Pina Coladas Can be Considered Painkillers

It looks like Obamacare is dead. Thank God. In order for the plan to live, lots of Americans would have had to die. So the way I see it, it was aborted to save lives. That’s pro-choice, isn’t it? And if you believe, as I do, that Obama got elected by accepting money from China and Muslim nations, then the pregnancy was also the result of rape.

It’s odd, but I can’t remember anyone suggesting that caregivers just charge the poor and uninsured less. As it stands now, the poor get all the treatment they need, but then they get charged huge bills they can’t or won’t pay, and the rest of us (the ones who take bills seriously) end up subsidizing them. Why not just admit that we overtreat and overcharge people? Let’s give the poor and uninsured good but not excessive treatment, and let’s charge what the treatment is actually worth. Maybe some of them would actually pay, and that would bring prices down for the rest of us. And the poor would be more likely to go to doctors.

Whenever I think about health care prices, I think about my first kidney stone. Like all medical emergencies, it happened on a weekend night, so I had to go to the ER. They gave me a totally unnecessary scan that cost several thousand dollars. They doped me up and kept me on a Gurney all night, and then they sent me home on Saturday morning–still containing a stone–with enough Percocet to get me through one day. Because clearly, I was a drug-seeking patient, and I had magically generated a kidney stone in order to get enough pills to last until Monday.

In the end, they charged me around six grand. That includes a few hundred bucks for my urologist, who actually provided useful treatment.

What did I really need? I’m not a doctor, but I know what doctors have done with millions of other people with tiny kidney stones. They x-rayed their abdomens (or not), gave them painkillers, and waited for them to pee the stones out. You can do this, including drugs and a follow-up x-ray, for maybe six hundred bucks. Apart from the pointless scan, this is the treatment I received.

The second time I got a stone, I called my urologist’s office, and I got his unbelievably nasty receptionist, and I was so offended, I decided not to get treatment. And a couple of days later, I was fine. Total cost: $0.

Now I lay off the calcium antacids, and I go easy on tea. And I definitely don’t take calcium antacids WITH tea. No more stones.

Apologists can say, “You could have had cancer! You could have been on the verge of death! You should thank God you got that scan!” And my response is that you could say the same thing about someone who went in to get a pimple squeezed. You can mistake cancer for a pimple. Or for hemorrhoids, or for any of a huge number of other trivial ailments. The fact is, the odds that I had a serious problem were incredibly low, and if I had turned out to be seriously ill, it would have become obvious with or without a scan.

The purpose of the scan was to make money. And it worked.

Have you ever gotten sick overseas? It’s a very different experience. The care you get is likely to be nearly as good as the care you get here, but it costs much, much less, and it comes with fewer bells and whistles. For example, I knew a kibbutz volunteer whose appendix went crazy while he was visiting Jerusalem. The same day, he went to a charity hospital in the Old City, and they yanked his appendix out, and they sent him back to the kibbutz when he was ready to travel. Didn’t cost him a thing, because the Catholics paid for it. But if he had been charged, it would still have cost much less than American care, because they didn’t generate 3,000 pages of documentation and give him fifty things he didn’t need, and he didn’t get a private room with cable.

I sliced my finger open in the Bahamas. Did a real number on it. There was no doctor on the island, unless you count the vacationing Americans who were lying drunk on their yachts. I went to the local nurse, and she ran a giant needle up through my fingertip and out of the nail, and she tied it up and bandaged it and sent me home. I was fine. In an American ER, they would have given me a bone scan, an EKG, three caviar enemas, and a grief counselor. I didn’t pay her a dime, but even if she had charged, it would have been dirt cheap.

I’ll bet this would have been a $500 injury in the US. If you’ve paid to have a minor cut stitched, leave a comment and tell me what they charged.

The other big excuse is that lawyers force doctors to overtreat. Yes, I’m sure the added profit is no incentive at all. Because nobody ever went into medicine to make money. Everyone knows lawyers screw life up, but they’re not the whole explanation for our medical costs. Doctors proactively look for ways to charge more. My dentist now has a racket where he tries to charge you for an oral cancer exam, and if you don’t buy it, you have to sign a release. That’s so blatant, it’s nearly a scam. And the obvious inference is that if you don’t pay, and he sees a lesion anyway, he’s not going to tell you. I hope that isn’t the case.

I avoid doctors for the same reason I avoid mechanics. You can’t trust them. You go in for a trivial problem, and while you’re there, they look for other things that can make them money. And unless you’re Superman, they can always find something. Actually, that might not be enough to make you safe. “Hmm…I can’t get this needle into your Kryptonian vein. I better give you an expensive yet inconclusive test for scleroderma. And some type of scan, as soon as Steve gets out of the machine. He has a very ominous pimple.”

If I trusted doctors–if I had not been cheated so many times already–I would be more likely to visit them regularly. It’s that simple.

Here’s another idea. Why not fly the poor overseas for treatment? I know it sounds insane, but it isn’t. You can go to Central America, pay a pittance for top-quality surgery, stay in a resort hospital on a beach, pay for your airfare, and still come out way ahead. If you don’t like arepas, you can go to India and have curry. Or Singapore.

Let’s see. Here’s how it would work. Poor person shows up at hospital. They determine he can’t pay. They diagnose him with a condition requiring expensive surgery. They send him to Belize. He recovers and doesn’t pay. The benefit? Now the hospital can cover his small foreign bill out of money received from paying patients, instead of covering his huge American bill. Sounds nutty, I know, but if it saves money, why not?

I wonder if my medical insurance would cover treatment at a ritzy beach hospital. I would greatly prefer it, wouldn’t you? You’d think they would jump at it, if it saved them money. A 2008 Time article says insurance companies are starting to take the bait.

Speaking of great foreign deals, I still have no Chaiwanese milling machine. The rigger I’m working with just emailed, and he said the shipper called yesterday to ask if he could unload the machine from a box trailer. They were looking for a flatbed and couldn’t find one. This means that as of yesterday, the machine was in…CALIFORNIA. This is amazing. I just checked, and it appears that I ordered this thing seven weeks ago. I hadn’t realized so much time had passed. Twice, I’ve been told they shipped it, and twice it has turned out to be untrue.

The seller says he has a different brand of machine he can sell me; he’ll be getting them in a week and a half. I told him to go ahead and make the switch, if the other machine was still sitting 3000 miles away.

I’ve been waiting for lathe videos from Smartflix, and they arrived yesterday. These are from ATI. I highly recommend their stuff. It’s very methodical and thorough. I guess now that I know the milling machine isn’t going to be here in the near future, I should watch the lathe videos and try to get some things done. It’s tempting to stall when you think a new machine will arrive at any minute. A milling machine would make projects much easier, so I find myself wanting to wait until it gets here. I really don’t understand the guys who claim you can do all sorts of great things with just a lathe. It’s not true. You need to be able to make straight cuts, and you can’t do that with a lathe unless you spring for an expensive milling attachment. Here’s what you can do with just a lathe: you can make a machinist’s jack and a head for a hammer. And you can thread things and cut rods in two. That about sums it up. I’m exaggerating because I’m annoyed, but what I say is true in principle.

Let me close with something useful. Heather’s mom (an actual person) just had more surgery. Stents in her urinary tract. Please offer a prayer.

She probably should have gone to Costa Rica.

SALE!!!!!

I got an email from Enco today. They love sales and promotions. This one is pretty good. Free shipping, plus 10% off. How am I supposed to get anything done, with a temptation like that rolling around in the back of my head?

Let’s see. What do I need right now? A square. Definitely. Micrometers! The ones I got from the guy who sold me my lathe are useless. And with Enco’s sale, it’s all nearly FREE! FREE! FREE!

Okay, I’m breathing into a paper bag. I guess I don’t actually have to order anything.

This weekend, my dad needed to fix the latches on some cabinets on the boat. I went with him, looking for stuff at local stores. It’s amazing, how these cabinets manage to be incompatible with almost everything out there. Yesterday I realized that if I had a MILLING MACHINE, I could fix this problem pretty easily. For that matter, the band saw would also do a good job.

I’ve discovered the problem with having tools. When you have them, you develop an unspoken obligation to MAKE STUFF for people.

I wonder what state the mill is in right now.

It Haunts Me

Guess what I still don’t have?

A MILLING MACHINE.

I’m starting to wonder if it really exists. Maybe I imagined it.

I have a powerful suspicion that the mill will be easier to use than my lathe, which means I might actually be able to make something useful with it. I would really like to put this hunch to the test. But I haven’t heard anything from the seller or riggers or importer since last week.

The positive side of all this is that I haven’t had any metal splinters in several days.

I don’t know what I’m doing wrong, but every time I use the lathe, I have to spend five minutes over a magnifying lamp, trying to find tiny yet extremely painful splinters that have lodged in my hands. These things are so small, sometimes they’re nearly microscopic. Yet somehow, they’re big enough to hurt. You find them when you move your hand past something, and the splinters catch on it. Like using a towel, or putting your hand in your pocket.

I’ve figured one thing out. If you have to have metal splinters, you want steel. Because it will eventually rust and disappear. Aluminum and stainless are forever, unless you find them. I think.

I have just about everything I need to start milling. The cutters are here. The oil. The vise. The 1-2-3 blocks. Parallels. A VFD. I even have a huge chunk of steel. I may still have to cut into one of my 220 circuits, depending on how short I want the power cord to be. Other than that, I think I’m ready.

I have no PROJECTS, of course. Let’s not talk crazy.

I hope this thing arrives this week. There is nothing like the satisfaction of realizing a dream, even if, like mine, it’s a silly dream.

“I Meant to Do That”

First up, an important message from former KISPer TC. He sent out an email requesting prayer for a fallen soldier:

Mark’s a good friend. He’s in Landstuhl Army Hospital after being shot in the head in Afghanistan.

Two other Georgia Guardsmen were killed on Monday, bringing the total to 7 KIA so far.

This has been a very costly deployment for the 48th Brigade so far, and it’s only a couple months into their 1 year tour.

Now, to less serious things.

Tyler Youngblood, proprietor of Projectsinmetal.com, noticed my post about the hammer I failed to make using his online plans. He took a moment to write a helpful comment, which I will repost here:

Hi Steve,

I’m sorry you’re having trouble with the soft faced hammer plans, but if it makes you feel any better, I scrapped the project twice before I got it right.

If I may make a few suggestions, maybe I can help. First, 304 stainless is far less forgiving than aluminum, which is what I made my hammer out of. It’s not as durable as stainless, but the hammer could be made fully functional by putting a pin into the head (the threaded head of my aluminum hammer comes loose with vigorous use). Locktite might also be an option. But I’m happy with the aluminum version for “light” hammering, which is what a soft faced hammer is good for anyway.

I didn’t turn the project between centers, but I had the benefit of a taper attachment, so that’s how I got the taper to work. If your compound slide has enough travel, you can definitely use that to put in your taper. Or you can buy/make a lathe dog for use with a proper face plate and do it that way. The only issue there is you mess with the alignment of the tailstock, which I try to avoid.

I’d suggest trying to use your compound to cut the taper. If you only have 2? of travel, change the taper to 2?. It would look different, but that’s fine, its your hammer.

Also, if you try to cut a taper using your compound, make sure to take light cuts. It sounds like you started cutting at the wide end of the taper, and by the time you got to the narrow end of the taper (3? later, up by the threads) you were cutting too much material. Instead, do it the other way. Start 1/4 inch back from the end of the taper and cut 1/4 inch in the direction of the threads, toward the radius. Your cut should gradually get a bit deeper, but since you’re only going 1/4? (and not 3?), the increased depth of cut shouldn’t be an issue. Once you have made that first pass, the rest of the cuts will be parallel to that first pass (thus no gradual increase to your depth of cut). After you’ve made that first pass of 1/4? or so, back your compound away from the part, then back along the axis of the taper you just cut. Your next pass should be 3/8? or so, then 1/2, …. all the way until your last pass takes a finish cut along the entire 3? taper.

It’s hard to explain. I really should make a video because it’s much easier if you see it done. As far as the radius goes, I used a tool with the proper radius to cut the taper, so when the taper was finished, the radius was already present. The radius on the end of the hammer was done with a file while the part was turning (make sure to hold the file backwards, with the tang facing away from you and cut from underneath the part, not on top – that way if the part rips the file out of your hand it will be pulled away from you). And of course, use a file with a handle whenever possible. No handle? Find an old golf ball, drill, and attach to the end of the tang. Tangs are sharp and dangerous.

You’ll need a mill to bore and tap the head of the hammer (where the handle attaches). You could do it on the lathe, but holding the part would require some significant workholding via the faceplate (I wouldn’t try it in a 4-jaw chuck, and a 3-jaw wouldn’t work at all). The threaded portions of the head where the faces attach are drilled on the lathe, but tapped after the larger hole is drilled, bored, and tapped on the mill.

For practice I single pointed the threads on the handle, but they can be cut with much less effort using a die. One of the scrapped handles was due to a mistake I made while cutting the threads.

Let me know if you’d be interested in me making a video of the process. I don’t really need another hammer, but I’d be happy to make a video if you think it would help (and if I can find the time).

Drop me a comment if you run into any other problems. I’d be happy to help in any way I can. I’m still learning too, so I remember how frustrating those first few projects were to master. But once you learn how to do all the steps in the hammer (turn down the dia, turn a taper, file a radius, knurl, single point (or tap/die) threads) you’ve got a very strong foundation and a good understanding of how the lathe works. That’s why the hammer, although difficult, is a great first project.

I’ve got another beginner project (a plumb bob) that uses hex stock, so if you’re interested in that (instead of the screw jack), let me know. Although the plumb bob is meant to be turned out of brass, not stainless. But stainless would work too.

Good luck!

Tyler Youngblood
ProjectsInMetal.com
Seattle, WA

That’s what I call service. I also got some good advice on the Chaski forum.

My biggest problem was trying to make the 3″ taper on the hammer handle. After I posted my whining, it occurred to me that I was probably cutting from the wrong end, and people have since confirmed this. When using a compound to cut a taper, start at the end where you have to remove the most metal. This way, the cuts are deepest as they begin, and they get shallower as you go. That will prevent problems with the cuts getting so deep the lathe throws up or whatever.

I learned a few other things. When trying to make a smooth transition from a straight piece into a taper which is thinner than the straight part, cut from the straight side. Say you have a taper that goes from half an inch to one inch, and you need a straight part one inch thick beyond the taper. You make the straight part too thick, and then you make the taper, and then you cut the straight part down, with cuts beginning at the end of the straight part which is farthest from the taper. The tool will cut off the excess metal from the straight part and then go into empty space as it hits the taper, leaving a smooth transition. At least, it worked that way for me.

I was told to use a file to make the small radii on the tool handle. That sure beats trying to grind a radius tool and then get it to make a perfect cut.

I blew the knurling. I am too lazy to get out my videos and see how it’s done, so I just winged it. No amount of skill can overcome true laziness. I know the knurls have to be perpendicular to the part, and the part has to be centered between the knurls. But I don’t know how to make them go into the same marks over and over as the part turns. I ended up with a surface that isn’t slippery, yet which would never be confused with real knurling.

I may dump this thing and use it for threading practice. It’s still a big piece of metal. There are lots of things I can make from it.

Here’s a photo of what I have. I put Dykem on it to help me line up the knurls.

It’s not good, but I learned a great deal while working on it. And I ran the tool post into the work, and I also ran the carriage into the chuck. No pain, no gain. I just wish I had realized the carriage was blocking the chuck before I took the housing off the lathe to find out what was wrong with it.

Here is the latest news about the milling machine:

Hi Steve,
Sorry, Mark said that he did answer me, I think maybe there was an email problem.
It did ship last week, the driver should be calling soon, he will get the information for me later today, he was not in the office right now.
Thanks again!

Mark is the importer. Man, this is exciting.

I emailed Og for advice about turning parts to specified dimensions. He sent photos of his latest project.

Yeah, I’m sure I’ll be doing this kind of stuff real soon. Notably, he used a crappy board for a base plate. I guess you never get too big for half-assed desperation jigs. I should start photographing the beauties I come up with.

Think I’ll take one of the bikes out and see if the wind blows the swarf out of my clothes. Sometimes I make splinters. Today I made several bona fide Slinkys.

Confounded Tapers

For the first time in like ten years, I have real, paid-for antivirus software. I ran Bitdefender the other day (free version), and I found out AVG Free had missed stuff. I looked around to see which program the nerds liked most (or hated most, in the case of evil nerds), and I installed it and ran it. It turned out I had PILES of viruses.

I didn’t realize it, but a big percentage of those 419 emails have viruses in them. And if you use Thunderbird and delete emails, the emails don’t really go away. You have to compact your folders to kill deleted emails. So I’ve done all that. I had a whole bunch of deleted 419 emails hiding somewhere. I believe they’re gone now.

I may have lost real emails, too. Sometimes people you know send viruses by accident. I don’t care. I don’t know why I keep emails to begin with. The commercial ones can be useful. You may want to know where you bought something a year ago. But the personal emails tend to be trivial and not worth keeping.

I see no point in saying which program I bought. If someone out there hates me, the name of my program could be helpful to them.

I am still considering going RAID1. And I may do it for my dad, too. He emits some kind of radiation that kills hard drives. Last time it happened, I took him to a retailer which runs a well-known computer repair service. Actually, it was probably a software issue, but they decided it was his hard drive, so they replaced it. And DIDN’T CLONE THE OLD ONE. Wow, that was really worth $300. If he had had RAID, he could have tested his drives himself, popped the bad one out, stuck in a fresh one, and continued with life.

I didn’t try to fix his problem myself because my attempts at cloning hard drives had always failed. But this week I managed to clone mine, and the software was free.

People say RAID isn’t a backup tool. Whatever. I don’t want to get into nerd semantics. If your data is in two places, I call it backup. The fact that the hardware is also backed up just makes it better. A virus can screw up two RAID drives at once, but isn’t that also true of software backup on a slave drive that isn’t on a RAID system? I fail to see how RAID is inferior. I’m sure it’s not as good as paranoid backup in a vault in your basement, with all sorts of hardware safeguards. But neither of us is willing to work really hard at saving data, so it’s either slave disk or RAID.

He’s definitely getting real antivirus software. I set him up with AVG, Spybot, and Ad-Aware, but I had those things, and look what happened to me. And AVG was like big government. It kept growing and causing problems. “Here, President Obama and Speaker Pelosi would like to help you search the web! Let’s go look at fictitious graphs about declining polar bear populations!”

If the shopping mall computer repair crew was right (dubious), my dad’s problems tend to be hardware issues, not viruses. Although he once got a virus that sent his business contacts porn ads. He informed them that it was a virus, and that he was not a porn magnate. All I said was that this was his story.

Yesterday I got back to work on the soft-faced hammer I was trying to make. I had to give up. I utterly butchered the 304 stainless I was trying to use.

Here’s a link to the plans, so you can see what I’m talking about.

Let’s see. First, I have no steady rest. So I assumed that meant turning between centers. But I have no lathe dogs; everyone says I should make them when I get a mill. Fine. I decided to grip one end in the chuck and put the other on a dead center. That worked.

First problem: how do you get the length right on the various features? For example, the flange below the hammer’s head is 0.20″ thick. Great, but my lathe has no graduations in the lengthwise direction, and it has no DRO. A dial indicator has a measuring limit of about an inch, and you can’t mount it on anything really stiff when you’re using the tailstock right up against the work. I tried moving the compound and tool post around (so I could use the compound graduations), and I eventually came sort of close, but if this part had to be within even ten thousandths, there is no way I could do it.

Second, how do you do the taper on the handle? I have no taper attachment. I tried setting the compound so it moved in as it approached the headstock, but the tool goes deeper and deeper as you go, and the pressure increases, and the work pops off the tailstock. Also, the taper is 3″ long. How do you arrange it so a tool coming in at an angle hits the work at a point precisely 3″ from some other point? It seems impossible. You can get within a sixteenth or so by guessing, but the point of all this is to learn how to be precise, so that’s worthless.

Third, how do you get the little radius on the head side of the flange? I ground a tool 0.20″ wide, with a radius on it, but it really didn’t work.

I don’t know what tools I need or what to do with them. The plans don’t say what to use, and the instructional materials I have really are not adequate. They show how to do operations, from a very basic standpoint, but there is nothing in them that would enable you to machine things to specified sizes, except for threads and plain old cylinders. So I think it’s time to hang it up and do something easier. The infamous jack screw project looks pretty dumb, but I have hex stock.

I’m not sure why people say you should learn to use a lathe before you get a mill. The mill seems much simpler. To get your measurements right, you have edgefinders and wigglers and indicators and a DRO, plus graduations along every axis. If I had use the lathe to make a simple round rod, say 2.250″ long, I’d be stumped.

Speaking of mills, I do not have one. Still. It’s probably enjoying a leisurely drive through Arkansas right now.

I have to learn how to do this stuff. You can’t buy nice tools and let them rot. Maybe things will be clearer when the bulk of my lathe DVDs gets here. Other people have learned turning and threading, so I’ll eventually get it, too.

Over the Side is Best

I got up today and wrote a big long piece about how things are going between me and God, and my PC locked up and killed it. What a bummer.

After that, I left and fixed a toilet on my dad’s boat. Needless to say, I have showered twice today.

Now I’m just tired.

Here, Have a Piece

My area is enjoying 93% humidity right now, according to Weather Underground. Is that a typo? Let’s see. It’s 87°, and the heat index is 111°. I think that means it feels like 111.

I suppose there are some whiny people who would have the temerity to call this weather unpleasant.

This is one of those days when, as soon as you go outside, you feel like you’re swimming. That’s how thick the air is. You could fashion it into a club and hit someone with it. This is what like would be like, if the world were a bowl of warm oatmeal.

The bugs are overjoyed. They’re partying. If there’s one thing I really enjoy, it’s setting a heavy saw up in the driveway, putting a heavier piece of metal on it, putting on earmuffs and glasses, turning the saw on and running it with one hand, and having a dozen mosquitoes buzz up and attack me in some area (like inside the glasses) I can’t reach with the free hand. While sweat begins to puddle in the glasses and obscure my vision.

That’s living, my friends. It’s the kind of adventure you will never see on a commercial featuring the World’s Most Interesting Man, because it is the opposite of interesting.

By the way, rumor has it this man saved Chuck Norris’s life with a partial beard transplant.

It’s kind of fitting that this guy hawks beer, because when you drink enough beer, you become convinced that you, yourself, are the Most Interesting Guy in the World. Or at least the most interesting guy on the floor of the bar.

“I always drink beer. And when I do, I prefer what’s on sale.”

Not funny unless you watch beer commercials. They were the only thing I ever enjoyed about watching pro football. I haven’t seen a game in forever. A few months ago, I learned that the World’s Most Interesting Man was still on the air, and it amazed me. That’s how out of touch I am, with important stuff everyone else knows about.

I am sorely tempted to get a horizontal band saw. A guy in my area is selling a good one at a reasonable price. I don’t know too much about these things, but I know enough to suspect that I was an idiot to buy a dry cut saw instead. A horizontal bandsaw is like a miter saw with a band blade. Apparently, you raise it, stick the metal in, turn on the saw, drop the handle, and go eat cookies while it cuts. When it goes through the metal, it shuts off. And you’re in front of the TV, and you’ve had cookies.

I am told that I could cut my 4″ bar of 1018 steel with one of these things in around 15 minutes. SOLD! Especially if I don’t have to be there when it happens.

I’m not sure what I’ll use the dry cut saw for if I get this thing. It gives gorgeous cuts, but if you have a mill and a lathe, you should be able to clean up any cut a band saw makes.

The dry cut saw might turn out to be my first idiot tool buy. My sliding miter saw may be the second; I rarely use it. Oh well. I got great prices on both of them. If you’re going to buy something you don’t need, you should at least get a bargain.

Weird things keep happening to me. It seems like I had a rough spot in my life for a few weeks, and now it’s over. Things were going great, but not as great as the weeks preceding this time. I took care of a few obligations that I felt might be holding me back, and now I feel like I’m on top again.

Last night I saw Perry Stone on David Cerullo’s show. I flopped on the couch because I was tired, and I turned the tube on, and there it was. It turned out to be very helpful to me. This has happened three times this week. Twice I turned on the tube, not knowing what was on, and found myself watching a show produced by the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, which is one of my favorite organizations. I am highly suspicious of many ministries and programs, but I like Perry Stone and the IFCJ a lot. I don’t know of any problems with David Cerullo. People complain that he makes too much money, but that’s not sufficient to upset me.

Stone was talking about Joshua. He led the Hebrews into the Promised Land after the death of Moses. I had forgotten the details. He had the priests carry the Ark of the Covenant across the Jordan, and the waters stopped and stood up like a wall until the Hebrews all got across. Stone believes this (like the flood) is symbolic of Christian baptism. He also suspects this is the place where Jesus was baptized.

He pointed out some things I had not heard before. He said the Jewish priesthood in Herod’s time was not fully legitimate, because it was no longer hereditary. The Romans chose the high priests and forced them on the Jews. John the Baptist was the son of a real priest. Stone believes he therefore had the authority to baptize Jesus and initiate a change from one type of priesthood to another. It’s a long story. You can find out about it in Stone’s DVDs. He also thinks Caiphus, the Roman-approved high priest, may have been aware of the significance of the crucifixion, and that he may have been a sort of silent co-conspirator. Every reasonable, informed Christian knows that blaming the Jewish people for the crucifixion is evil and stupid (It was God’s idea, not man’s), but it may be that even the Jewish leaders many of us routinely criticize were not what anti-Semites portray them to be.

Stone is going to be on Cerullo’s show again tonight.

Many Old Testament stories prefigure New Testament events. For example, the Passover prefigures the crucifixion. Shavuot is a shadow of Pentecost. If I understand Stone correctly, Joshua’s leadership in Israel prefigures Jesus’s leadership in the lives of individuals who live in the kingdom of God while here on earth. Joshua and Jesus even had the same first name; it was just translated differently in different books. And if you see what Zechariah says about “Joshua,” you will see that the connection is even stronger. It’s not even clear that he has the earthly Joshua in mind.

I used to wonder exactly what God was trying to tell us with the stories about the cities Joshua destroyed. It wasn’t done purely by human force. For example, Joshua had the people march around Jericho once a day for seven days, with seven priests blowing seven horns. At the end, the walls fell without human effort.

I think I have an inkling what this is all about. Seven is the number of the Holy Spirit; it’s in the Bible over and over, notably in the structure of the menorah, which has seven lamps fueled by olive oil, which is also symbolic of the Holy Spirit. I think the story of Jericho symbolizes what believers are now expected to do. We are supposed to fight our battles primarily with God’s strength, not our own. Even after we find our way into God’s kingdom, there will be strongholds (like Jericho) we have to get rid of, if we want true dominance. We don’t just flail at them with our puny human tools. We use faith and prayer and so on. And God honors that by moving them for us.

I decided to read Joshua last night, and I found a very startling piece of information in it that relates to my own life. Lately I’ve been asking God to set my family’s feet on the throats of those who try to harm us. Not so we can destroy them, but so we will have the power to resolve things properly. I thought I had come up with this metaphor on my own. But when I read Joshua, I found it there! Look at Joshua 10:24:

And it came to pass, when they brought out those kings unto Joshua, that Joshua called for all the men of Israel, and said unto the captains of the men of war which went with him, Come near, put your feet upon the necks of these kings. And they came near, and put their feet upon the necks of them.

You can imagine how I felt, seeing that. My life is like that of the Hebrews. I’m trying to walk in the kingdom, but there are things I have to conquer through faith and obedience, just as they conquered their enemies through faith and obedience. And in prayer, I happened to choose the image of an action that Joshua and the Hebrews actually performed while living out events presaging the challenges I (and other Christians) would face.

Too strange. But very welcome. It’s hard to ask for a faith-builder any stronger than that.

Christians can’t fight unbelievers on their own terms, because unbelievers have no rules. They will do or say anything to defeat us. They cheat. And our rules are very restrictive; we are encouraged to avoid tactics the rest of the world considers legal and morally right. We have to get connected to God’s power in order to turn back those who attack us. That’s how Jesus got away from the mob in Nazareth. It’s what destroyed Jericho.

This is the difference between merely being saved and living in the kingdom of God. I think so, anyway. So I am working on improving. Sure seems to be paying off.

The Bible does make sense. The problem is that it is being explained to us very slowly, over centuries. We have to believe that the parts we don’t understand yet will eventually be made clear to us.

I think I’ll throw some brownies together for the Fourth of July thing at church tomorrow. I was planning to do some machining, but three or four batches of brownies would be a more profitable product at this time.

Plus Power Feed

I think I finally have the power feed on the lathe figured out.

Reader and fellow blogger Andy recommended a site that has a few projects for beginning machinists. I decided to take a whack at the soft hammer project. I wanted a shorter one, and I don’t know if I want to put synthetic faces on it; I was planning on plain old brass. But this seemed like a good place to start. I’m probably going to end up with a shorter one anyway, because I cut the stock pretty close to the finished length, and I’m almost sure to lose some.

I have a fair amount of scrap now. I decided to use 1″ 304 stainless. I bought a 6′ bar the other day, because it was fairly cheap. I cut it on the vise, using a grinder and cutoff wheel. It was either that or take the dry cut saw out and set it up in the rain.

The steel cut easily. No problems there. I stuck it in the 4-jaw chuck and cleaned up one end. First I parted a tiny bit off, and then I faced the place where I parted it. It worked fine. It seems like I don’t push the metal hard enough, and it affects the finish, and it slows the work down. So I put a good deal of pressure on the 304, and it worked great.

I don’t have any lathe dogs, so I did something that may not be kosher. I center-drilled the tail end of the stock and I slid it out and fixed it so a little bit was clamped in the chuck and the other end was on a dead center. Then I started taking passes by hand, and the results were bad. I knew the tool was centered well, because I had just used it to face the steel, but I had to raise it a little to get it to turn well. Or maybe the problem was shallow cuts. I also increased the cut depth. Whatever helped, helped. But moving the carriage by hand was just not working. It was jerky, and it left a bad finish.

I started screwing with the controls, looking at the notes I had made and the so-called manual. I still don’t quite get it. There’s a speed control on the feed screw, and it has three settings, A, B, and C. B is the fastest. Okay, I’m sure that makes sense.

I kept trying different combinations of knobs and levers, and finally I sort of figured it out. I made a pass that wasn’t half bad.

At first I took 10 thousandths. Then 15. Then I went nuts and took 25 at a shot. Every time I increased the depth, the performance improved.

I wasn’t sure how to reach the final 0.875″ measurement. I haven’t seen any videos or texts explaining that. I know you can sneak up on milling measurements, but on a lathe, going too shallow on a cut will ruin the finish. I decided to go for broke when the calipers said I was 0.030″ away. I cranked the knob 0.030″, and I threw the feed lever, and I turned on the lathe. I ended up within a couple of thousandths. I am as close as I can get without using a mike; the calipers are never better than maybe 0.002″ for me.

Someone warned me about 304 chips, and they were right. This stuff SHOOTS steel at you. It’s like watching snakes try to jump out of a box. And they never end; the chips are three or four feet long before you know what’s happening. I had two bird’s nests so bad I had to stop the lathe.

Now I have a 0.875″ rod of 304 stainless. Tomorrow I’ll try to turn it into something. I don’t know how to do the tapered part. I guess I’ll have to use the compound and set it at the specified angle. The taper is less than 4″ long, so the compound should have enough travel to do it.

My big concern is that when I have to move the work to do other operations, I’ll mar the earlier operations. I suppose planning is the only answer to problems like that, unless you have instructions written in chronological order.

It was very satisfying, and I’m glad to see that the 304 wasn’t a waste of money. Machinists rate metals in terms of how well they respond to tools, and 304 is not a favorite. If it can be worked this easily, I shouldn’t have problems with things like aluminum, 360 brass, and 12L14.

Power feed makes a world of difference. I was going crazy, trying to turn that silly knob smoothly.

Behold my Feet and Drink Your Bathwater!

I hoped to do some work on the lathe today, but I ended up welding.

I started getting the garage ready so I would have some empty horizontal space and not go crazy from clutter, and while I was looking for a spot for my 13″ face plate, I realized I could make a hanger and stick it on the wall.

I can’t even guess what kind of steel and/or lead and melamine and plutonium is in the Chinese 1/2″ dowel I bought from Home Depot, but it has been unbelievably handy. I use pieces of it all the time. Today I sawed one off to use as a prong on the hanger.

I took another piece of scrap and cut it down for a standard (I guess you could call it), and I welded the two parts together, using a makeshift rig that would make Rube Goldberg hang his head in shame. I have a lot of welding magnets, but small parts are hard to deal with. I ended up making the first tack weld while holding the prong at the correct angle with a ballpoint pen. After that, I was home free.

I welded pretty nicely. It doesn’t look bad enough to justify a grinding job.

Once the lathe is in its final position, I’ll run a screw through the hanger and put it on the wall. For now the face plate sits on the floor under the lathe. Oh well.

I tried cutting my huge lump of 1018 steel in pieces today. I thought I would see how fast my dry cut saw did the job. After maybe fifteen minutes, I quit. This saw is great for many things, but you don’t want to cut a 4″ square steel bar with it. I got a third of the way through. I would have made it, but I don’t want to spend an hour on every cut and wear out the blade in the process.

I should go and have it done at a machine shop. HOWEVER, there’s a good used Jet band saw for sale near me. I am told a smaller band saw would do the job in maybe 15 minutes, so this one should be at least as fast. If I can get it for $125, it’s a great deal. The floor space is an issue, however.

I love welding because it’s so forgiving. Getting the angles exactly right is just a matter of using magnets, and sometimes you can even add metal to replace material your stupidity has destroyed. And if your welds aren’t perfect, just make them bigger. Eventually you’ll have something strong enough to work.

I got George Moneo all excited today by letting him know that a man with a lathe can make pointy things to use as feet on snob audio equipment. These things don’t really improve the sound; that would go against everything high-end audio stands for. But audio nerds think they do, so they sell.

He showed me a site that sells brass ones. I can make them a little cheaper, but not much. However…this is the fun part…I told George that what he really needed was cast iron, because it’s known for its inability to transmit vibration well. That would put him one up on the other addicts, and that’s really what it’s all about.

Where would you get a cast iron rod? Beats me. I understand it’s not much fun to machine.

Hammer Time?

Today has that “garage day” feel to it. I’m trying to come up with stuff I can do.

I need to see if I can cut my huge 1018 block into smaller pieces for tool holders. I am also thinking it might be fun to make a hammer from 360 brass, although I don’t know what to use for the handle. I saw a short-handled brass hammer in a machining DVD; I can see how that would be useful to knock things into line on the mill. Maybe I should make an aluminum handle about 4″ long. I hate to use nice brass for the handle.

It’s funny, but when I have to pay a lot for materials, I don’t like to use them up, because they’re expensive, and when I get a good deal, I don’t want to use them up, because they were so cheap.

Next Week?

I have no milling machine. STILL.

I got a message saying it had shipped. Then I got a message saying it was about to ship. Then I got radio silence. People have a way of running off and hiding when they sell you something and then can’t provide it. They know that if they pretend not to see your emails, they can ship whatever it is you bought before you can formally cancel the order. I guess that’s what happened here.

I don’t care; when you get a good price on the exact thing you want, and that thing is something which is a horror to shop for, a couple of weeks’ delay is not something that scares you.

Today I was told the mill will ship–for real–tomorrow. Probably. Maybe.

We shall see.

Sadly, I have a rotary table DVD now. And I can clearly see that without a rotary table, life will never be anything more than slow torture. It is better not to be born than to be born and be unable to acquire a rotary table. At least it looks that way in the video.

A rotary table is a turntable you can bolt parts to. It will turn the parts in tiny angular increments. Or big ones. The table in the video breaks a circle up into 129,000 parts. That seems like a lot. You can use a rotary table to position cuts at the correct angles. Say you’re machining a gear, and you want 34 teeth; the rotary table will let you move the gear just the right amount for each tooth. You can also make curved cuts.

Here’s a video of a guy using a rotary table. Before you look, let me say WARNING! AMATEUR VENTRILOQUIST ALERT! I didn’t know you had to have a dummy in order to machine properly, but coincidentally, I was planning to get a hat exactly like his. In my dreams, this is me in six months.

I don’t know if I’d watch the whole thing. The problem with this video is that the thing you want to see is way over on the other side of the room.

Ordinarily, you expect a ventriloquist dummy to talk. I thought that was the whole point. But I am not an expert.

Here’s a video where you can see a rotary table turning an object while a mill faces it.

I don’t even have to explain why it will be impossible for me to live another week without one of these things. And I blame the shipping delay for this. Instead of fooling with the mill, I’m goofing around online, where I am subject to temptation.

Oddly, rotary tables seem to be available for relatively little money, compared to other insanely expensive items, such as taper attachments. Horizontal tables are cheap to begin with, but horizontal/vertical tables cost a whole lot more. New. On Ebay, used ones are not too steep.

Maybe I’ll snap one up in a month or two. Looks like the smart buy is a used table that does both horizontal and vertical. They say you should get the biggest one you can find, but when you go over 10″, they weigh a ton.

I’m pretty much ready for the mill, except for utterly failing to finish the wiring. I should get on that. I already have the VFD. It’s moldering in a box. I paid extra for fast shipping when I thought the mill was on the way. There’s 22 bucks Obama will never get his hands on.

You can see I need that table, can’t you?

No More Coasters

My most exciting achievement today was installing a new DVD burner. My old one just refused to work. Changing media made no difference. Wouldn’t burn DVDs or CDs. I was tired of throwing out one disk after another, while I tried different things. So now the new one is burning a copy of a milling DVD.

The old machine was IDE, and this one is SATA. Seems much faster. The other one stopped and started, and it seemed to take a while for the PC and the burner to shake hands and get acquainted before burning a disk. And it looks like the burning itself was slower. The new disk just popped out, and the elapsed time was only 4:39.

I’m wondering if bird dust killed the old drive. Marv and Maynard emit dust 24/7. It’s like talc, only it seems finer. Goes everywhere. I don’t think it would do the optics in a burner much good.

The new one was cheap. About $36, delivered. OEM job. I stuck it in there and turned it on, and that was that.

I guess it’s sad when something this trivial makes you feel so good, but that old burner made me crazy, and I had to keep my laptop on the dining table to burn DVDs.

I don’t need a great burner, because I don’t steal movies or music. I record things so I can watch them once and then discard them. I suppose it’s infringement, but it’s a pretty lame type of infringement.

I’m mad with power. I think I’ll burn another one.

Pushed Aside by Mere PVC

I did not get to use the toilet knob I machined yesterday. Very sad. My dad’s boat guy had claimed the heads were so old it was dangerous to take the old valves off, but while I worked on one of them today, I decided to see what the story was, and the old valve screwed right out. Good, because it meant I could install a new valve. Bad, because the new aluminum knob was no longer needed.

And I just put a set screw in it! This is the first tapping I’ve ever done. I was all excited about fastening the knob onto the old stem, using my home-tapped set screw.

The toilets on the boat will be greatly improved by the new PVC valves I’m installing. Only a guy who installs toilets for a living would choose to put a frequently handled valve at the base of the bowl. Plumbing is a fine and honorable trade, but plumbers tend to be unbelievably dirty. A plumber will eat a sandwich with one hand while fixing your toilet with the other. Since I’m redoing it all, I can put the new valves above the bowl. Not optimal, but considerably less exposed to…whatever.

We got the generator running, with the aid of the guy who installed it. This is the boat’s third generator. You can’t kill Detroit Diesel boat engines, but the little motors that run generators have all sorts of problems that stop them in a hurry. The first Onan we had was balky when starting, and if it didn’t feel like cranking up right away, it was easy to burn up the starter. It also had a very expensive circuit board which could (and did) quit working for no reason at all. The second Onan was no better. Now we have a Westerbeke. Supposedly it’s much simpler, and it has no silly circuit board to blow up. Mating internal combustion engines with complicated electronics has caused a world of expensive problems ordinary people can’t correct, and I don’t think any of the problems it has solved could not be fixed by simple maintenance and common sense. As I understand it, a lot of the improvements in car longevity are due to improved metallurgy and lubricants; I doubt integrated chips helped a lot. Think of all the old slant sixes that ran for eons.

This generator has three fuel filters that I have become aware of so far. First, the Racor. This is a big aftermarket filter which is really more part of the boat than the generator. Then the spool-sized filter on the way into the motor. Then an inline filter farther downstream. I accidentally shut off a fuel valve, starving the engine until it quit, and I assumed getting fuel back into it would fix the problem. I also changed the spool-sized filter, simply because my dad wanted it done. We still couldn’t get the generator to stay on. The generator guy showed us the third filter, which–coincidentally–happened to be plugged up the same week I shut off the fuel by accident.

This is how boats are. You find a problem. You find the obvious cause. You fix the obvious cause. Then it turns out another cause has popped up at the same time, defying odds in a manner that would shame Susan Boyle.

I had to put off church until tomorrow. I didn’t want to leave my dad holding the bag. I’m trying to get this family running right, the same way I’d try to get a generator going, and I believe you have to treat your parents correctly in order to get the blessings going in your life. As the eldest (only) son, I think I have a special responsibility. I am supposed to be second in authority, now that my mother is gone. Feminism isn’t Biblical; neither is the idea that all siblings are the same. I don’t buy that modern nonsense. I think the eldest son still has added privileges and duties, so I am trying to do what I think is right. Running off to church with the generator problem still plaguing my father would be the wrong move. Sometimes you can offend God by trying to fulfill your obligations to him in the wrong way.

I’ve been told that this is the true meaning of the story of the Good Samaritan. I think Perry Stone said that. The two men who passed by on the other side and refrained to help were religious Jews, and they were headed toward Jerusalem. That suggests they were ritually pure and therefore afraid to touch someone who might be dead. They could become unclean and lose the right to participate in whatever was going on at the temple. The Samaritan was motivated by compassion, not his religious routine, and that was a good thing, because believers were expected to know that in an emergency, God valued compassion more than empty observance.

I wish that when I was young, I had understood more about the way people were intended to live. I’m glad some of it is becoming clear to me. It’s sad that I have no one to pass it on to, but if I had had kids at the usual time of life, I suppose I would have had little of value to impart to them.

We had a bad drought for the first few months of this year, but it started raining a month or so ago, and everything greened up fast. Looking around now, you would see no evidence of the problems we were having a while back. I hope life can be like that. I know it can. God can change things so fast, and so unexpectedly; I keep my eyes open all the time. Most of the good changes that happen to me are gradual, but I wouldn’t mind a few quick ones, given my age.

Machining has Occurred

Here it is! I made a knob for the toilet on my dad’s boat!

Feast your eyes on that. It took me three hours. I started with a 2″ aluminum cylinder, and I ended up with a knob that is probably 1 7/8″ in diameter, and I drilled a hole down the middle using my tailstock.

The finish is really nice. I’m surprised. I did it with the HSS tool I made, and it came out fine.

Let’s see. I used that tool to rough it out. I created the basic shape of the stem and the slope on the stem side of the disk. Then I used the compound slide to clean up that side. I cleaned up the circumference of the disk and faced the end. Then I used the compound slide to make a slope on the face, parallel to the slope on the stem side. I used a carbide tool to clean up the stem, and then I polished the stem with the HSS tool. I used a file to break the hard edges. After that, I put a big drill bit in my Albrecht chuck, stuck it in the tailstock, and made a hole for the shaft.

I don’t really know what I’m doing, so I relied on a round-nose tool, which is like the Wonkavator of lathe tools. It sort of does everything.

I made the knob long so it would be easier to reach. I still haven’t made a setscrew hole. I guess I’ll have to do that with a hand drill.

It’s driving me crazy. It’s beautiful, but it’s already picking up scratches and dings. I’ll feel better when it’s on the toilet.

I’d like to turn it into a cross, so it would be easier to grip. No mill, though. It would be very hard to do on a lathe. I guess I could have knurled it. Maybe I still can. I don’t want to mar it up in a chuck, but I could put it on a bolt and chuck the bolt.

I can tell I’m going to love machining. I can’t believe I made this thing. There are a few tool hurdles most men never clear. Welding is one. Routing is another. Machining is pretty much the final frontier. If you can do these things, you can do just about whatever you need to do. You can find weirder things to do, like casting and forging, but unless you’re a pathological nerd you’ll never need that stuff.

Drilling with the lathe is wonderful. The control is amazing. Don’t waste a second wondering how to keep the bit where you want it. It has no choice. It’s too bad you can only drill into the center of the work, unless you want to spend a year playing with clamps and a backplate to get the hole where you want it.

Man, I wish the mill was here. The DRO would make finishing this so simple.

Toilets Don’t Scare Me

I didn’t get to do any machining today. Figures. I got called to the boat to do a sea trial, and then I got MOST of the old handle off the valve on the head, and then my dad and I ran errands for boat parts. Now it’s nearly 5:00 p.m.

I got a new gate valve, figuring I might be able to take the heavy cast handle off of it and put it on the old shaft. The original valve had a stamped handle, which may be one reason it didn’t last. The debris that used to be a handle appears to be similar to brass, not steel, so I’m not sure why it rotted away. The valve itself is brass, and it’s still there.

The new valve I got is from Indonesia. The old valve had a stamped handle held on by a stainless screw that fit in the end of the shaft. The new one has the cast handle and a (possibly) stainless nut. The handle has a square hole in it, and the shaft is ground off so it has four flats on it, and the manufacturer just jammed it down onto the shaft. I think it’s tapered. I got it off easily using a vise and a hammer. I rested the handle on the vise, with the valve dangling between the jaws, and I hit the end of the shaft, driving it down through the hole in the handle.

I would rather make a cool handle that won’t rot, but this will be a good Plan B. I’d have to get a new stainless screw to put it on the old shaft. The old screw was cheap and soft, so it’s somewhat mangled.

I was thinking life would be much easier if I could just undo the pressure nut holding the old shaft in, remove the guts of the old valve, and insert the guts of the new valve. But I have no idea how to get the old shaft out once the coupling is off. Something holds it in place. I need to find a diagram somewhere.

I am Googling around, and now I’m wondering…was the guy who installed the toilet smart enough to know that a gate valve isn’t the right thing for throttling flow? This is something I learned from a sprinkler guy. A gate valve has a wedge-shaped thing in the path of the water. Turning the handle drives a screw that pushes the wedge into place, and I guess it mates against the brass of the housing, shutting off the flow. If you don’t open it all the way, bad things happen. The sprinkler guy said water flows over and erodes the wedge. Wikipedia says something about vibration eating it. Anyway, what you really want in a situation like this is a globe valve, and for all I know, that’s what’s on the toilet now.

Maybe the smartest course of action is to try to get the valve out of there, completely, and replace it with a PVC globe valve. Home Depot probably sells them. PVC would last a thousand years on that toilet.

It would ruin my fun, but it would work.

I also had an idea about rigging up a flex shaft to put the valve handle up at waist level, so people (mainly me) wouldn’t have to reach under the toilet to operate it. A PVC valve would probably be hard to connect to a flex shaft, and it would probably take a lot of torque to open and close it, and that would eventually ruin the shaft.

I like these venturi toilets much better than the old Galley Maids they replaced, but they are as temperamental as a doctor’s third wife.

Had a good day, even without machining.