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.

What’s a Good Swarf-Removal Shampoo?

The Holy Spirit is unpredictable. I suppose that’s one reason we’re supposed to let him inhabit us and tell us what to do. It keeps Satan guessing. The written law was considerably more predictable. It telegraphed our punches. It was still more than adequate to make a fool of the enemy, notably at the crucifixion, but the Holy Spirit himself has more flexibility, and he can tailor our actions to each situation, with more specificity.

Why mention this? I think he told me to buy something for myself. He has done this before. Probably many times, I guess, but I’m thinking of one particular example. I was driving on US1, and I started thinking about an Epiphone guitar I had read about, and I felt like I had to make a detour to Guitar Center and pick one up. I found myself saying, “Okay, I’ll buy it.” I walked in and asked if I could take a look at a Riviera P93. The workmanship was surprisingly good. It had features I wanted. And I had always wanted to see what an ES-style guitar was like. Sold. I didn’t even play it in the store.

It turned out to be an amazing guitar. I play it more than any other. The playability is so good, it’s shocking. The pickups were not great, but I put Lollars on it, and now it’s a monster. It’s a perfect blues machine. A little raw, a little dark, and highly expressive.

You can always rationalize when you buy something you want, and it’s easy to get confused and think God is in your own desires, but this was different.

Yesterday, I felt the same bizarre compulsion. And I was thinking about mini lathes.

I have a Clausing 5936. It’s an excellent lathe, crafted to insanely high standards, but it’s not practical for everything I want to do. Trust me on this–I know more about it than you think, even if you’re a machinist–making metric threads on this thing is a nightmare. Just getting the parts costs hundreds and hundreds of dollars, and you can’t get them, anyway. Finding a steady rest or follow rest at an acceptable price is impossible. A taper attachment…you might have to mortgage your house. Of course, if I had listened to Og, I’d have a Chinese lathe, and it would have all the stuff I need, but that’s another story.

I decided to put a DRO on the lathe, and I plan to follow up with an ELS (Electronic Lead Screw). The DRO is in progress. It will make the lathe easier to use. The ELS is a device which is about halfway to CNC. In other words, it’s a computerized, motorized apparatus that guides the lathe, but it doesn’t require CAD and whatever else CNC requires. And you can still use the lathe manually.

An ELS will let me cut any threads I want, and it will do tapers. But it’s a hellish project, and I know it will take a long time to get it together.

Yesterday I felt a very strong urge, and I have since ordered a Big Dog 7×14 mini lathe, plus a little bit of tooling.

This thing is big enough to do just about any threading project that interests me, and it’s small and portable. It comes with rests, a drill chuck, a 3-jaw chuck, change gears, and other stuff old iron usually lacks. Oddly enough, it might be very useful when I’m working on the ELS conversion on the other lathe. It should be a big help to me.

What will I do with it when the ELS is set up? Danged if I know. I believe the Clausing will eventually be easier to use and more versatile than the Big Dog. I suppose the small lathe will be better for anything requiring a rest, up to a certain size.

I have a quick change tool post on the way, plus a couple of random lathe doodads, but because I have the Clausing, I already have a lot of stuff I’ll need. Much of it works with any size lathe. I have tool blanks, measuring tools, acid brushes, a fish, cutting fluid, and so on. The tooling is cheap, which is extremely liberating. The tool post set, which is all steel, was $130.

I’ll have to get a 4-jaw chuck. Life without one is unthinkable.

The mill is benefiting from the lathe DRO. The mill came with a Sino DRO, from China. These things are very cheap, but they work. I have never seen anyone complain about the reliability. Sadly, it was a 2-axis DRO, and I wanted a z readout. I found a guy in Singapore who sells these things, and he said I should buy a 3-axis Sino display, plus a z scale for the mill and two scales for the Clausing. I could put the new display on the mill, and then I could install the z scale. After that, I’d have enough stuff left over for the lathe. Sold. The mill already has the new display on it, and I’m working on the z scale. It’s doable, even for me. The lathe will be a pain, but it will work.

I might as well point out that there was no reason at all to try buying a DRO here in the US. The guy who sold me my mill is unreliable; he still owes me a part. He sells Chinese DROs. I got a 3-axis DRO plus three scales shipped from Singapore for $520. That includes a huge $100+ shipping fee I could not get them to reduce, so the parts themselves cost me around $400. The mill guy would have charged at least $595, plus shipping, and who knows if he would have vanished again. The seller in Singapore was polite, fast with his responses, super cheap, and very helpful with tech advice. If having Asians take over the world means getting this kind of service and pricing, maybe it’s not such a bad thing. It looks like we deserve it.

There are better DROs out there, if you have to have the best. For me, this thing is a phenomenal deal.

I’m also working on the x power feed. I have a feed made by Align, a Taiwanese outfit. Over time, the handwheels required more and more inward pressure before engaging, and now they don’t engage at all. The power feed doesn’t seem to do anything. I’m trying to get it apart so I can see what’s going on. The US representative for Align has not replied to my email yet, nor has the manufacturer. People on forums are giving me tips. I guess it will work out eventually. If I have to replace the entire thing, the most I can possibly spend is $375. I would not want to do that, but it proves the problem is not catastrophic.

It’s supposedly a pretty good power feed. Cheaper than Servo, of course.

Within a few days, I should have a 3-axis DRO and a working power feed (or I should be waiting on the right part to fix it). It’s just a matter of persistence and prayer.

Don’t Forsake the Assembly of Yourselves Together

I belong to two prayer groups at church. One meets on Thursdays at 6:30 p.m. The other meets on Saturdays at 8 a.m. They’re supposed to meet on alternate weeks, so if I’m attending on Thursday, the Saturday group won’t meet.

On Thursday the guy who leads that day’s group asked me to take over because he was running late. I drove 18 miles in rush hour traffic and paid a $4.25 toll. I set the MP3 player up in the conference room and waited, and nobody showed up. Not one person. Not even the group leader. I was irritated, but I believe God keeps my life on rails because I pray in tongues a lot, so I told God I knew he wasn’t going to send me up there for nothing.

I got ready to leave, and on the way out, I heard a young man holler at me. He’s a musician. He hardly ever talks to me. He started asking me about food. Everyone at church wants me to cook. I started talking to some of the guys, and we ended up discussing the awful Australian music the church favors. It’s Hillsong stuff, I believe. Pretty bad, for the most part. I’m sure it goes over big in places like Australia and North Dakota, where people have no idea what soul is, but it’s very odd to see it played in a church which is maybe 80% black. We have lots of talented musicians, and they have no business playing this junk. It’s like baby food for them; they need something that lets them use their gifts instead of phoning it in. And they really need to write and play more original music. None of them will ever make it financially, playing this boring music. Musicians generally live or die based on the amount of quality original work they produce.

I have offered to let some of them come down and use my piano and amps, provided they work on original stuff. We started talking about this, and I said I might conceivably provide food if they showed up.

I didn’t realize how much they hated this bland music. Apparently, only two people in the entire church like it, and only one is a performer. But the band has no choice.

I also learned that one musician got criticized for taking his music to another church. That’s insane. When did religion become a zero-sum game? We’re all parts of the body of Christ. If our church won’t let someone gifted bless it, then that person has an obligation to find another place to serve God. I will never understand the small-mindedness that pervades churches. It’s amazing that people could be that wrong and not know it. It’s also amazing that they expect young people who live in the ghetto to starve instead of setting out on profitable careers!

It’s the nuttiest thing. If you sing, you can do pretty much whatever you want. If you speak, you can say nearly anything. You can go over on time. You can pour oil on people. You can run around the church screaming “HALLELUJAH!” But a musician who does anything remotely interesting is accused of pride, and he’s not supposed to play anywhere else.

So anyway, they might start coming down here. The neighbors will find that interesting. I don’t mind doing it. It’s no skin off my nose, and it might help motivate these kids to get out there and earn a living.

One of the guys asked if he could talk to me privately, and we discussed someone in the church’s inner circle who has a serious porn problem. This person is offering at least one woman money for photos. Evidently a lot of people know this, but it appears that they’re not doing anything to help. I may be wrong. I doubt they’d publish the news, if they were.

I felt bad about it. This is someone who gets shoved aside and taken for granted. He has a good heart. He’s very sincere. The church has benefited from him a lot, using his testimony and his talents on stage. I said the first thing was to quit telling people about it, and the second was to fast for him, so some of us will be doing that next week.

What’s the point of telling all this? The point is to show that I went to church for a meeting, and I got one. It just wasn’t what I expected. On the way home, I talked to God about it. Very often, God answers a prayer, giving me exactly what I asked for, but because the form is a little different from what I thought I had coming, I’ll feel like I’m cheating when I thank him for it. I’ll feel like I’m rationalizing, trying to make the shoe fit. That aggravates me. If I ask for X, Y, and Z, and I get all three, that means God delivered, period. No asterisk. No qualification. It bothers me that sometimes I feel like I’m giving God credit he doesn’t deserve. It must be a mental habit.

Today I thought I’d sleep late, because there was no meeting. Just before eight a.m., the phone rang. A friend who doesn’t know the meeting is on alternate weeks was on the line. Ordinarily, I would be highly annoyed if someone called at 8 a.m. on a Saturday, but I knew God was up to something.

This is a guy who left the church a while back. He still comes to meetings sometimes. Sometimes when people leave, they get criticized, or people talk as though they’ve failed or let the pastor down. That’s completely perverse. First of all, not everyone is supposed to go to our church. Some people are supposed to go to other churches, obviously. Pastors like to say “grow where you’re planted,” as if it’s treason to leave a church, but they only say that because they want your money. It’s not Biblical, and they ought to knock it off. If people are leaving your church, you’re doing something wrong, and you need to talk to God instead of berating and manipulating the people who pay your salary.

I could tell he was concerned that I would think less of him for leaving, but I made it very clear that I had absolutely nothing negative to say about it. The things he told me about his new church sounded wonderful. They made me envious, quite honestly. And he had concerns about my church. I told him I had the same concerns, and that he shouldn’t misunderstand me or feel isolated from me. I know why he left. I don’t blame him one bit. You go where you need to go. People have needs, and churches are supposed to meet them. If they don’t…sayonara. I wouldn’t go to a restaurant that put empty plates in front of me. For ten percent of your income, you ought to get SOMETHING.

I may visit his church soon. I’m not planning to leave my own church unless I feel led to do so, but it would be nice to sit in a healthy church every so often. I invited him to the Messianic synagogue, so maybe we’ll go this month.

I have no qualms about discussing the failings of any church. The Bible says you should be discreet when ordinary individuals have problems, but it’s also clear that correcting churches, leaders, and doctrine should be done publicly. The prophets did this, and so did Jesus. In the Revelation, Jesus complimented the Bereans for comparing new teachings with scripture, for the purpose of challenging bad doctrine. I don’t serve a church or a man; I serve God, and when man is against him, I have to say something.

Again, to get back to the point, I didn’t think I was going to a meeting, but I got one anyway.

The more I pray in the Spirit, the more I know God is confining my life to the tracks he has built. I’m not going to go far off course. A rollercoaster car goes up and down, but it always ends up where it’s supposed to. That’s what my life is like.

God has been teaching me a lot about love lately. That’s part of the ride. I know love is one of God’s two biggest priorities, so for years, I’ve been praying for him to help me with it. I get deeply involved with my own needs and desires, and I forget other people, and I don’t feel enough love for God himself. Lately, he has been showing me how important it is. Love is supposed to be our primary motivation, and if we really have it, it will lead to the virtuous behavior and thinking God is trying to get from us. If you look at the fruit of the Spirit, with the exception of faith and self-control, they’re all rooted in love or impossible without love. Goodness, kindness, patience, joy, peace, gentleness…you have to have love to get these things. Love itself is one of them.

The best love is the kind that comes from the Holy Spirit. I think it’s God’s love, somehow projected through you. I’ve felt it, and it’s a great thing. I think this is what we’re supposed to feel, because our own love is very limited.

Last night I woke up, and I felt very discouraged. I felt like my life was going nowhere. I knew that was crazy. I don’t know why I felt it, and I rejected the feeling completely. I prayed in the Spirit, and of course, the feeling left me. And while I prayed, I felt a new warmth for God himself. I hope that continues. It’s great to yammer about how much you love God, but I would rather feel the love, as clearly as I feel it for another person.

I don’t think we understand the importance of love. No matter how strong you are spiritually, God did not create you to make it on your own, with just his help. The Bible calls us a body. The Holy Spirit is our nervous system. He ties us together and coordinates our movements, and love is part of the apparatus. If we love each other, we will help each other. We will pray for each other, teach each other, and correct each other. This stuff is not optional. It’s mandatory, and it’s not going to happen without heartfelt love. Duty will only get you so far.

The Bible says a man will not hate his own flesh. If we are of the same body, each of us is the other’s flesh. If you cut one of your hands, the other will apply a bandage, right? Imagine the shape your body would be in if none of the parts helped the other parts. I wonder how many times my hands have given medical care to other parts of my body.

Perry Stone is talking about the same basic thing these days. He just aired a show about the Roman army’s methods. He was discussing “the armor of God.” He showed how they linked their shields together to form a sort of shelter, so a group of soldiers was stronger together than they would have been had they been separated. We really need to get ahold of this, if we’re going to stand in the miserable times that are coming. This is something God intended us to know. He doesn’t stick metaphors in the Bible without thinking.

Last night I was praying and thinking about all this, and I started talking to God about anger. The farther I go in my walk, the less anger I have. It’s something I’ve prayed about, and God has listened. But I still have a certain amount, and it’s more than I would like to have.

We all get abused and cheated. We all run into pastors and teachers who are basically thieves and liars. We all have good reasons to be mad and to hold grudges. But the Bible says, “Cease from anger and forsake wrath. Fret not thyself in any wise to do evil.”

I was thinking about this last night, and I got a fresh understanding of how dangerous anger is. Think of the things it inhibits: love, peace, joy, gratitude, forgiveness, patience, self-control, generosity…generally, it’s the antagonist of the fruit of the Spirit. That’s pretty bad. If you don’t have the fruit of the Spirit, MOST of God’s plan for your life has failed. If a person can put anger in you, he can isolate you from these things and also from God. We know that if we don’t love each other, we don’t know God, so anger that inhibits our love for each other must be capable of coming between God and man.

I know anger has to exist. Sometimes God himself is angry. But it can’t stay in you and fester, long after it has served its purpose. Last night I felt like God was telling me that holding onto anger is like wrapping my heart in broken glass. And it’s like a caged animal. It can’t live unless I feed it.

The supernatural, transforming power of the Holy Spirit is the best antidote to anger. But you need to have anger on your mind. You need to be praying for relief, if you expect to get it. And you should make a reasonable effort in your own strength.

It’s interesting. This isn’t rocket science. It should be common sense. But to me, it comes as a big revelation. Sometimes I think the things God tells us aren’t as brilliant as we think they were. They’re actually simple, but we’ve been blinded to them, so when they’re revealed, we’re much more amazed than we should be. It should be obvious that anger can cut us off from God’s power, but I didn’t have a good understanding of it until this morning.

Keep praying in the Spirit, and be sincere. Things will work out. In God’s kingdom, there are only two ranks: God, and everyone else. No human being is more precious or higher than any other. Anything God does for me, or for anyone else, he will do for you.

Why Couldn’t it Have Been “Melvin”?

Today I’m reading up on Rabbi Yitzchak Kaduri. He was a student of the top rabbi in Baghdad, and he moved to Israel as a young man. He died in 2005, at the age of a hundred and something.

Rabbi Kaduri did something that caused a lot of controversy. In the months before he died he talked about the Messiah a lot, and he had visions. He said the Messiah had come to him in a vision, and that the Messiah had identified himself. The Rabbi provided the Messiah’s name in a note, and he gave orders that it was not to be read until a year after his death.

After a year, the note was opened, and it contained a Hebrew message indicating that the name was “Yehoshuah,” which is the same name as “Joshua,” “Yeshua,” or…”Jesus.”

He also predicted that the Messiah would appear to Israel after Ariel Sharon died. Sharon has been in a coma since 2006. He is now 83 years old.

You can imagine the mess this has caused. It’s like serving pork at a bris. Observant Jews are highly disturbed that a respected rabbi has said that the Messiah has the same name as the Christian God. Some have asked if the note proved the Rabbi was a Christian, and others have expressed distress at the prospect of Christians celebrating the news. The rabbi’s son has insisted that the note is a forgery. He says the handwriting is not right, and that the rabbi was not capable of writing when the note was produced.

Here’s some more stuff Rabbi Kaduri wrote, presumably translated into English. I’ve looked at Word documents from his website, and so far, they’ve all been in Hebrew:

It is hard for many good people in society to understand the person of the Messiah. The leadership and order of a Messiah of flesh and blood is hard to accept for many in the nation.

As leader, the Messiah will not hold any office, but will be among the people and use the media to communicate. His reign will be pure and without personal or political desire. During his dominion, only righteousness and truth will reign.

Will all believe in the Messiah right away? No, in the beginning some of us will believe in him and some not. It will be easier for non-religious people to follow the Messiah than for Orthodox people.

The revelation of the Messiah will be fulfilled in two stages: First, he will actively confirm his position as Messiah without knowing himself that he is the Messiah.

Then he will reveal himself to some Jews, not necessarily to wise Torah scholars. It can be even simple people. Only then he will reveal himself to the whole nation. The people will wonder and say: What, that s the Messiah? Many have known his name but have not believed that he is the Messiah.

The funny part of this is the way it conforms to Christian expectations. The learned will reject the Messiah. “Many have known his name but have not believed.”

Do I buy it? Not really. I can’t dismiss it, but this guy has been wrong before. He said Sharon would be the last Prime Minister of Israel, and that didn’t pan out. He also said the soul of the Messiah had already become attached to a person in Israel. Jesus said he would return in the clouds, and that the whole world would see it. That doesn’t sound like a new incarnation to me. Aside from that, we are told that we only die once, so Christians don’t believe in reincarnation. We believe there is a spiritual anointing that can move from one person to another, as we see in the story of Elijah and Elisha, but that’s not reincarnation.

Maybe he’s right about some things and wrong about others.

I don’t know what Jews say about the rabbi’s credibility. They’re pretty gung-ho on the Talmud’s street cred, and they seem to have a lot of faith in men like Kaduri and the Lubavitcher Rebbe.

One thing is for sure: this will have Jewish scholars chasing their tails until the Messiah comes, and probably longer than that.

One, Two…FIVE!

Here’s something weird.

My church had a men’s conference. They called it “Fight Club.” I thought that was odd, but hey…men’s conference. We were getting what many of us had prayed for. What they called it wasn’t that important.

We had five amateur boxing matches the first night. A young friend of mine fought, and he lost. His name is Jeff. He’s hoping to become a professional boxer. I’ve told him it’s not going to do his brain any good, but he seems determined.

After the fight, I told him he needed to keep his left arm and shoulder up, because he was getting tagged at will. I told him about my experiences in the Eighties, when I trained at Virrick Gym in Coconut Grove. I was writing an article for the Sunday magazine of The Miami Herald; I wasn’t really trying to become a boxer. I was going to fight in the Golden Gloves and then retire immediately, but I got injured and had to quit.

I told Jeff I had trained under the same man who trained Jose Ribalta. For people who don’t remember, Ribalta is a Cuban heavyweight from Miami. He fought Tyson. After ten rounds, he lost by a TKO. I told my friend he needed a real trainer.

Jose used to kid me all the time. He told me I would know I had trained enough when I couldn’t count to three. He said that when I became champion, I’d be the PEOPLE’S champion.

Yesterday, I got these texts (combined here) from my friend: “So I’m running and this former Boxer, now trainer, stops traffic in order to Give me his Card and invite me to Train with him. I dare you to say God aint Good! Does the name Jose Ribalta ring a Bell?”

I didn’t know what to say. I hadn’t even known whether Jose was alive.

What does it mean? It’s like one of those testimonies you hear on TBN, except I know it’s true.

Maybe we can get Jose to come to church. That would be good.

It’s wild, how God takes all the seemingly loose ends in your life and ties them together.

Also, I got an interesting comment from Baldilocks. I wrote about the way Satan parodies God’s ways. I told about my visit to the National Holocaust Memorial. I said the model of Auschwitz showed me that the death camps were parodies of the temple. Instead of animals, people–most importantly, Jews–were processed, slaughtered, and burned. Very much like the burnt offerings in ancient Jerusalem. It was my opinion that the Holy Spirit had shown me this.

Here’s her comment.

One more thing: I was watching Sid Roth’s show earlier this year and he had a lady on who saw visions. She said she had a vision of the Holocaust and of the bodies burning. She said she could smell it and that she heard Satan say to God, “*there’s* your sweet savor.”

How about that?

You have to pray in tongues, and you have to keep your mind stayed on God. The more you do, the more amazing “coincidences” you will see in your life.

Pleasure’s Slave

I must have been nuts when I decided to make a turducken.

I’m cooking for two people. TWO. My father and me. That’s it. I should have thrown a turkey loaf in the microwave and been done with it. But I’m making two pies, a turducken, beans, cranberry relish, cranberry sauce, oyster dressing. cornbread dressing with andouille, bread dressing with crabmeat, mashed potatoes, and yams. If that doesn’t seem like a lot, try doing it yourself.

I had to make three pones of cornbread, which made it necessary to nuke a whole lot of bacon. That made Marv happy. He and Maynard helped dispose of the excess meat.

I deboned two birds for my abridged turducken. That was fun. Each one took at least half an hour. I still haven’t put them together. I have to get up, turn the bread and cornbread into stuffing, and then sew the whole mess up. I hope I have it roasted by ten p.m.

My dad has to have the stuff his mother made, so I am stuck with the extra dish of oyster dressing. That stuff reeks like you would not believe. He swears it’s wonderful. I wouldn’t touch it with my shoe.

He also insists on cranberry sauce, which is totally inferior to relish. I don’t have a relish recipe. I grind up cranberries, an orange, and pecans. I add Grand Marnier, sugar, and raspberry or cherry gelatin. BAM. I’m done. It’s always excellent. It’s hard to screw up fruit and Jell-O.

I haven’t even looked at the tubers yet. I plan to cheat and use the microwave. I don’t think it really matters.

A few years back, I ran out of dry ginger, so I used sushi ginger in a pumpkin pie. I thought it was great, so I do it every year now. But this year I grabbed the wrong Carnation can in the store, so I found I had to come up with a substitute for evaporated milk. Either that or fight a “2012”-style frenzy at the store. I mixed condensed milk, cream, and half and half. Pretty close. Who cares? Pumpkin pie is never going to be exciting.

I stuck Jack Daniel’s in the pecan pie again. I can’t figure out how such a disgusting beverage turned out to be such a magnificent cooking ingredient, but that’s how it is.

I’m wondering if the Karo pies I’ve always eaten are a substitute for something better. Corn syrup is the worst form of sugar imaginable, so you would think it came into use as a replacement for something more expensive. How about sorghum? I’ll bet that would be fantastic. I’ll have to try it some day.

Have a great Thanksgiving. This might be the last one before the Obama Depression, so live it up. If you’re not in line with God’s blessings, this would be a great time to get your game face on and start living in power.