more for their labor. Sure, when they find jobs for 1.5 (or whatever it is) billion hungry people. Until then, my bet is on the law of supply and demand. And if the Chinese multiplied their average wage by ten, they’d still beat our butts.

Then there’s India.

I plan to enjoy the great cheap tools until I have to go live in a government-subsidized hole.

Correction

Turns out the heavy cleaver on the right is Taiwanese. Their labor rate is 8 times China’s, according to the owner of Grizzly Industrial, yet they managed to supply a very nice heavy cleaver which retails for $20. I assume, then, that a Chinese job would be considerably cheaper.

Reproducible Pizza Results

I made another pizza with both Sorrento and Arrezzio cheeses. I learned that the cheese conclusions I drew the first time I made one of these are still true. Hey, it may sound like I achieved nothing, but this kind of research is important. No matter how big a drag it is. Making delicious pizza. Over and over.

I also learned that everything I concluded about overnight pizza fermenting was nonsense. I fermented this baby in a couple of hours, and it was very much like the one I fermented overnight. So I still don’t see what the fuss is about.

That Publix pan is a wonder. It fries the bottom of the crust beautifully. The texture is breathtaking. If you live near a Publix supermarket, try one. I no longer recall the exact name of the thing, but it’s about 8″ square, with sides maybe 1 1/2″ high. The inner surface is some kind of nonstick, but it’s not Teflon. I believe it’s aluminum oxide. Sounds crazy, but it works, and you can’t burn it.

A cast iron skillet won’t do this, unless you go through a lot of pointless work. The Publix pan works like this: put dough in pan, let dough rise, put sauce and stuff on dough, put pan in oven. Bam, as Emeril says. You have a perfect crust, except possibly for a little stone touch-up. No pre-baking, no preheating the pan. I suggest you try it.

I put the pan as close to the lower heating element as I can, and I bake for 9 minutes. I make sure the lower element is cycling on when I put the pan in, so the element will be red-hot for part of the time the pan is over it. When the pie is done, I pop it out and give it 30-60 seconds on the stone, but you really have to watch it, because the pan gets it very done, and the stone cooks the pie fast.

The pie I just made was beyond bizarre. I used my usual no-oil recipe (oil added to the outside later), but instead of activating the yeast, I sprinkled instant dry yeast over the dough as soon as I got the water and salt and pepper mixed into it. Then I mashed the dough around and folded it until the yeast was pretty much inside the dough. Sounds nutty, but it was great. There was yeast stuck to the outside of the dough, and I thought it would be nasty, but it was perfect.

I’m starting to wonder if there is a wrong way to combine pizza dough ingredients.

I got some new stuff for the garage today. A while back, I got a 16N Jacobs chuck, because the used 14N I bought to save money was junk. The 16N was a new chuck some guy had bought but not used, and while I got the chuck, I did not get the key. Today a new key arrived. It’s so big, you could literally use it as a tiny hammer.

Now I can actually use my chuck.

I also got several new center drills. All but one are cobalt. The other is carbide. I have HSS center drills, and they’re crap. I keep hearing how great HSS is. They’re crap. I’m sorry. I can’t help it. It’s not my fault. After you use one twice, it stops working. When I finally bought a big drill bit set, I went with cobalt, because the difference is very obvious, and the cost is not much different.

Maybe the HSS bits I’ve used were lame imports, and that’s why they got dull so fast. Maybe I applied too much pressure. I don’t care. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life trying to prove everyone who promotes HSS to me is right. If I’m wrong, I’m out maybe a hundred bucks I didn’t need to spend, and meanwhile, I have tools I can actually use. If my bad technique is the problem, isn’t the smart thing to buy tools I can’t hurt with bad technique? Obviously, I should try to do things well, but every little bit of insurance helps, and it’s extremely annoying to have to quit a job because a 30¢ drill bit is fried.

I tried to use my drill press to take the lower handguard retention pin out of my Vz 58, before I was persuaded to beat it hard enough to drive it out with a punch, and I learned something. Drill presses are not rigid. I knew that already, but I didn’t know how true it was.

I have a big industrial Rockwell press with a cast iron head, and the drill bit still wandered all over the pin. Even when I tried a thick center drill, it wandered. Some of this may be due to a need to tighten up the head, I suppose, but I can tell this thing will never drill like a mill. So if you’re looking for serious drilling technology, my recommendation is to get a drill press and a small mill. I may be wrong, but that seems like the way to go. You can get a little used mill for a few hundred bucks, and on those occasions when you need a mill or a rigid drill, you will get down on your knees and thank God you bought it. When you need a mill, you NEED a mill.

Truthfully, I’m a little worried that the drill press will turn out to be useless, but I guess that’s just neurosis. I’m sure it’s fine when you’re not trying to drill rock-hard Eastern Bloc steel that came from melted-down Trabant pistons.

I ended up putting my drill press vise in my milling machine vise! That was my strategy for drilling the pin out. But when I mounted the giant chuck on the mill, I realized I had no key. I tried to tighten it as best I could, but I couldn’t get it tight enough to do the job. The bit kept receding into the chuck. That’s a good thing, because otherwise, I would have wasted three hours trying to drill an inch-long pin out.

Those pins are insanely tight. You have to beat them so hard, it’s scary. I marred mine up, but instead of buying a new one for three bucks, I think I’ll make one on the lathe, slightly thinner than the original, with some means of yanking on it. Maybe a loop in one end. I realize pins in guns should be tight enough to resist falling out when the guns fire, but this thing was way past that degree of tightness, and anyway, my gun is semi-auto, so it’s not like it’s getting pounded ten times a second.

Now that I think about it, a brass or aluminum pin might not be a bad idea. Easy to make, easy to hammer out, and it won’t hurt anything around it. Brass would be pretty, too. And I have lots of 360 brass. I don’t know if brass galls when it contacts steel. Something to consider. I also have 304 stainless. That would work, and I wouldn’t have to blue it.

The Slop Flies on Friday

Obamacare has been signed into law, and I feel healthier already. I think I’ll get pregnant with octuplets, demand free prenatal care, and then decide to abort in the eighth month, because a pregnancy belly makes me look fat.

Obamacare is an amazing thing. Like the mortgage mess, it’s an example of knowledgeable people going against their own best interests, in a way that is bound to cause great misery.

My take on things like this is that they have their root in the supernatural. There is no other way to explain such a dumb course of action, taken by so many people who knew better. Democrat politicians are virtually begging to be recalled. When has that ever happened?

They supported Obama’s law, which is extremely unpopular among Republicans and Democrats, in order to prop up a very unpopular President. There is no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and we know they wouldn’t do it out of principle.

God clouds people’s judgments and lets them believe lies, when they’re far enough out of his will.

Obamacare will be a disaster, sooner or later. I wonder when the pain will come. I heard Rush Limbaugh’s show a day or two ago, and a lady in the insurance business called in. She said insurance companies jack up their rates in February, and she predicted 200%-300% increases. She was afraid these increases would come too late to affect upcoming elections, because elections are held in the fall. That would be a textbook example of a curse at work. Imagine people voting to perpetuate this insanity, two months before they understand what they’ve done.

If God is merciful, we’ll start suffering sooner, not later. Nothing is worse than prospering at the beginning of a self-destructive course of action. This is how junkies, alcoholics, and compulsive gamblers are made.

I wish Christians were doing more to help the poor. I believe our failings may have left this opening. I’m not sure about it. The fact is, bad behavior and lack of faith will lead to poverty, even when charities exist, so maybe it’s not possible for us to close the opening. Maybe God himself would stand against it. Jesus told us we would always have poor people among us. Still, any time believers fail, it leaves a way for the enemy to get in.

Aaron sent me a link to a wonderful Dennis Prager essay, explaining why secular Jews support Obamacare. Politically, Jews are suicide bombers. They vote against their own best interests, and the interests of the countries in which they live, in support of the religion of leftism. By and large, they are committed to justice, but they have abandoned the God who created their justice-driven culture. Man cannot solve his own problems without God’s help. That means obedience, faith, humility, and total submission. You can’t get these essential ingredients from Marxism Lite.

Secular thinking just doesn’t pan out, in the long run. That includes secular pride in our species. I have often noted the giant error Americans commit, when they claim human beings instinctively love liberty. I sometimes cite Star Trek. Kirk was always spouting off about the impossibility of domesticating and enslaving earthlings. He could not have been more wrong.

The history of humanity shows that often, it doesn’t take much pressure to enslave us. The Bible provides a proper method for people who desire to become slaves; you allow your ear to be pierced in a certain way. People were allowed to make that choice, and many did. Today many Americans are doing the same basic thing, voting for leftists. You give up control of your wealth, which is tantamount to selling your freedom piecemeal, because you can’t use freedom unless you have wealth. In exchange, you get to live like a hog at a factory farm. Mommy-State Dearest slops you and hoses out your pen, and in return, you accept a poor but stable standard of living, and your liberty is restricted.

We were created to trust God to give us health and prosperity and safety. Instead we rely on politicians, who are among the people we respect least. Crazy, if you think about it. We trust people like Jim Traficant and William Jefferson and Randy Cunningham more than we trust God.

Everyone has faith and lives by it. The question is, in whom is that faith placed?

God knew all this when he tried to get the Israelites to accept a church-state. Through Samuel, he told them kings would steal from them, treat them unfairly, and send their men to die in wars. Everything Samuel predicted came to pass; even David and Solomon did great evil. And we are no different from the Israelites. They’re at the center of God’s story. We’re peripheral, and unlike the Jews, we have no promise that we will be preserved as a nation. Compared to Israel, Gentile nations are disposable.

In continuing their blind devotion to Marx, Jews are perpetuating the decision they made back in Saul’s day. And any Gentile who votes the same way is doing the same thing.

On a lighter note, I’m planning to get back to rifle shooting. I got some .17 HMR ammunition. The price has dropped back to sane levels. I’m also finishing up the modifications on my Vz. 58/CZ858 (whichever you choose to call it).

Here’s something for suffering Googlers. If you bought a FAB Defense handguard, you need to know this. To remove the old handguard, place the gun on a very hard surface. You can put something under it to protect the finish, but don’t use anything thick. Take a punch and a sledge (I used a 3-pound hammer) and beat on the right-hand end of the retainer pin under the receiver. You may have to hit it really hard, but it will eventually come out.

To put the FAB part on, force it. The rear will be gouged by the receiver, but the gouges will be hidden once it’s on. Make sure you install the rails before installing the handguard.

I’m going to try to install mine today, and I may Dremel some of the polymer away to make it go on easier.

I still want a decent semi-auto long-distance rifle. The Kommunist Kannon (PSL/Romak III/FPK) isn’t that great. The trigger will slap you silly, leading to numbness and poor accuracy, and very few people report tight groups, especially with a hot barrel. Also, the supply of good Russian surplus ammunition (7N1) is gone. I think it may be time to get an AR15 and unload the PSL.

The Vz 58 is great for short distances, so I don’t need a light AR15 which is highly portable. That means a .308 with a varmint barrel. I think Rock River is the way to go.

This would pretty much complete my defensive arsenal. Not that I foresee a reason to shoot anyone 200 yards away. Or at any distance, for that matter. Prepare for war, if you want peace.

I also need a holster for church. The pocket method is working fine, but a holster would provide faster access. In the outside world, it would be a pain, but in church, it’s cool, and I can wear a shirt or jacket over it to provide concealment. And I feel like getting a Galco Miami Classic II for my .38 Super, for more formal occasions. Maybe it’s possible to get different holsters for the same harness, so I can use it for the Glock, too.

We have a lady armorbearer now. That’s pretty cool. And it makes sense. The greatest church-shooting hero of all time is a woman named Jeanne Assam.

I still have no pimp handles for the .38. Sad.

More

More info for Vz 58 owners.

It turns out the FAB Defense foregrip (pistol grip) with the integrated flashlight holder is worthless for the Vz 58 rifle. The rear of the pistol grip interferes with the magazine, no matter how far forward you put the grip. You can put the grip on the gun once the magazine is installed, but in order to remove the magazine, you have to take the grip off. Not really what you want to be doing while defending your house at 3 a.m.

Another fun issue: you can’t change the battery in the light or laser without removing it from the mount, unless your light or laser unscrews from the front. My light works that way, but my laser does not.

I’m emailing Israeli-Weapons.com, trying to get a refund. They don’t seem interested in returning my correspondence.

Another problem: I bought a plastic holder for a 1″ flashlight or laser. Israeli-Weapons thoughtfully includes a 1″ rear cap with a pressure switch. But the holder is too small for a 1″ flashlight cap, including the one they supply. How about that?

I had to put the holder on a milling machine and cut a hole in it to make my flashlight fit with the cap behind the holder. That way, you can screw the cap into the flashlight when it’s installed in the holder.

Let’s all Take a Deep Breath

Yesterday I wrote an entry about working in the kitchen at my church, and I pointed out that I had to be careful where I left a sharp Chinese cleaver, because the women who worked there were liable to injure themselves with it. I mentioned a lady who cut herself with it because she used it as a spatula. And I noted that women don’t seem to do very well with sharp knives.

People seem to think I was expressing contempt for the people in the kitchen, particularly the lady who cut herself. Sorry if I gave you that impression, but that wasn’t the point. As a matter of fact, the lady who cut herself is an unusually sharp and classy person. Speaks three languages fluently. The fact that she doesn’t know what to do with a Chinese cleaver does not make her stupid.

As for the generalization about women and knives, I’ve found it to be true. Most men are bad about sharpening their kitchen knives, but I’ve only seen women complain about knives being too sharp. Men tend to like sharp tools.

The safety concern is very real. When you work in an institutional kitchen, everybody shares equipment, and if the workers are volunteers, they often don’t know what they’re doing. No one who goes into a church kitchen is going to expect to pick up a knife that will pop the tiniest hairs off an arm and leave nothing behind it. They’ll assume it’s dull like all the other knives. One of the most likely ways to learn differently is to carve up a hand.

I can’t go to church and line everyone up and ask who is going to defy my expectations. I can’t hold a knife safety class. That means I have to make sure that if I have a sharp knife, nobody gets a chance to use it without asking me first. I should never have left my cleaver where other people could see it.

I ordered a cleaver for the church because I’m not willing going to suffer, using the church’s horrible knives to chop pizza toppings. I guess I’ll get a diamond hone, too. And I’m getting a Chinese Chan Chi Kee meat cleaver and a smaller Chinese vegetable cleaver for myself. I’m sold on the cheap Chinese stuff. You can put a fine edge on a Chinese carbon-steel cleaver in ten seconds, and my cleaver outperforms a Shun by a mile.

My Shun cleaver hasn’t been used since maybe a month after I bought it. That was years ago. There is a reason for that. Experience proved it wasn’t a very good cleaver. If it had worked well, I’d still be using it. Sometimes you have to admit the pretty toy you bought was a waste of money.

I guess I could donate the Shun to the church. But I don’t believe in giving God hand-me-downs I wouldn’t want for myself. There’s always the Salvation Army. They could sell it, along with the chipped Shun santoku I never use. And my Tojiro nakiri.

A commenter recommended Old Hickory carbon-steel knives. One of the few things I got from my grandmother’s house was her old rusty butcher knife. I don’t know if it’s an Old Hickory or not. I’m afraid to use it, because it’s kind of a museum piece. Fortunately I have a huge Forschner scimitar knife to fill the need.

My Preoccupations

I trammed my mill the other day. I had to. I knocked it out of tram while using a fly cutter. Guess what? It turns out you have to lock the spindle when you do that. Otherwise the fly cutter can sink into the work, and suddenly instead of ten thousandths, you’re trying to trim off a quarter of an inch, and the mill doesn’t like it.

I can’t be expected to remember these tiny insignificant details.

I trammed the mill using my cheap CDCO coax indicator. Seems to work fine. I also used it to align the vise. I just milled the side of a piece of aluminum using a 1/2″ carbide cutter, and the result was gorgeous.

I was going to use a fly-cutter to test the tramming, but then I remembered how I got where I was. I believe I’ll save that for finishing the part.

The part I was making for my Saiga 12 has to be completed, and the mill was so out of tram, I could not get a good finish. Now that’s fixed.

I have been discouraged from using carbide, but now that I’m using the tables instead of guessing at feeds and speeds, I find carbide pretty exciting. I can mill 1018 steel (of which I have maybe a hundred pounds) at 1000 RPM. That sure beats HSS. Anything that gets you out of the garage in half the time is good. I don’t know for sure, because I’m too lazy to find out, but I’ll bet a regular carbide end mill will rough steel faster than an HSS roughing bit.

I had to quit working in the garage because my bread had risen. I must be honest. I do not have great hopes for this “loaf.” But satisfying my idle curiosity is a vital priority, so here I am, waiting for the oven to beep.

The part I’m making is a replacement for a Magnolia Armory ISA. This is a doodad that fits in the rear of a Saiga weapon and lets you attach a manly buttstock. The one I got from Magnolia doesn’t really fit. It’s probably intended for Saiga rifles. It’s aluminum. I could have made the new one from aluminum, but here I am with all this steel, and if I make it from steel, it will last for eternity. So I’m putting up with the slower speeds.

I can’t do the tapping, unfortunately. I don’t have fine-thread taps. At least I don’t think I do. I’ll check, but it sure looks like the screws I’m using have finer threads than the ones my taps make. Guess I’ll need to pick a couple of taps up.

I have no way of bluing the part, other than Super Blue. I should look into that. If I had used aluminum, I’d have no way at all. I’d have to order something from Brownell’s.

It’s pretty cool to have concerns like these. Three years ago, I had no Saiga, no mill, no drill press, no lathe, and few clues.

I hope I can pull this off on the first try, although I’m already wishing I had gone for a folding design instead.

More

The bread worked fine, but I think it was actually TOO kneaded. The texture was very tight. I think next time I’ll mix it in a bowl.

More “Coincidences”

Sometimes I think I should rename this blog “testimony.com.”

Last night I made pizza at the church. There were problems. The pastor who led the service didn’t mention the cafe or pizza to the congregation, so we didn’t get nearly the traffic we got last week. The pre-service traffic was excellent; I could barely keep up. I got rid of 8 pies in a hurry. But I believe we only sold two afterward. Then something went wrong with the ovens; maybe the propane was running out. I couldn’t keep the temperature up. I had to quit.

I threw out maybe eight dough portions. Sad. I arrived at the church at about 4:15, and I didn’t leave until 10:45, and I achieved nearly nothing.

We’ll do better next time. This is how churches are; efficiency is not what Christians are known for.

When I got home, I had to take the birds out for half an hour each. I had forgotten to do it before going to church. I got to bed at 1:30, and then my eye started bothering me. I don’t know if it’s conjunctivitis or what, but I looked carefully in the eye and used drops and washed it out with water, and I still was not able to get to sleep for quite some time.

I figured I’d sleep late, but my father had other plans. He had an appointment to meet someone at his boat at 10:00 a.m., and he wanted me there, so he woke me up.

The boat had three problems this week.

A freshwater pump needed to be reinstalled; it had quit working earlier in the week, and I had removed it yesterday. I checked the motor, and it ran fine. He took it to a store, and they looked at the pressure switch, and it worked. So today it had to be reinstalled, and I had to check the wiring.

A cable on a transmission had fallen apart, and it needed to be fixed or replaced. I looked at this yesterday, but I couldn’t see a way to repair it.

Last time we took the boat out, the GPS couldn’t get a signal. I poked around yesterday, trying to find an antenna problem, but I couldn’t see anything wrong with it. When I turned the GPS on, it worked.

Today we still had to worry about the pump and the cable. We also needed to install some 12-volt bulbs in the engine room.

I was grumpy for several reasons. First, I was born that way. Second, I had not slept well. Third, the boat guy was late. Fourth, my morning prayers had been derailed. My dad left to buy some mounting screws for the water pump; he had lost the ones I removed. That left me sitting on the boat alone.

I rewired the water pump and put it in place without screws, and then I decided to try to catch up in prayer. I ordinarily do half an hour of prayer in the Spirit every morning, so I started the stopwatch feature on my phone and got started. After 12 or 13 minutes, I heard the boat guy, Juan, out on the dock. He was on his cell phone, talking to someone for business purposes. I prayed he would keep at it long enough for me to get to 30 minutes.

At 29:55, he stepped onto the boat, and we started talking. He had been working at his own church until after 2:00 a.m. He had to redo a bunch of audio wiring under the altar, and naturally, it was so screwed up it took forever to fix.

He started working on the cable, and my dad showed up. He loves to give Juan a hard time about religion, so he brought it up. He said he was starting to think there was something to it, because every time he had a problem with the boat, I showed up, and the problem disappeared. That’s not quite true, but it’s not far from it.

That got Juan going. He started telling my dad how good his life was because of God. His marriage worked. His job went well. His kids were doing well. I’d say he gave my dad a good half-hour of testimony. He told about his involvement with the Promise Keepers. He’s also an avid hunter, and he helps with a Bible-based hunting camp for kids. He said he had been filmed for one of the outdoor channels, teaching kids to hunt. He said he’d bring the video next time so we could watch it on the boat.

My dad used to be extremely hostile to Christianity. It made him angry. It filled him with contempt. But his attitude has gotten more and more open. Today he almost sounded like he was ready for a visit to church.

I left the boat ahead of my dad and thanked Juan in the parking lot, and he said he talks to my dad like this all the time. I had no idea. It means much more when this kind of thing comes from someone outside of your family, so this is a big deal.

The dockmaster was standing next to Juan when I approached him, and I explained what I was thanking Juan for, and it turns out he’s a Christian, too. And a hunter. I used to let him hunt on my land in Kentucky.

What a morning. I didn’t feel like going over there and crawling around in the engine room on this particular day, but I told myself there would be a blessing for me if I did the right thing and honored my father, so off I went. And look what happened.

Now my dad wants to buy me lunch, so I guess I’ll be blessed with a Dan Marino’s cheeseburger. That’s gilding the lily.

Drop That Breaker Bar

Learned three things today.

First of all, Loc-Tite is partly cyanoacrylate (“super glue,” “Krazy Glue”). So you can soften it with acetone in order to get it loose. You can also add fresh Loc-Tite to the threads and give it ten minutes to work in.

Second thing: ordinarily, people use heat to soften Loc-Tite, but if you’re dealing with aluminum, even a small amount of heat can wreck the temper of the metal.

Third thing: one good way to apply heat in a very small area in order to loosen Loc-Tite without damaging anything around the screw or bolt is to touch the fastener with a soldering iron.

Loc-Tite makes a proprietary solvent, but the price is approximately a billion dollars an ounce.

Monster Waste of Money

As part of my declutterizing campaign, I threw out my copy of How to Weld Damn Near Anything. This book got good reviews, but it’s totally useless. The overviews it gives on different types of welding are about as informative as the course description blurbs in a college class catalog.

FAIL.