More Stuff we All Need

You know what I really REALLY want? Other than a pickup?

1. A floor drill press.

2. A Saiga 12 shotgun.

I’m just about positive we are going to see the price of tools drop considerably, because commodities are getting cheap and the dollar is getting strong. So I am hoping I’ll be able to get a good deal on a drill press. And I am convinced that a Saiga 12 shotgun with a laser and extended magazines is just about the best security weapon you can get for under a thousand dollars.

What is a Saiga 12? It’s an AK-47 that shoots 12-gauge rounds. And you can get ten-round clips, which negates the big weakness of security shotguns, which is capacity. So hopefully, you get AK reliability, autoloader speed, 12-gauge stopping power, and rifle capacity.

These guns are supposed to be super-reliable, and they cycle fast, and you can have one for a little over five hundred bucks. And I’m pretty sure no rifle or pistol can compare, in terms of effectiveness. Being hit with one dose of buckshot is like being shot by several .30-caliber weapons at once.

I considered a Saiga .410. Supposedly, .410 loads are highly effective, and you get less recoil and muzzle rise and so on. But gun nuts seem convinced that 12 gauge is the way to go.

Right now, I depend on pistols to protect myself. And pistols are swell. They work great at household distances, and they’re easy to carry and maneuver. But it’s easy to miss with a pistol. If you’re within a hundred feet, I can pretty much count on hitting you at will with a long gun, even if you’re moving and I shoot from the hip. At least, I have found that to be true in the past. I guess you wouldn’t want to shoot from the hip if you could avoid it, because of recoil problems, but it illustrates the difference between pistols and long guns. It’s also harder to shoot yourself with a long gun.

Last time I went to the range, I looked at the nearly-new lumber they had put in the ground by the targets. It was the same stuff they use to make railroad ties. There were long pieces of it running across the range in front of the target bases. Mike and I were amazed to see that the wood already had bullet tracks in it. Seven yards from the firing line! There are people who go to the gun range and aim at the targets from seven yards and hit the ground! Bet that doesn’t happen much with long guns.

I think you can also put bayonets on these things. Not sure. Imagine explaining that to the cops, when they arrive to scoop up a criminal’s remains.

I saw a nice Delta bench drill press yesterday at Lowe’s. I felt like hugging it. I keep thinking of all the miserable jobs I’ve had to do, that would have been simple with a drill press. Maybe I’ll get my wish, and Steel City prices will slide back to ’07 levels.

More Power!

I’m a pretty awesome guy. I realize that, and I admit it, because it saves time.

Today I managed to install a 4-plug 20-amp socket inside my air handler closet. I also yanked an ancient light socket that went nowhere, capped the wires, shoved them back in the wall, and filled the void with Great Stuff so I’ll have a base on which to pile the patching stuff later.

I only worked about two hours, but I am wiped out. The air handler takes up almost the entire closet, and I was working in spaces about 15″ wide. Sometimes I had to back out and go back in to change tools. Exasperating.

At the outset, all I had was about eight feet of Romex going into the closet and attached to a 220-volt, 40-amp breaker at the panel. I had to remove the breaker, put in a 20-amp 120-volt breaker, cap the excess wires, rearrange everything so the colors were appropriate, attach hangy things to the wall in the closet to make the Romex to a square box, attach the square box to the wall, wire up two receptacles, attach the house wiring to the receptacles, and put the box together.

Because I plan to continue the circuit past the box (for some lights and the outdoor stuff), I decided to make the receptacle wiring super anal retentive. I used crimp-on eye connectors and extra wire to connect the receptacles to each other. Then I put eyes on the house wiring. I attached the receptacles to the face plate (which required me to come up with my own bolts), and then I put the whole mess together. If you know anything about the way electricians usually crap this stuff up, you will understand how weird my method was. But it’s incredibly clean, neat, and organized, and it will be much easier to run the additional stuff because I was so meticulous.

I removed a considerable amount of garbage the electricians and AC guys had left. By that, I don’t mean trash. I mean stupid things that needed to be corrected. The AC guy needed power to run a doodad connected to the handler. Did he put in a circuit? No, he drilled a hole into the garage wall, took an extension cord, and ran it out to one of my precious garage sockets. I kid you not. I got rid of that Sanford & Son monstrosity today. I had to sever the cord to pull it out of the wall. While I was at Home Depot, I looked for a plug I could splice onto it, but they cost nearly as much as new cords, so I’m tossing it.

Here’s a plug for Klein tools. I was tired, and I somehow got confused, and I cut the extension cord while there was still juice running through it. I popped the breaker when I shorted the wires. Those insulated handles work.

Tonight or tomorrow I’ll run conduit and connect this circuit to the outdoor stuff, and I’ll see if anything explodes.

I can’t say this emphatically enough: you need to overdo things when you work on your house. Example: never settle for a two-plug receptacle when you can have four. Never settle for a 15-amp circuit when you can have 20. Never get the crazy idea that you have enough power outlets. Sometimes you can add five dollars to the cost of a job and save yourself a lifetime of frustration and misery. Electrical stuff is very cheap, and if you spend a little extra, you can improve the livability of your house a great deal.

And always try to make things easier on yourself in the future. When you install something, imagine yourself trying to work on it a year later, and try to take the landmines and booby-traps out of it. I have no idea what I’m doing, but I am smart enough to realize that doing things right makes a big difference.

When this is over, I’ll have four sockets in the closet, two banks of lights in the closet, two more garage sockets, and a well-grounded 20-amp circuit that ISN’T connected to a 60-amp fuse.

Someday, I want an all-concrete house with concrete floors and double-pane windows. I want drains in the floors. I want to be able to clean the place with a hose and a leaf blower. I am fed up with frustrating BS that wastes my time.

More

I just have to offer myself this little salute.

How?

Surprise me tomorrow morning with some information. How do you drill a 10″ deep hole in concrete with a coring bit that is 4″ long? Seems like long bits are hard to find.

I was thinking there must be some kind of bit extender, and that every time the bit bottoms out, you could knock the core out with a chisely shaped sort of a thing.

But maybe it’s impossible.

No Explosions

Man, I am beat. I haven’t been working that hard. And it’s not really that hot outside. But it’s so muggy, the sweat gushes out of you, and somehow, it’s exhausting.

I ripped out the conduit running from the AC disconnect box to the outdoor floodlight. I rewired the floodlight. I ran wire in through the garage wall. I opened a hole going from the garage into the air handler closet, where there is a handy, unused length of Romex.

The drilling was too easy. I barely got to enjoy it. The rotary hammer just farts once or twice, and then you’re through the wall. As tool experiences go, this is hard to beat.

I experienced severe confusion, trying to figure out how to take wires running from the floodlight’s EMT conduit and run them through a concrete wall. There are a lot of rigid conduit parts made for this, but I couldn’t find any EMT stuff. I guess EMT under an outdoor soffit is less than kosher. I don’t know. I solved it by screwing a 1/2″ EMT connector into the side of a PVC box and screwing the box to the wall. I popped the plug out of the back of the box, and I ran the wires through it and into the wall. I pumped the opening full of Alex caulk to keep bugs from using it as a highway, although I guess that’s kind of pointless in a garage. I may blast the cavity inside the cinderblock full of foam, purely out of spite. This is Miami. SOMETHING will make a home in there.

I suppose a real man would replace all the EMT conduit with rigid. I don’t know what the code is. Virtually every piece of outdoor wiring I’ve seen in houses here has been EMT, but that doesn’t mean anything.

The rotary hammer makes a bigger hole on the way out than it does on the way in, so I patched the holes with crap from a can, and now I have to wait until tomorrow before I can finish.

The wiring from the AC box to the floodlight was fascinating. It passed an outdoor outlet on the way. There was one color code on the way from the box to the outlet, a second between the outlet and the light, and a third in the light. So part of the time I was just replacing wires so things would make sense.

Fixing the outdoor wiring is not what’s exciting here. What’s exciting is getting a new 20-amp outlet in the garage, a new 20-amp outlet in the air handler closet, and two sets of lights on the wall in the closet. But that won’t happen until tomorrow or Thursday.

I am the king of all tools. Fear me. Etc. Etc.

Makita Makes it Easy

I am making a Youtube of the hammer drill versus the rotary hammer. I happen to have 3/4″ masonry bits for each. I started the hole in the garage wall with the hammer drill, and it was working okay. Then I hit it with the rotary hammer. ZAP. I was done. Very nice.

Woody Allen says 80% of success is showing up. I would say 50% is showing up and 40% is having the right tool.

The Garage Will Submit Shortly

It’s an exciting day. Aren’t ALL days exciting? Of course they are. But this one stands out, because yesterday, my ridiculous rotary hammer arrived. This means I can redo the 15-amp 110 circuit some brilliant contractor ran directly to a 60-amp 220 fuse. I get to drill two deep 3/4″ holes in concrete and cinderblocks.

The hammer is kind of scary. And it has several knobs, which means I may have to look at the manual. Yesterday I complained that a contractor had used a rented demo hammer to make a hideous hole in a wall by the AC compressor. I think I understand why that happened. I think the rental people refuse to rent complicated tools to complete idiots, because the rental people lose the manuals, and they don’t want doofuses making dubious guesses. The demo hammer is much simpler. You push button, it go.

I’m psyching myself up, here. I may have to Youtube this for posterity. I think I’ll plug the hammer into the existing defective circuit and see if it burns the house down.

I Did Sleep at a Holiday Inn Express Once

As the proud owner of a rotary hammer that has not been delivered yet, I have an observation.

There is a hole at the foot of a wall, outside. It’s a three-foot-high wall. During heavy rain, water used to accumulate behind it. Long ago, I instructed a contractor to put the hole in, with a PVC pipe, to let the water out.

They rented a demo hammer with a chisel bit, and they busted a big nasty hole. It took them a long time. They quit before it was done. I had to go behind them with a hammer and chisel and open it up. I crammed a pipe in there and sealed it in place with foam. It looks pretty bad.

After I ordered the rotary hammer, a reader of this blog said I had to get a coring bit. This is pretty much the same thing as a hole saw, except it makes holes in concrete. You can make holes over 3″ wide with the hammer I ordered. Pretty, smooth holes. And if you hit rebar? No problem. The bits are made to cut it. It has occurred to me that this is what the contractor should have used.

Question: how many years do you have to work in construction before you realize a coring bit and a rotary hammer are what you need to make holes in concrete walls? Am I imagining things, or is this yet another example of Miami-contractor incompetence?

Starts With “W”

Og is off on an adventure, so he asked me to help keep his blog going while he’s away.

I think I am doing a good job.

Comforting Illusion

You people have completely corrupted me.

Today I was looking at my new carbon steel machete from China, and I realized I didn’t want it to rust, even though it has a street value of about seven dollars. I wanted to coat it with something. But it had sap on it. Because I punished some shrubs and trees.

Because my readers have pumped my head so full of tool crap, it wasn’t even challenging. I hit it with alcohol and then Windex, and then I blasted it with brake cleaner, and then I wiped it down, spritzed it with Eezox, and put it in my vise to dry.

I’m planning to sharpen it. And wouldn’t you know it? I just happen to have a beautiful 1750-rpm grinder that won’t overheat the metal.

This is the kind of situation I have been aiming at, getting all these tools. Often, in the past, I’ve thought of things I needed to do, and I didn’t even try, because I didn’t have the tools, or I had tools that were only good enough to allow me to succeed with great and prolonged suffering. Or sometimes I paid a fortune to rent stuff. What I want is to be able to waltz into the garage, lay my hand on the right doodad, and utterly crush and dominate every challenge. I am like 25% there, which is saying a lot.

By the way, Windex is the only thing that will take tobacco juice off your hands. I discovered that. People in Eastern Kentucky think I’m a genius. I don’t mean tobacco spit. I mean the sticky stuff that adheres to you when you cut tobacco.

Steel Awaits my Mighty Touch

I need a new railing for the back steps. There are only a couple of steps. The old railing is steel, and whoever made it sunk the upright parts in the concrete. He apparently shoved them into round holes and then filled the holes, but he didn’t fill them enough to make them level with the surrounding concrete, so they hold a little water. Naturally, the steel rusted away.

I’m fairly sure it’s impossible to extract the old steel and do it this way again. I think the best thing is to ream the holes out until I can put some patching stuff in there and sand it off level. Then I can attach the new railing with bolts through flanges, like an intelligent person.

Help me out here. I’m considering buying some sturdy steel pipe, cutting it to size, and welding it together. Then I’ll weld flanges to the bottoms of the upright bits and bolt them to the step with lag shields, or I’ll sink the bolts into epoxy, which would probably be better.

Think this will work? Galvanized fence posts weld up nice once you get the zinc off, but I’m thinking I could find something heavier. It wouldn’t be any harder to work on, because I am Tool Man and have no fear of thick steel.

I refuse to pay for regular steel at Home Depot. Twenty bucks for a frigging six-foot square tube? Insane. I can get better stuff out of people’s trash for nothing.

Charlie Don’t Mulch

All hail ME.

I have poisoned as much of my St. Augustine grass as possible, without risking giant patches of bare dirt. I have re-established the ant poison perimeter. I have obtained a machete, the need for which I should not have to explain. And I am about to fertilize.

I also took a look at rotary hammers while I was at Home Depot. They kind of scared me. I have ordered a rotary hammer. I chose it because it was in the price gap between my cordless hammer drill and a full-throttle demo hammer. There were smaller rotary hammers that were very close in price to my existing tool, and I figured it was stupid to get something so similar to it. For about fifty bucks more, I found a nicer, bigger one which has gotten rave reviews. Then I went to Home Depot and checked out some Bosch models which cost less than the Makita I ordered and which should therefore be smaller. And they were quite huge. In fact, they were not a whole lot smaller than the giant Hitachi demo hammer I rented last year to bust concrete slugs. So now I’m wondering what kind of monster tool I ordered. I mean, I’m hoping to use this thing to drill a bunch of 1/4″ holes this month. That may be like using a shovel to stir a martini.

I don’t care! Tools are almost always a good deal, compared to hiring idiots. I’ll find a use for it.

Now I must go add more non-organic, hopefully radioactive chemicals to the yard.

Beware my Wrath, House

Can I just tell you how wonderful it is to wake up in the United States of America, with a garage full of tools and a bunch of house problems to crush?

That sounds crazy, I guess. I just feel good today. As much as I hate sweating in the yard, I get tremendous satisfaction from the results. Wait…that almost sounds like a WORK ETHIC. Something must be wrong.

I consulted with a yard guru yesterday, and I have decided to kill the St. Augustine grass. Right outside, a battle is going on. The battle is between ordinary, boring, weed-loving St. Augustine grass, and pretty, weed-choking Bermuda grass. I have been trying to decide which one to poison and which one to keep, and because the yard guru says Bermuda will do well here, I have decided to put my considerable weight behind the Bermuda faction.

He says the kind of Bermuda which is invading can’t be bought, because the seed isn’t sold. So the only answer is poisoning the St. Augustine and transplanting chunks of Bermuda. Fine and dandy. I can kill two birds with one stone. Many lawn weed-killers kill St. Augustine grass, so all I have to do is weed the areas where the grasses are mixed. I can’t wait. Killing plants I hate is nearly as much fun as saving plants I like.

I also have to take the transfer motor thing off an SUV and see if I can make it work. And then there is the mess the bee-removal commandos left.

I can’t do any of the electrical work, because I refuse to use my hammer drill to go through 12″ of solid concrete again. I broke down and ordered a rotary hammer. I thought the hammer drill was the right tool for this, and that’s sort of true, but it’s like using a paring knife to carve a turkey. The rotary hammer should take about a tenth of the time the hammer drill takes. Don’t get me wrong; I love the hammer drill for most holes. But when you’re putting a 3/4″ hole through poured concrete, it’s not ideal. And I’m afraid using a cordless hammer drill for that kind of stuff approaches abuse and will eventually ruin the tool.

Here’s a question. Let’s say you have a cinderblock wall, and you need to put a hole in it for a unit air conditioner. What’s the right tool? I have realized that a $300 investment in a unit would multiply the usefulness of the garage by a thousand. Even if it only drops the temperature to 80 and the humidity to 60%, it will be a godsend. Right now, during the 9 hot months of the year, I find myself spending way less time out there than I should, because after a while, I can’t stand the sensations of my shirt sticking to me and sweat running into my eyes.

I guess a unit air conditioner will be an invitation to burglars. That means putting bars around it, which means fabrication, which means WELDING.

I am swimming in testosterone.

Fun New Fire Hazard Revealed

Here’s today’s shoddy-construction nightmare.

The air conditioner crapped out. Probably a bad capacitor on the compressor. No problem, right? Wrong. The breaker by the compressor failed to trip, so the wiring and the box burned. While the AC guy was replacing it, he found a piece of conduit running from the 220 AC box to a floodlight and outdoor socket. It was probably #14 wire. With the ground used as neutral. And NO FUSE ON THE CIRCUIT. In other words, some…GENIUS…drew power from a 60-amp 220 circuit for a 15-amp 110 circuit, and he didn’t use a neutral wire, and he didn’t put a separate fuse or breaker in the smaller circuit. So if the floodlight fries, the wiring leading to it melts. And if something near the conduit or floodlight catches fire, adios, house.

Isn’t there a law that says I can shoot someone over this?

The solution is to remove the conduit going to the AC box, drill a hole into the garage, drill a hole from the garage into the AC air handler closet, run more conduit, and hook it all up to the bare 220 Romex I found earlier this year, hanging in the closet. I can hook the Romex up to a 110 breaker at the panel. I can also put up some lights in the closet, which I wanted to do anyway.

The AC guy is putting a new box with slug fuses next to the compressor. I was going to bitch, but now that I’ve seen how well circuit breakers work outdoors, I’m keeping my mouth shut. Fuses are wonderful. Bring them on.

This house is like a sickly octogenarian, and I’m the immune system.

Yesterday I found out there was a leak in the swimming pool pump pipes I replaced, so I get to fix those as soon as the AC guy leaves.

Should I buy some expensive tools, chosen primarily because I think they’re cool? Yes, obviously. That will help.

If you have kids, for God’s sake, learn something about wiring and inspect your house. Don’t trust a professional. They just walk around the property once and then take your money. This place has been inspected, and they didn’t find a damn thing.

God Bless Competition

Life is very exciting these days, because it looks like ordinary mortals will finally be able to get their hands on a Fein Multimaster…CLONE. I mentioned this earlier today.

The Multimaster is one of those tools you feel you absolutely have to have, once you see the cool commercial. It’s even more impressive than the Flavor Injector and Mighty Putty, and that’s saying something. All it does is vibrate a blade or a sanding tip back and forth, but somehow, you can do a lot of impressive crap with it anyway.

I love watching the videos. The people at Fein seem obsessed with two things: removing putty from windows, and cutting the bottoms of door jambs so tile will fit under them. It sounds boring, but I could watch them do that all day.

Have I ever needed to do either of those things?

No.

Still.

Up until now, the Fein Multimaster has sold for the ridiculous price of like $200 for the tool and a couple of crappy attachments, which is like paying $200 for an electric toothbrush. So a lot of people have refused to buy Multimasters. I think the price is high because there’s a patent issue; nobody was allowed to clone it in the US. Maybe I’m wrong. Anyway, in a couple of days, you’ll be able to buy one of two knockoffs: the Bosch PS50 Multi-x and the Dremel Multimax. Actually, I think the Dremel is already available.

Boy, they worked hard coming up with original names for these things.

The Dremel has a cord and costs around a hundred bucks. It’s a 1.5-amp tool. The Bosch is cordless. I have no idea what the wattage is on either tool. The Bosch, plus the basic junk, is like $130. So it’s like 65% of the price of the Fein. I know, I know…the Fein is made by genetically engineered Swiss elves who used to work for BMW (HEIL!), so it’s an Ubertool. I’m sure the Bosch will work okay anyway.

I’m not a huge fan of cordless tools, but for something like this, I guess it makes sense. It’s not like you’re going to be running it for an hour at a time.

Here’s what would be really good. It would be really good if Fein dropped its price. I guess that will happen in about a month.

I make fun of these things, but I’ll tell you what’s cool about them. You can take a flat piece of wood and cut rectangular holes in it. I don’t have any other tools that do that. It’s a real pain.

No Amateurs, Please

I have a question for the tool people. It’s very technical.

Why is it that when you work in the yard all day, and then you set up your miter saw in the driveway and make shelves, and you get sawdust all over yourself and you sweat like a pig, and then you go inside and find out the air conditioning isn’t working because a capacitor blew…it always happens on Friday night?