Like Dancing With a Fat Lady With a Square Head

Whee. What fun I just had. I decided to move the compressor over near the machine-tool wiring, and I put the vertical band saw where the compressor used to be.

The compressor is the size of a refrigerator, and it weighs 500 pounds. Most of the weight is on top, so if it starts to fall, anyone around it stands a good chance of being turned into a stain.

I could not remember how I got it where it was, but there were several pieces of 1/2″ electrical conduit under it, so I could tell I must have tried to roll it on them, sort of like the old photos of slaves moving blocks for the pyramids.

Every time I move a big machine, I forget how stable they are. I lose all sense of what it takes to turn them over. This makes for a very nerve-wracking beginning. Today I had to lean the machine back to pull the isolation pads out from under it, and I kept thinking it would keep going and end up horizontal.

Those pads are crap, incidentally. Save yourself some money. Cut pieces out of an old tire. The pads deteriorate for no apparent reason. The ones I have are falling apart.

I tried moving the machine without the pipes, because I was afraid I’d push it over and die in an embarrassing way. I got it to move about a foot before giving up. It didn’t seem possible that the pipes would help; the machine’s feet are small, so you would expect it to come off of the pipes before going very far. Surprisingly, you can shove it about five inches at a time, which is more than enough to get the job done, and you can even turn it as long as one foot is on a pipe.

I was sweating pretty badly, even though the AC was on. Later I realized it had reset itself to 77 degrees instead of the usual 70. Swell.

I put the compressor behind my work stool, by my bench. Now when the 5-HP Baldor explodes into action like a MOAB, it will be two feet from my head. That will be nice.

I could just make a long cord for it and experiment with new places. I may do that. I already have a nice piece of 50-amp RV cord.

It’s funny; people talk about the necessity of using huge wires on machine tools, but the motor on my milling machine has what appear to be 12-gauge wires on it, and the wires on my 5 HP compressor motor are thin, too. I can see that it’s important to go overboard in the walls of a house, especially when wires are packed into small spaces that retain heat, but I’m not afraid of a nice extension cord, especially when the manufacturer says 50 amps are no problem.

The compressor is going to have a 3-prong plug and its own 220 receptacle. I have to get that taken care of. Everything must be up to code. This is Karl Goebbels, after all. I mean Coral Gables. I don’t want to get shipped off to a gulag.

I’m hoping the 2-HP air conditioner and the 5-HP compressor won’t mind sharing 40 amps. If they do, I’ll have to have the wiring upgraded, but that won’t be a big deal, since the existing circuit has blazed a trail any electrician can follow.

Tomorrow, God willing, the air dryer arrives. I’ll mount the hose reel on the wall above the compressor, and I’ll finally have compressed air I can use. I may go nuts and buy a cheap blasting cabinet.

My mobile bases are on the way from Grizzly, so I’ll be able to move stuff around and get the ultimate ergonomic and aesthetic solution. I can’t budge my drill press. It’s supposed to weigh around 200 pounds, but I added a sliding table and a big drill press vise, and I’m storing an 8″ rotary table and an 8″ chuck on the base.

Guess I could try the pipes. I’ll have to move it eventually, because it’s not going to jump on a mobile base when I whistle. My hoist is nearly directly over it (because I used it to put the drill press in the garage), so I guess I can lift it.

I’m so glad I didn’t go with my original plan, which was to run new conduit over the roof trusses, 12 feet in the air.

I hope I don’t have to move the compressor again, but very little is certain in this life.

The Garage of Blues is getting so cool, I’m afraid one day I’ll show up, and they won’t let me in.

For the longest time, I’ve been dreaming of a big garage-type room where I can relax and conceivably even entertain. God is giving me a foretaste of it. See Psalm 37, verse 4. He really does the things he says he’ll do.

I think I’ll go look at the mess I just made, without making any effort to clean it up.

Wheels

I’m anxiously awaiting my Ebay NOS refrigerated air dryer. I’ve been trying to figure out how to work it into the decor of the Garage of Blues.

Right now, things are working well. The vertical band saw and drill press form sort of an island in the middle of the garage, the mill is in a corner, the lathe is along a wall, and the table saw is on the other side of the room. The big compressor is between the garage doors. It’s a nice, ergonomic arrangement, but with the arrival of the dryer, things will have to be rearranged.

I have two 240 circuits out there. One is 60 amps. It’s for the table saw, vertical band saw, and both big machine tools. The other is 40 amps. Right now, the air conditioner is the only thing on that circuit. I was thinking of walking the compressor over to the machine side of the room and making a cord and plug for it, so it could go into the table saw socket. But that won’t work, because it has to be able to run at the same time as the plasma cutter, which has to be on the table saw circuit. So it looks like I have to put the compressor on the air conditioner circuit. I still think a socket is a good idea, though. Hardwiring costs you versatility, and I can’t think of any advantages it provides.

I guess I need a new socket on the machine wall, hooked up to the air conditioner line. I’ll have to put my compressor where the rolling tool chest is now. To keep easy access to the tool chest, I’ll have to put it where the drill press is. So the band saw goes where the compressor is now, and the drill press goes to the band saw’s location.

This adds up to a sad conclusion: I need mobile bases. I welded a mobile base together for the band saw, but I stupidly listened to some guy who said it would be a problem if it was too tall, so I fabricated caster mounts that would keep the height down. They work, but they’re flimsy, and the saw is hard to move. I covered the base with truck bed paint, so as far as I know, there is no practical way to clean it off, cut it up, and redo the casters. I don’t want to weld something that has flaming plastic all over it. It’s a big waste of metal, but I don’t know what else to do.

I’m going to have to put a base on the drill press, and I need a better base on the band saw. That will let me move stuff pretty freely, and it will make the garage much more versatile. So it’s time to take a stiff drink, log onto the Grizzly site, and place an order.

I’m not worried about the compressor circuit. I already have unused Romex lying around, plus unused conduit, so all I need are a socket and plug.

I also have to spend some loot on the truck. It looks like it has a camber problem. On a truck like this, you can’t adjust the front end camber using the tools they have at ordinary car shops. You have to find a place that does frame bending and so on. I’ve been getting alignments about every ten minutes, and the truck has been eating tires all the same. The folks at Firestone finally let me know that they couldn’t do anything about it.

There are a couple of shops in town that can do this. They cater to pimps, fake pimps, professional athletes, rappers, and low-riders. Thank God we have so many vain people in Miami. If you want to put 48″ rims on your pink and chartreuse Subaru, these guys will twist the frame and suspension parts to make it happen.

I have no idea how I ended up with a camber problem. The truck was used when I bought it. God only knows what the previous owner did. I’m going to make them check and make sure he didn’t add any stupid parts to the suspension.

I’m kind of disturbed by the amount of cash I’m laying out (the air conditioner also crapped out), but I think God has a purpose in all this. With these little problems, and with other unexpected needs for cash outlay, I think he’s reminding me not to be stingy. Not with others, and not with myself.

I don’t consider myself a fundamentally generous person. I come from stingy mountain people. In Eastern Kentucky, if someone gives a waiter a tip, they expect a free car wash. This is just how it is, and I am not immune to the influence. I try to listen when God tells me to give, but if I hadn’t drawn closer to God, I don’t think I’d be giving anybody much of anything.

Jesus told us we had to love each other. That obligation involves practical help as well as prayer. You have to give other people your time, money, goods, and so on. If God gives you a lot, he expects you to give a lot. And if that seems like a bummer, consider the people he isn’t blessing. They don’t lend or give, but then they don’t receive, either. I always remind myself: B.B. King says you have to pay the cost to be the boss, and it’s true. The people God puts in charge and makes prosperous have to help everyone else. The alternative to being a giver and lender is to be a borrower and charity recipient. It’s clear which is better.

This is a topic you can’t discuss much without inadvertently glorifying yourself, so I’ll leave it at that. I’m not getting into my own experiences. I would advise people not to feel bad when God requires them to give, because it suggests he wants to bless you.

Charismatic churches have turned giving into an onerous obligation, and they claim it’s all about giving to ministries. They occasionally mention the poor, but mainly, it’s, “Give me that thousand-dollar ‘seed gift’ so God can buy me a third 707.” They lie and manipulate to get money, and then they spend it on garbage. They lay guilt trips on their flocks, while they’re spending foolishly and putting churches in debt. I’m all done with that. God talks a lot about helping people in need. The stuff about giving to ministries is pretty sparse, once you get past the business about temple sacrifices (which have never applied to Christians). It’s great to give money to your church, but it should be because the Holy Spirit told you to do it, not because Steve Munsey made up a fundraising fable.

The other day I found out our church spent the cost of a Mercedes on eight annoying lights for the stage. I’m not exaggerating about the price.

There are a lot of things we actually need. We have debt. The person who told me about the lights saw that I was shocked and offended. Then he started to explain that someone high up in the church used to be a lighting guy. I raised my hand and told him to stop. That was all the explanation I needed.

Thank God he wasn’t a hockey player. We might have an ice rink.

These lights are extremely ugly, and they shine bright beams directly into the eyes of the congregation. Somehow Billy Graham got along without them. If the church was turned over to me tomorrow morning, they’d be on Craigslist before lunch. I don’t get it. We have a mortgage to pay off. I don’t think the Holy Spirit needs those lights. It’s not like he’s trying to land on an aircraft carrier at night.

I have learned not to give anything to the church–nothing beyond tithing–unless the Holy Spirit sends me orders on engraved stationery. I have to be a good steward, and I’m tired of seeing things rot and go to waste. Giving to other people is way more important, and it does much more good.

I’m also learning that financial foolishness is normal for churches. The people who run churches are like government workers; they don’t have real jobs. They don’t have to produce a service or produce and make a profit. They ask for money. They receive it. They spend it, either stupidly or wisely. Then they ask for more. If they waste money, it doesn’t affect their pay, unless the congregation knows about it. Charismatic churches tend to have zero accountability to their flocks, so people have no idea where the money goes, so they aren’t likely to complain. This must be the reason why churches are so corrupt and mismanaged.

Here’s a story I heard from a musician. He went to a church near me. Not my church. He was poor. A paying job came up. He told the church people he had to take the job. They berated him and tried to make him feel guilty. They said he had to play at a service instead. Remember now, as a tither, he pays their salaries, and they’re telling him not to work!

When the service rolled around, it turned out it didn’t conflict with his job. He also found out they knew it would not conflict when they were tormenting him.

The church had a singer who was working on their lights. He wanted to sing, he was talented…they had him doing lights. Typical. The church folks told him they wanted to give him a high-paying job as a singer. The condition was that he throw my musician friend out of the band. Nice. He refused, probably because he had some inkling of what the Lord would want him to do.

If you’re a Christian who works or volunteers in a church, stories like this will come to you, and you will learn that well-run churches are either nonexistent or very rare.

The problem is that people in leadership have no faith in God. You’re supposed to do what God tells you to do, regardless of whether it seems logical, and then you wait for God to bless you. We should be talking about the Holy Spirit and living in his power. We should be letting God draw people and money to churches. Instead, we rely on gimmicks and manipulation. Obviously, we don’t really believe God will back us up. We feel we have to “help” him. So the flesh takes over. Then you end up with eight lights that cost as much as a condominium.

There’s a positive side to knowing that churches are run badly. We’re taught that “church” doesn’t mean a building. It means the people who gather there. We should take that seriously. We should also remember that it doesn’t mean the people who are in charge. They’re just part of the whole. God is not a respecter of persons, even if most churches forget that. We use the word “VIP” in my church, and that’s really discouraging, because it shows our priorities are not in line with God’s.

My current take on all this is that as long as I’m doing good in my church, and I’m meeting and interacting with good Christians, the church is serving its purpose. The other stuff–what goes on in the offices and on the stage–may or may not be of God, and it may have very little to do with what God sees as the church’s purpose. The things sincere people do, under the radar, far from the stage, may be the primary functions of the church.

Oddly, I have become much more content with my church. If a worldly motivational speaker shows up hocking DVDs and pretending to be a guest pastor, I’ll just ignore him and wait for him to shut up and leave. If Steve Munsey comes in and claims all the Jews went to Jerusalem on Yom Kippur, I’ll smile and do my job, even though I know he’s wrong. I’ve met wonderful people. I’ve learned great things. Powerful things. I’ve gotten closer to God. Sometimes the people on the stage have helped. Much of the time, they have not, and I’ve moved forward because of someone else. That’s good enough. It doesn’t really matter where the growth comes from.

I still can’t believe I need new mobile bases.

Festival Seating

Let’s see if I can recap all the stuff that has gone on since my last post.

I’m ramping up the machining. I quit for a long time. My milling machine was acting up, and I was irritated because the lathe I blew a pile of cash on turned out to be incapable of cutting metric threads. Now I’m back. I’ve been writing about this.

I’m trying to choose a new lathe. The old Clausing I bought doesn’t cut the mustard. No metric threads, overpriced and rare tooling…I’m done.

I’ve been looking at all sorts of stuff. The most appealing new machine is the Grizzly G0509G gunsmith lathe. It’s a 16 x 40 with a 2″ bore, so it would be a long time before I came up with a project that wouldn’t fit on it. It has higher tolerances than other Chinese Grizzlys. It has NSK bearings, not the La Choy or Joyce Chen or whatever brand that goes in most Grizzlys.It cuts a million different threads. It has a short headstock suitable for gunsmithing. Everyone loves it. It’s a good safe bet.

Still, I am considering older machines, provided they’re in really good shape.

This week I found a Mori Seiki on Craigslist for $3800. I was stunned. It’s not far away. I emailed the owner the same day the ad appeared, and naturally, I haven’t heard a peep. Very annoying. I assume some dealer pounced on it as he was typing up the ad. I’ll probably see it listed at AM Metalmaq in Hialeah, for $15,000. They always have astronomical prices.

The Mori Seiki is 17″ by something. I don’t know what. It’s an MS-1250G. If it’s in good shape, it will last longer than I will. The headstock is long, so it’s not ideal for gunsmithing. But it’s real quality, and if the bed isn’t too long, it will fit in the garage.

Same guy is selling a Webb lathe and a Webb mill. He has good taste.

I finally got an air dryer for the compressor. I wanted one that would do at least 20 CFM, and I was scared of the Chinese ones on Ebay. Some guy listed an Arrow Pneumatic 20 CFM dryer on Ebay, NIB, for $410. That’s an acceptable price as-is. New, a dryer with this capacity costs well over a thousand dollars. Even an Eaton would be a four-figure buy.

The seller insisted on using freight, which is expensive. I couldn’t get him to respond to messages about using UPS instead. This is a very small machine; freight is overkill. He wanted $155 to ship it. I got disgusted and made a lowball offer, subtracting the difference between freight and UPS. Surprisingly, he jumped on it, and when the freight bill came, it was $120. I would have been happy to pay the asking price. So because he didn’t feel like answering my messages, he ate a big loss and gave it to some freight company.

This will allow me to use the compressor the way it should be used. I don’t like to use the plasma cutter because of the water problem. It also discourages me from painting and blasting. I had checked into cheap inline dryers, but they seemed like the chintzy, problem-filled approach, so I let the whole business drop. I have seen okay deals on used refrigerated units, but most of them are huge, and they run on 220, and I just didn’t want to get involved in any more giant, worn-out machinery.

Hopefully, next week, I’ll be firing the new one up.

I am working on a 304 stainless garlic press on the lathe. This metal is supposed to be a pain to machine, but it’s working almost as easily as aluminum. Go figure. The press is basically a piston with holes to let the garlic out. As far as I know, it is literally impossible to buy a decent garlic press made in a factory. The steel ones are wimpy. The pot metal ones snap. The aluminum ones stain the food. I’ve had enough.

I was working on the bore the other day when the lathe went nuts. It started making horrible noises, and I shut it down. The motor belt had come apart.

When I looked it over, I found that I had mounted the motor so that the motor pulley and the speed-change pulley between the motor and spindle pulley were not in the same plane. They were way off. I have no idea how I managed to do something this stupid. When I was installing the new motor, I must have taken a break and forgotten that it needed to be shifted. The setscrew in the pulley had come loose, possibly from vibration caused by the belt problem, and it had slid halfway off the motor shaft.

I had to buy a new belt, pound the pulley back into place, set the screw, and install the belt. To install the belt, I had to take the speed-change pulley off its bearings so I could slip the belt over it. What a nightmare. I was covered in grease. I shifted the motor and got everything put back together. Then someone told me I could have bought a linked belt which came apart and could be installed without removing anything.

Arrggh.

Anyway, the lathe runs more smoothly now, and I feel like an idiot.

I’m working on a follow rest. I needed to make an angled cut on the aluminum block it’s made from, and I realized the only way to do it was to use my rotary table. Then I discovered a new problem. The clamping set for my mill doesn’t fit the rotab. It’s too big. And I really don’t like lifting the 120-pound rotab from the floor to the mill for little jobs. I decided to add a third rotab to my collection. I wanted a 6″ job, but for reasons known only to Enco, the 8″ ones are cheaper, so I got myself one, and it’s ready to be put to work.

I also got lathe dogs, radius gages (“gauges”?) and telescoping gages/gauges/whatever. Little stuff like this can really slow you down when you don’t have it.

The garage is turning out to be a gift from God. I used to call it the Disco Garage because it had a TV and Stereo. Now that I’ve opened it up and organized it to some degree, adding an old MP3 player with hundreds of CDs, I’ve rechristened it the Garage of Blues.

I ordered two hideous camo backpack chairs from Amazon. They discounted them heavily because no one would buy them. When they arrived, I found that the seats were about ten inches off the ground. I couldn’t send them back, because the shipping cost more than the chairs. I thought it was a terrible buy, but I put them in the garage, and now I love them. I turn down the lights, open a Coke, put on Freddie King, and drift off into a state of total bliss. I really can’t describe the peace I feel out there. There is something about the smell of concrete and tools and oil that does things to a man. It’s better than Valium. I assume. I don’t know much about Valium.

I stuck my creaky old laptop out there, and I have it on wireless. Now I can listen to the blues, machine off and on, and post crap to Facebook without leaving the garage. It’s paradise.

Here’s a photo. I guess it can’t capture the ambience, but seriously, I sit out there thanking God over and over.

Speaking of God, I saw Perry Stone on TBN this week. I can’t believe they let him host their show. TBN is largely about money and ego, and Perry Stone is starting to be highly critical of the hairspray-and-Mercedes crowd. He is saying the same things I keep saying to my friends. This week he had Paul Zink and Damon Thomas on his show, and they started saying the same stuff! They FLOGGED the moneychangers. It was glorious. It showed me that the things I’ve been saying really do come from God.

Damon Thomas said we use the term “megachurch” to describe a place that’s full of people (and therefore tithe money and glory for preachers), instead of focusing on the presence of the Holy Spirit. Perry Stone said we should be looking for the “mega-presence.” They laid into preachers who sit around and brag about attendance, and who spew comforting, politically correct, Dr. Phil-type garbage instead of introducing people to God. It was wonderful. I often tell people I know that we are hearing a lot of Dr. Phil nonsense, and Damon Thomas actually mentioned Dr. Phil, the same way I do! Amazing.

My church goes way overboard on the self-help stupidity, and we have become obsessed with filling seats and getting tithes and offerings. We talk very little about supernatural things, even though we’re charismatic. We bring idiots in, and they teach an inferior version of the self-help that’s available from secular sources. We bring Steve Munsey in, and he teaches his ridiculous lies about the Seven Blessings of This or That Jewish Holiday, and we put up with it because when people hear it, they give money. It still amazes me that no one has called him out on his bogus claim that all the Jews in Israel went to Jerusalem on Yom Kippur. Anyone who can work Google can prove that’s a lie. And any observant Jew can tell you there were no extravagant money offerings, except those people gave on their own initiative. The offerings were generally small, and God scaled them down for poor people.

Watching TBN, I felt ashamed for not being more outspoken. God put me here to be the salt of the earth, and although I am definitely saying enough to annoy people, I am not blunt enough. The salt is not having its intended effect. So I decided to say exactly what I think from now on, when it comes to things that happen in our church. We have been taught to condemn people who say anything critical, and it’s easy to get caught up in that. Legitimate godly criticism has been compared to gossip and grumbling. But it’s not. Find me a Biblical leader who sucked up and pleased men, and who never criticized. There is no such person. But there were plenty of bootlickers who earned God’s wrath.

Obviously, if we teach people to pray in the Spirit and walk by faith, they will receive success and healing and happiness, and that will draw people to the church. This other stuff is filth and ignorance. It’s misdirection. It will never work. I keep praying for God to change my church, and he’s going to do it. My faith tells me that. If I get on people’s nerves, good. I pay the church’s bills. It doesn’t pay mine. I’m not going to worry about the consequences.

We tell people to live by faith, but the church itself operates without faith, according to the world’s rules. That’s no good.

On Sunday, the church tried to get people to sign a pledge, swearing to tithe. Needless to say, I didn’t fool with that. Jesus and James told us not to swear. Anything beyond yes or no is from Satan. He sees the stupid oaths we swear, and he uses them as nooses to hang us. It’s amazing that churches and ministries can’t see the obvious hypocrisy of requiring Christians to swear.

I guess they would say a pledge isn’t an oath. That would be weaseling and hair-splitting. The dictionary equates swearing and oaths and pledges.

God continues taking care of me. He gives me things I will never deserve, and he withholds the bad things I do deserve. It has very little to do with being good. It’s a reward for faith, and even that faith came from him. Anyone can have this, but they will never find it as long as preachers lack the guts to teach them. Very sad. I wish Damon Thompson had a church down here.

What else is going on? I’m building a new guitar amp. A young friend from church is coming to the Garage of Blues tomorrow, and we’re starting work on a JTM45 clone. I can’t wait.

That’s about all I have today. If any of this sounds good to you, follow my example. Pray in tongues copiously every day, and try to communicate with God in private. This is the foundation of a successful life, and everything else grows from it.

Even Solomon Couldn’t Sift Through This BS

I’m going to get rid of my annoying Clausing lathe. I was a moron to try to save pennies by buying an old lathe with no features. I want something that has a 2″ bore or bigger, and I want metric threads on tap (pun possibly intended) instead of having to perform major surgery on the lathe.

Every time I start to think I know a little bit about what I should buy, I hear a conflicting story.

When I was looking for my first lathe, I was told I had to buy “old iron.” American machine tools RULED, even when they were 300 years old and wouldn’t turn on! They were so BITCHIN’ compared to CHINESE JUNK, only a FOOL would buy anything else!

Then I bought my geriatric lathe, and I started hearing stuff like this:

It’s a cruel trick to witlessly seduce a noob into buying what was once a great machine tool that today is worn-out with broken and missing parts. For a year the poor sap will break his heart trying to get acceptable quality work from a machine that would challenge a machinist of 40 years experience. Then thoroughly dicouraged and thousands of dollars poorer he junks the lot and takes up a lesser vocation.

When a noob asks you a question and you respond from basis of experience you are undertaking a responsibility. I strongly suggest those of you with experience AND strong opinions, set aside your personal preferences and guide your protege into choices he can live with.

PM is a bit zealous on the old iron topic and many there recklessly propagandize the poor noob into believing the old worn-out American junk is superior to new, snug better quality Asian import machines. I delight in scotching their prejudices with personal experience, matching machine to task scenarios, and actual quantified data when appropiate. Tragic to say the noob has been misled in ALL machine shop message boards.

That comes from a guy named Forrest Addy, who is openly worshiped by machining-forum nerds. “PM” means the Practical Machinist forum.

Og said to go ahead and buy Chinese, but I thought the “old iron” people had a clue, so I wasted my money on the Clausing.

I’ve been looking around to see what’s available, and I’ve been thinking the Grizzly 16″ gunsmithing lathe might be a good move. It’s very cheap for this type of lathe, because it’s Chinese, but it’s hyped as having a bunch of special touches, and it looks like the hype has some ground under it. I spoke with a Grizzly tech, and he said the claims are true. It really does have special bearings and gears. It runs exceptionally smoothly. It’s a decent machine.

Shiraz Balolia, the president of Grizzly is a world-class marksman, and he had this lathe created because of his interest in gunsmithing. That’s actually true; it’s not just catalog puffery. It may look like other Chinese lathes, and it may be built in the same plant, but it has improved parts and tolerances. I find that credible, simply because I know how it is to get caught up in a fun project related to a hobby. Also, Balolia chose this lathe for his own use and kept it for a few years. As he has pointed out, he can have any lathe he wants. And you can download the specs and sample measurements from Grizzly.

While I was researching this, a very experienced machinist suggested a different lathe. It costs $2950, which is extremely low for an American 16″ lathe, and it has a sliding gap, which is the only kind of gap which can be used without messing up the lathe. Removable gaps can’t be reinserted accurately without major work or extraordinary luck. Funny how lathe makers don’t mention that in their ads. I found that out this week, so I no longer care whether I get a gap.

Here is the lathe he suggested:

That’s an ancient 16″ Leblond with a sliding gap. There are other photos. The ways are rusted. The compound is rusted even worse. There is so much rust on one of the screws, the surface appears to be eroded by maybe 1/16″. It has clearly been sitting in the rain for a good long time. But this machinist, who is respected by people I respect, said he would buy it sight unseen.

You can see why I’m puzzled. It looks like scrap iron to me. Does the motor run? Is the saddle frozen to the ways? Does it have .125″ of way wear near the spindle? Who knows? I wouldn’t go near it. But if a really good machinist says he’d buy it, who am I to discount his opinion?

I’m not going to buy a piece of junk like that. No way. But you can see how it would be hard to make it fit into my understanding of machine tools. And it makes you wonder: if something that abused and worn can be considered a good buy, what does a REAL junker look like?

I’m learning more about the machining itself. It’s pretty irritating, but it’s better than living in ignorance. Here’s an example.

There are lots of DVD teachers out there, and they give the following procedure for chucking round things in 4-jaw chucks. Stick the work in the chuck. Tighten it. Put an indicator on the part. Turn the part by hand and adjust the jaws one at a time until the runout goes away.

The old guy who suggested the Leblond says that’s wrong. If you do that, it will be okay where the indicator touches it, but farther out, it will be out of whack. So you have to wrap the base of the part in a soft sheet of metal, like copper, and…I don’t really understand this…chuck the sheet and part (chuck jaws touching sheet) and bang around on it until you get perfect alignment all the way down.

I’ve seen lots of people talk about 4-jaw chucks, and this was news to me.

I’ve also learned that you can tram a lathe using a precision angle block. This is just a precisely ground hunk of metal with two perpendicular sides. You put it on the table, put the extended quill against it, and adjust one axis until there is no light between the quill and angle block. Then you do the other side. Takes two minutes. Do this, and you’re accurate to within half a thousandth over six inches. You may want better accuracy for fly-cutting, but for 95% of what you do, this will cut the mustard, and it gives you the freedom to move your mill’s head whenever you feel like it.

The blocks are cheap on Ebay. I found a new one for $60, delivered. This should be a great help, and I can also use it on my table saw, drill press, and band saw.

I’m learning that you can always make machining easier or harder than it already is. There is no end to this stuff.

Yesterday I tried to open up the opening of the follow rest I’m making. I had a tough time trying to find a way to clamp it. I couldn’t get it to fit in the vise with the V-blocks needed to hold it at a 45° angle, so I decided to try clamping it to the table, using parallels as spacers. This is as far as I got.

I finally realized I was reinventing the wheel in order to avoid lifting my 10″ rotary table from the floor to the mill. I decided to face the risk of an episode of incontinence, and I picked the 120-lb. table up and stuck it where it needed to go. Then I learned that my clamping stuff won’t work with it. The T-slots are narrower than my mill’s slots. So I had to get a whole new clamping kit, plus several additional T-nuts. That’s on the way from Grizzly. Also ordered some lathe dogs, finally. I don’t know why some lathe dogs cost $40 and others cost $3. They seem fairly primitive. I ordered the $3 kind, so I guess I’ll learn the answer.

I realized I needed a THIRD rotary table. The tiny 4″ one won’t hold a big part, and I really don’t want to lift the big one more often than I have to. I figured 6″ would do. I checked Ebay and the other sources. Used ones are getting hard to find. I was surprised. And Asian prices are creeping up. I’m glad I bought my other tables a long time ago.

Enco has an insane pricing structure. I checked 6″ tables, and it turned out 8″ tables were considerably cheaper, so I did what I had to do. Same company. Same quality. Go figure. This happens a lot at Enco.

I keep checking lathe prices. I don’t know if I’ll go with Grizzly, but whatever I do, I’ll know a whole lot more about lathes than I did last year.

I still think you have to be an idiot to buy old American machinery that isn’t like new. Last night I realized it perverts the whole business. You buy machine tools so you can make things from metal, but then you find you spend all your time wet-nursing a senile machine that deserves to go to its final reward. Machine repair is not machining. Two different things. You can buy a car from the junkyard and make it run, but most people just want to drive, right? Same idea.

I guess if you have 40 years of machining behind you, you can make any machine work. I don’t really know. I don’t know how you can take a lathe with .005″ of wear by the chuck and flat ways 10″ away and make a straight part 15″ long. It must be magic. I can’t do it.

Don’t buy a worn-out machine unless you or some helpful buddy who lives under a mile away is a complete machining wizard. That’s probably the bottom line.

I thank God for letting me do all this incredibly cool stuff. It amazes me that I get to do so many things I’ve dreamed of.

Reader’s Loss

Please pray for long-time reader Bradford Kleeman. His mom was ill for a long time, and now she has passed away. I hope you’ll pray he finds God’s comfort and reassurance, and that he is strengthened in his walk.

No Reserve ‘Chute

The hunt for a better lathe continues.

This whole enterprise has me thinking about my first big power tool. About three years ago, I saw a used table saw on Craigslist. It was a Powermatic 66 set up for cutting Corian counters. It had the long Biesemeyer rails, and it came with about 16 expensive blades. Price: $500. That’s a good deal, even for an eleven-year old saw.

The problem was that it weighed about 600 pounds. I had nobody to help me move it, and my only “big” vehicle was my dad’s Ford Explorer.

Being crazy, I decided to go for it. I drove to Jupiter, Florida, early in the morning, and I met the owner at a storage facility. His business was dead, he had to get the saw out THAT DAY, and he was not going to let me check to see if it came apart for moving. And there was a surprise. When I had called about the saw, he had said something about helping me move it, but when I got there, he was wearing a back support, and he said I was on my own. I believe he was hoping I’d give up. He knew he had underpriced the saw.

Still being crazy, I gave him my $500 and got to work. He took off and said I should lock the unit when I left.

I had a Panasonic impact driver. This is a magnificent tool no one should be without. It turns just about any type of fastener easily, without stripping. I also had a socket set. I started removing screws and bolts.

I discarded the crummy plywood table he had put on the saw. That meant I just had to get the wings, rails, and motor off, to make the saw light enough to move. I got it dismantled, and then I wondered…how was I going to shove the cabinet into the Explorer? If I didn’t get it done, I was going to have to leave with everything but the saw itself, and the unit owner would get to auction off my new used tool.

There was a big pile of two-by-fours in the unit. They were cut to about five feet in length. The unit had a raised floor, about 2″ above the pavement outside. That gave me a 2″ vertical surface to brace two-by-fours against. I backed the Explorer up and put a few two-by-fours against the vertical surface, and I put the other end against the rear of the Explorer. Then I covered the two-by-fours with towels, walked the saw over to the truck, spent a moment of terror leaning it over onto the two-by-fours, and pushed.

Incredibly, the saw went up the ramp, and pretty soon it was in the truck. After that, putting all the other junk in there was a lark. I got the saw home, unloaded it on the grass so it wouldn’t bang on the driveway, put it in the garage, and assembled it. Suddenly I had the most amazing table saw in, probably, a one-mile radius.

I still had to put a new plug on the end of the cord, to match my welder’s 220 receptacle, but basically, I was done. I felt like I had jumped out of a plane with a needle, thread, and a bolt of cloth, and I had made myself a parachute on the way down.

On the way to Jupiter, I had doubted my sanity and my maturity. I was really afraid I would end up paying this guy $500 for a saw I would never be able to take home. Yet somehow, it ended up in my garage, and it has been a joy to use ever since. As I think I’ve mentioned, the other day I cut an aluminum four-by-four with it, lengthwise, and the cut was so regular from one end to the other, I could not detect any variation when I put the aluminum on the milling machine. It would have to be within one or, at most, two thousandths for that to happen. That’s a wonderful saw, people. And those blades retail for something like $200 each. I don’t know, because I have so many, I’ve never had to buy one.

Now I’ve realized my Clausing 5936 lathe–the supposed bargain–was a huge mistake. No metric threading. Unbelievably expensive replacement parts (Clausing charges $400 for a new PLASTIC lever for the front of a Clausing Colchester). More wear than the seller admitted. No brake. No clutch. Extremely scarce and expensive used accessories. It would be fine for someone who wants a CNC or ELS machine, or someone who doesn’t care about metric threads, but other than that…MISTAKE. So I’m looking for something different. And that means another episode of being intimidated by huge tools. Will it fit in the garage? Will the concrete break in half under the weight, sending the garage contents into a brand-new sinkhole? Will I have to hire illegals every time I want to change the 100-pound chuck? AM I STILL CRAZY?

Thing is, crazy though I may be, all of my tools have worked out reasonably well, in terms of space and manageability. I reorganized the garage the other day, and it’s so roomy now, I’m getting two folding chairs for guests. I love it out there.

I’m trying to make a rational choice. I’m trying to distinguish neurotic fear of big tools from reasonable concern about overdoing it.

There are so many temptations out there. Here’s an example. Most lathes have small spindle bores. Lathes have passages through their spindles, so you can put long things in the chucks and have the excess go through the head of the lathe and out the side. If you can’t get something through your spindle bore, you have to turn it over the ways. This means using a live center and God knows what else to support it. It’s inconvenient and a little bit tricky. If you have a big bore, a lot of your projects will go right in the chuck, instantly. And I recently learned that some quality lathes have 2″+ bores. But you pretty much have to go over 3000 pounds and a 14″ swing to get that.

On top of that, it seems like the selection of really nice used lathes is better when you go past 12″ in swing. I’ve found a few I’d have real confidence in, unlike the beater I got last time I shopped the used market. I found a couple which are basically new.

All of this information adds up to “bigger lathe than I originally wanted.” I started out looking at 13″ lathes, but the pickings aren’t that great.

I keep going to the garage with a tape measure, trying to see what I can realistically fit out there. One problem with big lathes is that they tend to be a little over 3 feet wide, not including handles which project from the front. You can’t put them directly against the wall, either. You really need a few inches, at least behind the pedestals, so you can remove crap and adjust the leveling screws. So you need to sacrifice maybe 46″, measuring from the wall out. I think my current lathe comes out about 33″.

It will fit, but when I consider going for it, I ask myself, “Am I being brave, like I was with the Powermatic, or am I just nuts?”

Asking other guys with tools is not helpful. They’re worse than I am. They’ll say things like, “I had problems moving around my 22″ lathe until I moved the living room furniture out in the yard. You might try that.” I know a hobbyist who has a JIG BORER. “What’s a jig borer?”, you’re asking yourself. Right. Exactly. This guy bought a one-ton machine to do something so obscure, most people don’t even know what it is. He has a 14″ Nardini lathe the size of a Yugo. I’ll bet if I asked him whether I should buy a 14″ lathe, he’d say it would be convenient to use when my REAL lathe was set up for other things. He’s looking for another big lathe, himself.

The other funny observation I must make is this: I still spend more time working ON tools than WITH tools. Today I have to resume trying to get the power feed and handwheel shimming fixed on my mill, just so I can use the mill to finish the follow rest for the Clausing! So I’m working on one tool so I can use it to work on another tool. That’s like Borges. It’s like M.C. Escher’s to-do list.

I don’t care. It’s all tremendous fun. I truly believe it shows how God is aligning things in my life. He created me with certain gifts and desires, and finally, I’m getting the means and the opportunity to do things with them. That’s Psalm 37, verse 4. No doubt about it. If your life is awful, and you’re stuck doing things you can’t stand, consider that. There is a way out, but you probably won’t find it without God, because if you did, it would discourage you from looking for him.

I Know Why Your Vacuum Cleaner Died

The machining adventures continue.

I’m trying to make a follow rest for my old Clausing beater lathe. I want to get a bigger (or at least better) lathe, but while I have this one, I’m making the best of it. I’ve seen people say a steady rest is more important than a follow rest, but so far, I’ve never needed a steady rest, but I’ve been bitten in the butt by the lack of a follow rest. Without one, it’s very hard to turn anything long and thin, and that kills a big percentage of the projects I want to do.

A steady rest provides a sturdy support for a big, long, rotating object which extends way past the spindle. Sometimes you can use a live center for this without a steady rest, but sometimes you can’t. I think. I don’t need to turn long, heavy objects. At least not yet.

I’ve been watching my lathe videos this week, and the guy who made them uses a 17″ South Bend with a 3″ spindle hole. I think he bought it because he’s a motorhead. He runs a place called Precision Measurement Supply, in San Antonio, and he sells products for other motorheads. He says he can put a driveshaft through the spindle of his lathe. That’s pretty cool.

Naturally, whenever I look at a lathe now, I think the spindle bore is too small.

My lathe has two flat spots on the saddle between the tool post and the spindle. Each one has what appears to be a 5/16″ threaded hole in it, so at some point, somebody must have anticipated mounting something there. It happens to be the perfect place for a follow rest. The holes are almost 9″ apart, so I’m bridging them with a 10″ bar of aluminum, and I’m going to find some way to put the follow rest on it.

I had a hell of a time (sorry, Christians) getting the bar ready. Back before I knew anything about cutting metal from raw stock, I got some good deals on “drops,” or spare pieces of metal, from a big metal retailer. I bought an aluminum four-by-four, if you can believe it. It was something like 3 feet long. I figured I’d slice it up in a hurry with my dry cut saw, but for some reason I no longer recall, I decided not to do that. I got myself one of those infamous 4 x 6 horizontal bandsaws. Mine came from Northern Tool, but it’s probably just like the Harbor Freight jobs. It looks like they made it on the shift that started on the morning after the Chinese New Year. Pretty sloppy. But it works.

It has always been very temperamental, so I leave the cutting speed low, and I fiddle with it a lot. I decided to use it to cut a 10″ length of aluminum four-by-four, and the blade kept popping off. I got it to stay on, and I made the cutting pressure very light so the saw would stop throwing up. That made the cut take forever, and that made the motor got hot. Well…bad workmanship made the motor get hot. You should be able to run it all day, but it died after an hour or so.

Oh, the misery I went through, getting the saw to work again. I finally learned that it had a thermal fuse inside the motor housing. This is like a little resistor, and it burns up at 268° F, I believe. Let’s see…128 C…262.4° F? Is that right? Too lazy to check. Anyhow, these things are so cheap, they don’t reset, and nobody wants you to know they exist, because if you think the motor is fried, you’ll buy a new saw. Other AC motors have these things, too, so if your vacuum cleaner dies, open it up and look. You have to go to Radio Shack and spend $1.79 on a new thermal fuse (or “cutoff”), and then you have to solder it in where the old one was, WITHOUT getting it so hot it blows again. Don’t ask me how I know.

I got the saw running again, and it blew after 40 minutes of running with no load. I did all kinds of research on things that make motors hot, and I think I know what’s happening.

Typical electric motors have bearings at each end. At one end, they have a bearing which is fixed rigidly in the motor housing. At the other end, they have a bearing which is supposed to be snugly inserted yet able to move when heat makes things expand. My motor, in spite of being made by the finest Chinese prison laborers, had a very tight fit on the bearing that should have been able to move. I think this caused the other bearing to get pulled out of whack. It was proud in the endbell, to put it in engineerese. I’m guessing here, but I suspect that misaligned bearings or bearings under the wrong kind of pressure can make a motor hot even though they don’t resist rotation all that much. Anyway, I can’t find anything else wrong with it. I may open it up and relieve the endbell’s surface with sandpaper. I found some experts yapping about it on a forum, and they claimed you could have .010″ of clearance between the endbell and the bearing without causing it to rot the endbell, as some others claim it will do.

Here’s a digression. I’m considering getting a surplus 3-phase motor and wiring it up to one of my existing machine tool VFDs. I realized I can run more than one motor from a VFD, and since my VFDs are bigger than 1 HP, they’ll be big enough to run anything I put on the saw. I can put a switch on the wall, selecting a machine tool or the saw. Pretty neat.

I got the saw to cut the four-by-four, and I faced it on the mill, but then I had to cut out a piece about 1.5″ on a side and 10″ long. I considered using the table saw, but I chickened out and used a big end mill. Man, what a job. It took something like an hour, and I made piles of chips. I Googled around and saw that knowledgeable people weren’t afraid of using table saws on aluminum, so I got out the WD40 and the featherboards and went to town.

It’s amazing how well a table saw will cut aluminum. I was done in five minutes, and I’m slow. The cut was beautiful, I didn’t waste nearly as much metal, the chips vacuumed up in a few seconds, and the cut was so straight it was within a thousandth or so of perfect. Incredible.

From now on, the table saw will be my first choice for aluminum. I have plenty of surplus triple-chipped Corian blades, and my time is worth something, believe it or not.

Here’s the aluminum after I cut it out.

After that, I used the mill to make it pretty. Here it is, as of last night.

Today I used a radiusing end mill to round it off and make it even prettier. I hate this end mill, because the manufacturer gives you no clues on how to locate it on the work, but if you bump the outside of the fat part, set the DRO, and then go in about .125″, you’ll be close enough for government work. Once you get the z measurement dialed in, you lock the quill and worry about the x and y.

I keep looking at lathes. There are some real deals out there. A guy who sold me some mill tooling had a beautiful Clausing 8015VS 13 by 50 on his site for a price which escapes me. Under ten thousand. It looked brand new. He also had a Chin Hung 16 by 67 for a similar price. Both of these things looked unused. I would never consider a lathe that big under ordinary circumstances, but the clean paint and unscarred ways made my heart thump. I started measuring in the garage. Thank God, after I emailed him, he took the Clausing off his site. I guess it’s sold.

I could put the Chin Hung in my garage, amazingly. But it’s just insane. It’s about 110″ long and 40″ wide.

It’s a wonderful machine. Tons of speeds, great rigidity, and quality construction. The same lathes are sold under the Kingston name.

I’ll try to forget I saw it. But it sure is beautiful.

I am starting to think I need a tool post grinder. Because they’re cool. My lathe DVDs feature a tool post grinder segment. You can use these things to put perfectly round points on things like scribers and centers. You KNOW I can’t live without that. Come on.

I highly recommend the DVDs. The series is called “Lathe Learnin’.” They run $125. I think Smartflix has them, but I don’t believe in stealing intellectual property, so I don’t keep copies of rented DVDs. I wanted something I could keep and watch over and over.

Some DVD machinists are extremely fastidious. Rudy Kouhoupt is an example. He must be the best machinist who ever lived, because I was watching one of his disks today, and I think I’m about 20 minutes into the discussion of punches. Seriously, I know every type of punch, and I know exactly how to sharpen them, and the video isn’t even about punches. He did a video in which he ground lathe tools, and before he even got started, he milled out a special adjustable grinding table with a sliding rest.

The problem with the super-persnickety machinists is that they will teach you to sit on your butt doing nothing, unless you can do everything perfectly. The Lathe Learnin’ guy is the other type of machinist. His motto ought to be, “OPEN A BEER AND GO FOR IT,” because all he cares about is getting it done. He shows you all the tricks a real machinist will use when he has deadlines to meet, customers to please, and less than twenty million dollars in tooling financing.

I tend to get caught up in trying to do things too well, so his approach is really helpful.

I want to finish that follow rest, but the mill power feed has gone nuts again. Something funny is happening inside it. I better call the importer and see what they can tell me.

Anyway, I feel like I’m finally getting somewhere with my tools. It’s a great feeling. God really does give you the desires of your heart, once you agree to do things his way.

Chihuahua Lathe Making Chips

Og is getting his revenge.

I bought a Clausing lathe a few years back, and it turned out to be in worse condition than I had been led to believe. Also, it wasn’t the lathe I thought I was buying, and the seller would not pay the whole cost of return shipping. It doesn’t do metric threads, and the stuff to change that is extremely expensive, IF you can find it. Og said I should get a new Chinese lathe, and he was right.

Last week, I took delivery of my first Chinese lathe: a Big Dog 7 x 14. It came with a tachometer, two rests, a drill chuck, threading gears, a three-jaw chuck, a turret post, and centers. For a few bucks more, I added a quick change tool post, a carriage stop, a four-jaw chuck, and parting tools.

I’ve been using it for a while, although I’ve been extremely busy with Noche Buena stuff, so I haven’t been able to do much. It’s fantastic. It’s convenient, it takes surprisingly deep cuts, and it seems to be well made. The first time I put something in the three-jaw chuck, the runout was undetectable on a dial indicator. The needle wasn’t still, but it moved so little and so randomly I couldn’t tell the runout from the surface noise. That’s pretty danged good.

The rests are wonderful. A Clausing rest costs anywhere from two hundred to three hundred bucks, and they turn up for sale about once a decade. That means you can forget about turning anything long and thin, or about 50% of the things you would want to put on the lathe.

The Big Dog is portable, so you can run it on a Workmate, which is probably Og’s favorite tool of all time.

I am no machinist, but I think I can safely say that anything that fits on this lathe, you can work. It may be a little slower than a big lathe, but it actually gets the job done, which sets it apart from the Clausing.

I wanted to make a stainless shift linkage for my Moto Guzzi motorcycle. This was going to be my first semi-precision project. It would require machining a rod to .078″ in diameter and threading both ends. When I got started, I realized the Clausing was not going to thread it, and that’s really the honeymoon ended.

This week I started again, on the Big Dog. I had a stainless hammer handle I had made, and which I knew I would never use, so I decided to turn it down to the right size. It’s really too short to do this conveniently. In order not to be crowded, you need some extra metal at the ends. But it seems to be working. I put the follow rest on the lathe and went to town.

When I got to work, everything went fine, except for the tailstock position. The live center kept backing out of the work. At first, I failed to lock the ram, so that was my fault, but it also happened when the ram and tailstock clamp were locked. I found that there was a little locknut on the front of the tailstock, and it determined how tight the clamp was. A few seconds’ work with a wrench fixed it.

I have some cute little carbide tools for the tiny tool post, so I decided to use one, in addition to an old 1/4″ round-nose tool I had ground. It worked great. Long stainless chips spiralled all over the garage, and the finish on the work was not bad at all.

If I can get the threading to work, I’ll try to finish this thing. I may have to scrap it and start with a longer piece, but it has served its purpose as a learning tool, so I can’t complain.

I’m looking for a bigger lathe. The Clausing has to go. I stupidly bought a DRO for it. Oh, well. It still has to go. Working with the Big Dog has reminded me how great it is to work on metal instead of working on my lathe. It seems like every time I want to use the Clausing, I can’t do it, or I have to find some clever way to work around the lack of tooling. That’s no good. I want to walk into the garage, flip a switch, throw crap on the lathe, and start turning. I want it to be just like my mill or my table saw. Turn on, do work, turn off, clean up, have beer.

Some guy in Tampa is moderately interested in the Clausing. I think I turned him off, though. I told him everything. The Clausing is a good quality lathe, and it appears to be in good working condition. It’s just limited in what it can do, and in the availability of affordable tooling. It’s not a junkheap. I guess I’m a bad salesman. I wanted to make sure I overcame the temptation to describe the lathe in a flattering way that would get it out the door, so maybe I went too far.

I found some interesting machines. First, I found a Yam (no kidding) Taiwanese lathe that had belonged to a prototype builder who used it in his garage. Here’s a photo. I could have had this for $3500. It’s a very highly regarded lathe, in spite of the hilarious name. Sadly, someone nailed it while I was getting a shipping quote.

I found a Millport, locally. It looked wonderful. I wanted to inspect it in person, so I sent an email. I used to think Millport had to be a horrible brand, because the name was so stupid. It was like they weren’t even trying. But I found out they make excellent machinery. Taiwanese. But as soon as I inquired, I found out there was a deposit on it.

I just found a Famot. It looks like it has been run about three hours. This is supposed to be a fantastic Polish lathe, considerably better than Taiwanese. It’s expensive, but it has every piece of tooling imaginable, and it should last forever. I put in an inquiry. I’m waiting to find out who just bought it. Someone up the road has a Nardini MS 1440E which looks like it hasn’t been used too much. I have read that the green Nardinis are good machines, but the blue and white ones are horrible. This one is green. Hopefully not the result of spray-painting.

I considered a new Birmingham, but everyone says they stink. I also inquired about GMC, the company that made my mill. I emailed the guy who sold it to me, but he never answered, and neither did GMC’s headquarters. So I looked around for Taiwan stuff. I found Eisen lathes. They’re not expensive, but they’re supposed to be very good. Their 1440 appears to be the same as Webb’s, and Webb is a good company. The lathes are not real heavy, however (1364 pounds), so the rigidity is something to wonder about. Anyway, you can get a new one for $7500, which is not bad at all.

I found another brand of new equipment: Clark. This is not the Chinese “Clarke” lathe that costs about forty dollars to make. It’s different. They make a 2500-pound lathe with lots of features and tooling, and you can get one shipped to you for $6000. The big problem with Clark is that no one knows about them. I contacted three sellers. One said the machines were Taiwanese. One said they were Chinese. The third gave me the truth: they have Chinese castings, but the other stuff is Taiwanese. That’s actually pretty appealing. I don’t think it takes a lot of skill to make a lathe bed, but screws, slides, bearings, chucks…you want a competent manufacturer for that stuff. My mill is made from Taiwanese parts, but it was assembled in China. I can’t complain at all. The only problems I’ve had were mostly the result of my own stupidity.

I guess I better put the Clausing on Craigslist and Ebay and get serious about replacing it. I want to get something I will never need to upgrade. Never buy cheaper or smaller tools than you can afford. You will always regret it in the end, and it will cost you more money than buying right the first time.

I’ll tell you something funny. I think I get much clearer guidance from God than I did back in the Clausing days. Maybe that’s how I ended up with the wrong machine. I’ve mentioned this before: when I started looking at the Big Dog, I kept feeling something inside me saying, “Just buy it. Just buy it. Go buy it. Buy it now.” And it worked out great. Hopefully I’ll get the same helpful guidance the next time around.

Bits of Hog All Over the Place

Noche Buena is now a MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.

What a week it’s been. It took forever to get the pig rotisserie built and operational, and then I had to cook yuca, black beans, brownies, rice, and coconut flan. I had to get beverages, charcoal, napkins…it was an ordeal. But it was worth it.

I thought Val Prieto couldn’t make it this year, but he and his wife Maggie showed up before the feast, and he helped me get the lechon mounted on the spit. Then after they made an appearance at his parents’ house, they came back and ate with us. Maggie reminded me that this was our “anniversary.” The first time we met, it was Noche Buena 2003. Val was cooking at his parents’ house. It’s too bad we couldn’t get them to come over here this year.

The pig cooker works great. I was so busy I didn’t bother taking photos, but Val took a quick phone video, which I will embed.

The charcoal pan is a piece of Home Depot galvanized metal with a few bends in it to give it strength and provide places for the charcoal to be piled. I didn’t put it on dedicated supports. There are two turkey fryers under it.

I had read that it was a bad idea to let fat fall on the coals, so I bent the pan to keep the charcoal slightly outside the central axis of the pig. I now think this was pointless, and it reduced the heat that got to the meat. I believe I’ll flip it and use the other side, and I also need to make sure the coals go past the ends of the pig. These parts are the biggest concentrations of meat, and they cook slowest. You need heat coming at them from the ends as well as the middle.

I believe a caja china with a smoke port would work really well. Maybe next time.

The motor worked great, although it sounded like it was coming apart. I guess that must be normal. It never got hot or paused, and I know it was working well below its rated torque.

I decided not to build a complex framework to hold the pig. That was a mistake. One of the Tapcons in the pig’s spine came loose, and the pig threatened to fall off the spit. We had to turn the motor off and run it intermittently, turning the pig 90 degrees at a time. This slowed things down a lot. Next time I’ll have the spit modified to prevent this.

I chose not to use the longer spits I had available. The heat of the coals got to the motor and bearings, but that was no problem, because it was a simple matter to bend a couple of pieces of foil around them to shield them. Much easier than modifying a new spit, and I got the benefits of the short spit’s rigidity and ease of handling.

The pig went eight hours, and some bits still were not fully done. Nonetheless, it was a phenomenal success. The smoky flavor of the hickory and charcoal made it much better than a caja china pig, and the skin was pretty crispy in spite of the rotisserie, which can make pig skin limp.

Here’s a horrible confession. I was too lazy to juice bitter oranges, and I don’t like the canned naranja angria in stores, so I marinated it in mojo made with Sunny Delight! Don’t laugh. It was amazing. Bitter orange is actually pretty useless. Mix orange juice with lime juice, and the results are just as good. Maybe better.

Yesterday was my dad’s 80th birthday. My friend Liz insisted on making him an Appalachian dried-apple stack cake, as well as cookies with Dilbert and my dad’s name silkscreened on them. My dad loves Dilbert. I think he enjoyed that.

The food exceeded my expectations. Everything was wonderful.

I had guest problems, though. The whole point of this meal was to help me and my church friends learn about love and unity, but five people bailed out on us. I ended up with nine church friends, Val and Maggie, and my dad. We had a wonderful time, but we were buried in food. I begged people to take it home. I made two gallons of black beans! Overshot just a little.

You can’t love passively. It’s not just a feeling. You have to act on it. That’s what we’re learning. So we’re trying to spend time together outside of church.

The patio is still a mess. I’ve conquered most of it, but there is still work to be done. I skipped church today, and I didn’t get up until eleven! I think I would have died if I had gone to church AND cleaned up.

I hope everyone who still reads this blog had a wonderful night, and I hope today is even better. God will be good to you and restore your life, if you give him a chance and agree to do it his way. It’s working for me, and it will work for you.

Gypped!

I just picked my my lechon. It’s 46 pounds, cleaned and ready to go.

The good: it doesn’t have boar taint, so I won’t have to soak it with bicarb. The bad: it has no head! You can’t have a lechon with no head! Is that some new thing invented by metrosexual Cubans? I won’t stand for it!

Anyway, I stuck it in the cooler in brine. It’s supposed to be frozen, but it’s not, so I’m going to have to run out and get some bags of ice.

Yesterday I was looking at the rotisserie, and I realized the pole could be a problem. It’s about five feet long, so the charcoal will be within a foot of each end. I don’t know if I want the heat that close to the bearings. I thought, “Man, I’m going to have to go to Home Depot.” Then I went out and checked my scrap collection. Naturally, I had a seven-foot pole, just waiting to be drilled and used. And right beside it. . .an eight-foot pole.

My church friends are starting to bail on me. I should have seen that coming. Nobody up there follows through. One my friends was going to come down and help with the cooking, but he says his sister just flew into town unannounced, so he can’t make it. I’m looking at 12 people and a 46-pound pig.

I was going to stuff the pig, but that’s a lot of work, and I am going to have little if any help. Right now I’m planning on lechon, moros, yuca, and dessert. Anything beyond that, people will have to bring.

I was hoping Val Prieto would come by, but he’s doing a rotisserie of his own at his dad’s house.

A while back, I realized God was serious when he commanded us to love each other. It’s essential, because only love will unite us and drive us to fight for each other. Without it, we’ll be weak. So I tried to get the folks at church interested in gatherings outside of services. That’s what this event is all about. It’s fun to stuff yourself with pork, but that’s not really the point.

Things are looking good. Hope all of you are planning a big bash.

Techno-Hog Rumbling to Life

The pig project is going to take a big leap today, assuming the motor arrives. I’m going to mount it on the supports. The bearings aren’t here yet, so I can’t machine the spit ends to fit them.

I don’t have a link to the motor I bought. I think Grainger discontinued it. But I can show you one just like it, except for the speed. Imagine this motor, running at 6 RPM with 250 inch-pounds of torque.

CLICK TO SEE MOTOR.

Naturally, I did not spend that much. Knock 80% off that figure.

I didn’t want the angled shaft, but now that it’s on the way, I think it’s the best choice. It’s easy to build a platform parallel to the spit support, which is what an angled shaft requires. A straight shaft means a platform which is perpendicular to the support, and that means welding.

I have to figure out what to do for a charcoal pan. I’m thinking I may just get a cheap galvanized sheet and bend the sides up. I know some people moan about zinc fumes being released, but Val Prieto uses galvanized, and so far, nobody important has died. I’ve also noticed that Lodge makes a chimney starter from galvanized, and it’s also common in barbecue stuff in England.

I would be perfectly happy to use bare steel, but it’s not like it falls from trees.

I’m a little nervous about achieving success. I’m researching to make sure it’s okay to roast a pig without an enclosure. I can recall three rotisserie pigs cooked at Mancamp. One was turned by hand, and it sat in a makeshift oven built from stacked cinderblocks. The oven had plywood on top to hold in heat. The advantage there was that in addition to heat from below, the pig got a nice 200-degree sauna. The other two pigs were not enclosed to any great extent.

I guess I’m worried about nothing. The Mancamp pigs were fine. Here’s a video of two Filipina ladies roasting a pig, and you can see it’s out in the open. If I had two ladies like that, I wouldn’t need a motor.

I had concerns about the spit speed, but I’ve learned that some rotisseries turn at much higher rates.

The new lathe will be here on Monday. I’m tooling up. I’m a little annoyed, because I thought I picked the best one, and I just found out it may lack a nice feature. In the past, small Asian lathes had metric screws on the compounds and crossfeeds, and they were marked with inaccurate imperial graduations. I believe the idea is that they pretended one inch is 25 millimeters, whereas it’s actually 25.4. So I guess you get a movement of 25 millimeters when you want one inch. Or maybe I have it backward. Anyway, Micromark claims it has the only lathes with “true inch” wheels and screws.

It shouldn’t matter much, since the final dimensioning is never done with wheels, but it’s irritating.

I don’t know if it’s possible to make a really accurate screw on my own lathe. I guess it should be, but I have a feeling it’s not easy to make one that works easily but doesn’t have tons of backlash.

I better get myself to the store. I have to make sure I have a pig by next weekend. I still haven’t decided what to put in it.

This should be a good time. It will be an interesting mix of Christians and highly tolerant backsliders. I think we’ll get along, as long as the food is okay.

No Details

Got two unusual comments from a regular reader. Thought I would throw them out there for prayer.

Bradford M. Kleemann Says:

My mother is sick. Her case manager suspects a urinary tract infection or a virus. She has a fever of 101F. She’s limp like a wet noodle. Her caregiver hurt her back lifting her and now I’m waiting for the caregiver agency to call back about a substitute.
–Brad

Bradford M. Kleemann Says:

We have a substitute caregiver. Awaiting antiobiotic delivery.

The Deity is IN

This morning I was thinking about testimony. Do you have it? Can you say God has done something amazing for you? If not, are you sure you’re doing things right?

A lot of people will say, “I have a great wife and great kids,” or, “I have a wonderful job,” and they consider that a testimony. I think they’re right. But is that the kind of testimony the Bible talks about? Is a Buddhist going to hear that and yell, “WOW! I have to have THAT! Let me get out of these crazy robes and grow some hair!” Probably not.

Jesus, the Apostles, and Elijah raised people from the dead. THAT is a testimony. If you can say you raised someone from the dead, or someone raised you, you have a pretty good story. If God has parted the Red Sea for you, again, good story. “Things are going pretty good” doesn’t really compare.

We have been warned not to follow signs. On the other hand, Jesus said signs would follow US. Remember Paul, shaking the viper off into the fire. Remember the angel busting Peter out of prison. Stuff like that is supposed to happen around us. If it’s not, we should consider it a warning that we’re off course.

I’m thinking about this because of the neat things God has done for me. He healed me of two kidney stones, instantly, while I was at church. I felt one of them move while I was praying; I didn’t even have to wait. He healed me of a burn on Saturday, over the course of a few minutes. The last time I started to get a cold-like illness, I prayed, and it went away in a couple of hours. I got an instant healing back in the Eighties. My sister is still alive and in remission, a year an a half after being diagnosed with small-cell lung cancer.

These things may not be as grand in scale as the parting of the Red Sea, but when God does the impossible or the exceedingly improbable, on demand, it’s a miracle. What difference does it make if a miracle is small or subtle? You better believe it doesn’t bother me! Would you want to lie around in pain for a week, waiting for a kidney stone to pass? I sure wouldn’t. I’ve been there. I wouldn’t want to spend a week battling the flu, either. I hate being sick. I’m still excited over my healed finger. I keep looking at it. My dad asked to see it, too. He actually said he was impressed. Maybe God did it for him, not me.

Last week a friend of mine said something indicating she was glad God was helping her to get through an illness. It’s always good to praise God. I’m not knocking her. But Hare Krishnas get through illnesses. Satan worshipers get through illnesses. It’s not impressive. What’s impressive is having an illness taken away from you. I told her the power of her prayers would keep increasing throughout her life.

Today I thought about my church. Suddenly I realized our pastors don’t testify. They’ll say God helped them to get grant money, or God sent a lot of people to the altar to get salvation. But you never hear any of them tell about miraculous things God has done through them or around them. That’s very odd, in a charismatic church. The only example I can think of is a pastor’s son, whose heart stopped beating when he had meningitis. He came back to life, and he’s still alive. But that was something like thirty years ago.

It’s not unusual for guest speakers to give good testimonies. But the actual pastors…not so much.

Maybe this is why we rely so much on gimmicks and worldly strategies. We give away popcorn and hot dogs. We gave away turkeys at Thanksgiving, and yesterday we gave away miniature Christmas trees. We show movies in the sanctuary. And when it comes to giving, we put people on stage and have them goad the people to give, sometimes for several long minutes. Other churches put offering boxes by the back doors and count on God to move people; I wish we did that.

Once we had a really awful testimony. A church employee gave the church $500 during one of our Steve Munsey “Seven Blessings” drives. Later she received unexpected money. In the amount of $480. The church leadership was so happy, they put this in a video to be shown during the Sunday giving pitch (which we actually refer to as “the pitch”).

I think you can see why found this disturbing. We teach that God will give people a thirtyfold or hundredfold return, but she got a 96% return, which is less than onefold, without interest. If Steve Munsey is right (and he’s not), God actually charged her 4% to hold her money.

What if people went up there and showed people withered limbs that had suddenly started to work? What if they could say God had miraculously healed injuries and diseases, in ways physics can’t explain? Wouldn’t that bring people to church? If we had that kind of power flowing, wouldn’t we focus on it to the exclusion of everything else?

The thing that worries me is that our pastors may not have any idea what that kind of power looks like. Maybe they just don’t experience the power of God. Maybe they’re not walking by faith, guided by the Spirit. If not, how are they supposed to do anything but fail?

I may be a total idiot, but I do walk by faith, and I know other people who do. It works. It’s not a joke. And it’s not hard. It’s certainly easier than not walking by faith, which leads to failure, curses, and frustration. You have to learn to accept God’s surprising plans instead of your own obvious ones, but that’s very pleasant, once you get used to it. If ordinary churchgoers can do it, why can’t pastors?

So I feel like I know what “blind guides” means. If you haven’t found the door, you can’t tell other people where it is. And if you preach living by faith, but you don’t do it, how can your teaching be taken seriously or have the effect it should? I’m afraid these well-intentioned, hard-working people are walking in circles. Like another group of people known for walking in circles. In the desert.

People won’t insist on a miracle-filled church because they don’t think it can happen. They think they’re setting themselves and others up for disappointment. They believe they may be asking too much of God, which is a little insane, if you think about it. But it’s not too much to ask. It’s what Jesus said he wanted to give us. It’s right here, right now.

We expect miraculous things to happen inside the church, but many churches don’t permit it, so instead we have the divine equivalent of ectopic pregnancies. Miracles happen in the “wrong” places, to the “wrong” people. If you gag Jesus in the sanctuary, he’ll speak in the parking lot.

It seems like the only miracles we promise people, over and over, until no one wants to hear about it, are financial miracles. God WILL give you that thirtyfold-plus return. He WILL. He PROMISED. He ASKED US TO TEST HIM. How come no one talks like that about healing? How come no one talks like that about getting marriages fixed or finding God’s true direction in life? Why don’t we swear God will deliver people from addiction? If we promised people healing, deliverance, and other helps the way we promise them money, maybe we’d see more miracles, and maybe we wouldn’t have to beg for tithes.

The funny thing is, people don’t get the financial miracles preachers promise them. It just does not happen. Here and there, some people get unexpected success, but that would happen even in a crowd of unbelievers. How can we keep promising this nonsense when we know it doesn’t work? Sure, God will be generous to generous people, at the right times, in the right amounts, IF they give according to the Holy Spirit’s real-time direction. But that’s not what churches teach, and they talk way too much about money as a way to satisfy the flesh.

Churches teach that God will give people prosperity for tithing and giving irresponsible, extravagant offerings, but they talk very little about giving to the poor and to each other, which is what Jesus talked about. Why is this? I suspect it’s because churches see the poor as their competition. If a guy who bags groceries for a living gives a hundred bucks to charity, the church isn’t going to get any big offerings from him for a while.

The other day I told my dad he was going to see weird things happen around me for as long as he knew me. It’s just a fact. This is what life is like when you listen to the Spirit. It’s not ego. It’s not self-confidence. It’s the opposite. It’s confidence in God, and it’s based partly on experience and partly on supernatural faith which comes into me independently of my own thoughts and character.

Anyway, God is still up there, and more importantly, he’s still down here. He isn’t retired. He’s not dead. He hasn’t quit exerting power in the earth. Listen to him and get to know him, and he’ll start doing stuff around you and through you, and your world-shaking testimony won’t be, “Things are going pretty good.”

Sometimes it Seems That Way

What a day I’m having.

I made a second aluminum hub for my pig roasting spit. It’s nicer than the first one. I had the cutting tools too high on the first shot, so I got chatter. Now the finish is very good, even though I’m using carbide. I have no idea what I’m doing, and I’m too lazy to look things up and do it right, so I learn a lot from experience.

I threaded the bolt holes on the hub, but I fouled the threads on two of the bolts. I didn’t know that aluminum swarf could become one with a steel bolt, but apparently this is a hazard of threading. It must be, since it just happened.

I knew aluminum had a very low melting point compared to stainless, so I tried to fix the bolts by heating them with a plumber’s torch. I got one of them red hot and then tried to put a nut on it. I gave up. That stuff is on there for the duration. But after I did this, I picked up the nut with my bare hand. I didn’t realize how much heat had gone into it.

I felt that I had burned myself on the pad of my index finger. I hate that. Such a useful finger. It had that flat, shiny look burned skin gets, and it hurt pretty bad. But I remembered something the Holy Spirit told me a while back. I was lying in bed, and I kept hearing the words, “You are protected” in my head.

What the heck, right? God has instantly healed me of two kidney stones while or shortly after praying, and a few weeks back when I started getting a cold, he took it away in a couple of hours. My sister is still alive (and in total remission), a year and a half after being diagnosed with extensive small-cell lung cancer; I prayed a great deal about that. I decided to pray about my finger. I “reminded” God of what he had told me. And I started thanking him. The finger still felt like it was in the process of blistering.

Guess what? My finger is fine. It has been around half an hour. I have no pain at all. I can use the finger. I can put pressure on it. The skin doesn’t look flat and shiny any more. I went and looked at it in the light, because I was so amazed. It looks like any finger that has been working with tools all day.

I just don’t know what to say. I told God I would tell people about it. You have to do that. I’ve heard preachers say you should make a monetary sacrifice when God does something for you. Maybe that’s true; I tend to discount it these days. But you definitely, DEFINITELY have to tell people.

Now you’ve been told.

Here’s something funny. I went to a machining forum and mentioned the pig work I’m doing, and several people expressed concern about the galvanized pole I’m using. I had to reassure them. I’ve done this a bunch of times, and Val even has a big charcoal pan made from galvanized. It doesn’t cause any problems.

The funny thing is that Og dropped by the blog the other day, when I wrote about lathes. Og and I are both hard-headed. Well, he’s persistent and determined. I’M hard-headed. Anyway, we had a big fuss over the hazards of backyard galvanized pig tools a few years back, and here I am discussing them right when he happens to be dropping by.

I guess zinc is like religion and politics. One of those things best not discussed socially.

Rise of the Machinists

The Holy Spirit has been teaching my friends and me about the importance of love and mutual support, so we are trying to spend more time together. We decided to try to get together on Noche Buena (Christmas Eve) for a pig roast. I’m hosting. I decided to built a roaster.

I found an unbelievable $380 motor on Ebay for $78 plus shipping. It has 250 inch-lbs. of torque, and it turns at 4 RPM, so it’s a dream come true. I’m making the spit from a length of 1 5/8″ galvanized fencepost. I machined a hub for one end, with a socket for the motor shaft. I found cheap pillow bearings on Ebay, so I’ll have one at each end of the shaft. I still have to make the second hub.

Today I drilled and tapped three holes in the hub, and I bolted it to the spit. Check this out. It’s gorgeous. I somehow messed up the 120-degree angles between the holes, but it won’t affect the function.

Out of the blue, my buddy Val Prieto offered to let me use two “burros” his dad quit using. These are amazing devices. Each one is a car wheel. They have steel tubing welded to them, standing upright in the centers of the hubs. The tubing has smaller tubing inside it, so it telescopes at the top. The smaller tubing has crossmembers welded to the top, with steel rollers. I won’t need the roller things, but I can use the bases to hold up the motor and pillow bearings. Take a look.

This is going to be wonderful. Those burros will allow me to make very small attachments for pig roasts, and they won’t take up much room. All I need now is a piece of galvanized sheetmetal for the charcoal.