Frozed

I just got back from the dermatologist. I procrastinated on my yearly skin cancer screening, because the one thing you should always be sure to do when faced with the possibility of contracting a highly curable cancer is to put off checkups as long as possible.

He froze about half of my head with his little spray bottle and said I could keep the rest of my head until my next visit. More or less.

This is the first time I’ve had to have anything frozen. But none of it was significant, thank God. If there is one time it’s good to have your prayers answered, it’s when you go in to make sure you don’t have melanoma. And I have been spared again. I think he froze three spots. I also showed him a thing on my arm, and he opined that I had self-medicated by scratching it completely off. Now I know how to save money on dermatology. I also rely on Maynard, who likes to walk around on my bare back biting out anything that strikes him as odd or potentially tasty.

One satisfying thing is that my health insurance coughed up part of the fee. With any luck, it will never kick in for anything other than preventive checkups. I know I’ll never break even. But that beats the alternative. God bless them; they can have it all, as long as I stay healthy.

I always get nervous when I go to the dermatologist, because to me, totally harmless skin irregularities and deadly cancers look exactly alike. I guess medical school is worth the money, because my doctor took–no exaggeration–three seconds to check my back and determine that my worst problem was love handles.

I like this guy because he doesn’t wait until the end of the session to tell you you’re not going to die. He looks at a bump, and he says, “This is nothing,” and he whips out the spray.

Sometimes I get the impression that I annoy doctors and dentists by being healthy. They see so many terrible problems, and then I walk in all worried about a new freckle or the mere possibility that I might have a cavity.

Lots of people in Florida die from skin cancer. I had a neighbor who died from melanoma. So even though I had no reason to think I was in trouble, now that I’m clear for another year, I can’t help feeling like I got a second chance at life. Silly, I know. I’m used to having things jump out and grab me without warning. I guess it’s hard to get over that.

I’m going to take another crack at truck shopping. I resisted getting a four-wheel drive because it has more parts to break, and it’s not very useful where I live. But it turns out the other options I want may be impossible to get without four-wheel drive. I also had the ridiculous feeling that I would get lower mileage, but that’s dumb, because there is no reason why the front wheels would have any more friction in their bearings than they would on a two-wheel drive. I don’t know exactly how it works these days. I don’t know whether the four-wheel engagement locks hubs which are otherwise free-spinning, or whether the wheels are rigidly connected to long axles which engage somewhere farther upstream, but the mileage figures show that it doesn’t matter.

I would like to be a useful person. It’s hard to do that with a T-bird. We’re supposed to be good stewards when it comes to money. With that in mind, it could be hard to explain why your only four-wheeled vehicle has two seats and a trunk the size of a kitchen drawer. It would be pretty good for driving lonely flight attendants and swimsuit models around, while explaining why they need to start going to church, but there isn’t much call for that, as far as I know.

I’m trying to make the garage more ergonomic. I mounted my lathe back plate on the wall. I’m planning to put in a second hoist above the mill, so I can move the vise and rotary table on and off the table without popping something vital in my upper body. I need to be able to lift stuff and then move it a couple of feet horizontally. Maybe I should try to hang the hoist on a rail or a jib. It only needs to be capable of lifting a couple of hundred pounds, but the smallest hoists I’ve seen are rated for 1,000. I guess that’s not important.

People have suggested getting a cart I can shove things off on, but a cart takes up a lot of room. Maybe a narrow shelf behind the mill would work, if I fixed it up so it had a part that acted as a bridge to the mill table.

My knurling tool never arrived. The seller had a computer issue. Their software kept telling them it had shipped. The other day they apologized and said it was on the way. I was tempted to ask them if they had actually seen the package, or if they had asked their lying software again.

I finally have drill bits on the way. I found a set of good cobalt bits at a price too low to turn down. The stock market is in the toilet today because retailers are face-planting left and right. Having seen the deals on new and used tools over the last year, I could have predicted that. Sometimes it’s shocking when you learn what startles “experts.”

Yesterday I tried to help my sister with car maintenance. She has a newish BMW 335i. What a horrible car. It has no oil dipstick. I’m serious. If you want to check the oil, you get out the manual and go through a bunch of steps, and three minutes later, the computer tells you not how much oil is in the crankcase, but how much oil it thinks you should add. And you have to run the engine while you do this. The brake fluid is the same way, and the brake reservoir is fixed so it takes a strap wrench. I stuck some oil in the car to keep it from seizing before she took it in for its BMW-endorsed Owner-not-allowed “free” maintenance, but I gave up on the brakes. Hope she doesn’t run into anything.

This car is like a HAL 9000. It talks to you, it tells you what to do, and it ignores your wishes. I can’t stand it. I’m sure it’s great for people who have more money than brains and who trust a talking car and a greedy dealer more than they trust themselves. But it’s not for me. If this thing conks out on a lonely highway, you have to wait for the BMW Luftwaffe helicopter to save you. Give me a car I have a hope of fixing. I just want transportation. Not a new world order. I don’t want a screen in my car coming on every day, telling me I have to hate Goldstein. This car is so authoritarian, overpriced, and hostile to privacy, they should call it the Obamamobile.

I’m glad that health care nonsense is not working out. I’d be on a nine-month freeze-spray waitlist, and if I lived until I received treatment, the government would pay $5000 in other people’s money for the service.

Nojo

Church was great last night, as always. But it was also disturbing. In the sermons and videos I’ve seen lately, and in my studies, I have seen a thread that suggests something bad is up ahead, and that I may not be able to do anything about it. I feel like I’m being prepared. But I’m not sure.

The thing I’m concerned about primarily involves someone else, not me.

Pentecostals always strive to get the gifts of the Spirit and the fruit of the Spirit. We’re told to “covet” the gift of prophecy, although it’s not clear that the thing identified as “prophecy” in this context is the same thing that word describes in the Old Testament. Ancient Jewish prophets were supposed to be stoned if they ever prognosticated wrongly; they had to be infallible to be considered prophets. I have heard people describe the New Testament “prophetic” gift as something different. An ability to exhort and instruct people, with God’s guidance. If that’s true, it’s unfortunate that we use the same term to describe it.

I always ask for the gifts called the word of knowledge and the word of wisdom. If we understand the word of knowledge correctly, it means God informs us of things we otherwise could not know. For example, a prophet told Paul he would be bound and imprisoned. This is a good gift to have, because we always profit from knowing bad things are on the way. Very often, we can avoid them through prayer and repentance, or just by taking the appropriate action, such as taking a different road or changing a flight. Other times, we can’t avoid them no matter what we do, but we can be prepared, and we can find whatever blessings follow in the aftermath. And we can avoid being offended. People who live by faith get used to having God solve their problems, and on the occasions when he doesn’t, it’s easy to get angry at God and question his goodness, and that’s worse than the problems themselves. If you see things coming, you’re not as likely to take that attitude.

God has never spoken to me. A lot of people like to yap about how God told them this or that, and I am always highly skeptical. It’s not that I don’t think God tells people things. But I think it’s unusual to be completely certain that God has told you something. I’m sure God has put ideas and motivations and so on inside my mind, but I would never claim God had “spoken” to me unless I clearly perceived words, either written or spoken, which I knew came from God. I would have to hear a voice or read something. That has never happened to me.

Many times, I’ve felt that something I was considering doing or an idea I had had was right and inspired, and then it has turned out I was wrong. What if I had stood up in church and hollered, “GOD TOLD ME THIS,” and then rattled on about something God had nothing to do with? People do that all the time. I’ve seen ministers do it. They say extremely stupid things, and they attribute them to God. Isn’t that taking the Lord’s name in vain? You claim you speak in his name, and then you say something dumb. Is there any better example of violating that commandment? Think about the harm a person like that can do. They can convince their followers to commit suicide, for example. That has happened. What if Moses had made up the thing about God directing the Jews into the desert? “God said we’d be fine. Those dried-up corpses are an illusion.”

I absolutely refuse to say God has told me things. It will never happen, unless I have experienced miraculous events I know I can rely on. God sent Joseph an angel. He sent Mary an angel. He spoke to Moses and Abraham. He sent an angel to the father of John the Baptist. He doesn’t need me to sit down here guessing. My guesses are often wrong. If he wants me to know something, he is well able to tell me. I think God illuminates the Bible when I read, and he gives me wisdom when I need it, and many times, during prayer, I’ve felt sudden rushes of faith that I considered confirmation that I was going to receive what I had asked for. But that’s not “God spoke to me.” It’s wrong to confuse these things.

I saw a preacher the other day, stating that Jesus appeared to him after his daughter’s death. He said Jesus explained some things to him, and he related it to the audience. This is a guy who can say “God spoke to me.” But if you’re trying to quit drinking, and you suddenly have a feeling that God won’t mind if you have one more bender, it’s probably not God, and whatever it is, it’s not someone “speaking” to you. If you’re defaulting on your loans, and you think God is telling you to give him a big offering which you could be using to pay your debts, you may be hearing from somebody, but I doubt it’s God.

I have known someone who claimed to give generously to ministries and charities. I later found out that this person was a financial train wreck, with huge debts and a negative net worth. How can that be, if we are promised time and time again that God will provide for people who help the poor? It had to be because this person robbed men to give to God. If you rip off your creditors to give to charity, aren’t your creditors the real givers? Surely, when this person told me God directed the giving, those claims were untrue.

That’s something I need to think about, actually. I avoid incurring debt, but there is one matter involving debt which I should look after.

I always hope I’ll reach a state where God will supernaturally inform me before bad things happen, in a very explicit and direct way. That would sure be nice. Because I have not been taken in by the liars who stand in the pulpit making highly questionable statements about people who “refused” to let bad things happen to them, “by faith.” I am used to experiencing deliverance and God’s generosity, but I am not a complete idiot. If Peter was crucified, and if Paul was shipwrecked, stoned, flogged repeatedly, and beheaded, bad things are going to happen to me and the people I care about from time to time, and it’s just plain stupid to think I can run around squalling, “I’M STANDING ON THE WORD” and avoid misfortune every single time.

The neat thing about many of the bad things that happened to Biblical figures is that they knew about them in advance. Nobody wants to be beheaded, but if it’s going to happen, it looks much more like a defeat if it happens unexpectedly and they drag you off kicking and screaming. It’s really not the same, when you take it calmly and get your house in order first. For the enemy, there is no real victory in harming you. The victory is in stealing your faith and your dignity.

So this is a gift I would like to have. It’s good to say, “I don’t understand why this happened, but my faith is not shaken.” It’s better to be able to say, “I am grateful I knew about this and was able to get all the blessings out of it.”

I don’t have that gift, but I think just about any believer will routinely receive subtle–or not so subtle–clues about the future. God tends to prepare us for things, and sometimes we realize it as he’s doing it. I hope I’m misinterpreting the things I’ve seen lately.

In other news, I think I’ve made a wonderful discovery. When I started getting into tools, I got myself a big pump jar full of Gojo, because ordinary soap is useless on the kind of greasy dirt you pick up from working on machinery. And the Gojo did not work very well. In the old days, it was great. It took just about anything off, and you didn’t even need to add water to it. It was miraculous. So I was disturbed to see that the new stuff didn’t do the job.

Finally, I pinpointed the likely culprits. Hippies. Who else routinely removes great products from the marketplace? I knew the old Gojo was full of scary chemicals. The new stuff says “natural” on the bottle, and “natural,” like “eco-friendly,” is often a synonym for “more expensive yet totally ineffective.” Like the pathetic pyrethrin-based bug sprays South Florida insects cackle at. I don’t know what the hippies didn’t like about the petroleum-based chemicals in Gojo, but they must have found fault with them, because Gojo is worthless now. I will never buy it again. I also tried Zep, and it’s also worthless.

Yesterday I went to Northern Tool to look at a band saw and a chain hoist. Because I am crazy. And while I was there, I spotted some obscure brands of hand cleaner. I figured the hippies had probably banned all types of good hand cleaner, but I checked the labels anyway, and I saw some very promising references to “petroleum distillates.” I bought the smallest size of a product called Permatex, and I took it home and did my best to grease up my hand, and I applied the cleaner. Seems to work. It has that same mysterious vibrating quality the old Gojo had; remember watching the can shake after you slapped it down on the sink? And it took the crud off my hand.

My advice is to run to Northern Tool and buy several crates of this stuff before the hippies find out about it. They think we should all be free to take street drugs full of lye and baby laxative, but they can’t bear the thought of allowing us to have bug spray and hand cleaner and breast implants. Yoda might have put it this way: “The dark side clouds everything. Impossible to see the logic is.”

I’m going to empty my Gojo can and fill it with Permatex, which doesn’t come in nice pump bottles. Life is too short to spend with black grease smears on your hands.

Plus Thoughts on Giving

Ammunition is starting to reappear in stores! Hooray!

Don’t you wonder how much money the ammunition and firearms makers raked in because people stocked up after the Marxist Messiah was elected? I hope they piled up huge profits they’ll be able to use for R&D, retooling, and lobbying.

Some people claim wars were a big cause of the shortage. Hogwash. I admit, I haven’t sat down and added up the number of conflicts going on at the moment, but things haven’t changed much since the Bush era, and there were plenty of bullets to go around back then. This shortage was caused by the election of a leftist with “Potential Dictator” stamped all over his forehead.

You can actually buy small pistol primers now. And they don’t cost $60 a box, either. They’re back down to 30 or so. I’ll bet they go lower. A saturated market is not good for prices. There are profiteers and neurotics out there whose houses are packed full of guns and ammunition they will never use. Even relatively reasonable people stocked up to some extent. I won’t need small pistol primers for at least three years, and I have no gun purchases in mind, which is amazing, for me.

I paid $600 for my Saiga 12 shotgun. Last time I saw them for sale, the price was $500. You can once again buy Wolf AK-47 ammunition for 30¢ a round. Even 9mm is starting to show up. I’ve seen it for $14 a box, which is still insanely high, given commodity prices and the economic slump. I’ll bet you can buy it for $9 in three months. It is conceivable that I may be able to get more Swiss GP11 ammunition at a reasonable price. I never thought that would happen again.

I wonder what it’s like to be in the firearms industry right now. They must be on their knees every morning, thanking God for their amazing luck.

If there is one silver lining to the country’s tragic willingness to elect unqualified, immature Marxist egotists, it is that we are not nearly as willing to give up our guns. This is one area where leftists aren’t making the headway they hoped for. I have said that I think God is behind that, and I still think it’s true. I think he’s willing to punish this country for greed, cruelty, abortion, sexual sin, and abortion, but I don’t think he is ready to disarm individuals yet. There are too many people here who serve him.

I am hoping to use my machine tools to improve my guns. I need to fix the scope mount on my K31, for example. It’s skewed to one side, causing it to shoot about 6″ to the right at 100 yards. And I have to put all the aftermarket doodads on my Saiga, to turn it into an ergonomic, laser-guided living-room sweeper.

My dad’s concealed carry permit arrived this week. I paid for his course, as a birthday present. When he announced the card’s arrival and showed it to me, instead of saying, “Look at this,” or “Guess what I have?”, he said, “I’m putting you on notice.” I told him I’d watch my back.

Concealed carry is great, but it can be a pain. I get tired of the weight of the gun, but I force myself to do it every day, because it’s a great privilege and blessing, and because safety measures are worthless if you don’t use them. A seatbelt you don’t wear can’t save your life when you need it.

When I joined my church, they gave me a copy of Robert Morris’s The Blessed Life. I’ve been reading it this week. It’s somewhat self-serving to provide new members with this, because the book is about giving, which includes tithes and offerings. And I am extremely wary of greedy preachers and overblown “name it and claim it” prosperity preaching. Still, it’s a wonderful book, and I believe the fundamental message is right. It is true that we are obligated to give generously; not just monetarily, but in all ways, and not just to churches, but to people in need. And it is also true that withholding generosity will cause your life to be cursed. I believe those things wholeheartedly. I don’t believe every Christian can have a private jet, but I believe we are supposed to have “shalom,” which means a very general type of success. Good relationships, good mental and physical health, spiritual growth, and more than enough wealth to cover our needs. A perfect life? No, but a good life which always moves forward toward better things. A life for which each of us can’t help but be grateful, in spite of the challenges.

This is a very tough message for churches to preach, given the shameful and disgusting excesses we have seen in this area. The distinction between valid teaching on generosity and self-serving teaching intended to stimulate gullible people to make preachers rich is slippery, and it will be lost on many Christians, especially those who were victimized in the past. The crooks and psychopaths who took us in didn’t just take money; they poisoned the well against godly teachers who would come later and remind us of the power of generosity. Stealing money is bad. Stealing another person’s willingness to do right is much worse.

The neat thing about this book is that I keep seeing little confirmations of things I came to believe before I read it. The Holy Spirit teaches us, and it’s always amazing and humbling to see how our “brilliant” conclusions have already come to other people.

Pentecostal churches are still going a little heavy on God’s promises to us, and maybe a little light on our obligations to him, but I think they’re headed in a better direction these days. I bailed out about twenty years ago even though I thought they were mostly right about God. I don’t want to repeat the mistake of refusing to go to a good church because it appears imperfect. And I don’t want to give anyone the wrong impression. It’s not like these churches are packed with fools who only show up because they think God will fix all their problems and give them big houses. The people are wonderful, and they are very concerned with doing what is right.

One of the things I like about the book is that it defines “covetousness” as setting your heart on things. This is something I’ve thought about a lot, although it opened my eyes to see it used as a definition of that term. We have natural, normal, righteous desires in this life, such as sexual desire, a desire for wealth, and a desire for food. It’s sick to starve those desires. God never intended for us to do that. It’s sick to call them “lust,” “greed,” and “gluttony,” no matter how they manifest themselves. It’s not wrong to have desires. What’s wrong is overindulging them, serving them, and allowing them to cause you to sin. Fundamentally, it’s wrong to see the things you desire as replacements for God. They become idols. Contentment comes from God, not from sating your desires. It’s okay to see someone else’s house and think it would be nice to have one like it. It’s wrong to resent that person, or want him to lose his house, or set your heart on having his house or one like it, regardless of what you have to do. And it’s wrong to think a house will fix your life. That’s idolatry. It’s the error that keeps socialism alive. Expecting blessings only God can give, from things other than God.

Desire for sex isn’t automatically lust, and desire for wealth isn’t automatically greed, and so on. Stupidly equating all earthly desire with sin leads to warped, unhealthy, self-righteous asceticism. We’re not supposed to be free of these things. We’re supposed to be in charge of them. That’s how I see it.

I think money moving into and out of a person’s hands is like electricity moving through a circuit. It passes through, and along the way, it’s used to do good things. But if charges get stuck in the circuit and accumulate too much, you end up with a destructive disaster. The key is to avoid bottling it up. Or you could think of it as food going through a warehouse. If you shut the “out” door and stop distributing it, it rots, supports rats, causes harm, and benefits nobody. If you shut the “in” door, you have nothing to give others. If you get used to giving and denying your impulses, you learn not to set your heart on things, and they become less dangerous to you.

Living right is complicated. You have to be generous. You have to be responsible. You have to control yourself and be logical. You have to know when to rebuke and when to suffer other people’s faults quietly. You can’t sum it all up effectively in a paragraph or learn it all in a day. Jesus gave a very brief summary of the law and the prophets, but he never suggested we rely on that summary and throw the other stuff out.

Morris gave an interesting interpretation of the confusing verse reading, “Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness.” He believes it means we are to help others in this world with our money, so that in paradise, they will greet us in gratitude.

It’s a pretty good book. I recommend it.

By the way, World Vision now has a special area in their Gift Catalog, listing gifts that carry matching funds. You donate X to some cause, and they get 3X or 10X or whatever in matching funds, so it’s almost as if you donated much more. Very neat idea.

Machining Woes

Heather’s mom is having kidney problems, and Heather is asking for prayer. Here is the link.

I had an interesting day. I was determined to check my Parlec vise and see if it needed adjusting. The parallels were sliding out from under parts when I tightened it. I went out and started moving the table to an appropriate position, using the power feed. The power feed slowed down. I figured it was defective. Then I heard a noise, and I looked up and realized I was trying to move a workpiece past a cutter which was not rotating.

Naturally, I lost my mind for several minutes. I could see that I had knocked the head out of tram. No dial indicator needed. I assumed I had destroyed the mill’s entire head. But it turned out to be okay, and I got some more valuable experience in tramming. Man, I felt like an idiot.

I put the vise back on the table and aligned it, and I put two 123 blocks in it, one on top of the other. I centered them in the vise and tightened it, and the lower block didn’t come loose. So it appears that the vise is okay, although it doesn’t work that great for parts that don’t press against the lower parts of the jaws.

I finished up one T nut. Had a couple of issues. First, I tapped the nuts by hand, because the alternative was to spend a year putting each one in the lathe and centering it in the 4-jaw chuck. The mill’s lowest speed makes me nervous, so I didn’t want to use it for tapping. When I was done, it turned out the threads were not perfectly perpendicular to the top surfaces of the nuts. I don’t think it matters when they’re in use, but it’s a bummer. Second thing: I made a subtraction error and made one of the nuts the wrong size. It will work, but I wanted it to be right. Guess I’ll make new ones.

It sounds nutty, but while I had no problems with advanced math and physics involving tons of variables, addition and subtraction of actual numbers drive me crazy. In higher math and science, mistaking plus for minus is usually a trivial error which is easily fixed. If you make the same error with numbers, it can cause real problems.

I will make nuts until I get them right. You watch.

I Will not go Quietly Into the Day Room

I am grateful for all the supportive comments I’m getting about my sister’s condition. It’s unfortunate that she doesn’t blog, because I’m getting all the kind words, and I’m not the one who is ill. I’m a peripheral figure in this story. It’s unseemly and disturbing when a blogger takes someone else’s misfortune and uses it to make himself the star of his own soap opera. I’m not going to do that.

Reader Ruth suggested I hop in an RV with my sister and dad and tour the country. It’s a wonderful sentiment. But while I am going to be as helpful as possible during my sister’s illness, there are some sacrifices I am not quite ready to make. I don’t want to sound insensitive, but I think anyone who has made a long car trip with these two (and my sister’s dog) would understand. Illness changes a lot of things, but it doesn’t change everything! If you’ve been there, you know what I mean. You are welcome to my bone marrow, but if you want to go RVing, send me a postcard.

I did promise I would go a couple of places with her. She wants to visit Israel, and there is a famous evangelist she wants to see when he appears in Sanford, Florida.

I hope that if I’m ever seriously ill, I’ll live up to the examples my mother and my aunt and my uncle set. They didn’t moan and complain. They didn’t pull out the cancer card when they wanted things. They didn’t lay guilt trips on people. Some patients do those things. When my mother’s surgery turned out to be a failure, she continued treatment primarily to please the rest of us, and she felt terrible guilt about the smoking that caused her disease. She did not want her illness to be our illness, any more than it had to be. She spared us the pain of remembering getting angry with a cancer patient.

My mother always said manners were extremely important, and I thought she was crazy. She was right. I thought she was too concerned about things like keeping your elbows off the dinner table, but she was also trying to tell me to be considerate. When you consider other people’s feelings, you can make a big difference in the way they feel. Sometimes it lasts a day, and sometimes it lasts much longer. We have developed a revolting reverence for assertiveness and aggression, and it’s very sad. If you travel from a place like Miami or New York to a place where the culture is kinder, you will probably notice that you feel better all the time. Spend a month in Texas or Alabama, if you want to see what I mean.

Consideration continues to be important when you’re seriously ill. It probably becomes more important, because the things you do during such times carry a great deal of weight and are not forgotten. If my mother had lashed out at me or my dad during her sickness about mistakes we had made, we would still be in pain from it. People tend to open their hearts to you when you’re sick, so they are especially vulnerable.

My big machining task for today is adjusting my Parlec vise. When I put parts in it, they rise off the parallels. That’s bad. It’s exactly what the vise is designed to not do. It’s why it costs four times as much as a normal vise.

A lot of people reflexively scream “KURT” when you say you want a milling vise. There are lots of vises out there, but almost none of them are really good, and you take a chance unless you buy a Kurt. I was reluctant to get a Parlec (Taiwanese) for this very reason, and some people told me not to do it, but after researching it, I thought it was safe. Now the parts are rising, and naturally, it makes me nervous. If it can’t be fixed, it’s $400 down the crapper. I have been told that the rise is okay, if it measures out small enough.

Last night I found out a few things. It’s awful, but I had to go to the Kurt website and download one of their manuals to get the lowdown. Apparently, you can’t clamp things off-center and expect the vise to work. The part has to extend to the midpoint of the vise on the x-axis. Also, you should try to keep parts low in the jaws. That, of course, is impossible. Much of the time, you have to rest things on 123 blocks or parallels. It’s not clear to me whether the y-axis pressure has to be exerted low in the jaws, or whether the thing that actually matters is the z-axis pressure, which would presumably be translated to the ways by the parallels. If the latter alternative is right, then the parallels don’t matter.

Anyway, today I’ll put an indicator on the vise, measure the rise, and see if I can adjust it. It has a set screw that helps keep the moving jaw down.

I am going to have to grit my teeth and start machining methodically. So far, I’ve been so excited about having the mill, I’ve been winging it, just to see the chips fly. But that’s no good in the long run. You have to calculate feeds and speeds. And you have to plan your cuts, in order. It’s like doing a science lab in college. I used to write chronological lists before my labs, and they got me out a lot faster and saved me mistakes.

Sometimes doing one operation before another can make life really hard, or it may make the rest of the job impossible. And when you use an edge finder which takes a collet which won’t hold your cutting tool, and which uses a way different z setting, forgetting to take all the right measurements at the right times can cause you real agony. Loosen nut. Tap nut. Collet out. Chuck in. Tighten nut. Raise knee. Realize you need another measurement. Lower knee. Loosen nut. Tap nut. Chuck out. Collet in. Do this three or four times in half an hour, and you will develop a real enthusiasm for checklists. And trying to remember four-digit DRO measurements will give you a serious hankering to master your DRO’s memory functions.

I also have to learn to use some kind of design software for layout. This may well be the task that results in my being fitted for adult diapers and a jacket that buckles in the back. All software is written BY nerdy engineer types. That’s bad. What is infinitely worse is software written FOR nerdy engineering types. They don’t even try to make it usable. People discussing these applications like to throw the phrase “learning curve” around, to help you understand just how screwed you are. That’s where I am now. At the base of a learning curve resembling Mount Crumpet in the original Grinch cartoon.

“Click to see tutorial.” Okay, but what do I click to get a tutorial to help me understand the tutorial? At times like these, I wish I lived near the Mexican border so I could drive across and buy Thorazine. But a month or two from now, I’ll be very glad I got adjusted and attacked these hurdles. I was a great lab student because I surrendered, acknowledged my severe mental deficiencies, and took appropriate steps. Machining should be no different.

Non-Tool Stuff Starts About Halfway Down

I’m trying to figure out whether the stuff I’ve learned in machining videos is correct.

A long while back, I ordered an “as new” OSG carbide end mill off Ebay. Seemed to work okay, and it was really cheap, so yesterday I ordered two more. I also looked at roughing mills. I have a 3/8″ roughing mill, but now that I know about the fun of changing collets, I realize I should try to put together a few mills with the same diameter. I found a 1/2″ roughing mill, and I noticed that the tolerances were not impressive. I think the diameter was listed as within 0.003″ of spec.

That confused me, because–I have not confirmed this yet–I’m fairly sure some of the videos suggested using an edge finder to locate the spindle relative to the work, and then popping in an end mill of known diameter, and using that diameter for calculations when moving the table. If you’re a machinist, you know that a diameter that’s off by 0.003″ is going to give you errors half that big in your work. And that’s more than big enough to be a concern when you’re trying to be precise. It doesn’t matter with a roughing mill, but other end mills have the same issue.

On top of that, I’m almost sure the ATI videos I watched endorsed carbide end mills. Carbide is really hard, and it’s expensive. The benefits are that it lasts a long time and performs well and cuts faster. Now I’m being told it should not be used on manual mills, because you’re supposed to climb-cut when you use it, and that will make a manual mill flex. I hope I have this right. I believe I was told that if you cut conventionally with carbide, it breaks up over time, and you get bad finishes.

The upshot seems to be that edge finders are worthless for some of the uses I hoped to use them for, and I was dumb to buy carbide. Apparently cobalt is a better choice for me. A lot of people tell me not to get cobalt, because it costs a little more, but it seems to work way better than HSS. At least in drill bits.

I guess I won’t regret spending $10 each on two carbide cutters, since they’ll definitely work long enough to be worth the money.

If you can’t use an edge finder to locate a cutter precisely, you have to do it some other way. I believe that sends you back to the rolling-paper method. You embarrass yourself by buying rolling papers like a depraved stoner, and then you find edges by holding them between the work and the cutter. The edge finder will tell you where the spindle is, relative to the work, but that’s not the same as telling you where the edge of the cutter will be.

I’ve been trying to find a good used rotary table, but it’s not that easy. You also need indexing plates and a tailstock, and by the time you get done looking for this stuff, you’ve been shopping for six months. It may be time to bite the Enco bullet and go Taiwanese again. You can often save three figures by getting old American tooling, but what does that savings cost you in lost time you could have been spending machining? It amazes me that people brag about shopping a year for a taper attachment or a steady rest. How long do they expect to live? These are usually middle-aged or older guys. A year can easily be five or ten percent of their remaining time on earth. When you decide to dedicate a lot of time to something, you need to ask yourself how much time you have left. I find life so interesting, I want to live a thousand years. That seems unlikely, however.

A few months back, my dad was talking about getting a travel trailer. I’m very, very glad he still has enthusiasm for things like that. But my mother has been gone for 12 years, and he’s 77. A lot of the people we could have visited 35 years ago are dead or elderly. It’s late.

My grandfather once leased a house to a 67-year-old man, tying it up for a number of years. Someone in the family complained, and my grandfather said, “He’s an old man. He won’t live long.” When he said that, I believe he was 72.

He was right, but you can still see my point.

I guess it will sound funny, but one reason I bought a convertible is that we didn’t do anything fun when I was a kid. My uncle Jim had a couple of convertibles in the Sixties, and some family members talked like he had gone insane. That’s how boring most of us were. My dad, my mother, my sister and I were pretty dull. We rarely went on real vacations. We never toured the US. We didn’t have a boat or an RV. We had no regular activities, like shooting or bowling. We belonged to no clubs or organizations, apart from the country club. We didn’t go to church regularly. We never belonged to a church. Golf was the only sport, apart from games my friends and I played in the yard, and my dad was the only one who golfed. We watched TV; that was our main activity. Isn’t that awful? I hate to admit it. That was our life. I went to school, and then I came home and watched TV, and I refrained from doing homework unless I had absolutely no choice, and after that I went to bed. My mother was the only one who wasn’t a TV addict, but she didn’t really do anything with the time she saved. My sister and I didn’t have many toys, which is weird, since we were well off. Mike says the other kids felt sorry for us. I had no idea back then. My mother bought me a banjo when I was 15; that was nice.

I guess I wasn’t as bad as the others. I enjoyed shooting BB guns, fishing for inedible fish, breaking things, and fireworks. Mike and I used to get together and do the kind of stupid, aimless things kids do when they’re on their own. Like Beavis and Butt-head, I guess, except we weren’t that mean or stupid. We tended to do strange, creative things. I had another friend nearby, but he wasn’t bright enough to come up with things like that. We also had CB radios and other passing interests. My sister didn’t do much of anything, but that’s normal for girls.

I remember Mike somehow got ahold of a surplus parachute. We put it in his yard, on a busy corner, and we weighted the perimeter. Then we put a fan under it and put some lights inside. It blew up into a big, quivering white dome, and we went inside and hung out. Cars slowed down so people could see this glowing object and wonder why these two abnormal kids were doing something that wasn’t ordinary.

I got my first convertible in 1980, and Jim was part of the inspiration. His branch of the family had more fun than the others. I’m sure my mother told me the car would flip and burn immediately, and I would be trapped underneath it like a chicken in a roasting pan. Oh, Lord. A convertible. Please, don’t let this happen to my child. Next he’ll be base-jumping. My mother didn’t like electric windows, because she thought any car with electric windows would plunge into a canal at the earliest opportunity, and there she would be, unable to roll down the window and escape. Meanwhile, she smoked at least two packs of cigarettes a day. I was crazy about my mom, but I knew there her logic had its weak points. I’m ancient. So far, I’ve know ONE person who was in a convertible that flipped, and he didn’t roast. I don’t know anyone who has driven into a canal. You can keep a punch in your car to break your windows, if that kind of thing worries you. I think my Glock will also do the job.

Once in a while, you have to do something. Just spend the money and do it. It isn’t going to do itself. I’m really glad I’ve had two convertibles and two motorcycles. I’m glad I lived in Israel for four months. I’m glad I published three books and got a bunch of tools and guns and learned to make beer. I can’t even guess how boring life would be if I didn’t do things like this. By and large, the strange and challenging things you do will be the things you remember with the most pleasure. That’s an extremely important lesson young people should learn. You shouldn’t be a sensation junkie or a hedonistic wastrel, but you should embrace opportunities to shake up your life. You should be conscious of their value and jump on them instead of avoiding them. You don’t want to leave your kids a diary that has entries like, “July 17: I celebrate 63 victorious years of resisting buying a motorcycle. I will celebrate by putting a small amount of real sugar in my oatmeal.”

I think a rotary table will be a real asset. Right now, I can drill holes and make straight cuts, and that’s about it. Not much utility for what I paid. A rotary table will let me cut arcs, and it will allow me to do tasks that require breaking circles up accurately into sections. Circles of bolt holes, for example.

I should take one of the bikes out today. I hope my mom will be too busy in paradise to notice.

Some Prefer Machine Tools

I guess a lot of people already think I’m a kook, so it can’t hurt me to post this.

Last night, I tried to make myself some T nuts from 12L14 round stock. I enjoyed it tremendously. I had to figure out how to position round stock in the vise. I had to decide which cuts to make first and which cutter to use. I had to use the DRO, which is fantastic. I can see why no machinist should be without one.

I used the lathe to cute a short piece of 12L14, and I put it on parallels in the vise, and I started cutting. I took shallow cuts, because the bar was round and smooth, so I was afraid big cuts would apply so much torque it would turn in the vise. I made a flat side, and then I cut two shoulders down from it, and then I flipped the metal in the vise and flattened the bottom of what would eventually be two T nuts.

It worked like a charm. The surfaces were beautiful, and they even had wonderful patterns in them, like woven silk.

I was going to leave the metal in the vise and call it a day, but I couldn’t resist taking it out so I could play with it. Here’s what I have so far.

While I was looking at it, I discovered a surprising and pleasing feature which would force me to scrap the part. How can something good render a part useless? See if you can guess.

Can you believe that? How can I throw that away? I had to play with the Photoshop controls to bring it out, but when you see the actual part, it’s much more obvious. There is an ichthus in the steel. The tail doesn’t show up well in the photo, but it’s there. The ichthus must have been put there by the saw the metal dealer used. I would have ruined it had I continued with the project.

Don’t email me for tickets. I’m not opening a tourist attraction. And so far, it hasn’t healed me or anything. I don’t expect it to start weeping blood, and it hasn’t uttered any prophecies. But it was still a nice surprise, and I would never assume a thing like this happened by chance.

Isn’t that just like God? Present in everything, but you have to know where to look, and you have to want to see.

Incidentally, I just learned that we are coming into the Days of Teshuvah. This is a 40-day period preceding Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement. On that day, and that day only, the high priest used to enter the Holy of Holies and perform actions that covered the sins of the Jewish people.

Teshuvah (that’s the spelling that seems to be preferred, if Google means anything) means “repentance.” Aaron posted a comment recently, explaining it in more detail.

A crescendo of the Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services is the three-word phrase: “Tshuva [return/repentence], tefilah [prayer], u-tzedaka [and charity] avert the evil decree”.

http://www.ou.org/about/judaism/tw.htm : Repentance, or return to G-d or the G-dly way of life; modifying one’s behavior by the following four steps: stopping the sinful behavior, confession before G-d, regret over past actions, and commitment to changed behavior in the future. If done out of fear of Divine punishment, Teshuvah turns past deliberate sins into “accidental” sins; if done out of love of G-d, Teshuvah has the power to transform deliberate sins into “good deeds.”

This refers to personal sins between man and God. Wronging another requires compensating damage and gaining forgiveness from the wronged party. One can’t steal from another and confess to a third party and expect to be forgiven. Judaism teaches that God won’t forgive sins committed against those made in His image. In cases where it isn’t possible (not merely inconvenient or uncomfortable) to make amends and ask for forgiveness, a competent clergyman might suggest a suitable action to compensate the community. A vandal might devote years to reversing the damages of vandalism in his town. A corporate polluter that harmed the rivers in a community might work in environmentalism.

Obviously, no Christian assumes the Jews are right about everything, but they knew God during tens of centuries during which my ancestors were worshiping trees and eating each other, so when they talk, I listen. I haven’t read anything expressly explaining the purpose of the Days of Teshuvah, but I suppose anyone can see that it is better to arrive on the day of atonement with repentance well under day. It shows respect and gratitude, and it shows you don’t expect to do whatever you want 364 days a year and then show up so God can change your diaper.

Whenever I think of the metaphor of washing our robes in blood, I think of parents changing diapers. I am positive God was trying to tell us something when he arranged for babies to take two years to be toilet-trained. I think this whole life is a lot like a diaper. We soil it and discard it and move on to better things.

The Days of Teshuvah are coming. “Coincidentally,” last night, my pastor preached about lukewarm Christians. That type of teaching necessarily involves repentance. There is no other way to fix the problem. He mentioned Revelation 3:19 and 3:20. I’ll tack 3:21 on, since it makes the message even more pleasant.

19 As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent.

20 Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.

21 To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne.

This family is facing a special need at the moment, and we will be dealing with it throughout the 40 Days of Teshuvah, which start on August 21. Knowing the significance of this time period will surely be helpful to us. I think God alerted me to this, and the series my church is teaching, which is all about turning up the intensity of your walk, is very supportive.

Maybe I’ll give that piece of metal to my sister when I pick her up at the airport today. It’s too small to glue to my car.

Last night, I listened to Perry Stone. He did a series of teachings in the obscure town where I was born, and I bought the CDs out of curiosity. In the session I listened to last night, he talked about the frustration he has experienced, leading his own son into a strong relationship with God. He told his son he only needed to “get zapped” by God once. He needed to see something miraculous, whether it was a manifestation of God’s presence or a miracle. He thought that would fix him. That may be true of his son, but I am apparently not that smart. God physically entered my car, when I was on the highway in 1985. He made another appearance a year or so later. He gave me a healing. He showed me two spirits. But I left the church twenty years ago, with those memories still in my mind! How do you do something that stupid? I don’t understand how I pulled it off. Where would I be today, had I paid attention? People go their whole lives without receiving treasures like that. You can’t buy them. They are more precious than anything any billionaire has. Still, I treated them as though they were unimportant. The Jews may recognize 40 days of teshuvah, but for the especially dense and spoiled, it can take years.

My sister and I need to take full advantage of this time. The warnings are not subtle. I don’t know how it could be any clearer.

Get the Brillo and Lysol

Yesterday, I went to a dealership and drove an F150 with an eight-foot bed. I was pleasantly surprised. The truck was slow compared to the Thunderbird, which is not a big shock, but the ride was very pleasant. Not like a truck at all. I instinctively slowed down for the speed bumps in the parking lot, being used to the Thunderbird (bottoming out), motorcycles (jumping in the air), and Explorer (jumping then rocking), but when I hit the bumps, nothing happened. The length of the truck doesn’t seem to be a problem. It’s 18″ longer than the next size down. That’s not a real burden when you drive, but it would be a big help at Home Depot. They had extended-cab versions that were the same length, but you lose some payload.

This truck was an XLT which means “cheap but not scary-cheap.” It had cloth seats and power windows. I thought it was fairly luxurious for a truck. In the showroom, they had a $43,000 truck that had rain-sensing windshield wipers and–you may think I’m kidding–motorized running boards that extend when you touch the door handles. I like nice stuff. No doubt about it. But when you’re too lame to turn on the windshield wipers or get into a truck without a boost, you need to be euthanized. It would be humiliating to be seen getting into that atrocity.

The guts of the truck seemed very good. The base V8 plus the towing stuff. This means a better suspension and more cooling capacity. That might mean the air conditioner works better, now that I think about it. I guess it depends on whether the radiator limits the air conditioner’s cooling capacity. I assume that is not the case, since cars don’t run hot in Miami with the air conditioning on. The air conditioner worked very well, and if it cooled on August 7 in Miami, with no clouds, it will cool in hell.

The truck was not much to look at. I didn’t realize it from the photos, but white pickups are somewhat better looking than silver ones. I don’t like these “colors,” but anything else will be a heat magnet.

The dealership was empty. Do not believe the Cash for Clunkers PR storm. There were maybe two other customers there. Ford sales have increased 2%, which means they are still in the process of going out of business.

They had a funny sales setup. The first Internet sales contact was a man. Then they palmed me off to a Latin girl with lots of cleavage and tight pants. When I showed up, she came out to greet me. All I can say is, I doubt she was hired for her LSAT score. Very spicy addition to the showroom decor. I don’t think she was Cuban. She seemed South American. Cubans will be mad when I say this, but South American girls tend to run a little hotter. But she handed me off to a third guy, who was a regular floor salesman. So it’s not the same deal I got when I got the Thunderbird. The other dealership, owned by the same conglomerate, had a separate Internet crowd, and they were much nicer to do business with. I think I’m going to contact them. They may be able to get me this same truck. I hate to do that to the guy who rode with me today, but his boss was very pushy, and he added $1500 to the price they quoted me, so they’ve had their chance. His behavior was not respectful. I realize they’re supposed to try to make money, but I’ve done some negotiating myself, and I know something he doesn’t: being obnoxious doesn’t help. You can be polite and take someone to the cleaners.

My dad has finally concluded he doesn’t want to go the Obama route, so I don’t have that option to worry me now.

I think I finally…FINALLY…have a viable milling project. Enco wants $15 for a proper set of nuts and studs to mount my vise. I used stuff from my clamping set, but I would rather have a separate setup. Today I realized I had enough stuff to make my own T nuts and studs. I don’t think I can make a flange nut, but life isn’t perfect.

I figured I would make a bar shaped like a T nut and bore and tap holes in it and then slice it into nuts. Then I realized I didn’t need to slice it. I can make a single bar a little wider than the vise and put a hole in each end. A T nut can be a hundred feet long and still work. There is no reason you do it this way, and it would save time.

A guy on the Chaski forum made an incredible ball cutter for his lathe. The ones you see for sale are very simple. U-shaped tool holders that pivot on steel bases. This baby has a table on ball bearings. Totally unnecessary, I’m sure, but who cares? He’s selling plans. I might take a whack at it. I would probably end up spending fifty bucks on materials, but a premade cutter would cost something in that neighborhood anyway.

I don’t have a lot to say about other matters that are going on in my life; don’t expect to read much about that in the near future.

Two things:

1. Dan Howell’s sister is not doing well, so keep her in your prayers:

Steve, will be Praying for your sister. God is control of everything and we just have to let him have His way. We need to let go and let God work. My sister, Mary Ellen has been put back into Hospice House and is her last days of the beast, cancer. Thank you for your Prayers on her behalf, we will miss her, but I will not judge God for not healing her in my way. She will be Healed and we will see each other again when I am healed of this world. Touch her now God and make Steve’s sister whole.

2. Heather’s mom is in the hospital.

Praying for your sister.
My mom was admitted to the hospital last night.

Uselessness is Not a Virtue

I hope people will not fault me for returning to blogging as usual. Things will continue to go on behind the scenes, whether or not I write about them.

I guess I can mention one thing. It’s something I’ve written about before. In 1987, I received a miraculous healing, and last night my sister asked me how I got it. I tend to assume all Christians know these things, but I guess that’s dumb. I’ll go back over it. Maybe it will help someone.

I decided I had to find a church. When I started looking, I became ill. I thought I had a cold, but it would not go away. It wasn’t like an allergy; I know the difference. It persisted for weeks. It drove me nuts.

I had been watching a number of TV preachers. Somewhere–maybe it was from Kenneth Copeland–I heard that if you wanted to be healed, you had to “confess” your healing orally and stick to it, no matter what. You prayed for healing, then you announced aloud that God had healed you, and you continued to do that, without waivering, until your healing came. I gave it a try. I was sick for days after that, but I never once permitted myself to say I was not healed.

One day I was standing in my dad’s kitchen, and I looked in the freezer. While the door was open, I saw a dark transparent shape travel from me into the freezer, and then it made a turn and went out through the back door of the house, which was closed. I was instantly healed. My mother and father were in the next room. They didn’t see what happened, but they both saw that I was healed when I came out of the kitchen. My father forgot it. My mother never did. Oddly, my father has forgotten it several times, and so has my sister. I’ve had to tell them more than once. I’ve told my sister at least twice this year, and there is nothing wrong with her memory.

It wasn’t a leg growing back. It wasn’t cancer. But it was a miracle anyway, and it was a big relief to me.

Today I would do more. I’d add fasting and repentance and offerings and prayer. But what I did in 1987 worked. I think sometimes God does more for a new believer than he would for someone who knows the ropes. Just a guess.

I don’t endorse Kenneth Copeland, but no evangelist is wrong all the time. Maybe this story will help someone.

Back to normal life.

As time passes, I am more and more inclined to get a pickup and sell the T-bird. I was sitting in church the other day, thinking what I always think: “I wish I were of more use to these people.” I have all these tools now, and I have time. But I drive a car with two seats and a trunk the size of a lunchbox. The trunk is amazing; it may well be the reason this car was not popular. You can get two suitcases in it, and that’s it. Period. I would guess that it’s impossible to put anything more than 14″ tall in there. If I take this car to the gun range, I have to put my range box in the passenger seat.

It’s starting to look like we’re going into a deceptive plateau in the decline of the United States. That means cars will start selling, and prices will go up. I’m thinking I should snap up a truck before the dealers develop a false sense of confidence. Then I can hold onto the convertible for a few months to see if the used-car market gets a boost. If not, I unload it. Or I drive it occasionally. The only problem with that scenario is clutter. The positive side would be that I would not have to drive a huge vehicle all the time. I find that when I drive a big vehicle, every once in a while, I really miss driving small cars I can turn and park easily.

The picture is complicated because my father unexpectedly announced that he might want to take advantage of the Obama handout. I can’t blame him. The IRS treated him like a slush fund all his life. He will never break even. He’s thinking of getting rid of his old Explorer. The best truck he can extract from Obama’s udder is a Toyota Tacoma. It’s smaller than I would like, but it will work. I can’t put extremely heavy objects in the bed, but it will pull a rented trailer just fine. You can’t rent a trailer if you have an Explorer. Uhaul’s attorneys have seen to that. And the Explorer’s odometer died at 109K, so I wouldn’t trust it with a trailer now.

He has an idea about getting a travel trailer; I don’t know if that’s a great idea, but the Tacoma will pull it. It’s not the best choice, but it can be done. If he gets a Tacoma, I’ll be a good son and borrow it constantly. No need for an F150.

Either truck would be a good move. I would like to have something practical. When I got the T-bird, I didn’t need a utility vehicle, because I could always borrow the Explorer. Now the Explorer is old, and it’s not an ideal vehicle for hauling things, and I have more reason to haul. Maybe I’ll run up to the Ford dealership and take a look at the F150 I have my eye on.

I was practicing law when I got the T-bird. I thought it would be fun to have a car with a little style, and I am addicted to ragtops. You don’t need a big car when your payload consists of a briefcase and a laptop, and it wasn’t a bad car for a single man to have. You know how women are. But I am shedding the upscale trappings I started to accumulate in law school. I wish I could burn my suits. I wear sneakers and cargo shorts all the time. I have given up on expensive sunglasses. The people in the better men’s shops used to know me by sight. Those days are long gone. And the women I am likely to meet now are not going to have a lot of interest in flash. A woman who will not let you take her out in a pickup is going to be trouble eventually. Like a man who expects his wife to give him an itinerary whenever she leaves the house. Or a guy who drives with no shirt on. I am convinced they always make bad husbands. It’s a hunch.

If I have a truck, I’ll be better able to pursue my own hobbies, and I’ll be in a position to make myself useful to others. If the church needs a sliding miter saw or a table saw, I’ll be able to pop it in the bed and get on the road. I won’t have to sit in the congregation feeling like a doofus because I drive a self-indulgent roadster.

If they know I have tools and a truck, won’t they bother me all the time, asking for favors? Probably. That’s what I’m hoping for.

I should go look at that thing. I dread meeting a salesperson. I’d rather have a snake thrown on me. But I guess there is no other way.

Plus Fun with Chinese Tools

While I am sitting here waiting, I thought I’d write some tool-related stuff.

First, I read my mill’s manual the other day. It’s not fantastic, but it’s much better than the manual for the DRO, which might as well be a Jackson Pollack painting. The manual says the mill is built so the front of the table (toward the operator) is supposed to be higher than the back. How much higher? Uh…guess. They say it should be around 0.005″ higher, but that’s as close as they’re willing to get. So I have no idea what to do. I trammed it with all four sides at the same height. I guess I can do it again and assume 0.005″ is the right figure.

Second, I got a quote on a pickup. I suppose I shouldn’t be looking while the socialist, wealth-destroying, deficit-increasing clunkers disaster is ongoing, but I doubt full-size pickups are moving well right now. I don’t know if big pickups with V8 motors are ever eligible for handout money; if they are, it wouldn’t happen very often. You would have to drive a tank in order for a full-size pickup to be an upgrade under the Obama plan.

This morning it occurred to me that this is sort of like the Fannie Mae mess, except it applies to cars. My dad pointed out yesterday that Obama is encouraging new buyers to go further into debt, and that will take money out of circulation. My guess is that many people who own cars worth turning in under this program are poor loan risks. If your trade-in is worth substantially less than the handout figure, you are probably not well off. And car dealers are notorious for writing bad loans and dumping them on GMAC and other institutions. It’s an accepted practice. It can only get worse with this plan in place. Maybe next year we’re going to see a wave of repos.

I got a quote because I wanted to see how desperate the dealers are, and my effort was rewarded handsomely. They took something like six grand off MSRP, right away. I suppose I should be able to chisel another two thousand off.

The truck I looked at was a fairly basic F150 with an eight-foot bed and no back seats. It has the towing stuff, and the payload capacity is about 3,000 pounds, which means it can move heavy objects such as milling machines. I ought to go take a look at it. The Thunderbird has been fun, but I’m starting to feel like it’s no longer in character for me to drive it. It’s a party car. The resale value is surprisingly low; I would be lucky to break even on the truck buy. I am tempted to hold it for six months and see what the economy does, but I think Obama is steering us into the toilet, and we are probably experiencing a deceptive lull before the storm. I can’t believe God would reward socialism and hostility toward Israel.

It would be nice to have a vehicle that can carry things. Many times, I’ve had to borrow my dad’s old Explorer, and it’s getting creaky, and it’s no substitute for a truck with a bed.

I don’t want a backseat, but my lifestyle may not always be as solitary as it is now, so maybe I should rethink that.

I’d like to get a truck made by a company that did not accept the tainted Obama nipple, so Ford is a good choice.

I don’t know why I should hesitate to buy a new vehicle. We’re all buying new vehicles for other people now; might as well buy for ourselves. I need to get a shirt that says, “Kiss me. I paid for your house and your car.”

Huh?

I’ve been having fun today, trying to decipher my Sino DRO manual. By all accounts, Sino DROs are very good. If you hire a Chinese person to show you how to use them.

“Setting of system. In process of self check, key ‘.’, then the system enter setting mode after self check finished.”

“It is possible to return to zero any point, take the example of X axis display.”

Okay. Isn’t a self check something you do in the shower?

I have been sitting in front of the mill, punching buttons to find out how the DRO actually works. I am taking notes and writing my own instructions. I guess it’s worth it, because an American DRO costs a grand, and this one was included with my mill! God only knows what it would have cost, had they paid an English-speaker to write the manual instead of using Babelfish.

It amazes me that there are Americans who have figured out how to use Sino DROs. They write about them on forums as if everything was fine. I guess they learn on DROs with better manuals, and when they end up with Sinos, they already know everything. I was considering downloading a manual for a different brand, in the hope that there were similarities.

I tried to determine whether I needed a rotary table, a dividing head, a super spacer, or an indexer today. And I finally realized I would never figure it out if I lived a thousand lifetimes. I think I’ll eventually get a rotary table with dividing accessories and see what happens. I really don’t know what else to do. If I keep trying to figure out the best possible thing to buy, I will die before I actually get anything.

Og says I should get a swivel base for my vise, and I’m sure that’s a good idea. Of course, I chose not to get one when I bought the vise, because I kept seeing forum posts in which people said swivel bases were a complete waste of money. It’s nice how everyone’s advice is consistent. I don’t think I can go wrong with a rotary table. And the table on my mill is long, so my hope is that I can have the vise and the rotary table mounted simultaneously, most of the time.

I am pretty well convinced that I should get a 3-axis DRO, put it on my mill, add a z scale, and move the 2-axis DRO to the lathe. It would be nice to have some idea how long parts are, and I cannot figure out how you do it with a dial indicator with a one-inch range. I think measuring a 24″ part with a dial indicator would be challenging, to say the least.

The DRO manual would be confusing even if it made sense. It has instructions for cutting arcs with a straight end mill. How is that possible? It doesn’t move the work; it just tells you where it is. You can’t move all three handwheels at once unless you have CNC, and I’m pretty sure they would all have to move to make these exotic shapes.

I still want an electronic lead screw for the lathe. It does what a DRO does, most of the time. But when it doesn’t, it doesn’t. And a DRO can’t do what it does. It replaces metric gears, a taper attachment, and sometimes, a DRO.

I gave up on making my own dovetail cutter. It’s a very stupid idea. Luckily Enco is having a sale. They must adore me.

I really think I may make something some day. Possibly by Christmas. Of 2011.

Hope Obama hasn’t backed a truck up to the garage by then. When he crowns himself at the National Cathedral and starts confiscating Jewish property, we’ll know he’s almost ready to nationalize our tools and shoot everyone who can read. If you’re Jewish, have a tailor make you a nice silk yellow star right away. Don’t wait for the rush and end up with a crummy one made out of felt.

Liar, Spendthrift, or Both?

The Obama birth mess never seems to die out completely.

Yesterday, I read about the newly discovered Kenyan birth certificate which says Obama was born in Mombasa. Attorney Orly Taitz is using a copy as evidence to try to convince a federal court to get the Kenyans to release the original. I am not a “birther,” and I don’t have a lot of confidence in this document, but I noted that it would be pretty odd for an attorney to present a court with a faked document, in a situation where the truth was virtually certain to come out eventually, and where the attorney’s enemies would do their best to use the submission of the faked document as a basis to ruin her career.

In a comment, Aaron pointed out that Jon Stewart’s staff produced a newspaper birth announcement from Hawaii, printed in 1961, indicating that Obama had been born there on August 4th of that year. I thought that was pretty powerful evidence that Obama had been born in the US. But that’s not the end of it. Mrs. Taitz appeared on TV recently, and she pointed out that it was possible for Obama’s mother to get the announcement published without proof that Obama was born here. She also noted that Mrs. Obama would have been highly motivated to do this, because it would have avoided a lot of aggravation, dealing with the immigration people.

So the newspaper announcement is nearly worthless. IF Mrs. Taitz is correct.

There is a new wrinkle, however. According to Wikipedia (sorry), Mombasa was in Zanzibar when Obama was born. It was not part of Kenya until 1963. If that is true, how can the birth certificate be legitimate? On top of that, we still don’t know how hard it was to get the certificate issued. For all I know, it may be even easier than getting a Hawaiian newspaper to print a birth announcement.

Apart from all this, we still have no explanation for the huge stonewalling effort Obama has made. Accounts say he has spent nearly a million dollars, when he could simply have had his Hawaiian birth certificate (the original, which supposedly still exists) released. Is this his own money? What kind of nut would harm his children’s financial legacy by blowing a million dollars for no clear reason? Is it money from supporters? What kind of nut would donate money, when Obama could solve the problem by writing a note or making a phone call?

If Obama can prove he was born here, he must be out of his mind, spending all this money. Of course, he’s pretty good at wasting huge sums of money, so maybe the lawsuit cost is merely more evidence of an underlying character deficiency.

Speaking of deficiencies, I am trying to figure out what items of tooling I need to make my milling machine useful. Yesterday, I decided it was time to try to get moving on my plan to make quick release tool holders for my lathe. These will have 60° dovetails on them. So I’ll need a dovetail cutter. On the suggestion of a reader, I decided it would be fun to make my own one-flute cutter with an indexed carbide insert.

The cutter would be a cylinder of steel with a 60° cone machined from the bottom of it, big side down. You put the insert on one side of the cone, in a notch.

Problem: the notch has to be an equilateral triangle, with the vertical side tilted 30° from the axis of the cutter, to rest against the side of the insert. This means cutting a big chunk out of the cone part, with the mill table traveling at an angle to the axis. Generally, you would use a rotary table or a dividing head to do this, although you can clamp stuff to the table and align it with a protractor, which is not very precise and likely to lead to insert alignment problems.

So I’m looking at rotary tables and dividing heads. A dividing head is likely to be cheaper and lighter and easier to use. But–I am pretty sure–you can’t cut arcs with it. It clicks from angular position to angular position, in discrete jumps, and you machine with the work at rest. Perhaps I’m mistaken. With a rotary table, you can turn the work while the mill runs. But you will not be able to move it quickly in desired increments, unless you buy extra parts. Say you want to drill six holes around a disk, at equally spaced intervals. With a dividing head, you move the work five times, pretty quickly. With a rotary table, you turn it gradually from point to point, and you line up the angular graduations, which takes time.

Complicating things further, a rotary table may be purely horizontal, horizontal and vertical, or tilting. I assume “tilting” means you can position it anywhere between horizontal and vertical. As you might guess, the price goes up as you go from purely horizontal to tilting.

So once more, I am completely at sea. On top of that, I’ve been informed that one-flute dovetail cutters are stupid, because they cut very slowly. And making a multiple-flute cutter is nearly impossible, because the inserts won’t line up. And anyway, when you make three or four notches for inserts, you weaken the cutter a lot.

I checked out Enco, trying to find a dovetail cutter which would be appropriate for making BXA tool holders. It’s very hard to figure out. The height of the cutter has to be right, and so does the width, and it has to work well with whatever diameter cutter you use to make the slots you turn into dovetails, so you have to have the right size shank.

My head hurts.

I can make cubic and rectangular pieces of metal, and I can drill holes and mill slots in them. So far, that’s about it.

Using the mill is a blast, regardless. I stare at it, like I would stare if I just found out I was married to Jessica Biel. I can’t believe it’s here. So far, my efforts have been limited to tramming the mill and facing a metal disk with a fly cutter, but that’s pretty exciting compared to having no milling machine.

I think new machinists probably tend to look like Christians, because the lathe throws oil on us, making vertical stripes on our shirts, and the mill throws oil horizontally, and when it’s all over, you end up with a big cross.

I’m going to make something, starting today, even if I only turn my disk into a rectangular block.

The facing went okay. The work seems to rise when I tighten the vise, which is disturbing, but I have been beating it with a soft hammer while I crank the handle, and it appears to do away with the problem. I faced the disk on both sides, and the thickness, measured at four points, was within two thousandths of an inch. That’s okay for now.

Yesterday I learned that this particular mill has a table which is supposed to be somewhat higher in front than in back. How much higher? That’s the question they don’t answer. They say it may be 0.005″. “May.” So maybe I need to tram the mill again. What fun.

Sooner or later, something useful will be made in my garage. I will notify you when it happens, and on that day, it will be such a big story, no one will care where Barack Obama was born.

Diamond is #2 Now

I quit trying to mill the strange object Mike brought me. It appears to be hardened, so it does not like being machined. I dug out a 3 1/2″ 12L14 disk someone sent me, and I mounted it in my vise and ran a fly cutter over it. Big difference. It cuts like butter.

Here’s a photo. The cut is around 2.5″ wide. I made three passes. The last one is 0.003″ deep. You can see marks from both “sides” of the fly cutter (same side on different parts of the rotation), but the trailing “side” left the most obvious marks. I am hoping this is acceptable. I am not eager to tram the mill again.

I haven’t found good information on fly cutter tool grinding yet. I found a diagram of a design on a CNC forum, but it had no relief on the bottom of the cutter, which surely has to be a mistake. I ground this new one with relief but no radius. I assume a radius would give a better finish.

I ordered some square T6 whatever bars. If I’m careful, I should be able to slice them in nice pieces with the dry saw and WD40. That will give me plenty of mill fodder for a while.

I still don’t understand why people say you should get a lathe before a mill, and that a lathe is more useful than a mill. The lathe is swell, but it’s harder to understand, and you can’t make straight cuts without a milling attachment. The mill is very straightforward, and you can do all sorts of things with it. I guess the traditional wisdom will make sense to me eventually.

More

I divided the RPMs by about 8 (115), changed the workholding method, and ran it through again. This time the finish is much better. I believe the feed was around 3″ per minute.

The disk is wider than the cutter, so I had to run it through twice. You can see a small part and a big part, with a dividing line. The small part is the last part I ran under the cutter. For some reason, it’s a tiny bit higher than the rest of the disk. No idea why. I locked the spindle this time, but I didn’t lock the gibs in the z-direction. Is that the problem?

It Moves

I got the VFD hooked up to the mill. I have no idea where to put it. I may just screw it to the wall. It’s going to be a phase converter most of the time, so it’s basically an on/off switch. I don’t need it to be terribly handy.

The manual for TECO VFDs is horrendous. I’m sure the Chinese part is written much better. The English part is hopeless, even for a guy who already programmed another VFD. Luckily, I found out how to make it generate 60 Hz, and that’s all I need.

I don’t understand why the mill takes up so little room. Well, yes I do. The guy who made the pretty Bridgeport floor space diagram I relied on must have been crazy. He claimed a 42″ BP takes up so much room, you need 74″ of wall on either side of the corner in which the mill sits. I don’t know how he got that idea. My mill is wider and appears to need less room than that.

I haven’t machined anything, obviously. But the mill is probably trammed, the vise is probably aligned correctly, the oil thing is full of Vactra, and the VFD works.

Maybe I could check the tramming by facing something, turning it over, and facing it again. Mike–you have to love this guy–saw a piece of scrap steel on the side of the road while he was driving down from DC, and he stopped, backed up 85 feet, and put it in his car. I could put it on parallels, face one side, put that side down, face the other side, turn it around, start facing it, and see if the cuts look funny. I would think a head that was out of tram would cause a face cutter to hit the work crookedly, and that you would see it as the work moved under the spindle.

I guess there’s a clever way you’re supposed to check the tramming. Things like that have a way of appearing in my comments. Or maybe the tramming itself, being a measuring process, is, itself, supposed to be the check. Generally, though, machinists have ways of double-checking themselves.

The vise is super-duper aligned, I think. I used a metric Tesa TI, and it doesn’t move when you take the vise across the spindle. I thought that was cool. Tramming was no fun at all. The machinist’s square made it a lot easier, because when I got way off, the square brought me back to a reasonable starting point.

I have to figure out what kind of oil to put in the cups on the head. I have air tool oil and spindle oil. I have two weird Mobil oils. DTE 24 and DTE 26, I think. The head runs at up to 5000 RPM, so I don’t want to put the wrong thing in there. It might actually be in the manual!

I’m wiped out. Tomorrow, I machine.

Lights Blinking and Everything

I’m pooped, so I’ll repost what I put on the Chaski forum.

My friend Mike and my dad (not exactly machinists) got mad at the mill and refused to quit working on it while I posted questions on the web. They figured out the worm gear. Mike called a machinist buddy of his, and he confirmed their discovery. We moved the head up and got it stable.

I did not find a pin. If one existed, it must have sheared and vanished.

I figured out how to move the head horizontally, and I centered it on zero degrees. Then I did my best to tram it. I have a Tesa TI (metric), and it was within two notches, N, E, S, and W. The Indicol I bought is not the ultimate in rigidity, and my skills are negligible, so there may be some error I didn’t catch. Luckily, my squares arrived today, so I was able to use one to get the spindle close to trammed before using the wrench and Indicol.

The power feed and DRO are set up and working. Now I have to wire up the VFD and make a cord for it. I better get to Home Depot; I forgot to buy a plug. I don’t know where to put the VFD. I may just stick it on the wall. I get the feeling I won’t need it to be as convenient as the one on the lathe.

The machine rocks a little. Is bolting it down worth the effort? I don’t want to get squooshed.

I thought it would be a space problem, based on some measurements I got for Bridgeport Series I floor space, but those measurements must be off, because I could shove it back another six inches and still get full travel on the table.

I’m not sure how far out the ram should be. It shipped fully extended, and I figured the machine would be better balanced if I moved it to the center of the ways, so that’s what I did.

The manual is as bad as I expected from other people’s Chaiwanese adventures. It would be great to have an American machine with an American manual at a Chinese price.

The top cover on the motor has a big chunk out of it, because the importer doesn’t put anything between the motor and the table when he ships.

I think the most humorous part of the lathe is the brand name on the DRO: “Sino,” which means “Chinese.”

If anyone is looking for a Taiwan mill right now, Matt at Quality Machine Tools is willing to deal. I could have done a little better for this price, had I known it would take this long. He sells a slightly better mill with a 3 axis DRO.

It looks like I got a free coolant system, although all I see for the moment are a nozzle and a hose.

I haven’t run the machine, obviously, but I am extremely impressed with what I got for the money.

Thanks for all the help. I’m going to try to get the vise mounted.

The DRO says “ALE.” I think that’s a good idea.