“I’ll Sneak up on Jeff Bob and Try to Insert a Tag”

Because I am a failure and I do not possess a 7/8″ Forstner bit, I had to quit working on my woodworking table pretty early yesterday. I get to bed between 8:30 and 9:00, so I’m glad things didn’t work out, because I think there is a good chance I would have stayed up late and ruined my morning.

I ended up watching a woodworking video with Marv and Maynard. It’s a Taunton.com video about table saws, featuring a guy named Kelly Mehler. It was so relaxing. When you have tools but still can’t get anything done, they cause anxiety. When you see someone tackle similar problems effortlessly, it’s incredibly soothing. I do not know why.

Maybe this is how women want to feel when they pick husbands. “Look at all the crap this guy can do; he can take CARE of me.”

Oh, hey, it looks like he has his own site: Kelly Mehler’s School of Woodworking.

He works in Berea, Kentucky, where my late mom went to boarding school. According to her, Berea was “arty.” I think that means a lot of yankees had descended on the place and tried to turn it into a bizarre and geographically inappropriate colony of longhairs. I don’t know too much about Berea, but I believe it’s one of those towns where they have a whole lot of people making butter churns with hand tools. It’s probably the kind of place where it’s very easy to buy a really good chisel.

I don’t know if the theme of the place has anything to do with Appalachian culture. To hear my mom tell it, the situation was pretty much the opposite.

Wikipedia says a past president of Berea College started the artsy-craftsy metamorphosis, hoping to capitalize on the national market for Kentucky crafts. I don’t want to break anybody’s rice bowl, but Eastern Kentucky is not known for finely crafted items. It’s just not. It’s not even known for good construction. The old houses tend to have crooked walls and sloping floors. I’ve been all over Appalachia, and one of the things I noticed was that old houses and buildings in North Carolina looked a hell of a lot better than they did in Kentucky. The difference is very obvious.

I’ll bet the vast majority of the people making this junk are from out of state, and that they have taught the locals ten times what the locals have taught them. I’m just being honest. People up there have always made great music and fantastic quilts, but I can’t think of anything else they do really well. The sad truth is, people who are good at things generally leave, to get away from the bad local economy. They call it “brain drain.” This is why I grew up in Florida.

Kentucky attracts people who are much more excited about its culture than they have any right to be. One example: Appalshop. This is an outfit in my dad’s hometown, Whitesburg. This town is located among some of the most nearly vertical terrain in the US. The hills aren’t all that high, but they’re about four feet apart. It’s very close to West Virginia. For some reason, a bunch of hippies showed up and started documenting the culture and recording the music. That’s Appalshop.

It’s kind of odd, because culturally, the hippies are about as much like the locals as Cambodians. Their values are utterly foreign. Nobody in Eastern Kentucky wants to hear about composting and tofu and recycling. People who preach that stuff are lucky if their houses don’t get burned down. The only liberal value people in Eastern Kentucky support is the desire to addict people to welfare checks. When it comes to government money, they are hardcore socialists, on the same page as Saul Alinsky.

Here’s a handout horror story. My aunt was a school principal up there. She said people in her town instructed their kids to fail ADD tests so they would get stuff from the government. Imagine that. “Honey, be sure you don’t bust 600 on the SAT, so mamaw can get free Ding Dongs.”

It’s kind of insulting, having hippies educated in New England show up and “help” the locals preserve their culture. But I guess they’re not going away. If I lived up there, and they came to record me playing the autoharp or the banjo, I’d feel like a monkey at the zoo. It’s funny; no one seems to notice the implicit condescension. There is nothing flattering about having yankees show up, take photos of you, your house, and your family, and treat you like a newly discovered aborigine.

I wonder why the hippie organizations don’t send people into black ghettos to preserve the wonderful culture. Okay, I don’t really wonder. It’s because it’s harder to get away with condescending to black people.

I think people from Appalachia should get in vans and go to places like Michigan and Massachusetts and document the culture. Problem is, people in places like that don’t have any discernible culture. “Here’s Lance and his wife Margaret. Let’s see if we can film them playing some indigenous music. Oh, wait. That’s right. They HAVE no indigenous music, because they’re exactly like people in California and Indiana. Well, maybe we can film them hitting a bucket of balls at the driving range.”

I want some more woodworking videos. I can’t get enough of this stuff. For some reason, they’re the best tool videos. The metalworking stuff just isn’t as satisfying. Maybe it’s because metalworking is so much easier. Metal does whatever you want. At least it seems that way.

Router Table may Conceivably Work

I am feeling unusually smug, and that is saying a lot.

I decided to make a final effort to stiffen up and flatten my old MDF desk, so I could put a router on one side and a miter saw on the other. I went to Home Depot today and got the stuff. Two two-by-sixes and a bunch of lag screws and washers. The idea is this: use the table saw to put straight sides on the two-by-sixes and then screw them to the underside of the desk. I was going to try to screw in from the bottom, but I decided to take Og’s advice and go down from the top. It’s just too hard, making straight holes all the way through a two-by-six with a hand drill. Going in from the top, I only need to go a couple of inches past the MDF, and if everything isn’t completely straight, I’ll never see it.

The table saw scares the daylights out of me. Ever since I saw a Sawstop promotional video featuring a guy with about six and two-thirds fingers, I have been afraid of the table saw, and if I ever get rich, I will buy a Sawstop in a heartbeat, just to put that video out of my mind.

I set it up today, and I even remembered to attach the shop-vac AND turn it on for some of the cuts. And guess what? It will true up the side of a piece of lumber. I didn’t think it would work, but it did. I now have a piece of 4 7/8″ wide lumber with a very straight side on it, and I’m going to screw it to the desk.

Unfortunately I underestimated the size of the Forstner bit I would need. I thought my 3/4″ bit would do it, but it looks like it will have to be 7/8″ to accommodate the washers under the heads of the screws. I am on hold until I get the bit.

I’m sure I used the table saw improperly. I got out my Fine Woodworking DVD and looked at parts of it, but it seems like every time I get ready to use a tool, the books and videos cease to apply to whatever it is I’m doing. I have no outfeed table, so I had to go around the saw and hold up the lumber myself, once it got to the point where it could tip. I’m not sure how this could be dangerous, but since I did it, I’m sure it is.

Any clues for handling outfeed would be appreciated. I don’t have anything approximating the height of the saw table. I guess some sort of roller deal is the easy way out. Let’s check the Home Depot site. “Roller stand.” I suppose that’s it. I need me some of those.

The two-by-six is still crooked in the other direction. That is, if you stand it on an edge and look down on it, you can see a bend. I have that figured out. I’ll pre-drill the screw holes in it, and I’ll attach a few at one end first. That will be easy, because the deflection over half the piece is small. Then I can shove the other end into line as I put the other screws in. I think.

The big question is, will the tabletop be flat once the lumber is screwed to it? If not, I’ll have to kill myself. It certainly should be. It would take a lot of force to flex that two-by-six, and the tabletop is not that rigid. I don’t even think it’s warped. I think it’s just sagging because it isn’t supported.

This is recreation, so if it doesn’t work, it’s still fun.

I impressed my father today. He has a newish copier, and the toner ran out. He also has a bunch of old toner from old machines. I told him to refill the cartridge from them. He brought it to me and told me to go to town on it.

Generally, toner cartridges have plugs you can rip out, in order to add toner. Canon has figured this out, and they don’t like people filling their cartridges, so they make their cartridges so you can’t get to the plug without destroying them. I took the Wecheer tool and a Dremel disk and cut out a rectangular piece of the cartridge, and I dumped everything out and filled it with toner. Then I covered the hole with duct tape. I saw that trick on the web. Now he has a $90 refill for absolutely nothing, and he can keep refilling the cartridge until it stops working. He probably has a pound of toner, which is a huge amount.

He can’t believe it. He thinks I’m a genius.

I absolutely love tool videos. It’s so beautiful, seeing people succeed easily at the impossible. I think I’m going to buy a few more and just watch them when I feel like I can’t cope. I’ll know that no matter how inept and pathetic I am, somewhere there is some guy who can make a dovetail joint.

I am GOING to have a woodworking table. You just watch.

I Will not Submit

Here is my latest trick. I tried to true my old desk, to make it into a router table, by screwing an L-shaped piece of aluminum to the underside. This effort was a failure. So I went back out and stuck shims between the aluminum and the desktop. That helped a lot. But not nearly enough.

I think I know the answer. I should scrap the desk’s legs and make a new desk out of wood. I could use my table saw to rip a few very straight pieces of lumber to put under the top. Then I could put the newly reinforced top on some new two-by-four legs. I would still get to use my nifty melamine/MDF top.

On the other hand, maybe I could get a couple of warped two-by-fours and fasten them under the top lengthwise. Then I could put long screws through them, into the table, and tighten the screws selectively to flex the table into line.

Hmm. I may have a better idea.

*#^%*#%%*#!!

I took a piece of scrap aluminum and screwed it to the bottom of my heavy MDF desk, in hopes that it might take a dip out of the center of the desk’s top. No dice. The aluminum is fairly sturdy, and I checked to see if it was straight before I attached it, but I guess the desk is too strong for it. Maybe I should have forced the desk into a true plane before I put in the screws. The aluminum exerted a lot of force on the table as I put in the screws to attach it, however, so I am sure it’s pushing against the bow.

I don’t know what to do now. I’m wondering if I could put a turnbuckle under the front of the table and connect it to the ends with cable. Then maybe if I tightened it, it would pull the table out of the bowed shape.

The steps I have taken so far cost about two dollars, so I don’t feel too bad.

I wonder if I could get a long threaded bolt and run it between the front feet of the table and use it to pull them together.

Clue me In

Say you’re building a router table, and the desk you’re basing it on is pretty big. Like 30″ deep.

How far back from the front edge should the router spindle be?

I’ve read that it shouldn’t be more than 16″ from the right edge, because a longer distance makes work uncomfortable.

You Can’t do it; They Can’t Help

Home Depot may not be the most efficient retailer on earth, but it is one of the most entertaining.

They put a saw on sale. The saw was on their website. The site said the sale price was not available in local stores. I ordered a saw. I paid for shipping.

I ran an errand to Home Depot. I saw that they were selling the saw for the sale price. I bought it. I tried to cancel the online order. I was told I could not.

Home Depot called me and said they couldn’t stop the shipment, but they were waiving the charge. I took the other saw back to the store.

Today I checked my email, and Home Depot said the online order was CANCELED.

I called them up, and sure enough, it’s true. There is no saw on its way to me. And the one I bought is back at the store.

Now I have to go to the store again and buy back the saw I returned.

My bet: the other one will arrive this afternoon.

More

A reader comments: “My bet is that the one you brought back (the last one in stock) has been sold.”

I just got back, and it appears he was correct. I would have recognized that beat-up box anywhere, and it wasn’t there. But two new saws had materialized, so I bought one of those.

While I was wrestling it onto a cart, some guy appeared from nowhere and helped me. Then a second guy appeared in line behind me and started telling me what a great saw it was, and how he had one, and how I was going to enjoy it.

I know this will sound truly stupid. I understand that fully. But every so often people pop up in your life, out of the blue, treat you unexpectedly well, and disappear. And you know how religious people interpret things like that. But you don’t expect it to happen when you run random and insignificant Home Depot errands.

The only non-self checkout line was bogged down, and I didn’t know I could take giant boxes through the self-check lines, so I stood there and waited it out. I thought they would never get me out of there, but it finally happened.

Now I fully expect the saw I ordered online to arrive later today. This story would not make sense if it didn’t.

Have you ever tried to accomplish a simple task and had so many things go wrong, you were amazed? That’s what this saw purchase has been like. I almost wonder if there is some secret significance to it. It’s crazy! I’ve been trying to get one of these saws for about a year, and things have gone wrong over and over.

I am afraid to open the box.

Junk, Redeemed

I am trying to turn my huge surplus MDF desk into a router/miter saw table. I just put it back together and stood it up in the garage.

This thing is like 1 1/4″ thick, so it ought to be plenty sturdy. But it has a dip in it. The center is a little lower than the ends. I’m thinking of fixing this by screwing a piece of scrap aluminum to the bottom of the desk. It’s shaped like an angle iron, about 2″ on a side. I’m not sure it’s stiff enough to do the job, but I’ll know ten seconds after I attach it.

The table is really long. I am not sure what to do about a T-track, since they are probably shorter than the table. I suppose it doesn’t matter if a T-track dead-ends in the table’s surface, as long as one end is open.

The fun part will be cutting the hole for the router insert. I believe the ideal tool for this is…a ROUTER. But I am not sure. Maybe you’re supposed to jigsaw it out and then clean it up with a router. And of course, I have no jigsaw.

I figure I can plop the miter saw over the router opening, and on the rare occasions when I want to use the router, I can take it off.

If none of this works, I can always put the mangled results by the curb and enjoy the knowledge that comes from screwing up.

Sisyphus Dreams of Chocks From Harbor Freight

I am trying to be better to the birds these days. They see me all day, and I interact with them, but I think I’ve been giving them too little time out of the cage, and I worry that their toy budget has been too low. So I’m taking them out occasionally during the day, for brief bird-pounding sessions. This can be challenging. I got a second huge cage so I would be able to relieve their boredom by moving them from one cage to another. When Marv is in the cage nearest to my chair, and Maynard is out, Marv squawks and tries to run interference, and Maynard launches himself repeatedly at my face and grabs my nose. It’s a jealousy thing. So when I want to take Maynard out, I now have to make sure Marv’s cage is behind me, out of Maynard’s sight.

I still haven’t sold Marv’s old cage. You would think people would jump at the chance to pay half price for a big King’s Cage in nearly new condition, but no one has bitten. I even tried to sell it to Tommy, for his green-winged parakeet, but he won’t go for it. And I was willing to sell extra-cheap!

I got them a $25 hanging bird toy, much like other toys they have destroyed in the past, and they ignore it. I don’t know what their problem is. At the same time, I got a weird bamboo-ladder toy, and they are eating it at a respectable rate.

Maynard is on my arm, watching me type. Soon he will want to stroll on the keys, and then he will want to walk down my legs and eat my shoes.

There he goes.

I wish they had an enclosure outside, so they could get some air. Parrots don’t like the sun–for that matter, they’re not too crazy about being outdoors, generally–but it would be good for them to have a daily change of scenery. I can’t sit them outside on perches. There are hawks here. A while back, I saw one staring at Marv while I sprayed the dust off of him. It probably could not understand why I was doing such a thorough job of washing my food. These guys would be a real treat for a hawk. Other birds eat slugs and lizards. Marv and Maynard eat seed mix, fruit, Jelly Bellies, and pizza. They are hawk Wagyu.

I am getting a bigger miter saw. Home Depot’s sale price is irresistable, and the lifetime Ridgid warranty is hard to beat. This means I will no longer have an excuse for stalling on a few carpentry jobs. I just couldn’t face doing them with a 10″ saw or a circular saw. The small miter saw would have been hard to set up perfectly, because flipping the boards in order to cut all the way across them would reveal tiny errors in cut squareness. The circular saw is a pain in the butt, pure and simple. When I cut a board to length, I want the operation to go “plop, whizzzzzz, plop, next board.” Not “plop, whizzzzzz, turn, aim carefully, whizzzzzz, curse.”

How did people ever live, back in the hand saw days? Imagine cutting twenty boards to length with a hand saw. Galley slaves had it better.

Maynard’s new thing: standing on my belly, lunging at my nose. He has had enough time out.

I don’t just want tools. I want tools that make things easy. Over and over, I have said that the real purpose of tools is to end frustration. My idea of hell is spending every day doing jobs with the wrong tools. While listening to rap. And wearing bell bottoms. And drinking Budweiser. In France.

Kind of got off the track there.

The right tool is the difference between pleasure and misery. The other day, I dug a hole for a citrus tree, using a shovel. Planting the tree was pure hell, because the dirt here is full of rocks. I think it took me an hour and a half, lifting a pint of dirt at a time. I dug the next hole with a hoe, and it took maybe ten minutes, and I didn’t break a sweat. This is why I want a big sliding miter saw. This is why I don’t want to build things using small or inappropriate saws. I don’t want a half-hour job to last four hours, and I want results I can be proud of.

This principle is why people who create new slot designs for fasteners should be released naked in the middle of the Libyan desert at midnight. During the scorpion rut. Every time a new slot design is created, people who want to be able to turn screws have to buy at least three new drivers and a bunch of bits. I have tons of these things, I and I still can’t turn all the screws I encounter. That leads to fun activities like trying to turn screws with a small Vise Grip. Put it on, start to turn, watch it pop off. Repeat for four hours. Check Expedia for fares to Libya.

By the way, I saw some fantastic videos yesterday. They’re at Taunton.com. A couple of guys demonstrate carpentry stuff. They build a bookcase. They build a workbench. They install a vise on it. Wonderful. If you click on the first video and watch it, the second one will load when it’s done. I sat through the whole set, mesmerized. They were doing things that WORKED. How come that never happens to me? Their tools didn’t break. They always had what they needed to do the job. The wood cooperated. Nobody threw anything or got out a sledge and beat a frustrating workpiece to splinters. Not that I have ever done that. Three times in one day.

Of course, it’s all rigged. It’s like an old Popeil commercial, where they use a cheap knife to cut a nail in half, but the nail is actually made of lead. The videos are totally unrealistic. They rig them by doing unfair things like preparing, measuring, and owning $500,000 worth of tools.

Bench dogs. Who has bench dogs in his real-life garage? Okay, Og probably does. He probably makes them from brass he made on his stove, from ore he mined in his backyard. He probably assembles the copper molecules from a kit. But nobody else. These guys had a whole collection of these unbelievably useful things. They even had a special pointy hat for a bench dog, which you put on top of it so you can bang a piece of wood down on it and make a starter hole for a drill bit. I think that’s right. My memory is pathetic.

Here’s an idea. Go to the Home Depot in Coconut Grove and tell Employee of the Month Ernesto Rodriguez you want a pointy hat for your bench dog so you can dimple some MDF. You’ll be lucky if he doesn’t bend a pry bar over your head.

Like all DIY videos, these are misleading and ridiculous, but they’re very satisfying to watch, because these guys succeed easily at things you would like to do, but never could. If I were not a Christian, I would compare it to watching adult films.

Speaking of hell, I know the punishment these guys deserve. They should be forced to make complex wooden items without an endless supply of obscure and expensive tools their viewers have never heard of.

SATAN: [holding a leash attached to Cerberus, the three-headed bench dog] Okay, guys, time to make a printing press from a solid block of oak. Otherwise, you have to wear the red-hot cast-iron leiderhosen all day.

FIRST VIDEO GUY: That’s impossible!

SECOND VIDEO GUY: You’re crazy!

SATAN: Observe. I mill the sides flat, draw my guide lines, and THROW THE BLOCK INTO MY BRAND NEW THREE-MILLION-DOLLAR DELTA PRINTING PRESS MAKER!

FIRST VIDEO GUY: Could be worse. We could be in France, drinking Budweiser.

SECOND VIDEO GUY: Word up.

I think I’ll make my own line of realistic DIY videos. “Today I show you how to pinch yourself with pliers and get a blood blister!” “Today I show you a quick and easy way to get a scratched cornea!” “Today I show you how to do everything right and still end up with marred workpieces!”

I already know the name of my next book. “1,000 Exotic Fasteners and How to Strip Them.”

Here’s some comforting news: even the video guys sometimes have to use the wrong tool. In one of their videos, one of them uses a socket wrench to drive a screw that would take .3 seconds with my impact driver. HA. Amateurs. Toss me the ringer.

Tools remind me of War Games. The only way to win is not to play.

Long-Awaited Tool Purchase

I’m beside myself with excitement. The miter saw I wanted to buy is on sale! In a BIG way! Home Depot knocked $200 off the price!

A year or two ago I got myself a 10″ compound miter saw, and I felt like a big deal. But I was actually an idiot. Because I did not realize that a 10″ saw that doesn’t slide will not cut anything wider than about six inches. It’s great for tiny jobs. For large pieces of wood, it is utterly useless. You have to flip them over and cut from the other side, and then you get errors because the blade is out of alignment by a fraction of a millimeter. I have it very square, but it’s not perfect.

Since buying this thing, I have been amazed to learn how many jobs it WON’T do. It’s a great saw, but too small is too small.

A 12″ sliding saw will cut 13.5″ across a board. You can go right through a four-by-four with it, too.

Now I have to figure out what to put it on. Very confusing. There are a bunch of good stands out there. Ryobi makes a beauty, believe it or not. It’s also sold under the Denali brand. But hold on! It’s too small for 12″ sliding saws. So are a lot of the others.

Ridgid makes one, but it’s gigantic and heavy, and the legs that hold up the support things at the ends of the stand are no good. Bosch makes a great one, but it’s $279. Delta makes a nice one, but you have to attach your saw permanently. I’m not sure if that bothers me or not.

I guess I could flop it onto the Workmate and use two freestanding support doodads. Whatever they’re called.

This saw would be perfect for deck problems and so on.

Maybe the answer is to buy the Delta stand and leave it set up in the garage. A miter saw is extremely handy, but only if it’s always ready to use.

I don’t know what to do with the old saw. Buying it was a mistake. Craigslist, maybe.

I have been considering turning my old melamine desk into a router table. If I do that, I can put the miter saw on it and use add-on supports. The router is under the table, and the miter saw would be above it, so there would be no conflict.

Dust removal will be challenging. Maybe I should just put a big fan beside the table, to blow sawdust out into the driveway. I’ve noticed that no matter how much sawdust I blow out there, it disappears in a day or two. And I can pretend it’s mulch.

Fine New Whip

You have to do me a favor.

Make me stop looking at this truck.

It’s a little confusing. It seems like the headlights and grille on this thing are different from the photos of other 2007 Silverados I’ve seen. But it’s automatic. It has the small V-8. And it has a regular bed with no ridiculous crew cab. And it only has 7,000 miles on it.

In some ways it’s fairly cheesy. The windows have cranks, and there’s no CD player. And vinyl seats? Won’t I stick to those? I like the durability, but I would think leather would be best, to avoid the staining you get with cloth, without losing breathability.

The appeal of getting a cheap used work truck is that it’s cheap. The downside is that I might want to make a truck my primary vehicle in a year or so, and then I’ll have no T-bird to back it up, and my only ride will be a pea-soup-colored truck with window cranks.

Chili!

My yard has been sprayed with copper. The garage door has yielded to my efforts. To reward myself, I have decided to commit suicide with chili.

I made my famous Unauthentic White Anglo-Saxon Protestant Chili today, only I made a change. I took out 2/3 of the beans. I am trying not to be a giant obese hog, and the beans are what make chili sit in your guts like mashed potatoes. With the beans cut down, the chili isn’t so carb-heavy.

Believe it or not, I’m low on peppers. I have some white habaneros, but they’re all heat and no flavor. I managed to scrape together three habanero golds and one yellow habanero, and I made my own chili powder, which contained chipotles. I think I did okay. I put the cutting board and a few other things in the dishwasher, and after it had been running a while, I opened it to add something else, and I started coughing. The pepper residue from the dishes was rising up with the steam. It was like being maced.

Usually I don’t go for internal blistering, but today I felt like I needed some heat in my chili, so I am not playing. I got some cheddar to put on the top and some sour cream to go on the side. This should be tremendous.

It Will Pay

Man, do I have stuff to do today. I have to spray things with copper to kill fungus. I have to make some effort to get started on the soffit. And I have to kill an electric eye on a garage door.

I have had lots of problems with this electric eye. Its purpose is to detect objects in the path of the door and stop the door so it won’t close on them. That’s its ostensible purpose. Its actual purpose is to protect the garage-door-opener company from lawyers.

You would have to be brain-damaged to let yourself be injured by a garage door. And the door has a second sensor which stops it when it hits stuff, so the electric eye is superfluous even for the brain-damaged. Obviously, somebody has sued over this, because there is no other explanation for all this safety junk.

I am wondering if I can fool the electric eye by putting foil over it, so the foil reflects the light back into the sensor. If the door crushes me and I die, I will take full responsibility.

I can’t believe it didn’t occur to me to disable it sooner. Maybe I’m brain-damaged, and I need the sensor to save me.

I put arsenic on some of my St. Augustine grass yesterday. Still waiting to see if it dies. I sure hope it does. I love that fluffy, bug-free, weed-free Bermuda grass.

Over the last two days, I have gotten so much done, it’s hard to believe. Yesterday I filled the trash heap with an enormous pile of hibiscus and other limbs. I gave a new hedge its first trim. I’ve been moving my old tomato pots off the patio and dumping the dirt in areas that need it.

I feel full of hope these days. Am I the only Republican who can say that at this time? I’m sure I’m not, although I doubt there are many non-Christian Republicans who feel this way.

Amen, Bubba

I feel like God and gardening are all I write about these days. I guess it’s monotonous for a lot of people. Can’t seem to do anything about it, however.

I think the physical condition of a house reflects the spiritual condition of the people in it. If you have filth and crud around your doors and on your walls, for example, I think it means malevolent spiritual beings go in and out freely and hang out inside and on the grounds. Just as the blood on the doorway of a Hebrew home during the Passover was a sign that a hostile spirit was not to enter, mildew and rust and mold and bug cocoons are signs that say, “Everybody come in and party; you will be welcomed here.” I can’t say I know of a biblical justification for this idea, but it still makes sense to me. So I can’t help thinking that the compulsion I feel to correct the neglect and decay on this property comes from God and reflects the turnaround I have made.

My mother was a realtor. In addition to selling property, she found tenants for condominiums. I used to paint empty condos for her, and sometimes I helped clean them.

In Miami, the presence of drug dealers and the necessity of doing business with them are facts of life. And it was worse back when my mother was alive. It was not unusual for her to rent properties to people she felt sure sold or transported cocaine or other drugs. I was often disgusted by the things I saw when I entered the places they had vacated. Very often I could smell the roach feces as I opened the front door.

Many of these people were involved in Santeria and other occult practices. Sometimes they left big black candles behind, which had become fastened to counters by wax that had melted. They had revolting shrines. If I recall correctly, sometimes they had photos of their children around the areas where they kept their religious items. Innocent-looking school photos framed in construction-paper borders. Imagine involving your child in Santeria. Why not just inject him with AIDS while you’re at it? Looking at those photos was like looking at photos on milk cartons. No hope for those kids.

The tenants kept liquor around, ostensibly to be used in worship. And they had so many roaches, their cabinets were littered with tiny brown pellets of reeking manure. For some reason, they had German roaches, which are much filthier than the bigger and scarier American roaches. German roaches are unusual in a clean home in Miami; it has been years since I have seen one. Avoiding American roaches is impossible, because they live in the trees and don’t need filth to survive.

I remember sponging out those cabinets and throwing out that disgusting Santeria trash. I wondered how anyone could be foolish enough to worship demons in their own home. Of course, this stuff still goes on here, and it’s not just among drug dealers. But with drug dealers, you can pretty much count on it.

These people welcomed demons into their lives; they spent money and worked hard to attract them. And their homes were like neglected animal pens. They stank. If you were to buy one of these condos, the only way to make them right would be to install new cabinets and replace the carpeting and blinds. The filth works its way into the particle board and fibers.

Santeria, spiritism, and voodoo are among the reasons I want to get out of Miami. These evil religions are the reason life in countries to the south of us are so miserable. In a country where Santeria is popular, no one should be surprised when a communist revolution erupts. You should expect things like that to happen; it’s the logical result. When you worship demons, a punishment like the Castro regime should be considered mild. And Haiti, where voodoo is practiced, is worse than India.

And here we are in the US, flirting with socialism, at a time when sick religions are more popular than ever. Coincidence?

I keep thinking about getting a truck. At first, I wanted one because I realized it was impossible to pursue my interest in tools without a decent vehicle that would hold things like dirt, bricks, scrap metal, and sheets of plywood. But lately, I have begun to think that every responsible person should have a truck these days. At least those that don’t live in cities. Hard times may be on the way; when they arrive, practical things will be a blessing, and Bentleys and Porsches will lose a lot of their appeal. And a person who has a truck can do things for other people, which can’t be done with a roadster.

Today I have to put poison on my mamey tree, which has termites. I have to trim a hedge. I should trim a tree that is getting a little close to telephone and electrical wires. Sooner or later I have to get real and fix the soffit where the bees were removed. I also need to remove a dead strangler fig from a cabbage palm.

Before too long, things will look presentable. I may celebrate by barbecuing every day for a week.

Take the Good With the Bad

Deflation. Good if you have cash. Bad if you owe money. I keep wondering if it’s on the way. Gas prices are plummeting, and so are the prices of metals.

Here is something that may make the shooters among you happy: Natchez Shooter’s Supply is selling CCI Blazer 9mm ammunition for $7.49 per box. Ammunition is full of copper and lead (and aluminum, in the case of Blazers), so as metal prices have gone insane, so has the cost of shooting. Now metals are cheaper. Maybe that’s why ammunition prices are dropping.

They’re even selling .45 ACP for under twelve bucks. If you don’t reload, this is a hell of a deal. Maybe the metal shortage is over.

Incidentally, let me ask: have any of you had bad luck with PMC .357 ammunition? The last two times I’ve tried it, I’ve had lots of duds, and I’ve been pretty unhappy with my accuracy.

Yesterday I started thinking (again) about building a belt sander. Then I looked at the price of steel. It’s ridiculous. A one-foot piece of 2″ square tubing costs $22.

Can someone explain this to me? I’m sure I can buy heavier products containing steel for less than that. And they’ve been worked and painted and shipped and advertised, so you would expect them to cost more.

I have to wonder how anyone ever comes up with the money to fabricate anything. Some time ago, I realized you can do a lot with dirt-cheap galvanized stuff, but the cold-rolled costs plenty.

I’ve noticed something else. The supply of surplus Ebay motors has dried up. Wonder what that means. Does it reflect a slowdown in business, generally?

Picking a motor is difficult even when there are a lot of them available. For example, one guy who built a grinder says he found a DC motor and speed control on Ebay. It’s nice to be able to vary the speed of a grinder. But how do you power a one-horse DC motor? Where would you get that kind of DC current? Ebay has something called a “motor drive.” I guess that’s it.

I never got the gearmotor I ordered for my pig roaster. I’m very upset about that. Maybe I should take care of that first.

NEVER Pick my Mangoes

I found out something surprising today.

I got myself a machete at Home Depot a while back. It’s Chinese. Looks okay, but the blade is dull, and the edge has corners on it, and they obstruct the blade when it goes into stuff. I also got a hand sharpener; one of those things you pull blades through. I figured it was very unlikely to work on a big machete, but I knew it would work on other garden items, so what the hell.

It seems to have some effect on the machete, but on the whole, it’s lame. So I started looking around the web for a better answer. The ideal answer, clearly, is to build the belt grinder I wrote about a year or two ago. It would only cost several hundred dollars, and think how sharp my Home Depot machete would be.

I didn’t come to a conclusion about the sharpening, but I learned something wonderful. Gerber and Cold Steel both make machetes and sheaths. And they’re very, very cheap (around ten bucks). So, being the incorrigible Internet shopper that I am, I got one of each. Now I will have three machetes. Overkill, perhaps, but I fail to see how that is relevant to anything.

I have a Forschner scimitar knife which is only slightly shorter than a machete. It’s for slicing big things like pigs. It has occurred to me (since I sat down to write this) that a quality machete is probably a better deal. They cost half as much, and they’re even more impressive to dinner guests.

Cold Steel makes like five million different types of machete, so I went with the bolo shape. It’s wider toward the tip, to add angular momentum when you swing it. That should be fun. The Gerber has saw teeth on the back.

These things are really dangerous to use. If you swing down and miss, off come your toes. If you swing higher, the machete goes into your shin. If you swing sideways and miss, it goes into your left hand. Something to think about.

In my experience, they’re not that useful. They’re good for cutting sod, and you can use them to clear away green plants, but anything woody is likely to be a problem for a machete. So the intelligent thing seems to be to avoid using a machete until you’re sure nothing else will do.

The self-defense possibilities are obvious. Get one of these things sharp, and you’re probably better armed than an average gun owner, who would be lucky to shoot the earth successfully with three tries.

I guess I’ll get out the grinder and see what I can do with the machete I already have. If I can get the blade to make contact with the stone.