Acceptance

I replaced my beloved fishing glasses today. And I am bummed.

Why is it that every product I take a liking to gets discontinued? I guess it’s because I’m getting old fast, and by the time I realize I like something, it’s been on the market for a quarter of a century.

I used to wear Flying Fisherman sunglasses on the boat. They cost $12.95, the lenses were glass, they were polarized, they were the right color, and it didn’t bother me at all that they looked hideous. I kept a spare pair on hand, just in case they got discontinued. We started fishing again this year (I think we took all of last year off), and when I looked for my favorite glasses, they were gone. I don’t know if someone stole them, or what. You would have to be a pretty sorry thief to be satisfied with beat-up fishing glasses that look like something a doctor might make you wear. Whatever the deal is, they’re gone.

My dad is having some work done on his boat. The right engine has been running hot, so he had a mechanic run acid through it and change both of his raw water impellers. We ran by a marine supply store to look for gasket material for sea strainers, and while I was there, I bit the bullet and bought new glasses.

Naturally the ones I like are no longer available. I got some squinty ones that will probably be better in practice. But I want the old ones!

I look like a complete idiot when I fish. I wear a lavender dress shirt I got at an outlet store. I wear a horrible straw hat, held on with a chin strap. I do not care. I hate the sun so much it’s hard to describe it, and I also hate sunblock, so I cover everything I can. I wish I knew where to get a burqa with an embroidered sailfish on it.

I’m taking more of an interest in the boat these days. My dad spends a lot of time fooling with it now, so it’s a good excuse to get together and do things. And now that I’m somewhat tool-proficient, I can do a lot more. I need to make a knob for the starboard head; I guess I could fire up the lathe and give that a try. The brass is already here.

He thinks he may be able to con our boat guy (“boat guy” and “mechanic” are two different things) to take us out for yellowtail this weekend. That would be great. The wind is going to be from the west, so dolphin fishing is likely to be lame. I’d love to get some yellowtail, or some big snapper and grouper big enough to cut into fingers.

We ought to try to get some amberjacks. Some people won’t eat them because they get worms in their tails, but the worms are big and white, and you don’t have to eat the part with the worms. You can spot it and remove it. Let’s be serious. Fish have all sorts of parasites. The great thing about AJs is that they’re considerate enough to have parasites you can see and get rid of. With other fish, you enjoy your sushi and then find out later that you have toxoplasmosis or a tapeworm 30 feet long. Or ciguatera. That’s fun.

I love amberjack. I don’t know why more people don’t like it. Other than the giant worms.

The mill is still in shipping limbo. I guess I should email the seller and see if he has any idea which continent it’s on. I need to make a square hole for the toilet knob; I guess I can grind a tool and mount it on the lathe headstock and use it like a broach. It will take forever to open up the hole, but it will give a beautiful result. It will be a shame to put it in a sweaty little room where people pee.

Making the body of the knob would be easier on the mill. I figure a cross shape is easiest. I can make it by drilling four big holes in a disk and then opening them up to make it a cross. This would take like ten minutes on a mill. On a lathe, I have to find a way to chuck it, and locating the centers of the holes will be fun with no DRO. How I’ll open the holes up, I can’t even guess.

Another option is to take a short cylinder of 304 stainless and put a square hole in the middle. Not elegant, but it will last, and it will give lots of leverage.

There are a lot of things a machinist/woodworker could do to improve the boat. Example: replace the engine room hatch covers. Two of these–the ones you use to get in and out all the time–are very heavy. The frames are some kind of hardwood, and I would guess that the panels are one-inch-plus marine hardwood. They weigh maybe 35 pounds each. My dad does not need to be lifting those, and they don’t need to be that heavy. Sheet aluminum would be more than strong enough. I could make the panels and then screw them to wooden frames, or if I wanted to do a better job, I could use aluminum for everything. I’d have to insulate it well, but that’s not a problem.

I also want to make a part for his anchor chocks, so he can use “mud palms” (look it up) and still chock the anchor. By the way, if you need an anchor, I can’t recommend Fortress brand anchors highly enough. I’ve had the galvanized kind, and Fortress aluminum anchors are so much better, it’s not even worth discussing. They bite fast and hold like you would not believe.

I’m hoping to have a garage day tomorrow. Maybe I can get that knob started. Or at least make a mess and enjoy the air conditioning and the stereo. I have all sorts of metal to play with now, so I have no excuse for not generating swarf.

Hand me the Sledge

I suffered a crushing defeat today. I had to give up on my useless DVD burner.

I have an NEC 3550A burner in my desktop. Which sits on the floor. Making it a floortop. The burner worked fine when I first got it, but it eventually went nuts and refused to burn anything. I have upgraded the firmware, even taking a chance on a shady souped-up version written by kooks. I have upgraded my burning software. I have sent logs to the people at Alcohol-Soft. Nothing has worked.

I threw in the towel. I have a new Samsung on the way. Had to order it, unless I wanted to shop locally and get the wrong thing and pay way too much. Maybe next week I’ll be able to burn disks without turning on my creaky laptop (which fails about half the time).

I was using the PC to burn machining disks from Smartflix. There is no way I can take notes on DVDs fast enough to get them back to Smartflix before a late fee kicks in, so I make copies, send the originals home, take notes while watching the copies, and then discard the copies. Because I was having so many burn failures, I was still having late-fee issues.

My new solution is to copy them to my hard drive. I don’t want to sit in my sweaty office watching machining videos, but if I have the copies on my drive, I can burn them later, when the new burner gets here. After that, I can watch them in comfort. Either on the couch, or in the new Multimedia Garage.

The guys who sell videos are smart. Or maybe they’re just lame. They use ordinary purple recordable disks. These things are harder for DVD players to read, and they’re harder to copy. And they seem to get damaged easily. I’ve had several Smartflix disks refuse to play all the way. This makes life easier on the video guys, because it makes it tough to rent and copy the disks. If they upgraded to real equipment, their disks would be just like the ones you get when you buy movies. They’d last forever, and every machine in the universe would read them with ease.

I am tempted to take the old burner out and crush it with a sledgehammer. My dad has a 13-pounder on his boat, for removing props. I think it would be perfect for this job. I remember the joy the guys in Office Space got from destroying the Evil Printer. Or was it a fax machine?

The mill’s status is unknown. The last communication I had indicated an arrival date of around…yesterday. But it was not a firm date, and I have no mill, so I’m assuming the machine is still being twiddled with. When people are slow to ship you something expensive, they always want to let you know as soon as it leaves their facilities, so you won’t post nasty things about them on the web or try to back out of the deal. I have not received any authoritative shipping notices, so my best guess, based on being old and knowing how the world works, is that the folks who are drop-shipping the mill have not received the DRO yet. The mill is probably sitting in California right now, while irate Asian guys fume about the time it’s taking for the DRO to arrive from China.

The company is run by an Asian. That’s how I know the hypothetical angry guys are Asian.

It’s funny how we’re not allowed to say “Oriental” any more, even though it’s a completely harmless term (means “eastern”) and it’s more accurate than “Asian.” Benjamin Netanyahu is Asian. So is George Michael. But they’re not Oriental.

Wikipedia says “Oriental” is offensive in America, but not in England. That’s proof that it’s a legitimate term. Man, what is it with liberals? You can’t say “stewardess.” They tried to take “black” away from us, and blacks wouldn’t let them. American Indians got mad when they tried to make us stop saying “Indian.” What is the point of manufacturing a controversy where none should exist?

We can still say “hippie,” “moonbat,” “tree hugger,” and “feminazi.” I’m not letting those go.

I read something interesting today about milling machines. Evidently, if you really want to do good woodworking, you’re better off with metalworking machines than woodworking machines. You get more control.

I’m sure there are drawbacks. You have to watch out for oil and grease and swarf, and the tools turn slowly by woodworking standards. But imagine how much easier it would be to rout, using a milling machine instead of a router. You clamp the piece down. You use your DROs to make sure the measurements are right. Then you stand back in complete safety while the power feed does the work. No feeding your fingers into the bit. No eighth-of-an-inch errors because you couldn’t keep something from moving around. I guess if you really wanted to be a good woodworker, you’d buy an old mill and rig it so the spindle turned at 12,000 RPM. If the machine was worn-out and you screwed every cut up by ten thousandths, no one would ever know, because you’d still be super-accurate by woodworking standards.

The guy who was writing about it is an extremely proficient and experienced machinist. He pointed out a few pitfalls, such as using metal cutters on wood. But it sounded like a great idea, regardless.

Using a router is a giant pain. The work tries to jump, and sometimes it succeeds. It’s very hard to measure accurately. If you hold the router in your hands instead of using a table, it will do its best to tilt and cut big gouges in your wood, just when you think you’re about to finish your project without a hitch.

I wonder if there’s any reason I can’t put a 3-phase motor in my table saw and get a dry-cut blade for it to cut metal.

The mill will get here eventually, and then we’ll see what it will let me do.

100!

I guess you could say it’s a little warm today. Miami has blistering sunshine (due to low latitude) and miserable humidity, but the temperature usually stays below 90 in the shade. Today we hit 100 in some places. It’s like August out there.

Oddly, the humidity is low by our standards, at 55%. That means you walk outside and feel like you just opened the oven door, but it takes over a minute for sweat to start running off of you, which is unusual in the summer.

I guess even Al Gore has a good day once in a while.

I received a bunch of metal today. One item: a loaf of 1018 steel. It’s just like a loaf of government cheese, only it’s steel. Same size and shape. I’m hoping I can cut it into tool holders. If not, it will make a really effective paperweight. It weighs 72 pounds. I’m a little nervous about dropping the dry cut saw on it, but I have Ridgid oil, and if it acts up, I guess I can quit.

I got a 36″ round bar of 360 brass. It’s about 1.5″ in diameter. I think. It’s so pretty, it will break my heart to slice it up.

I also have a long 12L14 round rod, a 12L14 rectangular rod, a long 304 stainless rod, and a long A2 rod. It seems like cheap rectangular or square mild steel drops in easily machined alloys are not easy to find.

I found a company that publishes photos of the mill I ordered. I’m shocked at how nice it looks. It’s gorgeous. Even the Chinese DRO. Of course, those photos are the closest I can get, because there was a shipping delay. The DRO wasn’t in stock, or something. For some reason, the DRO took an extra week to install, so I assume they didn’t have it when they needed it.

Here’s something useful I’ve learned. When you receive a box of steel odds and ends, and you have to stick one in your chuck right away because you have no self-control, try not to machine off the place where the sender used a marker to write the metal’s designation.

Geez, that mill looks nice. I can’t get over it.

Crack is Cheaper

One of the frustrating things about trying to learn machining is the constant search for cheap metal. You would think metal would be inexpensive, given the low prices of many large metal objects. But you would be wrong. Seems like metal is the only thing that loses value after you use it to make something.

I’ll give you an example of the kind of problem I’ve come up against. I wanted to make some brass knobs for a bathroom cabinet. The best size brass cylinder for my purposes is about 1.5″ in diameter. I need four knobs, so a foot of brass is a good safe amount, to allow for waste and leave a little extra for chucking. Let’s check Onlinemetals.com.

For 360 free-machining brass, which is a brass machinists like a lot, the cost is over forty bucks, before shipping. Add shipping, and it’s over $53.00.

Now, what do knobs cost at Home Depot? I don’t know. But less than $53.00 for four. Granted, you get way less metal, and it’s probably the worst metal available. Still, it takes some of the fun out of making the knobs for myself.

You can do better on Ebay, right? Wrong. Well, okay. Right. But not a whole lot better. Ebay used to be a true flea market, packed with finds. Now, many of the sellers are ordinary retailers who charge near-retail prices. This includes the metal dealers. So it ain’t that great.

Luckily for me, I found a guy who is liquidating the inventory of an aircraft business. Up side: cheap metal, cheap shipping. Down side: metal very weird.

There are certain metals machinists use all the time, like 12L14 steel, T6 aluminum alloys, and the brass mentioned above. Then there are metals from Mars, like “Greek ascoloy,” “Inconel,” 660 stainless, and “Waspaloy.” The liquidation dude has lots of this stuff. If you want to buy from this guy, you have to spend forty minutes Googling each alloy to find out what it is.

I got some good stuff from him. A little tool steel, some stainless, and a mysterious round bar which might make a good tool holder, provided I can machine it. But by the time I found him, the really useful items were gone.

I also found a metal dealer that sells drops. These are like carpet remnants. Example: somebody who makes locomotives orders x hundred feet of mild steel 3″ by 3″ bar, and you buy the remaining 16 inches cheap. You can save maybe two-thirds of the ordinary price. You get dinged on shipping, but if you order a large amount, it still pays off handsomely. I got some mild steel I hope to cut into lathe tool holders, plus the brass I wanted. Plus something else I do not recall.

People say, “Go to the local scrap yards and ask if they sell drops.” I guess I can do that. I already put in a word at a boatyard. But Miami metal dealers don’t seem all that interested in that kind of business. They sell new metal cut to order, and they buy scrap, but if they are letting people come in to wander around and look for goodies, they are definitely doing a bad job of advertising it.

One nice thing about joining forums is that forum members help each other out. I bought a drill chuck with a useless taper in it, and it turned out another guy needed that kind of taper, so I sent it to him for nothing. He’s going to send a mystery package in return. Another member offered to send me some steel rods for nothing, as long as I paid shipping.

So now I will have the beginnings of a useful scrap pile. I won’t be totally helpless.

Steel rod suitable for turning and threading is not readily available around here. A reader recommended a local dealer to me, and they’re great for angle iron and aluminum rod, but they had no idea what leaded steel was. Seriously. Did not know what it was. I had a dowel I got from Home Depot for a welding project, and I tried turning it, and wow, is it lame. Imaging trying to turn cold cheddar cheese in a lathe. The tool jumps. The metal tears. The finish is horrendous. Cutting fluid made no difference. So I guess I can forget Home Depot for turning stock, even in emergencies.

I was using a round-nose tool I made myself, intended mainly for finishing things I make using cobalt. A round-nose tool with a big radius gives a better finish than a pointy cobalt tool. I tried it on the Home Depot dowel, hoping to create a surface I could use as a basis for threading. Upon witnessing the cheese effect, I concluded that I make really bad tools. Then I chucked a piece of aluminum and tried it, and the finish was beautiful. It shocked me. So it’s not me; it’s the metal. Fine for welding. Useless for turning.

I’m keeping an eye on Craigslist. Sometimes a liquidation takes place.

Can you do anything useful with machine tools? Sure. Here’s a link someone just sent me. A guy made a 1/6-scale Chevy 327 that runs. The perfect thing to have on hand when Stuart Little goes through puberty. Or it would make a great power source for a blender.

Brass & Threading

Made myself a couple of new lathe tools. Not sure how well they’ll work.

I started with brass. I used 1/2″ HSS, and I just eyeballed it. I used the grinder and finished on a diamond stone. Here it is.

I wanted to make a tool for internal threading, so I needed a small piece of HSS to start with. I decided to use 1/4″ HSS with 10% cobalt. To get the angle, I put Dykem on the tool, clamped a fish to it, scribed outside of the fish, and ground to the lines. The Dykem turned brown from the heat. I had no idea that was coming. I had assumed it was made to stand up to heat.

Let me know if you see anything wrong with these.

The mill’s delivery date got pushed back a week. Imagine my shock. Should be here about a week from now.

Fortunately I Have Loose Specs

I bought a Jacobs Super Chuck on Ebay, used. I had heard that the newer ones weren’t as good. When it arrived, it had a Moore jig borer taper stuck in it.

Jacobs makes cheap hardened wedges to get tapers out. They’re U-shaped pieces of metal that narrow toward the tips of the U. You put one on each side of the chuck, between the chuck and the taper. Then you press them toward each other with a vise or a hammer. I have heard people say a hydraulic press would work, but these things are very wimpy, so I don’t see how the additional force could be used.

The wedges were very blunt on the narrow ends, so I had to grind them to get them to slip past each other. I broke a couple. They bent like cheese. Finally, I put the taper on the anvil of my vise and beat one wedge into it with a blacksmith’s hammer, and out it popped.

Sadly, the wedges gouged my chuck. So I put it in the lathe and removed as much of the damage as I could. Here is the end product. I took off very little metal, and left some of the gouging in order to avoid going too deep.

The results are pretty good. The finish is not much worse than a new chuck. I used an AR tool (indexable carbide) and Ridgid Pipe Cutting Oil, and I didn’t expect great results from carbide, but it looks okay.

I started by facing the flat side. I was able to indicate the chuck in, but I could not index the flat side against anything, so it probably wasn’t all that perpendicular to the lathe’s axis. I don’t know if you can see it, but the flat side is not perfectly symmetrical. Oh well. Life will continue.

Once I had that done, I cleaned up the chamfer. I also did the rest of the face. The part that is angled. I had to break the compound loose, set the tool against the surface, and tighten the compound and tool post. I did the facing by moving the compound slide forward across the chuck, with the lathe in reverse. To go deeper, I drew the cross slide toward me. It worked out okay, so I guess you don’t always have to measure. None of these angles are critical.

I managed to stop the chuck (Jacobs, not lathe) a couple of times by cutting two deep. I think the little nick next to the rectangular-looking gouge occurred at that time, as the tool bit in. I removed most of the nick.

This was a lot of fun. I think the chuck is okay. The amount of metal I removed is like two sheets of aluminum foil.

Weigh Yours While There is Still Time

I’m in for a fun morning. Dentist appointment.

I was thinking about it earlier. I would hate to be a dentist. As disgusting as other types of medicine are, I would still choose most of them over dentistry simply because I could not face handling spit all day. And having big, gaping malodorous mouths open a few inches from my face. I have this notion, correct or not, that physicians usually get to straighten their arms more than dentists and keep the revolting stuff farther from their lips.

I hope he doesn’t find anything. Last time, or time before last, he found a filling that dated back to the Reagan years, at least. Maybe Carter. He didn’t believe me, but it’s true. That got replaced. Time before that, I think, he found places on my incisors where I had ground them away at night. He replaced parts of the teeth with composite. I am hoping that as I get older, he will gradually replace my entire head. That should cut way back on dental expenses as well as nasal allergies, and it will make it easier for me to fit in, in our socialist future. When the last particle of brain is removed, I plan to change my registration to Democrat and propose to Janeane Garofalo. You can’t have a limbic brain if your whole head is made of space-age resin.

I need to get started on the garage wiring today. It’s not going to be hard at all, except for the chore of moving my gigantic bulk to the top of a ladder about three thousand times. Someone pointed out that my method of moving my compressor on rollers resembled the technique Hebrew slaves used to build the pyramids, but I have to be honest and admit that I was allowed to use straw. So it’s not really a fair comparison.

As I become more of a tool nerd, I find that I keep more items in my pants at all times. This morning, curiosity overcame me, and I weighed them. Without my cell phone–I never know where it is, thank God–my pants checked in at 3 pounds, 11 ounces. And they’re shorts. I’m just glad I don’t have one of those ridiculous nerd keychains that are so big they have to be attached to your belt. That would put me over five pounds, for sure.

In the future, when psychiatrists try to determine whether a tool fixation is pathological, pants weight will gain recognition as a fine diagnostic tool. Under four pounds, odd but normal. Four pounds to eight pounds, shock therapy indicated. Over eight pounds, treat for hoarding. Or call Mrs. Berger and have a frank chat.

Time to get up and go. Maybe I should chew an onion first.

75 Pounds of Sexy Iron

My Parlec milling vise arrived. I never realized 75 pounds could be this heavy. I put it on a scale because I was sure it had to weigh more.

Is it a good vise? No way to know. Og had no problem with the choice. Once the mill arrives, I can put the vise on it and do things to it with a dial indicator and a test indicator. That will tell the story.

I’ll say this. The workmanship appears to be spectacular. It’s gorgeous. It’s going to kill me to crud it up with swarf and cutting oil.

Where do you put a thing like this until you have a mill?

Skills and Plumber’s Crack Developing Nicely

I decided the only way to move my compressor was to break down and spend the necessary cash.

It amounted to almost three dollars.

I was thinking about the problem, and I realized I could use conduit as rollers if I could fasten a sheet of plywood to the feet of the compressor. I didn’t need a pallet. This thing only weighs around 550 pounds, or the weight of two fat ladies. It’s not heavy machinery. But I didn’t have a suitable piece of plywood, and I didn’t feel like cutting one. Then it occurred to me that it only needed to have a complete span of wood along one axis, so a couple of pieces of two-by-whatever would do. I could put one on each side of the compressor, put the conduit perpendicular to them, and go.

Here’s the process.

I bought this expensive hardware and added hi-tech fiber shields to prevent marring.

I screwed the boards to the compressor.

I shoved conduit under the boards.

I pushed and sweated. But not too much.

The pads seem to be coming apart. I didn’t know they had a finite lifespan.

Now I have to reposition the bench and the tool cabinet, run some conduit, and wait.

Two years ago I probably would have hired a crew to do this.

Call the Fire Department

I just got terrible news. My milling machine shipped yesterday. And that’s not the worst of it. Checking around the web, I find that coast-to-coast freight shipments sometimes take as little as four days.

I finally have to face reality. I have to move the compressor and redo the wiring.

Arrghh.

The plan is to lay conduit over the garage rafters and run wire from one side of the garage to the other. I think the tops of the rafters are about 12 feet up. You would be surprised. The roof is level with the house roof, but the garage floor is a foot lower, so it adds up to a lot of headroom. My fat body is going to have to go up there in order to put in the conduit. I have to get 30 feet of pricey #8 wire and a new disconnect. Bummer.

I don’t know how to move the compressor. I have a Genielift, but moving it to the garage would be about as much fun as moving the compressor, and anyway, it would only raise the compressor if it were on a pallet. The geometry is not right for the Genielift. And I can’t use pipes as rollers. The compressor rests on little feet a good distance apart. I am afraid I’m going to have to scoot the silly thing twenty feet.

If I could find short, tough casters I could lean the compressor over and bolt one to each foot. I can look into that. They’ll have to be capable of holding around 150 pounds each, but short enough so I can run them up under the feet without tipping the machine over.

An engine hoist with a strap would also work. That would run about 50 bucks.

Wish me a fun day. Maybe I can find a reason to procrastinate. I sure hope so.

I Feel Like Donald O’Connor on His Tenth Take

There are two things you never want to have to pick out for yourself. Taps and drill bits. You would be better off killing yourself. The Enco catalog is mostly taps and dies, I’m pretty sure. The tap and die stuff starts on page 76 and ends on page 114. Drills aren’t quite as bad, but still pretty horrible. All drills and taps look exactly alike. I am still traumatized from going through them.

I ordered a couple of small tap/drill sets in HSS. I ordered the weird tap wrench Og and a forum dude recommended. I am pretending I don’t need drill bits. I don’t want to think about them. Ever.

Actually, I bought a pound or two of them a while back. Some Ebay guy sells mixed new and used bits by the pound. It’s not a bad deal. When I need a drill bit, I rarely know the exact size; I just look for one that will work for me. These will come in handy. They won’t be a good substitute for a real set, but they will allow me to avoid abusing a real set unnecessarily. I can reach for the cheap drills first, whenever possible.

I still haven’t made the final decision on a quality set, for a very good reason. They cost a TON. I’m hoping that if I put it off long enough, science will come up with a cheaper substitute for the drill bit.

Some forum guy says I’ll need a tapping head. I told him some other guy had said I wouldn’t need one, if I had a lathe I could reverse. Oh, no; that was nonsense! I needed a thing called a Procunier tapping head, and…here’s the good part…they come in different sizes, so you can’t just buy one!

Oh, yeah, THAT’S a surprise.

I plan to avoid that purchase even more doggedly than I avoid recycling, margarine, and Jehovah’s Witnesses.

The mill should be here next week. I’m really hoping I can make tool holders. I tried to pick out a 60° dovetail cutter today, but Og showed me this homemade job: look. Might be fun to try to make one.

The only really worthwhile thing I accomplished today, other than a Costco run, was washing out my motorcycle helmet. Damned thing got mildew in the liner during the garage’s raining-indoors phase. Not a pleasure to wear. And new helmets cost over $300. Iodophor really did the job on my saddlebags, so I blasted the helmet with it, too. I stuck it in the sun to dry, and then I picked it up an hour later, and it was still cool and wet on the inside. I should have realized it would insulate like a beer cooler. Helmets are full of foam. In fact, riders sometimes compare riding with a helmet to having a beer cooler on your head.

Do NOT get the idea that a beer cooler is a good helmet substitute. Never mind how I found out.

I stuck the helmet in the house. Hopefully the AC will dry it out eventually.

I better have some fried Costco and relax.

Tool Holders!

I have learned something about machining. You can’t just buy a quick change tool post set and be happy. The set will only have two holders for turning tools. Once you start grinding tools, you’ll end up with a variety. In other words, more than two. So when you want to change tools, you’ll find yourself moving tools in and out of the tool holders.

The upshot of all this is that you need more than two holders.

Some guy on the Chaski forum posted a photo. He has a collection of tool holders, from CDCO Tools. They sell cheap Chinese tooling. The photo showed dozens of these things in a drawer, set in rows. It was like a Communist-bloc tank display. He has a library of tools he has already made, and they’re sitting in their holders ready to go.

Another guy says you have to have at least 10 in order to be happy. And someone said he makes his own.

That got me thinking. This should be an easy project for me, once I have a mill. You buy cold-rolled steel, cut it in suitable chunks, make them pretty with a fly cutter, tap a few holes, cut a few grooves, and you’re done. I doubt I can do it for less than the $9 cost of a CDCO tool holder, but that’s not really relevant. If I wanted to have everything done for me, I wouldn’t be buying machine tools.

I suppose you could make them from aluminum. Tool holders are pretty beefy. I don’t think aluminum ones would be flimsy enough to flex. The threads might be a problem, though. I guess you would have to worry about them holding up.

My set came with two holders suitable for turning and facing. One has a groove in the bottom of the tool slot, to support a boring bar. The other doesn’t. I assume the grooved type must have some disadvantages, because if it didn’t, there would be no reason to manufacture holders without grooves. I have to figure that out. I don’t think I’ll ever want to use this kind of holder for boring, since I have a holder designed especially for boring bars. But versatility is good.

I also want to make some brass knobs for a bathroom cabinet. I realize they probably won’t be as cute as the ones at Home Depot, but it’s an irresistible project.

I have to get some tapping tools. It’s an essential I somehow overlooked.

Medical Insurance = License to Cruise

What a fantastic day. I didn’t always think I was having fun, but in retrospect, I realize I was.

I decided to organize God’s Own Garage, because it was starting to get cluttered, and I still have to stick a 2400-pound milling machine in there. I really opened it up. It felt wonderful. An orderly room is like a beautiful woman. It gives you pleasure just by existing.

Then I decided to clean the mildew off the Harley’s saddlebags. It grew during the roof-problem era, when the garage was damp. I got on the web and looked, and I saw a lot of stupid ideas for killing mildew on leather. Then I realized I already had something that would probably do the trick: iodophor sanitizer. Unlike bleach, it won’t damage the leather, and as far as I know, iodine kills EVERYTHING. So I cleaned the mildew off with rubbing alcohol, hit the leather with iodophor, and followed up with leather conditioner. And the bags looked great. I was shocked.

I never thought that bike was all that good looking when I bought it. The black tins disappointed me, but at that time, you bought the Harley the dealer showed you, or you did without. Today I realized it’s actually a very nice looking bike. It has grown on me.

One thing led to another, and I found myself trying to get her started. I had to drain all the fuel back when I installed the new petcock, so the tank was literally dry. I figured it was time to fire her up. But I had no gas. I did something really stupid. I had a truly ancient container of gas on hand. I decided to put a quart in the tank. I figured it would get me to a gas station, and if it wasn’t the greatest gas on earth, it wouldn’t matter, because I’d be diluting it twenty-to-one with new gas.

I had to use a MAPP torch to get the silly thing started, aiming the nozzle into the carb. When it started running, I thought my problems were over. I decided to take a short spin to see if it was in shape to get me to the gas station. And the bike died three blocks from home. Worse, the place where it conked out was a good two feet lower, and you really can’t push an 800-pound bike uphill. Even a slight grade is bad news.

I walked back to the house, got the torch, and drove to the bike. Got it started. Then it died again. Finally, I had to call my dad. He was the only person available on short notice. He graciously abandoned his dinner, drove to a gas station, bought a gas can, bought a gallon of good gas, and brought it to me. Thank God, it did the trick.

I got the bike home and fiddled with it, and I went for another spin. The acceleration was weak, and it tried to stall at low speeds. I figured it was either the gas or corrosion in the slow jet, which happens when a bike sits. I went and got gas, and on the way home, the bike got worse, surging and farting. Surging is embarrassing. It makes you look like an idiot in traffic. Like you have no idea how to work a throttle.

I got home and ordered some new slow jets on the web (the dealer near me probably charges fifty bucks each for a two-dollar item). Then I decided to play Dr. House. I thought there might be crud in the carb, but I did not want to take it apart and hit it with carb cleaner. But I realized I had a bottle of STP fuel injection cleaner and some Sta-Bil. I figured carb crud had to be just like injector crud. And if the bad gas had water in it, Sta-Bil would get rid of it. I made an STP and Sta-Bil cocktail, poured it into the tank, and hit the started. The bike ran! I got a screwdriver and adjusted the idle speed, and away I went.

It ran like a dream. Great low-end torque, good acceleration, no backfiring, no hesitation, and no surging. It probably didn’t run this well new. Against my better judgment, knowing I was very rusty, I decided to go for a longer ride. I put on my helmet and horsehide jacket and boots, and I tooled through Coconut Grove and onto I-95.

Riding at highway speed is very intimidating when you’re a new rider, and every rider who has been off his bike for months feels like a new rider when he gets back on. So I was nervous. I felt stiff, and every seam and reflector in the road seemed determined to knock me off the bike. I stuck with it, having no choice, and I went all the way to Northeast 95th Street (over 10 miles) and got off. I rode by the house where I grew up, across a busy intersection from Mike’s old house. I rode down by the bay, where we used to waste our time gigging inedible fish.The bike never gave me a second’s trouble.

On the way home, I felt loose, and my Motorcycle Safety Foundation training came back to me.I threw the bike around a little, just to get used to moving the weight. It was wonderful. I had really missed riding, without even realizing it.

Also, I came up with a name for the bike. It made me laugh. Can’t tell you now, though. I’ll spill it eventually. Not all of you will get it.

I plan to ride more in the future. I was always reluctant to ride, because I was worried about having an accident, and I was too cheap to get medical insurance. Actually, I was afraid they’d make me get an exam, and I didn’t want to show up fat and out of shape, and I never seemed to get into the kind of shape I thought would impress the insurer into giving me a ridiculously low rate. When I finally got insurance, all they did was ask questions. I could have told them I was a giraffe. They would have bought it. So I said my blood pressure was 75 over 40 and I had just won a gold medal in the Decathlon.

Not really.

Anyway, I have insurance, so I’m not as scared of the road. Oddly, the thought of paying medical bills scares me less than the possibility that I will be turned into a giant meatball.

It was a magnificent day, all the way around. I realized my milling dreams were doable, and I got the Harley on the road. I can’t ask for more than that. I’ve been thinking I should ride it to church. It’s a long trip on the interstate, on a low-traffic day. Perfect for riding.

I’d look like a freak with that jacket however.

The pastor’s son has a chopper. I guess I would be excused.

I had a problem with the insurance people. Somehow they got the idea that I had smoked fairly recently, and they jacked up my rate. It’s a lot of money. A hundred bucks a month. I called and complained, and they said I could get a blood test and prove I didn’t smoke.

I’ve been thinking about it. I may just let it go. I keep thinking it’s wasteful to spend that kind of money for an occasional cigar. Then I think about the more fundamental issue: freedom. Do I really want to live like an uptight, irrational, self-righteous, liberal smoke Nazi, just to save money? Wouldn’t I be letting them control me?

For a long time, I thought I might want to give cigars up altogether, because I had read a few things that worried me, and I was concerned about using a product which had been a curse to my family. But last week I read up on it, and here is the truth: smoking a couple of cigars a week is one hundred percent harmless. It’s not addictive. It won’t hurt your heart or lungs. It won’t give you cancer. The Jews believe asceticism is evil, and I think they’re right. Maybe it’s wrong to live like a fanatic in order to keep the insurance company from ripping me off. Liberty–even small, nonessential liberties–is worth something. Pleasure is important. Christians forget that. You’re not supposed to be a slave to it, but if you deprive yourself more than you should, you just store up temptation for the inevitable day when your willpower breaks, and you weary yourself of trying to be good, and you reject gifts God intended you to enjoy. One purpose of the sabbath was to teach man he occasionally had to get off the hamster wheel, stop punishing himself, and enjoy things.

I don’t think John the Baptist was a true ascetic. His diet was limited when he was in the desert, but no self-respecting ascetic would even consider eating honey. It’s an extremely decadent food. And we have no idea what he ate when he was in Jerusalem, where he had access to real grub. You can’t compare him to true ascetics, like the Buddhist and Hindu nutjobs who wander the jungle for decades in diapers, living on dirt. We know Jesus and the disciples enjoyed food and wine, and Jesus even let a woman perfume his feet.

I still have time to think it over.

St. Nick Arrives Early

Yesterday I celebrated Christmas in June. The tooling for my mill arrived. I spend some time fondling and pawing it. Now I can’t wait for the mill itself. Should be here in maybe ten days.

Here’s what I got.

1. Clamping set. They practically give these away. Comes with a nice bin sort of a thing you can hang on the wall or the side of your mill.

2. Set of 8 cutters. Four are 2-flute, and four are 4-flute. I wanted carbide, but people told me I was nuts, so I got cobalt.

3. Set of 5 fly cutters, with HSS blanks I can turn into cutting tools. I know you’re supposed to make your own fly cutters, but here’s a funny thing I’ve learned: it takes tools to make tools. Some things, you can bang out with a cordless drill and a butter knife. Others require you to be fairly well tooled up. You need a mill and God knows what else to make fly cutters.

4. R8 collets.

5. Wiggler set.

6. Edge-finder.

7. Indicol holder.

8. Parallels.

9. 1-2-3 blocks.

10. Woodruff key cutter.

11. Acid brushes.

12. Corner-rounding cutter.

That’s the bulk of it. I forgot to get a square and V-blocks. If you have suggestions, let fly. Enco has so many squares, I have no idea which is best for the money. I figured I’d get a pair of import V-blocks without clamps. They’re not too pricey. For squares, the 4-piece Brown and Sharpe set has been suggested to me.

I have a Jacobs Super Chuck I bought off Ebay. I was going to get a new one, but everyone says the quality is not as good, so I went used. It has a humongous taper in it, from a Moore jig borer. Looks like I’m going to have to get wedges to knock it out. I tried using a punch.

The vise arrives next week. I hope it lives up to what people say about it. It didn’t save me much money over a Kurt, but it’s bigger and a little tougher, so I thought it was a good choice.

I think the best thing I bought was the cheap shop apron. I am really tired of ruining my nice $4.95 shirts.

As if You Needed It

I guess only machinists will find this funny.

Today my 1-2-3 blocks arrived via UPS. I had never seen 1-2-3 blocks before, except in videos. I took a look at them, and I heard myself think, “I thought they would be bigger.”