Plus Boring Virus Whining

I guess people think I’m dead because of the gap in my blogging. Sorry to disappoint you. The virus has left me in a strange mental state in which I sort of drift around like a cloud. I just don’t feel like doing anything.

I’m not complaining. The soreness went out of my throat yesterday, and I haven’t had chills or aches since Saturday night. I’m caught up in a dreamy state in which I lack motivation. And I don’t feel like exerting myself mentally. This must be how liberals feel every day.

I’m so happy I can swallow and breathe, I don’t care much about anything else. I can almost taste food.

My doctor says about 4% of sore throats are strep throat, and the remainder are mostly viral. I tested negative for strep, so I guess I’m in the majority. I had both flu shots, and I haven’t had a high fever, so it’s probably not the flu.

The medicine I use causes much of my suffering. I loaded up on Afrin night before last, and after I got up in the morning, I had the notorious rebound effect, so until about nine p.m., I felt like I had rudder-box packing stuffed up each nostril. I also had problems with 12-hour Sudafed waking me up at three in the morning.

I decided to try guaifenesin. It’s supposed to loosen things up. Seem to work, but not all that well.

The guy who runs security at my church sent an email to everyone who works with him. An organization that trains security people will be having a two-day seminar in Fort Lauderdale in January. I think it would be great, but the $300 price is a bummer.

I think our church needs to have a few members packing heat at all times. We’re in the ghetto, and we collect cash offerings. Besides, being unarmed is almost never a good idea. Remember Jeanne Assam. Better yet, remember the people who were killed before the gunman ran into his first armed Christian.

Whenever I go into the building, I have to leave my carry piece in my truck, where it can be stolen by crackheads. I’m unarmed, the church has one less potential defender, and the crackheads have a chance to steal a nice pistol. This is not a good situation for anybody, except the crackheads. Plus, it’s a pain.

On the subject of guns, allow me to bring you good news. Federal FMJ 9mm ammunition is back down to $9.95 per box, where it should be. What a relief. You can find it at Outdoormarksman.com. They also have Wolf 7.62mm x 39 for $200/thousand. That’s helpful, if you need to sweep your church’s parking lot with a Vz 58. That will learn the heathens respect.

If I can make myself stand up long enough, I may finish my Saiga 12 conversion today. I would be really embarrassed if a burglar showed up before it was finished and all I had to offer him was a 1911.

I try to be a thoughtful host.

Breathing is Nice

Take a deep breath. I’m considering taking the plunge. I may get myself…a DUST COLLECTOR.

The other day while I was doing something stupid on the web (which I no longer recall), I came across a dust attachment for my Dewalt planer. Not a real dust collector. More like a grass bag. Then I read up on dust some more, and I realized dust collection was something I could actually achieve, now that I can’t use the garage for parking. The added room makes it possible.

I have a table saw, planer, router, miter saws, and band saw. Dust generation is not a problem for me. I can fill a car trunk in a day if I put my mind to it. But I hate the post-fun vacuuming. Anything I can do to cut back would be good. The aggravation of cleanup makes me use the tools less, and that is unacceptable.

I keep letting credit-card points expire, and that’s bad. So I’m redeeming a bunch of them for gift certificates. I wish I could use them for a dust collector, but I can’t get a Delta, which is what I want.

I have to put a floor in my table saw so the dust will stop falling out of the bottom. Ironically, I’ll need a table saw in order to do this. I’ll have to cut the MDF I bought. I guess dust will have a couple more victories before I overcome it.

The drill press vise I ordered will be here this week. That will be fantastic. I’ll have everything I need to put the cross slide table and the vise on my drill press. That will get a fair amount of hardware out of my face.

What would you buy, if you had some Sears gift certificates? I think I should get out my book on putting together an amazing garage and see what I lack.

OOH! Worm-drive circular saw!

That’s a thought.

Dust in my Chips

I just tried woodworking on the milling machine. It was interesting.

The machine has no end of power, so that’s not an issue. But it tops out at 4200 RPM, which is a little slow. And the aluminum cutters leave a finish that isn’t what you would get with a wood router. Also, the vise bends the work! I think you have to clamp stuff right onto the table to make it work well.

Cleanup wasn’t bad. I did it right away, because I was afraid wood dust would hold moisture and rust the machine.

One nice thing: that 3-phase motor is much quieter than most woodworking machines.

I guess I’ll think about this before I try again. I have a piece of mahogany about 4″ square by 0.44″, and I want to get it to a nice flat 0.28″ and cut some mortises in it.

It may be time to think about real dust collection instead of a cheap mask and a shop-vac.

I’ll Watch Avatar When They Read the Health Care Bill

I had to go to the doctor today. I hate that. I woke up at around 3 a.m. with an unpleasant sensation in my right eye, and I was afraid I had aluminum swarf in it. It got much better by the time I woke up, but if there is one rule I have learned in life, it’s “Don’t take a chance on going to the emergency room on a weekend.”

I found an ophthalmologist who was willing to see me in a hurry, and we had a pleasant visit. He said my vision was “fantastic,” which is strange, because it was so much better when I was young. Maybe he meant I have fantastic vision for a fossil. I can see the edible weeds and grubs better than the other stegosauruses.

He couldn’t find metal in my eye, but he said I had some kind of crud accumulating around the inside of my eyelids, so now I have to clean my eyes once a day. My bet is that he found bird dust from Marv and Maynard. African greys and cockatoos generate a fine powder from their feathers, and I wrestle with my birds all the time, so I’m sure my eyes are always full of that stuff. I tried to force myself to bathe them every day, but of course, I wussed out. Now I pay the price. I keep their cages nice and clean these days, so I don’t feel too bad about the progress I’ve made.

I think I need to get serious about eye protection. Yesterday I was wearing a face shield (I used the grinder) plus reading glasses, and I still got burned. Maybe I need to get goggles that close up better. It’s so easy to forget the safety lessons you’ve learned. Now that I think about it, I recall a piece of a wire brush coming around that face shield.

I may have put metal in my eye after taking the safety stuff off. It’s possible to have it on your hands if you miss it while washing.

You know how doctors are. This guy talked me into a full-blown middle-age eye checkup. I go in next month. I guess it’s a good thing, although I have no idea what he could have missed today. Vision test, glaucoma test, and microscopic exam.

I tried jowl bacon at breakfast today. I can’t say enough about fried pork for breakfast. It’s quick, it goes great with coffee, and it’s better for regularity than cereal.

The bacon tasted good, but it had a strip of tough material down one side. I gave up on that part. The birds are enjoying it. I don’t think I’d eat jowl bacon this way again, but I can see using it in other dishes. It has lots of fat compared to ordinary bacon, so it’s a little funny, eating it by itself.

I’ve decided to review Avatar without seeing it. Here goes. A young Marine with a disabled body and a gung-ho brain volunteers to have his mind hooked up to a giant blue alien so he can function on the alien’s planet and mingle with the species, which Dick Cheney’s great-grandchildren are trying to conquer so they can make them buy Halliburton stock. The Marine is supposed to be a mole, but–SURPRISE!–he realizes the rulers of the United States of America the earth are evil, and the blue aliens are wonderful, peaceful people who have fantastic sex! He falls in love with a sexy alien who trusts him completely, and he vows to ruin the plans of the Cheneyites and President George W. Bush VIII. He becomes a guerilla and sabotages the whole mess, and then there is a weird plot twist which I am too lazy to guess. Probably something where the blue girl thinks he’s the enemy and decides to kill him, but love conquers all, and she decides taking a chance and letting him live is better than dying alone with a cat. After this, earth loses, and Barack Obama’s body is exhumed and flown to the alien world to apologize. Then a descendant of Al Gore reads a poem so bad the blue people send him to a penal colony.

I may be totally wrong. Maybe Hollywood had an original idea for once, and this isn’t just Dances with the Surrogate Matrix Wolves. But it’s fun to try to guess. If it’s not an attack on the imaginary Military-Industrial Complex, it will be a shock worse than the end of The Crying Game.

Seriously, what point would there be in a movie where the Marine thinks everything is swell, slaughters as many aliens as possible, and then retires to a trailer park? Where is the plot in that? That wouldn’t be good fiction. That would be life.

Some day I want to see a movie about a liberal doofus who goes to work for ACORN because he’s totally brainwashed, recovers his sanity, and becomes a righteous plant for Front Page Magazine. Or a movie about a Marine who gets to know a bunch of blue aliens, decides they’re incredible jerks, and sleeps soundly in the knowledge that he is fighting a bunch of creeps.

I think that in a movie of the Avatar type, the people who look and act most like hippies are likely to be the heroes. Also, they look like cats. And you know how liberals love cats.

This is Almost Unnecessary

Why does life have to be so predictable?

From a review of Avatar:

There is no underlying novel or myth to generate his story. He certainly draws deeply on Westerns, going back to “The Vanishing American” and, in particular, “Dances With Wolves.” And the American tragedy in Vietnam informs much of his story. But then all great stories build on the past

Translation: “I am a hippie and I never get tired of stale hippie myths.”

The story takes place in 2154, three decades after a multinational corporation has established a mining colony on Pandora, a planet light years from Earth. A toxic environment and hostile natives — one corporate apparatchik calls the locals “blue monkeys” — forces the conglom to engage with Pandora by proxy.

Later, Al Franken moves to Pandora and gets himself elected Senator by means of a series of hallucinogen-assisted vote recounts.

How come entertainment-industry hacks are never called “apparatchiks”?

But as Jake . . .

Stop. “Jake”? This is one of the movie names I banned a few years ago, along with “Stryker” and “Devlin.” No Jakes. No exceptions. A court of inquiry must be held. The guilty will be punished with soap and Debbie Boone CDs.

But as Jake comes to see things through Neytiri’s eyes, he hopes to establish enough trust between the humans and the natives to negotiate a peace. But the corporation wants the land the Na’vi occupy for its valuable raw material so the Colonel sees no purpose in this.

“Neytiri”? That’s a name for girl who wears jewelry in her nose and writes “face painter” in the “occupation” box on her 1040. Neytiri is an annoying vegetarian. Bet on it.

The only question is: How will Cameron ever top this?

Maybe he can do something even more original, like a buddy movie. Or how about The Three Musketeers, featuring the Blue Man Crew?

Relief

I got my fly cutter working. Thanks for the help.

Big shock: it was not a mysterious problem. It was just bad workmanship. It appears that the relief on the bottom edge of the tool was not sufficient. It worked in the past, and I did not find any evidence that wear had changed it, but when I ground the tool over again and put a nicer radius on it, it cut beautifully.

I threw my aluminum plates on the mill and resurfaced them. I had intended to get them to 0.500″, as closely as possible, purely for the learning experience, but I had to settle for 0.498″.

I decided to get a 4″ cam action fake Heinrich vise from Grizzly. People said a 6″ vise might be unwieldy, and I noticed that the mounting holes were not a great match for my slide table. I also ordered T-nuts and countersinks. I want to sink 3/8″ screws into the bottom of the plates, and I can’t do that unless the holes are countersunk or otherwise recessed.

My dad wants to know what I want for Christmas. I may let him help me out with the VFD or motor for the drill press. I can’t resist a chance to install a VFD. As for his Christmas, all I am willing to say now is this: I was forced to call the BATF and get information about “straw purchases” before I could take care of him.

I’m so glad God has given me a great relationship with my dad. Apart from the things God has done within me, it’s the greatest treasure I have. If you’re on the outs with someone, remember this: as long as there is a sliver of light in them, it is possible for God to reach them (and you) and help you reconcile. Some people are reprobates and can’t be fixed, but others will surprise you.

This week I’m going to start classes for the prison ministry at my church. I have no idea what I’m doing; I can’t believe I’m going. Over the last year, I thought I saw changes in a very headstrong and self-destructive person, and it gave me hope that others could be turned around, so when I found out we had a prison ministry starting, something pulled at my heart. Or maybe it was God’s boot in my rear end. I wonder what it will be like. I fully expect 95% of these men to be completely dishonest and unwilling to change, but surely some will be reborn. Jesus would not have told us to visit prisons if it were a waste of time. I hope I overestimate their unwillingness to learn and change.

I’m having some difficulties right now with someone I have been praying for and trying to help in the walk of faith. Perhaps a few readers would take a minute and say a prayer. God has been so wonderful to me, I want everyone to share in it, but you know what they say about leading horses to water. And it can be very frustrating when a difficult person provokes you to the point where you worry that your own attitude and behavior grieve the Holy Spirit and put the brakes on your development. It’s easy to sound holy on a blog on the same day you told someone off, face to face.

I keep saying I expect to be perfect any day now. I can’t understand why it has been delayed.

My jowl bacon, dried apples, and blackberry jam arrived from Kentucky. It’s almost like being at Granny’s house. I guess tomorrow I’ll fry up a couple of slices. The apples are not as brown and dry as the ones I remember. I don’t know if that will affect their usefulness in dried pies.

Life is good for me. Maybe some day I’ll succeed in helping one other person have it as good as I do. Perhaps this will occur next month, when perfection is finally upon me.

My Future Self

I still have to choose a vise for my drill press. No idea what size to get, or whether a quick-release vise is worth the additional cash. The vise I have right now is maybe 3″ wide across the jaws. The drill press is a 17″ model, so if anyone has a suggestion, I am listening. I’m thinking 4″.

I bought a very good book recently. I think the Christian life is mostly about spiritual warfare, as Paul made clear when he talked about principalities and powers, so I am trying to learn more about how to fight. I want God to teach my hands to war (Ps. 18:34). Luckily for me, I found Perry Stone’s Dealing With Hindering Spirits.

It always amazes me how little mainstream churches talk about Satan and demons and fallen angels (I mention fallen angels and demons separately because I suspect they are not the same things). Jesus mentioned three things he expected his followers to do, and one of those things was casting out “devils.” Fighting a spiritual war by being good, without going after the enemy, is like trying to win World War II by keeping your troops at home and growing a victory garden. It makes no sense.

Evil spirits make us sick, often terminally. They kill us by attacking us physically. They give us addictions. They give us sick behaviors we can’t quit, such as domestic violence and fetishes. They ruin our careers and our families. They make us blind, deaf, crippled, and insane. They prevent many of us from receiving salvation. They cause us to do things that bring punishment and curses on us and our families. They are as common as flies, and they are not trivial enemies, and there is no human being on earth who is not beset by them. Yet somehow we have decided we should not talk about them or fight them. Crazy.

The book taught me some interesting things. Example: it’s probably a stupid idea to get puffed up and tell Satan or another powerful spirit off. There are little spirits we can deal with pretty easily, but there are also big spirits that can make our lives hell if we attack them without preparation. Stone notes that Jesus pointed out that even when armed with his name, we would sometimes have to resort to prayer and fasting to get certain spirits to submit. Look how long it took God’s messenger to reach Daniel, when an evil “prince” withstood him. Three weeks. Not all spirits are pushovers.

The message I took away from that is that I should not go looking for trouble. I think there are certain fairly low-level spirits in the area in which I operate, and I should be content to overcome those spirits instead of inviting bigger ones to go after me and my family. Stone says some ministers will rail against powerful spirits, only to end up with horrible problems in their ministries because they bit off more than they could chew.

He also said a married couple will have more fighting strength than a single person. That’s something that has been on my mind a lot. I’m not constant. Sometimes I’m spiritually strong, but sometimes, I have to deal with earthly matters, and besides, I’m fundamentally bad. So I’m not always focused on my enemies. If there were two of me, I could be on my guard more of the time. The Bible says one will put a thousand to flight, and two will put not two thousand but ten thousand to flight. I see a single person as a house with only two walls. The spouse provides the other two walls, and that closes the house and provides security. You have to clean up your temples and establish armaments and barriers.

Stone wrote about Paul’s thorn in the flesh, and he noted that God told Joshua that if he didn’t clear his enemies out of the promised land, they would remain to vex him. In the Bible, the story of Joshua is symbolic of the story of any given believer. That’s what I believe, and I think it’s what Stone was saying. Crossing the Jordan (water) into the Promised Land represents baptism and salvation. The warfare the Hebrews did inside Israel symbolizes our warfare to get spirits and sin out of our “temples,” meaning our bodies and minds and hearts. We are supposed to fight the spirits using our faith, as the Hebrews did. The walled cities they conquered represent strongholds in our lives. Sins and afflictions we need to defeat. If you don’t get rid of as many as you can, they will remain and vex you. You will have given place to Satan, providing him with his own office in your “building,” and he will have the right to make you miserable, as the Amalekites made the Jews miserable after God’s people permitted them to live.

This is why Christians have to quit sinning, even if they are not under the law. Sin generates defeat and leads to a life of slavery. And then you lose the rewards you would otherwise store up in heaven. We have to be filled with the Holy Spirit and the fruit and gifts of the Spirit, and we have to be changed from inside, and we have to fast and cast down strongholds. I’m convinced this is how it works. Joshua got the Lord to help him destroy Jericho and Ai and other cities. We’re supposed to get the Lord to help us destroy alcoholism, unforgiveness, sickness, habitual sexual sin, drug addiction, pride, hard-heartedness, and other “cities” Satan has built inside us.

We’re supposed to be in constant communication with God while we do this, and we are supposed to walk in faith. The Hebrews wandered in the desert for forty years not because of proactive sin, but because of a lack of faith. It’s as bad as defiant and immoral sins such as idolatry and adultery. The spies looked at the Promised Land, and the ten faithless spies convinced the Hebrews they couldn’t defeat the giants that lived in the land, and God punished Israel for having no faith in his ability to deliver them. Had they had faith, they would have entered the land forty years earlier and been given daily guidance and blessings. They would have lived in victory.

You have to be like Joshua. You have to have a personal relationship with God, in which you seek his will daily, and then you have to do what he tells you to do, even if it seems like it won’t work. Otherwise you’ll wander. You may think you’re doing great, but you’ll eventually find out that you were spinning your wheels. Building on sand. When trouble comes, you will have to crawl back to God for help. You may be blind and poor and naked and not even know it.

That is my take on spiritual warfare, so I am glad to get any advice I can. My family has been subject to all sorts of evil-spirit manifestations since before I was born, and I am tired of it.

On the subject of broken strongholds, I continue to lose weight without much effort. I am down twenty pounds now. Fifteen more would be great, and it seems certain that I’ll keep losing, since I’m not the one doing the work. If God chooses, I’ll make it. I also have more control over sexual immorality and anger-related sin. I hope God will see fit to continue the improvements, because I don’t want my enemies to have any footholds within my walls.

Get Some Swarf Between Your Toes

I’m very excited because I’m going to get to use my fly cutter today.

As reported yesterday, I am trying to mate my cross slide table to the table on my drill press. The best method I’ve come up with involves making two aluminum plates, screwing the cross slide table to the plates, and bolting the whole mess to the drill press table. But in order to do that, I had to make aluminum plates.

I had a 3 1/2″ x 3 1/2″ bar of aluminum. I cut a 6″ piece off the end, and then I put it in the band saw sideways and cut two 5/8″ slices out of it. Now I have to clean them up.

Last night I got started. I stuck a 3″ cobalt fly cutter in the mill and ran one of the plates through it. At first, all was swell, but on later passes, the swarf got sandy and the finish got gritty. I tried going to higher RPMs and slowing the feed, but that didn’t help.

It’s hard to know what’s going on. I’ve determined that the right speed is about 400 RPM (hope I’m right), and I’m going to give it another shot today.

I can see how various things would cause this problem. A fast feed would give you big spaces between the cuts, adding up to ridges and points on the finished product. A shallow cut would result in narrower grooves which would not blend into each other well, giving the same problem. A slow tool speed would make for bigger spaces between cuts, just like a fast feed.

I thought maybe a piece of aluminum had welded itself to the tool, but I didn’t check. I’ll take a look. I doubt that’s the problem. I buried the work in WD40. And I also had finish problems with a piece of steel.

In any case, it’s wonderful to have a little time to make the metal fly.

I could use an end mill, which would be very easy. I can’t help myself. I love watching a fly cutter.

I’ll say this. The mill appears to be in excellent tram. The finish on the first pass was beautiful.

It’s surprising how challenging this job is. The two tables relate to each other in ways that make a simple solution impossible.

The slots in the cross slide table will take 5/8″ bolts, but I can’t believe that kind of hardware is needed. I assume they make big slots in case the tables are used for milling, which exerts lots of lateral force. Surely a couple of 3/8″ machine screws in aluminum will suffice to hold the table down and keep it from spinning. I can’t imagine a small 1-2 HP motor breaking screws this big.

Next, I need to may covers for my mill table. I keep piling junk on it, and I already have one ding. One is too many.

Ten-Minute Job Takes Days

I still have not mounted my Phase II cross slide table on my drill press table. I’m working on it right now. I feel like those ladies in the old commercials who used to say, “I’m cleaning my bathroom bowl” while they were playing tennis or whatever. My horizontal band saw is cutting me a slab of aluminum while I type.

That’s a great machine, although it would be much better with a lubrication system. I don’t know how much lube it needs, but I’m afraid to use it dry. For steel, I sit and dribble Ridgid pipe cutting oil on it, and that means sitting by the saw for an hour for a four-inch cut. I read that you can lube aluminum by putting a paraffin block in the path of the blade. I don’t have a block, but I have some crappy half-burned hurricane candles, and I’m using one of them now. Seems to work. I’ll run out and check from time to time to make sure it hasn’t popped out.

I had a really hard time deciding how to mount the table. It’s about one inch too narrow for the slots to line up with the drill press slots. Very confusing, from a geometric point of view. I’m not about to drill new holes in the drill press table. My solution is to make half-inch-thick aluminum plates, mount them over the drill press slots, attach the plates to the drill press slots, and then attach the slide table to the plates from above. I’ll have recessed bolts going up through the plates through the cross slide table slots. It won’t be sturdy enough to mill on, but then I’m not milling. The objective is to keep stuff from breaking free and spinning and cutting me a new belly button.

I don’t know how I’ll recess the bolts into the underside of the aluminum. I’ll worry about that tomorrow. I guess I can use an end mill and make cylindrical, flat-bottomed holes. Then I can put washers in there and rest the heads of the bolts on them. Countersinking would be better, but I don’t think I have a countersink big enough. I’d like to use 3/8″ bolts, at least.

I think I’m going to get a VFD for the drill press. People are telling me it’s overkill, but think about it. You can’t reverse a drill press. At least not this one. That’s lame. That alone makes the VFD useful. Besides, I found a good cheap motor.

I love machining aluminum. I can see why it’s so popular. It’s like machining cheese. Deep cuts? No problem. Steel is so slow, I can hardly stand it.

Better go check on the saw.

Can’t Get a Permit for a Moat

I bought some elephant tur…”concrete buttons” today. These are the round concrete domes people put on their lawns to discourage drivers from using the grass as a highway. For a long time, the only name I knew for these objects referred to elephant droppings, and then I heard “berm,” and now I find that the people who sell them call them “concrete buttons,” so I am relieved to know the generally accepted term.

Some character who drives in this area early in the morning–almost certainly a newspaper delivery person–has been deliberately running over and moving my only elephant…my only concrete button. The yard is getting pretty torn up. This seems like a poor way to stimulate newspaper sales. He’s in for a surprise.

I considered getting buttons with holes in the middle and hammering rebar into the ground through them, with a little bit sticking up from the top of the buttons. This would make the buttons immovable and hole tires pretty quickly. But the object is not to cause damage. It’s to discourage idiocy. If the perpetrator doesn’t see the rebar, he’ll hit it, and then the deterrent will have failed. After that, there will be no hope of peace or change, and the newspaper guy and I will be like Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam.

It’s wonderful having a truck. In the past I would have had to borrow my dad’s ancient SUV and put the buttons in the back, making a mess. Today I backed the Death Star up to a gate, and a forklift pulled up and held the entire box of buttons over the truck bed while a guy unloaded them for me. Nice.

I spend time in prayer and study early every morning, and today I thought about the first psalm. It says we are to “meditate on the law day and night.” My assumption has been that as a Spirit-filled believer, I was to interpret this as an instruction to pray in the Spirit during the day. There are strong hints about this, which I am too lazy to repeat now. We believe the law, handed down at the first Shavuot, has been supplemented and to some extent superseded by the baptism of the Holy Spirit, which was handed down at Pentecost (Greek name for Shavuot) after the crucifixion.

I think I missed part of the picture. The great thing about the post-Pentecost era is that we get to mingle our strength with the unlimited power of the Spirit, and while the latter is unquestionably the big-ticket item, the former is important. So I think it’s important for Christians to meditate on (which means “repeat internally”) the scriptures during the day, especially during time that is otherwise idle. I have a rule, which I observe poorly: never wait. When you find yourself delayed for some reason, find something useful to do. This fills that time very productively.

Because God is a thoughtful planner, I am fairly well prepared for this. For a long time, I’ve been memorizing psalms. I keep losing bits of them, but I have a pretty substantial mental library built up. The psalms are no joke. Jesus and the Apostles used them all the time, as did Satan when he tempted Jesus. They have power. Memorized scripture is the sword of the Spirit. It’s a weapon. It worked for Jesus. So it’s not like I’m just armed with meaningless poetry.

I’ve been making an effort to think on memorized psalms when my time is free, and it’s wonderful. It brings peace, and it reminds me of the power that is at work on my behalf. Very nice. It also helps me not to forget the things I’ve memorized. I recommend it. I’m not suggesting you have to do this in order to be a good Christian, but it appears to work.

I can never remember to do anything I purpose to do, so I asked for grace to be able to make myself do this, and so far, it’s working. I feel much better and more inclined to trust God. If you try this, or if you do it already, let me know what you think.

I learned something yesterday. I love watching Robert Morris, because I think God is telling him fantastic stuff about Spirit-filled living, but I think he may be wrong about something. He says he believes the Holy Spirit “owns” the spiritual gifts, and that any believer can exercise any gift. I’m sure this is true, to the extent that God can do whatever he wants with any believer (or with donkey or a rock or a stick) at any time, but I think we are wrong to believe that generally, the gifts are universal. Robert Morris seems to teach that if you have one gift, you have them all, all the time.

I thought he was right, simply because so much of the rest of his teaching was right on target, but I now think he’s wrong.

Here’s a bit from 1 Corinthians 12:

Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. To one there is given through the Spirit the message of wisdom, to another the message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues. All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he gives them to each one, just as he determines.

Here is more:

Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body.

You can look at the first passage and say that it doesn’t expressly rule out the Morris interpretation. The fact that God gives different gifts to different believers at various times doesn’t mean those believers can’t operate in all of the other gifts at other times. But why would Paul write the second passage, if different believers did not have different gifts, generally? There would be no reason to write the passage. Why would one believer think himself better or worse than another, with regard to the gifts, if he had exactly what everyone else had?

If you read 1 Corinthians, you will see more evidence that his interpretation is shaky. I am too lazy to quote all of it.

Not a big deal, but worth noting.

Augustus Gloop in the Workshop

I had fun today. I put a new blade in my 4 x 6 metal cutting bandsaw, and then I spent about three hours trying to fold the old blade. It’s a Mobius strip that bites.

While I was trying to fix up the garage, I made an amusing discovery. The rear cover on my mill ways was not attached at one end, so the ways (or saddle or whatever) was littered with swarf. I had to use a blowgun to clean the crap off. I think you have to be nuts to use a blowgun around swarf, but there was no other way. I still have my eyesight, thank God.

I knocked my old 14N chuck off the arbor so I could put the new one on, and stupidly, I didn’t think to take the arbor out of the collet first. The chuck dropped unexpectedly, and now I have my first mill table ding. It’s tiny, but I couldn’t feel it more if it was on my own surface instead of the mill’s.

The band saw is a little slow. It took about an hour to cut a slice out of 4″ by 4″ 1045. I don’t know the right speed, so I used the lowest one. I don’t know how much lube to use, so I had to run to the saw every five minutes and squirt pipe threading oil on it. What a drag.

I started making so many dumb mistakes in there, I quit and came inside. Maybe my blood sugar is low.

Hope I get it together so I can finish up. My cross-slide table arrived, and I need to make hardware to attach it to the drill press.

Bring Your Rubber Duck

My Ebay Jacobs Super Chuck arrived. It’s a beauty. I went for the 16N, which goes up to 5/8″. I don’t know how I managed this, but I got an unused chuck for about $67. That’s half of what Enco charges. There’s no key, but I have two that will fit.

I already have an old 14N I got on Ebay. I thought I was so smart, buying used. The 14N acts like it has wadded-up metal obstructing the parts when you turn it. The 16N is nearly as smooth as my Albrecht. I was stupid, buying a used chuck just because it looked good in the pictures. And the 14N was a little small. I guess I could use it on the lathe, if I got it working right.

The guy who sold me the chuck wrapped it in about seven layers of bubble wrap, with packing tape around each layer. Using a big Gerber folding knife, it took me several minutes to get to the chuck. As I cut and pulled, I heard myself say, “This guy must be retired.”

Do you ever say things to yourself that you find funny? It happens to me from time to time. In a sermon, my pastor told our church that the way to control lust worked like this: when you see a hot tamale an attractive woman walking down the street, you praise God for his work. Today while walking out of a restaurant I passed a lady with a remarkable endowment, and before I realized what I was doing, I thought, “Way to go, LORD!”

That was bad.

I’m getting better. The last time something like this happened, I saw a lady walking down the sidewalk, and I thought, “Way to GO, lady!” I totally forgot the praise part. You can see how I’ve improved.

I keep telling people I expect to be perfect in a couple of months, but there have been unexpected delays.

I am not alone. Last night at my prayer meeting, I learned that one of my church’s members makes a living selling sex pills to to convenience stores. I did not know what to make of that. And the pastor who leads the pill guy’s regular prayer group said their group was going to be hot-tubbing together. I thought he was kidding, so I laughed. And it turned out I was wrong.

Call me overly cautious. I see a recipe for problems here. I’m glad the last time I got together with guys from the church, all we did was shoot pistols and talk about killing people. You know. Holy stuff.

I don’t know what I’d do if I were invited hot-tubbing. I’m not fond of other people’s dirt and germs. I don’t know if I could bear to sit chest-deep in man soup. Wasn’t one of the Apostles boiled to death? I would hate to get martyred by a malfunctioning jacuzzi. Next to the guy who sells sex pills.

“The bottle was empty when we found them, Chief.” “Okay, let the news photographers in now.”

Last night someone suggested doing a tailgating thing at the stadium where the Dolphins play. We’d have food and drinks, and we’d hang out and try to win souls by distributing ribs or something. “God took Adam’s. We’ll GIVE you ours.” Something like that. Sounded great to me. I love barbecuing. Then someone pointed out that the line of cars is like a thousand miles long at seven in the morning, and my righteous zeal to win souls for Jesus disappeared instantaneously. So I have to ask myself, “Would I rather see people go to hell than sit in line for five hours?”

I prefer not to reach a conclusion.

I’d do it, but man, I hate lines.

We might start chauffeuring people to services. We tossed that around. Problem is, you need drivers with chauffeurs’ licenses, and you have to get a physical and pay over $300 to take a written exam. I don’t know if we’re capable of that level of effectiveness. Right now, we have trouble getting people through the church cafe’s waiting line in under an hour and a half.

We will definitely do something. We just don’t know what it will be. Figuring things like this out is where the Holy Spirit comes in handy. Otherwise, each of us is just listening to his own internal Pointy-Haired Boss.

Man, We’re Old

Someone suggested I fix my dubious Lodge skillet by machining it. I have considered that, but I would have to be able to mount it on my rotary table, and that would be a pretty good trick. The table is not as wide as the skillet, so I’d have to put a plate on it, and the plate’s thickness would have to be extremely uniform. If it weren’t uniform, I’d get a skillet that wasn’t uniform. Which is what I already have.

Not sure what to do about that.

The plate would also have to be perfectly flat and very rigid.

I’m going to try to get a couple of bigger Griswold skillets. Now that my bone-filled head has accepted the time-honored wisdom about cleaning skillets with salt and a spatula, I am not as reluctant to use them as I used to be. I’d go ahead and use the Lodge, but one side gets hotter than the other due to the varying bottom thickness.

Hmm…maybe I should boil a little water in one of my Griswolds and make sure they don’t have this problem. If they heat unevenly, I have less motivation to get more of them.

You can get Griswolds fairly cheap on Ebay, but if you get picky about features, the cost goes up. And the bigger skillets can be extremely expensive unless you get lucky. One thing I can say about them: you only pay once. I’m buying used items that are up to 70 years old and nearly like new.

I want one or two more matching skillets before I give up and go cheap. I think the size 13 jobs (and whatever comes after them) will have to remain an unrealized dream. If I paid over $300 for a skillet, I’d have to have myself institutionalized to find out why. The big ones can cost that much.

I’m really looking forward to church this week. It’s the first week of the month, so we’ll be having Breakthrough Wednesday. This is a fantastic service. It’s not as regimented as the regular services. There are tables up front and in the back for communion, and there are people available to pray for you. The worship is very intense. I love it.

I’m going to be an “armorbearer,” which means I’ll be helping the church out as needed. One of my duties will be to put on a two-way radio and wander around keeping an eye on things. I had to buy my own “surveillance set,” which is what they call the microphone and the earpiece with the squiggly cord that runs up your neck. The church has radios, but the surveillance sets have a way of vanishing. I think people just don’t want to share them, which is understandable. I sure don’t want to. Yech.

God has been so kind to me, helping me to find purpose in life. Works don’t get you into heaven, but they help determine what heaven is like for you, and besides, they allow you to express your love for other people and your gratitude for God. I’m way behind, so any opportunity he gives me is appreciated.

Speaking of God’s kindness, Aaron just had a grandson! Unbelievable! I’ll be praying his mom recovers fast, and that he has a life of blessings and righteousness. Perhaps you will join me.

Another thing you might want to pray about: reader Dave Rodenborn lost his African grey parrot, Splint. The poor little guy wasn’t trimmed correctly, and he managed to fly out Dave’s front door. Dave is in California, so the weather shouldn’t be too hard on Splint. Many greys are recovered; they don’t like to fly far in the first month. I truly hope Dave gets another chance. Nothing is worse than knowing your mistake harmed your pet.

Auction Worked

Ebay actually got me a decent deal on an auction product. How often does that happen? Half the time, noobs ruin auctions with pointless bids days before the final moments. And a lot of the stuff has high reserves or high minimum bids. I nailed this one, though. I got a nice new Jacobs chuck, using a sniping program. And I beat another sniper, which is incredibly satisfying!

Before I knew about sniping, I wondered why I never won anything. I marveled at the amazing people who somehow managed to place bids ten seconds before auctions ended. It was frustrating. I’d sit there thinking I had won, and then POW, a snipe would come in and blow me out of the water.

Life is full of cheats. Sometimes you never find out why you lost. It’s nice to have the inside track once in a while.

Long ago, I used to play Duke Nukem 3D on a network, and I got thrashed constantly. I used to shoot other guys over and over, and they didn’t die. Later I found out they were cheating. They had hacked the game so they could take huge numbers of hits without dying. What jerks. You have to wonder how a person can feel satisfaction, playing people who have no chance of winning.

Lots of things in life work that way. Racist hiring policies, for example. Now affirmative action does the same thing, only the victims are white, male, or heterosexual.

I got the chuck because the used one I Ebayed a long time ago is a piece of junk. I tried to fix it, but it was a waste of time. Sometimes trying to save money is a stupid idea. You have to do it right. I trusted a used item, and I got burned. Now I’ll have a decent chuck for my mill. I’ll use the drill press most of the time, but the mill’s higher horsepower may be useful for bigger bits.

I ordered a slide table for the drill press. I’m going to act mature and hold off on a VFD and motor. Those things are luxuries. The slide table is a necessity. I think I’m going to try my old drill press vise before springing for a Grizzly. I’m not sure a cam-action vise is worth the money. It’s not that hard to turn a screw and tighten a vise.

I have fun on the agenda today. More pork sausage. And I have to slice and freeze Costco loin so I’ll have chops.

Contain Your Amazement

I forgot to blog yesterday. Is that even possible? There must be some kind of mind ray aimed at my house.

I had a lot of stuff to do. I had to cope with 96 ounces of Costco hamburger, which had to be mixed with salt and garlic and frozen in patties. I had to freeze a crop of bananas before they turned black. And I had to deal with stuff related to my sister’s illness.

I let the burger sit in the fridge for nearly a week, until it turned a nice shade of beige. Fresh hamburger is just no good. You have to let it start to turn a little. I know it will upset some people to read that, but it’s true. We age beef, and hamburger is beef, right? So shut up.

This stuff was a little brown on the outside, with plenty of pink inside to balance it. Once I mushed it up with salt and garlic, it was a nice uniform color. It will make wonderful burgers. Costco claims it’s “extra lean,” but that isn’t true, because if it were, the burgers would be dry and nasty. They’re not. They’re juicy and wonderful.

Costco is selling bone-in rib roasts for around five bucks per pound. Tempting, to say the very least. I’d love to age a couple of those babies and freeze them for later use. Rib roasts are glorious, even if the meat is only choice. Mike says I need to pop one in the Showtime oven. Sounds like a plan to me.

I ran down to Northern Tool today. I don’t like to shop on Sunday, for religious reasons, but they had the warranty part I ordered, and the parts guy is a little crabby, so I needed to get it in hand before he could ship it back. I drove all the way down there, and I asked an employee for help, and he told me the parts guy wasn’t there on weekends.

This is the same parts guy who implied I was a big liar when I said the pulley on my band saw was already chipped when I bought it. It only makes sense that he would fail to inform me that he did not work on weekends.

I sent the employee to talk to the manager, and the news got worse. Not only was the manager unable to do the parts specialist’s difficult job (reaching onto a shelf and grabbing a part and handing it to me); the parts guy was on vacation (probably attending a grouch convention), so I would have to wait another week.

No.

I asked for an audience with the manager, and he came out, and I said surely he could hand me the part. And he agreed. He had been under the impression that I needed to order a part, which requires parts-guy skills. We went to the parts region, and he handed me a box, and off I went.

It must be really easy to qualify for a Northern Tool franchise. The store charges more than the website, and their customer-relations skills are not good. If I hadn’t been pushy, I would have been forced to make the ten-mile drive two more times, in addition to tolerating a ten-day delay.

I am trying to fix up the drill press, although again, not on Sunday. I think I may put a 3-phase motor and a VFD on it. The speeds range from 385 RPM to 2250 RPM, and with a VFD, I could get 200 to 5000, with no loss of torque. I would also be able to leave the pulleys on the middle setting and get a nice wide range of speeds without touching the belts. Plus–come on–it would be fun. And cheap. Even with the motor and VFD, this drill press would be way cheaper than a 17″ Chinese cheapo like the new Deltas or Steel Citys.

I think I’m going to get a Phase II slide table. They’re $243 at MSC, but Enco (different name, same company) sells them for about $90.

Okay, that makes perfect sense.

Anyway, I can stick one of those on the drill press, and I can add a Grizzly cam-action vise, and I should be set for all drilling needs for the rest of the millennium.

Come on. You KNOW I need that VFD. I can hear you grumbling about it, but you know it’s the right thing to do. I have a 2 HP motor which will fit the drill press. I’m sure it will be fine. I don’t totally understand the consequences of going up in horsepower, but it would compensate partially for the loss of torque at low speeds. I don’t think it would hurt the bearings or anything, because the drill bit and the workpiece and the belt drive should be the weak points in the power train.

It’s a mess to explain. The VFD gives constant torque, but because the pulley ratio would not change except in rare circumstances in which I felt motivated to move the belt, you can end up with less low-speed torque than the stock configuration provides. The bigger motor should double the torque, making belt changes necessary less often.

Let’s see. The middle setting on the pulleys is 935 RPM, and the low setting is 385. So you would figure 2.42 times the middle-setting torque when you use the low-speed setting. Right? I think so. That means a 2 HP motor would be pretty close to the machine’s current torque output at low speed, without moving the belt. Dang, how can you beat that? How often would I need that extra 0.42 fraction? Belt moves would be pretty rare.

I can’t believe how much physics I’ve forgotten. I’m actually going to have to draw myself a picture.

I want that VFD, however. I just want it.

I wonder if I can adjust a VFD to increase torque at a given speed. I guess so, since constant torque VFDs would not exist if it were impossible. Maybe I could jack the torque up at low speeds.

Oh, great. Now I’m going to have to download a manual or something. Now I’ll have to THINK. I hate that.

Can’t do anything until tomorrow anyway.

Drill Press!

Was this all too predictable?

That’s a Rockwell 17-430 drill press. A guy was trying to sell it on Ebay with a minimum bid of $219, and I got in touch with him, and I took it for $220. These machines are pretty simple, but very expensive. A new one runs about two thousand. Don’t ask me why.

I would guess it weighs 250-300 pounds. There is cast iron all through it. I think even the power cord and belt are cast iron.

Getting it off the truck was fun. I used my chain hoist and a crappy nylon rope. I felt sure I would kill myself, but I was spared. I can’t say as much for the bit the previous owner left in the chuck. It caught on my bed liner and popped.

The table has the “arc of shame” on it. I guess I need to find a good filler. I’ll also need a decent drill press vise.

The owner is an interesting guy. On the phone, he kept saying he lived in halberd. I’ve never heard of Halberd, Florida. Finally I realized he was saying “Hollywood.” I ran up there to see the machine, and he had it crammed into a tiny storage bay with a 1963 Porsche 356 he and his son were restoring.

He was one of these friendly foreign guys who like to tell you their life stories. Let’s see. He was born in Rumania. He came here in 1979. People were nicer here then. He tells his son that all the time. He was an engineer in Rumania. He ended up in metallurgy because his father thought it had a better future than electronics. Here in the US, he didn’t want to go through all the hassle to re-learn everything, so now he writes code for CNC machines. The metallurgy situation in Rumania was pathetic due to Communism. When he got here, he couldn’t believe how many kinds of stainless steel we had.

He really likes Dodge diesels. The Fords sound better, but you can’t do the maintenance yourself, and an inline six will last forever. He had to see my engine, so I popped the hood, and he climbed up on the bumper and told his son why this truck was totally superior to a Ford.

I told him we used to have a hive of Rumanian professors and grad students in the physics department at the University of Miami. We agreed that the English measurement system is pathetic, and we both marveled that the US had done so well while forcing its engineers to live in the Bronze Age.

I enjoyed meeting him. A lot of people get bored with older people who like to talk, but I’m not like that. I find younger people boring. What do they know? Nothing. How to play video games. Wow. That sure beats hearing about storming the beach on D-Day, doesn’t it?

The workmanship on this machine is very impressive. Everything moves as though it had no metal in it. It feels like it’s all oiled rubber parts, squishing against each other as they move.

I think I’ll pop the motor off, confirm the size of the shaft, and stick a 3-phase motor and VFD on it. I can do this for about what the drill press cost, and it will put an end to my concerns about the odd speeds this machine features.

The metal yarmulke is a little off center, and the Rockwell badge is gone. I may pretty it up a little. The collar that holds the table won’t lock up very well; he said it needed to be tightened.

Very nice buy. This should put a permanent end to my drilling worries.