Christian Content Ahead

I write a lot about relatively trivial things these days. I say “relatively” because they’re not completely trivial. I write about good things that are happening to me because God is blessing me. These things happen because God has taught me important things, and I am putting them to use. That’s not really trivial at all. But I still need to tell other people about the root causes of my blessings, which are much more important than the blessings themselves.

I’ve learned a number of things recently. Perhaps the most momentous thing I’ve learned: I am a god.

I think most Christians would be angry to read that, and that should surprise no one, because the Jewish religious authorities of the time of Jesus, who (like most of our Christian authorities) were servants of Satan, got very angry at Jesus when he said the same thing, which he found in their scriptures, which they supposedly revered.

What do I mean by “god”? Do I mean I get to sit on the throne of heaven and tell everyone else what to do? Do I mean I can create a galaxy if I feel like it? Obviously not. Whatever authority I have comes from the father, and I will always be under his command. I can’t create my own reality. There are kooks in places like California who teach that every human being can create his own experience, without deferring to any higher authority. Celebrities, who tend to think of themselves as higher beings simply because people point cameras at them, have fallen for this nonsense. It’s a lie. Everyone serves someone. Everyone is accountable.

When the Bible says we are gods (“elohim”), it means we are children of Yahweh and that we are above all the creatures that are not. Most people, to put it mildly, are not children of God. They are his creations but not his children. God’s children are those who are truly saved. That excludes many people who think they are Christians. Ideally, a child of God is led by the Holy Spirit. The Bible says, “As many as are led by the Holy Spirit, they are the sons of God.”

In the hierarchy of the universe, we are above demons, fallen angels, objects, unsaved human beings, every inanimate thing, and nonhuman earthly creatures. Jesus died on the cross, and we are heirs to his authority.

Jesus did a number of things religious authorities did not like. He violated the man-made, unscriptural Jewish laws, and he encouraged his followers to do so. He healed people on the sabbath. He also called himself the son of God.

In John 10, Jesus said, “I and the Father are one.” Some Jews who heard him picked up rocks to stone him. This passage follows.

Jesus answered them, Many good works have I shewed you from my Father; for which of those works do ye stone me?

The Jews answered him, saying, For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God.

Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?

If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken;

Say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God?

Jesus referred to Psalm 82, which says, “I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High.”

They continued to try to kill him, but he walked off under God’s protection, as he did every time he was threatened, until he finally allowed himself to be taken. He walked away unharmed because he was God’s son. He was a god, and he was favored above those who were not.

Psalm 82 says God is addressing those to whom the word of God came. Jesus is the word of God, according to his own declaration. The Bible says prophets spoke when the word of God came to them. Jesus speaks to the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit repeats things to men. That’s what prophecy is.

It all makes sense. God created the earth for the purpose of reproduction, and he calls us his children. What do a giraffe’s “children” grow up to be? Giraffes. What do a trout’s “children” grow up to be? Trout. A child of God grows up to be a god. Like God himself, we will live in the highest realm of creation, totally invulnerable to all harm, with all our enemies permanently defeated and confined far away from us. We will have no flaws or weaknesses. We will have no fear of anything. We will never sin or want to sin. We will be gods. We just won’t receive worship.

When Paul and Barnabas showed up in Rome, they demonstrated so much power, people called them Mercury and Zeus. They had to humble themselves and make people understand that the power came from the throne of heaven, not themselves.

The earth is a dirty place (made from dirt), but God, who is completely clean, has chosen to have contact with it for the purpose of reproduction. He uses people in flesh bodies. Our bodies are like the feet of God. In the Bible, feet symbolize human beings who, though citizens of heaven, are here on earth completing missions for God.

When God cursed the earth, he told Satan the seed of Eve would bruise his head, and Satan would bruise his heel. He was referring to us. We are above Satan. Our feet are above the highest part of him, so when there is contact, he can only bruise our feet. It’s as though the faces of the spirits that are against us are our cobblestones. We walk on them.

Psalm 91 mentions this. It says, “Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder; the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet.”

It’s amazing when you see how various parts of the Bible fit together.

Psalm 91 says God’s angels will bear his children up in their hands lest we dash our feet against stones. It refers to the stones of Satan’s temple. We are the stones of Jesus’ temple, and people who are not saved are the stones of Satan’s. Psalm 91 says we will not have our flesh driven into conflict with carnal people.

We’re supposed to have lives of authority and success. We are elite. We are nobility. We are the 1% of the universe, to steal a phrase the envious and murderous children of darkness like to use to describe people who are blessed. The Bible mentions problems Christians will have on the earth, but that’s about persecution, not things like disease and poverty.

There were people in the early church who were not successful in life. They were doing Christianity wrong. The early church was strong and full of knowledge, but it wasn’t perfect. It failed because people still did things wrong. You shouldn’t assume that your life won’t be any better than theirs. You shouldn’t get the idea that they were perfect or that you can’t do Christianity as well as they did.

Jesus said his followers would do greater things than he had. We haven’t seen that yet. The early church didn’t accomplish it. That means it’s still in the future. We should hope to exceed the deeds of early Christians.

Moses did things that were much more impressive than anything Jesus did, and that was under the old covenant, so how can we think we’ve seen all that new-covenant people will be allowed to do?

The apostles made mistakes. People don’t like to hear it, but it’s true. Paul corrected Peter publicly when he tried to Judaize new believers and make them obey the law instead of the Spirit. Paul and Barnabas had a major argument. Obviously, one of them was wrong. We shouldn’t think we can’t do better, and be more blessed here on earth, than the early church.

We are gods already, even if we are stuck to uncooperative bags of deteriorating meat at the moment. We have authority now. We have God’s character and mind now. The Bible says God gave us the Holy Spirit as a down payment here on earth. We have to use supernatural weapons to defeat our flesh, other people, and spirits in order to manifest the power and virtue of sons of God.

Churches don’t teach this stuff. They have turned Christianity into a game show. “Do this for God and get this many points.” “Refrain from that and get that many points.” Add up the points, and maybe you get to heaven. Christianity is not a game or a set of rules. It’s supernatural. A great spirit comes to live in you, and you communicate with him all the time and submit to him, and he gives you assignments and the power to complete them. He gives you a new heart and mind and kills the old ones. He relieves you of the obligation to work hard and fight for everything. That stuff is carnal, and it honors the flesh and insults God.

It’s very important to understand these things, because Satan runs the church, and he has created a system which sets you up for failure and eternal damnation.

I had a very disturbing dream last night. I was in this house, and my dad was still alive. It was dark. I got myself a ham and cheese sandwich. When I picked up the mustard jar, it was empty. One of my dad’s faults was that he would eat things he liked and leave nothing for anyone else. I knew he had done it; he had eaten all of the mustard, like ice cream, with a spoon. I went to my own private fridge for another jar, and that fridge contained an empty, dirty jar with no lid.

I took the jar to his bedroom to confront him and try to help him remember not to eat all the mustard. I was going to tell him it wasn’t pudding. I went into his bedroom and started to talk to him about the mustard, and he interrupted me and said, “To me, it’s like pudding.”

After this, I heard a voice. It was my sister, calling my name. She was in my house. Immediately, I felt my stomach twist into a knot. I have never told her where I live, and I will not permit her to be on this property for any reason. I refuse to go back and be subjected to the presence of someone who abused me and everyone else in the family for years.

The first words out of my mouth, before I even started walking to find her, were, “GET OUT.”

I found her in the kitchen, and I told her to get off my property that instant. I told her she was not allowed to set foot here. She said I had already lost, and for some reason, I said, “I have never lost.”

I noticed a bunch of people were with her. Cops, mostly. They had come to help her move in. One had a cast on his right hand, and he was holding an M16 rifle in front of him, looking around as though he expected someone to pop up and shoot him.

I told them they were all trespassing. I told them to leave. I saw a wall of disorderly cardboard boxes full of my sister’s belongings. I told her I was going to put them off the property and leave them in the open. I told her she knew me and that she knew I would do it.

I started asking who was in charge. I saw a woman at the back. I went to talk to her. I said, “Social worker, right?” I told her my sister’s history of being ejected from rehab facilities. I told her how exceptional she was and how she had repeatedly fooled people like the social worker.

A bearded man with glasses was staring at the house and my things. He marveled because it was such a wonderful house. I agreed. I said, “It’s the greatest house in creation.”

They didn’t seem to be inclined to obey me, so I shouted, “I am a LAWYER, and I am telling you to leave NOW.”

They left, and my sister and the boxes were gone.

I woke up immediately. I felt terrible. I felt as though she were coming back to make my life miserable.

I prayed. I asked God what the dream was about.

My sister represents false siblings who are heavily controlled by fallen angels and demons. These are people who claim to be Christians yet have no knowledge. They think they know better than I do, even though I listen to the Holy Spirit and they don’t. I know a lot of people like this. My word for them is “boneheads.” You can’t tell them anything. You can spend your whole life trying to bless them with useful knowledge, and all they will do is torment you. They persecute, and they waste your time. When you fail to go along with their carnal plans, they start accusing you. You’re heartless. You’re selfish. You think you’re “a little bit special,” as one said to me a few years ago.

My dad represents the leadership of the church. My dad was demented, and most church leaders are inept and very ignorant. They know almost nothing, and what they think they know is toxic and wrong.

My dad was extremely carnal. He loved to stuff himself in front of the TV. Many preachers are just fat sacks that gluttonize on things like money and food. They’re like babies. Everything is about the mouth and the blanket.

Mustard represents the kingdom of God, as it did in a parable. Ham represents gentile flesh (mine). Cheese represents the milk of the Bible. Bread represents God’s word. Ignorant, gluttonous preachers who serve their bellies destroy the kingdom of God for other people. They can’t benefit from it, and they keep us from going in. They eat the mustard, which doesn’t help them, and they keep us from getting it.

The cops and the social worker represent well-meaning people of earthly authority whom demons and failed Christians manipulate to get them to control the Spirit-led.

The other day God showed me something. In Genesis, Satan was represented as a serpent because a serpent has no arms or legs. It controls other animals with its mouth. Even a constrictor begins by grabbing prey with its mouth. Satan has no power of his own. He uses the power of others. He threatens them. He makes deals with them. He offers them bait. He lies to them.

A good Christian controls his own strength and God’s power to get things done. A child of Satan controls other people. Always remember that. Anyone who uses threats, guilt trips, juicy bait, or lies to make you obey is serving Satan. When you obey such people, you obey Satan, too.

To get everyone to leave, I had to use the authority of the law. I had to tell them I was a lawyer. It’s funny that Christianity was not part of the dream. I didn’t pray or speak in God’s name. It makes sense, though, because Jesus spoke parables that had no overtly religious or supernatural content.

God is reminding me not to join a church. I’m not sure why he did it, because the idea of joining a church is repulsive to me. Maybe he did it so I would tell others.

The sense that I was slipping back under the power of evil people and spirits left me feeling very traumatized. After several hours, I am still not over it.

The word says, “The Lord is my pastor; I shall not lack.” That’s Psalm 23. When I was under human pastors, I lacked. They used me. They taught me toxic things that weren’t true, along with a number of helpful things that were true. God is the perfect pastor. He only teaches truth. He doesn’t hurt; he always builds you up.

False Christians will be very prominent in the persecution movement as it ramps up. They already are. They always have been. I have had very few problems with non-Christians. The people who made me most miserable in my walk over the years were preachers, church officials, and volunteers.

I think it’s hard for most Christians to accept the fact that Satan runs the church, but then the Jews didn’t like it when Jesus called them “the synagogue of Satan,” and he was right.

I have much, much less anxiety and stress than I did even a year ago. The closer I get to God, the better things go and the more I succeed. God told me this: “Success brings joy, and joy brings success.” It’s true.

Joy isn’t ordinary happiness. It’s associated with victories and breakthroughs. This is why the Bible says, “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.” It’s why people in the Bible reJOIced when good things finally happened.

These days, I prophesy and interpret tongues a lot. I have been reluctant to to it, because I was afraid I would say crazy things that were wrong, but that is changing. God’s word says he’ll back me up, so I leave that to him. I can’t tell you how comforting it is to hear what he has to say to me. I need to spend more time doing it. After all, the Bible says, “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing, by the word of God.”

He keeps telling me I have nothing to worry about. Worry is something he really hates. He talks about it all the time. He keeps saying he will never drop me. He says he has never left me, and he never will. He says he will lift me above the world. These things are all consistent with the Bible.

Worry is his main issue with me. Not lust. Not pride. Not anger. Not covetousness. Not dishonesty. He barely mentions those things. He talks about worry every time he speaks. It’s very important to cooperate with him and to continue to diminish worry.

Favor is a big deal with God. He really wants to help you, believe it or not. He keeps showing me favor in funny ways.

I have a list of people I pray for, and I ask God to send people to help us. I ask him to cause them to pay us money we haven’t earned, to give us things we haven’t earned, to give us free counsel, to take care of us and all we have so we can spend our time serving him, and so on.

My prayers have been working in an amusing way. I can’t seem to go to Home Depot without getting something for nothing. I tried to buy a circuit breaker. The cashier couldn’t look it up, so she insisted I take it and not worry about it. I went to Home Depot to buy a cabinet, and when I arrived, the exact model I wanted was by the door, selling for half price, and I got it for $5 less. I bought a few things the other day, including a vacuum nozzle, and the cashier was not able to look it up, so she told me it was mine. It’s making me nervous.

I went back later and sneaked the circuit breaker and nozzle back onto the shelves, but I’m not sure God wanted me to. After all, he told the disciples to take a stranger’s donkey without permission.

I couldn’t go to customer service, because the cashiers might have gotten in trouble.

It’s strange, but I never think about the morality of what they’re doing until it’s too late and I’m in the parking lot. That’s when it hits me. I don’t know why.

I went to a metal dealer, and when I told the people there I was learning to weld, they gave me maybe $25 worth of free metal to practice on. I didn’t spend that much on what I bought.

I hired an electrician to improve my shop’s wiring, and his company said they would trace and fix a problem with a socket for nothing. They’re coming tomorrow. It’s not a small job.

I wanted dust collection for the cabinet I bought, which holds a wood lathe. I picked a product from Rockler.com. When I went to order it, it was on sale, and they were offering free shipping.

I’ll tell you about the weirdest example of favor I’ve seen.

I’ve been stretching briefly every night. I want my back to be healthy. I first started a month or so ago, and I was startled to see how stiff I was. I could only get my fingertips to within maybe 6″ of the floor. I kept at it, and over a few weeks, I improved to the point where I could put two fingertips down.

The other day, before stretching, I commanded my flesh to be healed, strong, lean, and flexible. Then I stretched. I put three fingertips on each hand on the floor. I didn’t know what to think. It was astonishing.

I can now put all five fingers on the floor, with a slight bend in each knee. Explain it if you can.

I’m not a prosperity-gospel Christian, and I don’t believe prosperity and other earthly blessings prove you’re doing things right, but I know God’s supernatural favor when I see it. Besides, I don’t give money to preachers, so I know what I get has nothing to do with the prosperity lie.

You need to work on the gifts of the Spirit, and you need to hear from God many times every day. You’re not going to get anywhere by sending preachers money, going to Africa on missionary trips God didn’t order you to take, hitting yourself with a flagellum after you sin, saying Hail Marys, building an unnecessary orphanage, or being the extra-best church volunteer who ever lived. You need to know God personally. That’s what he likes, and it brings results.

What did Jesus say? People would come to him and tell him about all the great things they had done in his name, and he would send them to hell, saying, “I never KNEW you.”

Hell is full of Christians. Accept it. I would be surprised if any of the dead popes are absent.

When I was a kid, my grandfather used to give me money. I didn’t ask for it or earn it. We spent a great deal of time together, and every so often, he would just hand me some cash. That’s how God is. He’s not waiting for you to present a bill for building a cathedral. He loves his children, and he enjoys giving them things just because it makes them happy.

I have no idea how many words I’ve written. Many, I suppose. I will close, and when I come back, maybe I’ll have a new wrench to write about.

Two Days of Favor

I didn’t blog yesterday. I started to, but I did not publish what I wrote. I will paste it here now and add today’s news.

09-25-19

I’m getting a ton of things done today. I had to quit and have some food so I didn’t get burned out.

I had to get rid of the L-shaped Corian counter in my workshop so I could have my machine tools moved here. Today was the day.

I didn’t know how to deal with Corian. I decided to try the sawzall. I cut several holes in the counter with a drill to make it easier to start a cut.

When I finally got the saw in there, I was surprised. Corian cuts very quickly even though it’s hard. I zipped through the counter in around 20 seconds. I had been under the impression that the counter was an inch and a half thick, but I learned that only the edges were that size. The rest of it was around half an inch.

While I was tearing the whole structure apart, I also took down the weird boards the previous owner had screwed into the shop walls. He put boards up, and he added strange horizontal strips of galvanized steel. There were little tabs that were bent outward into the shop, presumably for hanging tools. I never found them useful, and the boards were in the way.

Once I had the Corian out, I didn’t know what to do with it. It was too big to cut on the table saw with a miter gauge. I decided to fire up the band saw and eyeball it. I cut the ends off sort of square.

In the end, I made a sled from scrap, to force the Corian to go by the table saw blade in a straight line. I made a piece 18″ by 36″ in size, and I plan to turn it into a top for a wood lathe cart. The wood lathe used to be on the counter, so now I need a place to put it.

I may make a cutting board out of the third large piece of Corian. It seems like a good use for it, and cutting boards are ridiculously overpriced.

I got tired of woodworking, if you can call it that, so I decided to take on another project.

Long ago, I made a temporary extension table for my table saw, and of course, it worked so well I never replaced it. There was a problem with it, however. The legs on the end were not supported well. I used two small pieces of wood for struts, but they weren’t fastened reliably. I was concerned that one day someone might put something heavy on the table and the legs would kick out from under it.

I got myself a couple of strips of metal for additional struts. Today I bent them on the finger brake, drilled holes in them, and attached them to the saw table extension. I tried to arrange it so they were in tension, pulling the legs toward the saw.

The brake is not that easy to use. I made one bend that wasn’t right. There were two struts with four bent tabs, and one tab was longer than the others.

I tried to straighten it using the vise. I didn’t expect to do too well, and I was right. It had little bends in it when I was done.

I’ve been considering trying forging, and I’ve been anvil-shopping. I have a big piece of 1018 steel, and my plan has been to use it as an anvil until I get a real one I can trust. The steel is 4″ on a side and around 15″ long. Very heavy. Today I stuck it on a stump and used it to straighten the crooked steel.

I was pleasantly surprised. The hammer didn’t dent the 1018 block at all, and the bends came out of the steel in a hurry. I got everything bent the way I wanted it, and I used the “anvil” to fine-tune it.

I put some holes in the tabs, deburred them, and attached the struts. Now I know the table saw can’t collapse. I really will redo it some day, but this will prevent a disaster while I’m getting around to it.

09 26 19

I’ll tell you about my day, and you can decide whether I have God’s favor or not. I believe we are supposed to live in favor. The Bible says so in many places, so anyone who disagrees is wrong.

After I dismantled my Corian counter, I had a wood lathe sitting on the floor. I had to find something to put it on. I had been planning to make something out of the scrap lumber I removed from my workshop shelves, but I felt like it would take more time than I wanted to invest. I have a lot of things that need to get done before the shop will really function, and that makes it hard to justify spending two or three days on a lathe project. I considered getting a cart instead.

For quite a while, I’ve wanted a one-drawer Husky rolling cabinet from Home Depot. It’s an amazing bargain. For $69, you get a good-quality cabinet with casters, a locking ball-bearing drawer, locking doors, a pegboard back, and a power strip that has USB ports. You can’t beat that deal. I am on a crusade to put everything I own on wheels, and I thought this cabinet would be perfect for my 8″ bench grinder.

Yesterday I thought of the cabinet when I considered the lathe situation. I decided to go to Home Depot and see if the cabinet looked right. The lathe probably weighs 80 pounds, and the feet are about 30″ apart from side to side, so I didn’t know if the cabinet, which is 27″ wide, would work.

I walked in the store, looked to my left, and saw a product sitting by the customer service counter. It was the cabinet I wanted, with a $35 price tag on it. Someone had returned it.

I got a few things I needed. I bought casters for my heavy pedestal fan, along with some washers and nuts to use for installation. I bought a new hot glue gun. Something–I don’t recall what–had reminded me that I needed one.

A hot glue gun is a phenomenal tool. Imagine glue that sets in 5 seconds, provides a lasting hold, and can be loosened and removed from most things later with little or no damage. That’s hot glue. Now that I think about it, woodturners use it a lot. They fasten blanks to lathe plates with it so they don’t have to use screws.

I got my stuff and went to the customer service area to ask about the cart. The lady who helped me said the buyer had brought it back because there were no keys to the lock. She saw that I was not happy about that, so she added that they could take a little more off the price because of it. I thought about it. There had to be someone on Ebay selling replacement locks for $5. I decided to take a chance.

When I got home, I opened the cabinet and checked it over. Everything looked fine, except something was hanging from the rear of the drawer, inside the cabinet. It looked like fishing line. That looked familiar. The last time I had seen that in a tool cabinet, it had been attached to something. It had been attached to a set of keys.

I pulled the line loose, and a set of keys fell into my hand.

Not bad.

On the way home, I stopped by the grocery. I needed vegetables for breakfast. They had Ben & Jerry’s on sale for 50% off. Last time they did this, my favorite favor got cleaned out before I got there. Not this time! I bought two pints.

I went home to work on the lathe project.

The cabinet had to have a new, wider top in order to support the lathe, and I already had it. The 36″ slab of Corian was waiting for me.

I fired up the router table and put a 1/4″ radius on every upper edge of the Corian so it would be pleasant to lean on and so on. Then I tried to figure out how to attach it to the cabinet.

My big table saw is working now, because I have 250V power. I also had scrap wood. I decided to make several strips of wood of just the right thickness and attach them to the underside of the Corian. The upper surface of the cabinet is like a tray with a lip on three sides, so my plan was to situate three strips so they anchored the top against the tray and kept it exactly where it should be. I also intended to put a fourth strip on it under the front, where there was no metal lip.

How do you attach things to Corian? I got on the web and looked around. I considered wood screws, but Corian is brittle, so it sounded like a bad idea. I considered tapping it for metal screws, but that also sounded risky. Then I remembered something.

I had a brand-new hot glue gun.

I situated the top on the cabinet very accurately and sprayed the underside with Dykem metal blue. This showed me where the top touched the cabinet. When I took the top off and rolled it over, I had Dykem lines to use for measurements.

Using a caliper and the table saw, I cut four strips of wood very precisely, and I stuck them to the Corian. It worked great. I rolled it over, put it on the cabinet, and verified that it was correct. I used denatured alcohol to take the Dykem off the cart, and I was done.

The top and lathe are not attached to the cart. They just rest on it. They are confined on three sides by the cart’s upper lip, and I have faith that the lathe will not suddenly violate the laws of physics and jump in the 4th direction and into my lap. I can always glue or bolt the top in later.

Here is the cart. Not bad for $30. It holds the lathe and all my chisels. The big area in the bottom is large enough to hold a shop vacuum converted to collect dust. You can imagine what I’m thinking. Run a hose out of the cabinet to a dust scoop over the lathe. I already found the product. Rockler sells them.

I guess I’ll also put a cheap LED light on the lathe. I already have one. It’s a sewing light with a magnetic base. I used to use it for welding, but I got a better one. The cabinet’s power strip gives me a good place to plug it in.

Some people criticize little Chinese lathes, but the truth is that they’re very good tools. They’re just small. You can make a lot of very useful things on one. If you want a giant salad bowl, a baseball bat, or a bedpost, you need something bigger, but what percentage of your projects are that long?

I can make tool handles, mallets, and many other useful and ornamental things on this lathe. If I need more length, I can use my big metal lathe. I made a woodturning tool rest for it.

There are woodturners out there bragging about their $7000 lathes with 2-HP motors. Well, my metal lathe weighs 4000 pounds and has a 7.5-HP motor, and in terms of rigidity, it makes an expensive wood lathe look like a limp noodle.

I think I have the bases covered, if I ever decide to turn anything. Which I might, now that I don’t have to huddle in a filthy corner of the shop.

I’m very close to moving my machine tools here. I just need to clear out one side of the shop I might be able to finish by the end of the week. After that, all I need are a couple more outlets. That’s a quick job.

I might pour a little slab and put my compressor in its own tiny shed, just outside the workshop. That would kill most of the noise and save me some floor space.

I think I’ve had a remarkable day and that God is behind it. It’s not his job to be my genie and make everything cushy for me, but he is good to his children because that’s how good fathers are.

I expect to be back at the job of establishing my workshop tomorrow.

Crew Arrives Soon

I’m waiting for the electrical crew to arrive to double the amperage to my workshop. Today they’re going to tear up the yard, drill a hole in the side of my house, and give me a big bill. I can’t wait.

This morning, I went out and locked all my tool cabinets. I took photos of everything that was out in the open that a person might want to steal. I went through the garage, where the electrical panel is, and took pictures. I moved several thousand rounds of ammunition indoors. I guess I shouldn’t have had it out there!

I have no reason to think the electricians will steal, but good fences make good neighbors. There is no point in tempting people. Also, if I don’t take measures in advance, there will be problems in the future. Every time I can’t find something, I’ll think they stole it until I locate it.

A relatively expensive fishing rod vanished from my dad’s garage, and I noticed it after electricians did some work. I still suspect them. I didn’t eat it, and it didn’t evaporate.

I think I hear a truck.

False alarm. It was Federal Express.

After the wiring is finished, I’ll get some conduit and wire and fix the workshop up for my machine tools. Then I have to rearrange everything and decide where to put the big guns.

I have an L-shaped Corian counter in one corner, mounted to a wall. The previous owner left it. It has to go. I’ve been wondering if I could cut it and reuse the Corian. This morning I hit it with a sawzall, and it cut just fine. That means I can break it into two big pieces, and then I can trim them on the table saw.

My panel is on the north side of the shop, so in order to avoid running conduit and expensive wire long distances, I may put the lathe, the mill, the compressor, and the phase converter on or by the north wall. That will mean moving…actually, not that much stuff. I’ve been fervent about putting stuff on wheels, so the only thing I’ll have to drag is my workbench.

I’m hoping to put my wood stuff toward the east and south. I want a woodworking bench in that area. It doesn’t have to be fancy. There is a real fever out there for fancy woodworking benches, but I am determined to resist, because they’re unnecessary. Thousands of woodworking factories have come and gone in this country, and what did they use for the most part? Simple plywood tables. I plan to go fancier than that. I’ll want a vise and some dog holes. I’m not joining the fancy-bench religion, however.

I suppose I could make my bench top from Corian. Why not? Better than wood, and I won’t have to plane it flat.

I hate to do it, but I may sacrifice some tools. I have a jobsite table saw and a 12″ sliding miter saw on a stand. Nice tools, but I have a Powermatic 66 table saw with a 5-HP motor and an extension as long as a couch. I don’t see myself using the small tools in the future.

I’m really making this place my own. I used to use my dad’s initials for the name of this PC, because it belonged to him. I gave it that name for him when he bought it. Today I got rid of that. Totally new name. His influence is disappearing. The influence of the people who sold us the house is disappearing. Mine is increasing, along with God’s. It’s wonderful.

I can’t wait to get this over with. I can’t do anything until the electricians finish. Can’t even leave the house. Hurry, hurry, hurry.

Money Out, New Wires in

Things continue to go well.

I had an electrician come out and look at my workshop. He gave me an estimate, and I’m having the wiring upgraded. I’ll be able to run a 7.5-HP compressor and a welder at the same time. I’ll be able to install my 10-HP phase converter. I’ll be able to move my machine tools up here at last.

I considered doing the work myself, and I suppose I could have, but I want it over with. I compromised. The pros will run the wires from the main panel to the workshop, and after they’re gone, I’ll wire up the receptacles on my own.

The people who built this house did a lot of great things, but they were not “tool queers,” as Youtube tool guru Keith Fenner likes to put it. They did not live for tools. Their biggest tools were things like a farm jack. Clearly, there was something wrong with them.

I’m going to have a mill, a lathe, a big compressor, a bunch of welders, and a plasma cutter, not to mention some 250V saws. Just a few things a guy needs in order to get by.

It’s hard to believe what it costs to put two wires in a hole and attach them to a couple of panels. It has to be done, however. I’m not going to continue to live without machine tools. It’s barbaric.

They should have the job done by tomorrow afternoon, and I’ll be able to get the tools moved up here next week. Between the completion of the wiring and the tool move, I’ll have to rearrange the shop. I need 8 or 9 feet of linear space for the lathe, about 7 feet for the mill, and a square yard for the compressor. Which I should leave in Miami. I should bite the bullet and get a bigger compressor.

I’ll have to run air lines up in the trusses. I’m not going to mess around with one air line I drag around the shop. I have to mount my big hose reel on the wall.

The shop has a big L-shaped Corian countertop which sits on a two-by-four frame screwed to the wall. It has to go. It’s a neat feature, but I don’t need it. It sucks up a lot of space, and it’s not flexible. You can’t move it. Maybe someone will buy it and take it away.

I could cut it up and save the Corian for other things. It’s a dynamite work surface. I just happen to have Corian blades for my table saw. I bought it from a guy who cut Corian.

Things are happening fast. It looks like God is preparing me for a pleasant time during the cool months.

Plus Hot Metal

Yesterday was eventful and profitable.

I have moved my tractors out of the workshop. I put tarps on them to protect such parts as would react badly to rain. Now I have more room for important things, like plasma-cutting and watching Youtube.

Speaking of Youtube, I tried to come up with a plan to hardwire the shop for the Internet. I don’t want to dig up the yard. I was thinking about it when I remembered that there was a jack on the wall out there. Phone? Ethernet? I had always assumed it was a phone jack, but I had never checked.

I went out and looked. It was a phone jack. That didn’t stop me. I wanted to find out what kind of wire was behind it. I had a couple of things in mind. If it was skinny phone wire, it could act as a fish line to pull Cat 6 wire through for the Internet. If it was something better, maybe I could connect it directly.

It turned out to be Cat 5, which, while inferior to Cat 6 (or Cat 11), is far better than I need. Pretty exciting. I came up with a plan. I would put a Cat 5 port in the garage, and I would find the phone port nearest to the router and turn it into a Cat 5 port. I would disconnect the land line stuff, which is obsolete, and I would have the Internet, wired, in every room where I had a phone jack.

I got myself some tools and went to work. I changed two phone jacks. I went to the computer. I turned it on. No service.

I traced all the wires, and I learned a couple of things. I found out where all the wiring in my house is. I learned that all the Cat 5 wiring was only partially wired up. Cat 5 has 8 wires, and the phone jacks use 4. Even if the wires from the garage had gone straight to the phone box by the garage, only 4 wires would have connected that box to the jacks in the house.

While I was working on all this, I decided to trace the Cat 5 workshop wires as far as I could. I opened a little box outside the workshop. Guess what I found? Cut wires. The jack in the garage was connected to approximately 5 feet of wire which dead-ended right outside.

Now I have two ethernet jacks that go nowhere.

I’m not sure what to do, but it can be dealt with. I just have to decide whether I care enough to do it. It will mean working in the attic, where the fiberglass insulation and wiring are, and I don’t really want to do that until the temperature drops into the low sixties.

I can use the Internet out there already, by using my phone as a mobile hotspot. It’s just annoying.

I also did some welding. I cut some flat steel bar into short pieces and made T-welds (fillets) with TIG and stick.

My TIG welding still needs a lot of work. After I welded, I went inside and watched some videos, and I took note of some fundamentals I had forgotten. I am hoping to do better today.

Welding is not like other tool-related pursuits. You have to keep practicing. People who have welded for 30 years practice. You don’t have to do this with other tools. No one practices using a wrench.

Because the weather is so much better now, welding isn’t a chore. I don’t sit and drip sweat into my helmet now. That means I can practice as long as I want, provided I observe the duty cycles of the machines and I don’t overheat the TIG torch.

Welding is easier with the cat gone. Before he left, I christened him “Heisenberg.” He now resides with my friend Amanda. I think it was a big mistake for her to take him, but apart from the obvious problems of taking in an unneeded pet in a crowded household, he will do an exceptional job of whatever it is that cats do. I’m just glad I can back out of the driveway at full speed again. And when I want to weld, I don’t have to put any animals in cages.

She took him to the vet to see if he had an ID chip, and of course, he did not. I predicted it, because I knew it was very unlikely that anyone around here would buy a cat chip and then throw away the cat and not look for it.

People treat cats as though they’re disposable. No sane person has ever paid for a cat. They’re always free, so a lot of people feel that that makes it okay to dump them beside the road. That is surely what happened to Heisenberg. He has a wonderful personality, but he’s a cat, so he’s an at-will family member who can be discarded at any moment for any reason.

Whoever abandoned him should have either given him away or had him put down, but it was easier to have no spine and toss him out of a car.

If you want to irritate a cat person, say this: “Dogs cost money, but cats are free.” By and large, it’s true.

His picture is on the Internet on sites where people look for lost pets, but no one will ever claim him. If anyone cared about him, I would have received a response by now.

I wonder if his neediness, which I saw as a plus, is what got him fired. It’s unusual for a cat to be bursting with affection. Maybe someone didn’t want to be pestered. Before he left, he was doing things like jumping on me and wrapping all 4 legs around me. That could get old. In fact, it did. He interrupted me repeatedly while I was trying to work.

I talked to my friend Mike about it. He understands completely. He has two cats, and he keeps hoping they’ll die. He feels obligated to take care of them because no one will take them and he’s not willing to take them to a shelter, but they’re not real pets, like dogs. They don’t care about him. I would have taken them to the pound a long time ago. People are more important than animals. You shouldn’t disrupt your life so an unwanted cat can have food and shelter until it croaks. You have more value than that.

God showed me something interesting and very important. There is a correct order of authority in people’s lives, and if you’re not in God’s will, that order will be inverted. When an animal’s desires come before your needs, you have an inversion of authority. We’re supposed to be above animals. They live for us, not the other way around.

My sister is a sociopath and a sadist, but she loves animals. She used to cry and make loud moaning noises every time she saw a horse through a car window. She has a long history of spoiling aggravating little dogs and using them to control other people. She has never housetrained a dog. She forced her dogs’ company on people who hated them. She will sing songs to a dog after it poops on the floor, so it knows it’s a good idea to keep doing it. She has an inversion of authority.

Satan rules demons. Demons rule her pets. Her pets rule her. Through her, they rule other people. To deal with my sister is to accommodate her awful pets. This is why every other person in the family has killed at least one of her dogs. My dad turned one loose. My mother took two to be gassed. I took one to be gassed. I prayed for God to kill the last one because she claimed it was the reason she wouldn’t go to drug rehab.

I don’t know if she has pets now, or even if she’s alive. I’m glad I no longer have to be around animals that are so spoiled they climb on the furniture for the purpose of urinating on it. I’m glad I no longer have to be around my sister. Her main function in life is to take away the dignity of other human beings and destroy their joy. I keep praying for God to keep her out of my life forever. He told me I should not think about her, so I try not to.

When I was a kid, I had a dog. I saw him climb onto a couch and push my sister off so he could stretch out. He did this to an abusive, extremely aggressive person who pushed other human beings around and made them miserable. He knew her proper place. She was below him in the supernatural hierarchy. I didn’t understand this until long after he was gone.

Satan promotes something I call “the alternative righteousness.” It’s a pretend righteousness that has nothing to do with serving God. Sick devotion to animals is part of it. People who are obsessed with animals are not Spirit-led Christians. If you have pets, you will be exposed to these people when you need help, and you will see certain things often. Liberalism. Vegetarianism. Witchcraft. Feminism. These things are abnormal, but on the surface, they look nice. Leftists claim they love the poor because they give them things and reinforce their pathological flaws. Vegetarians think they’re better than the rest of us because they don’t kill their food, even though Jesus ate meat and created the sacrificial system of Judaism; the Torah HAD to be written on the skins of slaughtered animals. Witches always claim they only do good. Feminists…don’t get me started.

A warped adoration of animals is part of the alternative righteousness. It’s probably why Hitler loved dogs and gave up meat. The Nazis were heavily into vegetarianism, environmentalism, and nature worship. You can look it up.

I love my pets, but I bought them in ignorance, and I would not do it again. I wouldn’t buy another animal or accept one unless I had a good reason, such as that it was corn-fed, cut in thick slices, and on sale. I would let a barn cat live here (and stay here after I moved) in order to keep pests down. I would buy a protection dog if I had to. I’m not going to have any more pure pets if I can help it. I won’t even have fish.

Drudge likes to link to stories about people who are pulled out of trailers full of sick animals and feces. “HOUSE OF FILTH” is one of his favorite headlines. Those people are demonized. Demons run them, and the demons tell them to hoard animals. It doesn’t help the animals, who should be euthanized, and it certainly doesn’t help the hoarders or the people they cause to suffer.

The Bible says one person is worth more than many sparrows. That’s just how it is.

Have you noticed how nutcases are filling our stores, restaurants, and airplanes with “support animal” pets? That’s a sign that demons are increasing their power over us. People who are controlled by animals have a demonic desire to extend that control over others. Satan is a conqueror; he never stops looking for more territory.

It’s not enough to carry a pig in a bag and sing songs to it. You have to make other people sit next to it in restaurants while it breaks wind and eats off a plate you might get next week. Like the increasing power of illegal aliens, it’s a sign that America is losing God’s support.

If you’re not full of the Holy Spirit, you won’t understand these things. It’s all true, though.

It’s a smart system, in the short run. Not only do you get to coerce admiration out of other people through your virtue-signaling; you get to put them down and control them by saying they’re less righteous than you are. Most people are so simple, they will buy it. Satan is an extremely accomplished manipulator. He has done his homework.

The point of the alternative righteousness is to convince you that you can be a good person and have a fine afterlife while continuing to enjoy sin and reject God. It works really well. Many people you know are burning in agony and humiliation right now because they fell for it.

It’s remarkable how Satan can degrade you with animals, once God stops backing you up. There is a lady in Florida who forces other people to share airplanes with a horse. Those people don’t even know they’re supernaturally defeated. It’s not just a horse on a plane. It’s Satan, saying, “This is how low you are now, because you reject God. A horse is more important than you are.”

My sister, who is basically a demon apartment building with feet, was always ahead of the curve. She forced her dog into restaurants years before the other children of darkness got the idea. While she lived in filth in a house with walls that were caked with mold and floors that were varnished with urine and feces, the dog ate rib eye steak from Whole Foods. That’s the gospel truth. I am a witness.

If you have God’s favor, you should live like it. A man should have authority over his wife, his kids, and whatever animals live on their property. The wife should have authority over everyone except him. The kids should have authority over the animals. If an animal is running your life, you have a demon problem, and you’re not living up to the potential God REQUIRES you to fulfill. It’s a sign, and you need to take notice and repent.

Now that I think about it, Jewish legend says God withheld the flood until human beings began marrying animals. That suddenly makes more sense to me. It’s about as severe as an authority inversion can get. When you’re having sex with your dog and calling him your husband, you can’t get much lower. You’re signalling your true value, which is nil. If you declare yourself worthless, God may respect your assessment.

He has prepared a place for the worthless.

Fascinating stuff. It’s remarkable that this wisdom isn’t commonly held. After thousands of years, we should all know these things. One generation should teach the next.

I’m repeating myself, but God told me these things: “All strength comes from inheritance. There is no strength without inheritance. Satan hates inheritance.” We are so bad at giving new generations their inheritance of wisdom, we are re-learning things people knew 5000 years ago. Satan has done a great job of keeping us poor. We did all the work for him. He just lied and made us think it was the right thing to do.

Why fight your enemy when you can make him fight himself while you watch? When you kill an enemy, you gain nothing. When you make an enemy destroy himself, you gain a servant and a soldier.

If animals or worthless people are above you in life, you need to get some authority. Your situation is not normal, and it’s not permanent unless you want it to be.

I wish I had had someone to tell me these things when I was young, but my parents didn’t know anything. Maybe this material will help you, though. I certainly hope so.

Time is Getting Short

Today’s blog post ought to be pretty interesting to Christians.

I believe God told me to leave Miami. I ended up near Ocala, and it has been a dream come true in most respects. I have dozens of acres. I have a big workshop. I’m far away from the coarse, ignorant, obnoxious people of Miami. I’m surrounded by southerners and Christians. Hard to beat.

At some point, I started to feel that God was telling me to move to Tennessee, even though I had not been in northern Florida long. I had no problem with this. As great as my present situation is, there are some down sides. There are basically only two kinds of trees here, and both are trash trees. You can’t have normal grass here. The soil here is just sand, so you can’t grow anything. It’s very hot in the summer, which wasn’t a big deal in Miami, where there was no incentive to go outside anyway. Here, outdoor life is very important, so it’s difficult when it’s 95 degrees every single day for three months. Also, I want more acreage, and I miss Appalachia.

Recently, I learned about a 2015 prophecy that came from Perry Stone. He said God was calling his children to the mountains. That startled me. Persecution of Christians is going to get worse and worse as Americans become more and more vile (and less American), so people like me will be better off in remote areas among their own kind.

In 2018, I felt driven to go to a meeting of the Last Reformation in Clearwater, where I was re-baptized correctly. I had started watching their videos. They are part of a wave of revival in the church. People who are caught up in it go around healing strangers and so on. They’re against the filthy money doctrine we are so used to seeing from Trinity Broadcasting. Their leader is a Dane named Torben Sondergaard. He was at the meeting in Clearwater.

I was baptized in December. In January, Torben and his family were driven out of Denmark by the Danish government. He was accused of abusing children and practicing quackery. In Denmark, where the government licenses churches, casting demons out of children is considered abuse.

Since January, Torben has been looking for a new home. The Sondergaards applied for asylum here. They started out in South Florida, which seemed like a big mistake to me, because of the unpleasant, arrogant, boneheaded ways of the people there.

Yesterday, he posted a Youtube video. He has a new headquarters in North Carolina. The sellers wanted $2.2 million, but because they believed God was with Torben, they cut the price to $1.2 million. Another $800,000 came to them suddenly from another source. Now they only need between $400,000 and $500,000 to pay the place off.

This all happened extremely quickly. They haven’t bought the place yet, but they have been allowed to move in and begin work anyway. I watched the video, and I thought, “Loans aren’t for Christians.” Instantly, Torben started saying he didn’t want a loan. He doesn’t believe in borrowing to glorify God, any more than I do!

I felt a little pain while I watched. I have not found a place in Tennessee yet. Big properties with houses are not that easy to find. North Carolina is less challenging, and it’s beautiful there. I have asked God repeatedly if he is sure it has to be Tennessee and not North Carolina, and I feel he is insisting on Tennessee.

Anyway, something is happening. If you’re among the individuals who think God wants you to live among the depraved because you’re going to save your community, you need to think again. It’s not going to happen. You can help a few people, but you can’t save a neighborhood. Eventually, they will turn on you. You need to ask God to move you.

Torben compares the new facility to Noah’s ark. That’s not just him being clever. It’s from God. The ark was provided to protect God’s loved ones from the children of darkness and their punishment. God is putting people who are especially close to him in safer areas. You need to get situated before it’s too late. You won’t be able to move in with people who listened to God while you were stubbornly clinging to places like Los Angeles and Baltimore. It won’t be that easy.

The video doesn’t show much of the property, but the words are what matter.

Don’t say you weren’t warned.

Projects Yield to God’s Favor

I feel like I can’t go about my business at the end of the day without blogging because I have an obligation to let people know how well life is going. If you’ve learned a few things about God, and they start to work for you, it can be hard to make people understand that they need to seek the same things. If people see how well you’re doing, they might start asking themselves if they need to try to do what you’re doing.

That being said, today was a great day.

I got up and finished mowing the yard, and the John Deere didn’t have a fit or anything. That was pleasing to me. When I was done, I found myself sitting in the shop, looking at the Kubota brace I’ve been working on. I had intended to go in and take a shower (because I don’t bathe before doing yard work), but the steel was there, the welder was there, I was there…I did some welding.

Last night, I got the metal ready to be welded. Today I had to do the welding. I had a bunch of new welding magnets from Strong Hand Tools, and I was eager to use them. I took them out of their packaging and found that they didn’t work for the parts I was welding.

The shield I was welding was supposed to be joined to a piece of tubing cut at a 44-degree angle (yes, 44). The magnets weren’t right for that. I had to think.

I went in the house, where I had a stack of Chinese rare earth magnets stuck to the fridge. I brought 4 out and used them to hold the shield on the tubing. They worked perfectly. Tacking the shield was a breeze.

Welds always pull on the base metal. A gap opened up before I placed the last tack. I had to come up with a way to close it. I decided to use an Irwin woodworking clamp with rubber pads. One tack wasn’t going to heat the metal enough to melt the rubber.

When I was done, I got out the Dumore hand grinder and a carbide burr and cut the tacks down a little to prevent them from sticking up through the final welds. Then I welded. I didn’t do too bad. My welds were professional quality. Of course, most professionals don’t weld all that well. Like theirs, mine were good enough to do the job but not good enough to be on the cover of a welding magazine.

I own manufactured products with factory welds which are worse than my welds, so I can live with the welds I produce now. They’re going to get better. I’m learning the importance of 1) being able to see the puddle clearly, 2) being comfortable before I start welding, and 3) concentrating intensely while I weld.

I cleaned and primed the brace. The primer sagged in some places, so I had to do some of the priming over, but I got it done, and tomorrow I’ll pick up some new Kubota-orange paint (my old can dried up), and I’ll finish the painting. Then I’ll form leather around the ends, glue the leather to the brace, and see if it works.

I also fixed the small-wheel attachment for the belt grinder. It wasn’t tracking right. This attachment comes by itself, or you can get it with an additional attachment that adds two wheels to it to force the belt into a sharper bend. I bought the second attachment. When I installed everything, the belt tracked way off to one side.

I finally realized it did this because the additional attachment was attached beside the first one, pushing the first one out and forcing me to adjust the belt outward. The second attachment is around 0.400″ wide, so I needed to take that much metal off the side of the tooling arm it was mounted on. And I had no milling machine.

I used the table saw. You can cut aluminum just fine on a table saw, as long as you go slow and use WD-40 to lubricate it. I made about 48 parallel cuts on the tooling arm. The cuts joined each other, creating a 6″-long rabbet. I then used the router table to smooth off the surface the table saw had left. Then I deburred with the belt grinder and a file. The product was less refined than a machined part, but it will work just as well.

Cutting aluminum with the table saw is always an adventure. The blade threw hot, sharp pieces of aluminum at me the whole time. I got several cuts on my arms. Hey, that’s metalworking for you. It’s not for snowflakes. If you’re afraid of getting aluminum in your man bun or having hot metal burn little holes in the pink tights your mom borrows sometimes, find another hobby. And go get some testosterone shots.

I found something else wrong with the grinder’s alignment. It had been off for years. I fixed it today. The belt tracks perfectly now, and because I got a bunch of top-quality belts, I should be able to do great things.

I’ve been watching metalworking videos. Some featured Jesse James. This is the guy who may be remembered forever mainly as the man who cheated on Sandra Bullock. That’s unfortunate, because he makes magnificent vehicles. There are builders who do things that are more startling and perhaps more creative, but Jesse James vehicles are classics. His taste is impeccable. Everything he makes will look just as good 25 years from now as it does today.

He has a bunch of incredible machines. He likes to buy old metalworking tools. I’m not sure he really needs them, because there are people who do equally good work without them, but I can understand the attraction.

He has one machine that came from an aircraft carrier. He says a lot of them were shoved over the side after World War Two because they weren’t needed any more. He has a machine he got from an Air Force base. Airplanes that fly in combat need a lot of aluminum panels.

He’s an interesting guy. He has made a lot of bad decisions in life, and he has suffered because of it. He always talks about how much he has suffered and how hard he fights life’s obstacles. He seems happy about it. I don’t think he understands that we’re supposed to have blessed lives in which things don’t go wrong all the time. I saw him talking to some pastor about his life, and the pastor seemed equally in love with the drama and hard knocks. That’s crazy. I can understand why a bike builder would think life was supposed to be hard, but a pastor has no excuse for believing that. They’re supposed to know God’s word, and his word says his yoke is easy and his burden is light.

We love drama because of pride. Drama and suffering make us feel important, and they bring us attention.

Today I watched an old show featuring Indian Larry. He was also a bike builder. I had seen the show before. He died not long after it came out. I wrote about him on my old blog.

Like Jesse James, Indian Larry’s taste in machinery was faultless. He didn’t want to build slick-looking bikes that would have looked at home in front of a mansion in Dubai or in a pimp’s driveway. He built classic V-twin machines with all sorts of mechanical parts proudly displayed. He used laced wheels, not weird billet wheels that looked like they came from show cars.

In the show, Larry was up against a guy named Paul Yaffee, who was building the kind of bikes you would expect to see characters in Marvel movies ride. Way over the top. No soul.

Indian Larry died in an accident. He used to do motorcycle tricks. He would stand on his motorcycle’s seat while riding at high speed. The odds caught up with him while he was doing tricks for a crowd, and he fell and died from a head injury.

I wrote about him on my old blog, and strangers showed up to post comments. It was as though I had created a monument. Hundreds of comments appeared. Unfortunately, they came down when I started the new blog.

It was neat to watch Jesse James and Indian Larry shape metal to fit their visions. Woodworking is great, but there is something special about working metal. Metal is hard and unnatural. It doesn’t occur in nature. It resists being shaped. When you start working it, you find yourself dealing with a very stubborn material, but when you’re done, you’ve created things you could never create from wood. You can’t create a new wooden object. All you can do is join and bend existing shapes. You can distort metal. You can twist it. You can add to it. You can melt it, cast it, and forge it into something different. The main limit to what you can do with it is your patience.

I feel that I should get farther into metalworking. Wood is nice, but it’s limited. I’m not a worldly person, and I could never consider a person like Jesse James or Indian Larry a role model. Working with tools is never going to give me purpose. I have God for that. But it’s nice to have interesting things to do here on earth while you serve God.

I’m thinking I might get a tubing bender. That’s the main thing I’ll lack after I get the finger press brake working. I also want a lift table big enough for my John Deere garden tractor. I want to be able to lift big projects up where I can work on them without straining my back. I’m looking at products now. I may buy one. They’re not cheap, but it’s not like what I want is going to pop up on Craigslist. I need 1500 pounds of capacity, with removable panels so I can work on wide objects as well as narrow ones. Most people who buy lift tables get narrow ones that can only hold motorcycles. A wide one will hold anything short of a car.

I don’t have much interest in working on cars, which is good, because a good general work lift is no good for cars, and a car lift is no good for other projects.

I’m going to clear out the garage this week and see if I can get my lathe and mill moved up here. I think I’m going to sell my compressor and get a bigger one I’ll never need to upgrade. After I get these things done, along with the lift table, everything else should be small strokes. I’ll have machining, grinding, TIG, MIG, stick, a lift, lots of air, a finger brake…everything except talent, knowledge, and skill.

Now you know what happened today, so you can relax.

Getting Ahead by Copying Other People’s Work

I think I have the answer to my latest welding puzzle.

To complete my Offroad Swag finger brake kit, I have to weld a big angle iron into a channel. The angle iron will open upward, and the outer edges will be welded to the upper edges of the channel. Other people who have done this have gotten warped projects.

I now have a copy of Design of Weldments, which is a useful book a Youtuber recommended. You don’t have to be a welder to find it useful. I don’t think the Youtuber welds. It’s useful for anyone who builds stuff. This morning I checked the book to see if it could help me, and I found the answer in chapter 6.

The correct procedure for my welds is to preset. This means I need to clamp the work down so it can’t bend during or after welding. I can clamp it down as it is, or I can put a slight bend in it, away from the anticipated warp. Presetting is what the pros do.

I thought about peening the welds. This means beating them with a hammer to flatten and lengthen them while they’re still hot. The book says this is a waste of time.

It says I should do the welds in small segments, and I should wait for each set of segments to cool before welding the next set. I say “set” because I plan to do one segment on each side of the project at a time, so they will balance each other. The project can warp back-to-front as well as vertically, so you can’t just weld the front and then turn it around and weld the back. Funny how no one on Youtube has checked to see if he has warpage in the horizontal plane! It’s surprising that I figured that out and they didn’t.

I can clamp the project to my table saw, with sheet metal on the saw table to keep spatter off, or I can put it in the press and weld it. The press would be better, but it may be hard to do, because I’ll need something longer than arbor plates to support the project.

I can use the table saw easily because I now have a 25-foot extension cord for my welders and plasma cutter. I won’t have to shove the 700-pound saw across the shop.

Incidentally, Harbor Freight provides good arbor plates with its presses. They used to use cast iron, which is brittle and snaps suddenly. Now they’re steel. Good thing to know. If you have cast iron, you should get new plates. It’s dangerous when a plate snaps.

Right now, I have two jobs on my mind. One is to practice MIG until I feel good about doing the welding, and the other is to rearrange the workshop so I can make a final decision about where to put my machine tools. Right now, I’m leaning toward putting them out there instead of in the garage. I would need some serious electrical work.

If you think your shop is too small, spend a whole day rearranging it. It will expand by at least a third. Trust me.

I should be able to finish my tractor front end loader brace today, except for the paint, which takes a while to cure. Then I have to decide what to do with the tractor. I intended to park it inside with the loader up, but maybe it’s okay to park it outside with a sturdy cover over the seat. It is, after all, a tractor, and I will probably have another solution in a year or so, so it would not be out there long.

I’ll bet someone sells tractor seat covers. I’ll check.

I can’t find temporary covers, like grill covers, for tractor seats. There are a lot of permanent covers which would probably be a hassle to take off when I mow. You can’t sit in a wet seat cover.

A small tarp will work fine. That’s what I should get.

I’m still making the brace. I want to be able to walk under the loader and work on the tractor.

God told me three great things the other day.

1. All strength comes from inheritance.

2. There is no strength without inheritance.

3. Satan hates inheritance.

When you inherit, you don’t earn. You just receive. Other people do the work for you. This works with knowledge as well as wealth. When you inherit knowledge, other people make the mistakes and suffer the resulting problems. You come along later and get the knowledge that works, so you don’t suffer or waste time.

When you get knowledge from other people by any method, it’s like inheriting. They do the work, and you get the benefit.

I could sit around and theorize about how to weld things, and that would be my natural inclination, but it’s a lot better to open a book and get the truth–BAM–like that.

Think how rich and informed you would be if your all of your ancestors had understood and applied the principles of inheritance. Every generation would have made the next one stronger. You would have been born into a life of privilege and power. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work this way. People forget and waste, and their kids have to start with little or nothing.

Fred Trump was rich. Donald Trump is rich. Eric Trump is rich. His kids are too young to have jobs, but they’re rich, too. This is how life is supposed to be. The Trump patriarchs pass on wealth and knowledge so their kids hit the ground running. Making your children grovel and toil like mules in order to get where you are is stupid and often based in a sick desire to see them fail.

I could never figure out all the things in the book on my own. I like coming up with my own solutions to problems, but it’s smarter to find out what other people have done.

You can see why physicists are so useless compared to engineers. When a physicist has a problem involving building something, his skills will only help him to write equations and work from scratch. An engineer will pick up a book, look at a table, and copy the answer. Or he’ll stand up and ask the guy in the next cubicle. Some engineers complain that they never get to do math or design anything at work. Everything is laid out for them. That’s a good problem to have.

Engineers inherit things physicists have to build.

Interesting stuff.

If You Can’t Move it, You Won’t Use it

I’m thinking about more shop upgrades.

Yesterday, I had to press two steel rods into tight holes, and then I had to adjust them. I used my wooden workbench and Wilton mechanic’s vise. The vise was stretched nearly to its full opening capacity, so I didn’t use it. It’s not a top-quality vise, and I don’t want to put more stress on it than it can take. My workbench is very heavy, but it bounced a lot when I hit the parts with a 3-pound rawhide hammer.

This tells me I could stand to make three improvements. A better vise would be helpful. A sturdier workbench is needed. Finally, an anvil would be nice to have.

People love overpriced Wilton bullet vises, but they’re not really that exceptional. There are other vises which are just as good. The really old bullets–I am told–may not have been made from the same strong iron as the new ones, so it may be a waste of time to buy a bullet made before they changed the metal.

I’m thinking I might get a Chinese Yost vise made from super-strong ductile iron. For a small fraction of the outrageous, Snap-On-like price of a 6″ Wilton, I can get a 7″ Yost which is much, much stronger. It will open to 9.5″, which is very impressive; right now I get 5.25″. It would also weigh much less than a bullet.

You don’t really need a heavy vise. You need a strong vise which is very securely fastened to something which is also very strong. Added mass is sometimes an engineer’s way of compensating for bad materials and/or bad design. The iron Wilton uses can’t compare to Yost’s, at least in terms of breaking strength. I don’t know about rigidity, but since the Yost can clamp with 11000 pounds of force, it must be at least somewhat rigid.

The lighter weight of the Yost would make it easier to deal with.

I don’t know what to do about the workbench. I could make one by laminating 4″ (nominal) lumber side by side. That would be twice as thick as what I have now.

If I had a big anvil, I could use it instead of a bench when I needed to beat on something. I’m not sure you’re supposed to beat cold mild steel objects on an anvil’s face, though. I need to look into that. Even if it’s a bad idea, the problem could be solved with a small piece of steel plate that goes over the anvil.

I’m also going to invest in a patient lift. This is basically the same thing as an engine hoist, except it’s made for invalids and overweight people. It has wheels and an arm powered by hydraulics. You attach it to a patient who needs to be moved, and you pump it up. A basic lift will raise anything up to 400 pounds.

I want to use the lift to move things around the shop. Many people use gantry cranes and forklifts. I don’t have room for a forklift, and a gantry crane is not as maneuverable. I can remove the doodads that attach to human beings and replace them with nylon straps or something.

Patient lifts are expensive…unless you live in northern or central Florida. This area is full of invalids, and, I’m sorry to say, a lot of them pass away every week. This leaves their caregivers with expensive lifts they are sick of looking at. Today I replied to an ad. Someone is selling one for $50. Can’t beat that. If I don’t get this one, another one will pop up. Some people try to charge $400 or more, to get their investment back, but it’s a lost cause. There are too many of them on the market.

I could have used a patient lift when I was trying to get the upper pan off my John Deere garden tractor. I’m going to have to do that again, and I don’t plan to lift the pan this time. Not when $50 can buy me a patient lift.

The weather here is beastly hot right now, but the humidity is way down, and it warms up later and cools off earlier than it did in August. This all adds up to a much more suitable working climate. I’m taking advantage of it. Back when my dad was dying, I wanted to get things done during the pleasant months, but I didn’t. I spent way too much time huddling indoors, waiting for the difficult time to pass. Now there is nothing holding me back.

As long as I’m writing about new tools, I should talk about the improvements in my Christian walk. God has been giving me a new revelation of the power he has given me.

The Bible promises us a lot of things, but there are many we don’t receive. Sometimes it’s because of lack of knowledge, but it can also be because of lack of faith. Your mind knows you’re supposed to have something, but you’re not convinced in your heart, so you don’t receive.

It’s pretty obvious from the New Testament that we are supposed to have everything Jesus had. We’re not supposed to wait for it. It’s supposed to be ours right now. But you can’t fully believe that unless you have faith.

The Bible says our faith comes from God. It’s not something you can generate by trying to believe. When God gives you faith, which is a kind of revelation, things start moving.

When we speak, other beings, including God, are supposed to receive it as though Jesus were talking. When God looks at you, he doesn’t see the old man who died during baptism. He sees a replica of Jesus, and that person has the authority of Jesus.

When demons flee us, it’s because they feel as though Jesus were talking to them.

Where does faith come from? Praying in tongues is crucial. It builds up your faith. The Bible says faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God, but it doesn’t mean you get adequate supernatural faith just by listening to someone quote the Bible or by reading the Bible. People believe that, but it isn’t true. It means the supernatural word of God comes to you from inside, and you listen and believe. This happens when you pray in tongues.

If something shouldn’t have happened to Jesus, it shouldn’t happen to you. If Jesus, while in the form of a man, should have been able to do something, you should be able to do it now. This is what God was working to bring about through the crucifixion. It was an act of reproduction, and to reproduce means to make copies.

God’s new covenant way is much better than the old way, which involved a great deal of work and defeat. Daniel, for example, got God’s help with spirits that opposed him. We fight and defeat them directly, as though we were Jesus. We don’t have to wait for God to send angels to defeat the Princes of Persia and Greece and so on.

The Bible says we “clothe ourselves” with Jesus and “put on” the new man. That makes sense. It’s like putting on a military uniform. When others see the uniform, they give it the obedience it is due, regardless of who is inside it.

You know what they say in the military: “Salute the rank, not the man.” Satan says, “You’re the guy who fornicated, lied, and stole. Why should I listen to you?” He says that because he knows he can’t fight the uniform. He wants you to forget you’re wearing it.

I think I know why Satan continues to fight God. It’s because he has no hope. If you want to see someone do great evil without hesitation, take his hope away. Satan is going to be burned for eternity, in what will probably be the greatest humiliation of all time. He knows that. He fights in order to delay it. He doesn’t care about offending God, because he knows his end will be horrible no matter what he does.

He continues lying to us after we become new people, in order to prevent our power and righteousness from manifesting. I suppose I would do the same thing, even if it only delayed the onset of the burning for 10 seconds.

Certain things have to happen before Jesus can return, and they depend greatly on us. Satan is doing his best to slow us down. He has done a fine job for 2000 years, and he is not done having temporary victories, but he doesn’t have to have any victory at all in your life. He may keep knocking mankind to the canvas, but you don’t have to fall with everyone else. The word says, “A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand, but it shall not come nigh thee.” This is because you’re God’s favorite, if you’re his Christian child. Expect favoritism and accept it, no matter what happens to the people you know.

The bad things that happen to other people are justified, and they are not your responsibility. You’re not supposed to sink with them.

I hope I get that patient lift. Right now I have to go buy more steel for the tractor brace.

Videos from the Assisted Living Facility

I have been considering using my action camera for some projects, so today I had to find it and clean it out.

While my dad was dying, I shot a few videos of him for the future. We would sit outside at the assisted living facility, and he talked about whatever he wanted.

I didn’t really want to see these videos, but I had to look at them to see what I was dealing with, so I am watching all of them before moving them to the PC.

I thought it would be worse than it is. It’s sad to see him in that condition again, but there are good things about the videos. He said all sorts of nice things about me, and he affirmed his new faith in God repeatedly.

It’s good to see that I was pleasant to him and that I asked him a lot of things about his care and so on. I’m glad I didn’t just sit there and stare at the clock. I wish I could have done more for him, but eventually you have to accept the past as it is and live in the future.

The videos end 11 days before his death. I recall that he had several days when he was not up to visiting, and I probably forgot the camera once or twice.

The videos are short because the camera works off of an app on my cell phone. Various things can cause the phone to interrupt the video. I had to keep turning the camera back on. I have an old phone I plan to use as a remote in the future. No one will call me on that one to interrupt.

I think I did okay. I had no help, and I have enough video to give a good picture of his condition and our relationship.

Once I get the files moved from the camera and deleted from the card, I’ll think about what I want to film. I don’t know whether I’ll go through with it or not, but at least I preserved the videos of my dad.

I’m very glad I shot these videos. I won’t get to see him again until the marriage of the lamb in heaven. It’s good to have video of the good times you’ve shared with older people. They will give you peace later on. They will help you to think less about the bad times.

Metal, Angle Grinders, Plasma, and the Belt Grinder

Today has been great so far.

I sound like a broken record, thank God.

I want to be able to park my Kubota with the front end loader raised, and that means I have to be able to brace one of the hydraulic tubes with a specially made steel device. I need a piece of U-shaped tubing that will fit over a hydraulic rod. One end will press against the end of they cylinder, and the other will fit against the hinge the cylinder is attached to. The cylinder won’t be able to retract, and people in the workshop will be less likely to be crushed.

I now have three welders ready to rock, so all I needed was metal. I went to the local supply place. I love that place. It’s a house with a giant Doall band saw and a monstrous jib crane in the backyard. It shows how you can make a good living out of your house doing something completely unexpected, as long as the zoning people are with you.

For $18, they gave me a length of 2.5″ square tubing, a piece of plate to cap the end, and 12″ of angle iron for my anvil project, which I will write about later.

They didn’t have steel channel deep enough to go around a hydraulic rod in a way that gave me confidence, so I had to buy the square tubing instead. That meant I had to cut one side out of it. Time to fire up the plasma cutter.

I was delayed because the presence of God filled the car on the drive home, and I ended up spending some time praying before I got to work.

I made the mistake of searching online to figure out how much air pressure to use to cut 5/8″ steel. I figured all plasma cutters were about the same, so I settled for an Eastwood manual. It said to use 40 psi. I didn’t question it.

I clamped a wooden yardstick to the tubing to use as a guide. I figured there would be one quick swipe of the torch, and the stick wouldn’t burn. I was wrong about that. The torch kept clogging up. I had to replace the little copper orifice inside the tip. I couldn’t cut the tubing to save my life.

I got on the web and looked around, and a source said the kinds of problems I was having were caused by low air pressure. Okay.

The yardstick was largely carbonized by this time, so I grabbed a piece of steel strip and used that instead. Should have done that to begin with.

I turned the compressor up to 90 and let it rip. No problems this time. Unfortunately, I already had one boogered-up cut. Time for the angle grinders.

I decided to put my new Hercules (Harbor Freight) grinder up against my new Bosch, to see if there was a difference. All I could tell for sure was that the Bosch made more noise. I don’t think it worked better, but it was more pleasant to use. The paddle switch wasn’t as hard to get used to.

I used two free cutoff disks I got from the Walter company. They make top-notch flap disks, and they give away samples. I couldn’t tell whether the disks cut any better than the other ones I had, but they were free, and I love the flap disks.

It took a very long time to liberate the unneeded side from the tubing. Then I had to use the grinders to clean up the terrifying burrs. I guess that took 45 minutes.

Using angle grinders on metal is fun. It’s surprising how accurate you can be with such a violent tool. It’s very absorbing. Angle grinders are great because you can turn bubba’d-up messes into great-looking projects with them.

I want to get a 6″ Metabo for cutting metal. They’re incredibly fast. Today’s experience gives me motivation to go ahead and order one.

After the tubing was modified and cleaned up with a knot wheel, I put it on the belt grinder and did some deburring. Very nice. There is nothing like a 2×72.

Now I have a channel ready to be turned into a brace.

The cuts are not identical, but it doesn’t matter. Besides, it would be good practice to make a second brace, now that I know how much air the plasma cutter needs.

Tomorrow or the next day I need to cut an opening in the end cap and weld it onto the tubing. With a mill, it would take 15 minutes, and it would be gorgeous. I’ll probably have to use a hole saw and the plasma cutter. I also have to modify one end of the tubing so it will rest securely on the loader joint. Maybe I can do that with the belt grinder.

I can’t decide how to weld it. The welds don’t have to be strong. The tractor will push the cap toward the tubing, and the welds are only there to hold the cap on the tubing, so the tractor and the welds will be doing the same work. But I want to do a good job. I’m not ready to TIG it, but it would be neat if I could do the job with stick and 7018.

I guess I can practice on the metal I removed from the tubing. That will be helpful.

When I’m done, I’ll get out my can of Kubota orange implement paint. People will think I bought a Kubota brace.

I should take some chances with the project. If I ruin it, it will still be good practice, and it will only cost me maybe $14 to try again.

The weather was surprisingly good today. It got up to 99 in Ocala, but there was a high wind, and it was very dry. Another present from Hurricane Dorian. I’ll take it. Hot weather with very little sweat is better than hot weather with soaked clothing.

As is often the case, it was considerably cooler where I am than in town. My workshop thermometer read 88 today. I can’t explain it.

I don’t have an anvil. I am thinking I might like to try forging, though, and I would need something to beat metal on. I have a piece of 4″ square 1018 steel maybe 15″ long. I’m considering welding angle-iron tabs to it, drilling holes in them, and using them to screw the block to a stump. It would’t be as hard as an anvil, but it would work well enough to give me a chance to see whether I like forging, and it would give me some welding practice.

I don’t know how I’d move the stump and block into the workshop. I guess I need to move the stump indoors first.

The improved workshop is a joy to use, and God willing, it will be much better in a month or two. I really look forward to that.

Dorian Brings Much-Needed Fresh Air to Marion County

The forecast for Hurricane Dorian is looking so good, there is not much point in talking about it. The odds of problems here are dropping off to the point where I should start writing about other things.

Again, never watch the news when hurricanes approach. They will always lie and exaggerate, in order to benefit themselves. Always go to the Internet and look at sources as close to the actual data as possible.

This morning, it occurred to me that Bryan Norcross may be a major reason why TV heads shriek and whimper during hurricane season. Back in ’92, Andrew hit Miami, and afterward, Norcross was the main source of information for many people in the area. He worked as a meteorologist at Miami’s WTVJ. I don’t recall exactly what happened, but I seem to have a dim memory of other channels being knocked off the air.

Before Norcross, WTVJ’s main weather personality was Bob Weaver, a chatty, overweight New Yorker who was more than 20 years older. Norcross was young and thin, and the ladies liked him, so my guess is that Norcross was hired to be a glamour boy. Norcross supposedly didn’t like the ladies back, if you know what I mean. That piece of information popped up long after Andrew.

A lot of weathermen are gay. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because it’s the most flamboyant position in many newsrooms. Weathermen are generally entertainers.

When Andrew hit and people were desperate for news, Norcross took the throne and became South Florida’s premier hurricane guru. He was adored. He was in the kind of situation in which women you have never met mail you their underwear. Media outlets interviewed him. One publication featured a photo of him on the beach in a Speedo.

The stories about his orientation broke a lot of hearts.

After Andrew, his career cooled off a lot, and it never again attained its post-Andrew heights, but for a while, he was big news all over America.

The rise of Bryan Norcross made it clear that hurricanes could make people considerably more famous and, potentially, wealthy. I’m sure other TV personalities noticed. Maybe that partially explains their undignified antics.

To get back to the storm, the projected path is firming up, and it is expected to turn north very soon and head for the general area of South Carolina. The storm is weakening. The top winds have dropped 30 mph, into the Category 4 region. Hurricane-speed winds only extend out 25 miles from the center, so there is a good chance that Florida won’t get them.

The Bahamas really got whacked. It’s astounding. The storm hit Grand Bahama as a 5, and then it just sat there. It’s bad to get hit by a storm at all, but at least they usually move on quickly. I can’t imagine spending an entire day in hurricane winds, especially with the flooding the Bahamas are getting.

The up side is that the Bahamas are sparsely inhabited. The population of Grand Bahama is under 30,000 people.

I have been praying for God to turn the storm north and away from land, and I feel very strong faith for it. I would like to see it move off the Bahamas so the people can get some relief.

I think people forget that hurricanes weaken as they go north. Also, my guess is that the winds generally slow down as storms get wider, due to the conservation of angular momentum. I don’t really know. Maybe Google can tell me.

Wow. Those search results look really boring. Never mind.

Maybe I shouldn’t say this, but the forecast for my area is considerably nicer than it would have been without a hurricane. July and August were very, very unpleasant for outdoor activities, but now we are expected to have strong breezes and considerable cloud cover for a while. I was able to work in my workshop during the last two days without coming back in completely soaked in sweat, and Dorian will extend that benefit and make it easier to wait for the pleasant days of October.

It should be breezy enough to make outdoor work somewhat difficult, but it will probably be very nice inside the workshop with the doors partially opened.

If I were going to stay here, I would get a propane generator and build a new shop. As it is, I’m thrilled to have several days of relatively pleasant weather, with 7 months of cool weather to follow not long after.

I spent over $40 on hurricane supplies. Don’t I feel silly.

Keep That Garbage to Yourself

Man, it’s tough dealing with people when you have faith in God.

Someone I know keeps texting me, telling me Hurricane Dorian is headed for me. This morning, she told me the TV heads said the storm didn’t turn away from Florida the way it was supposed to. This message arrived after I had already checked and confirmed that the storm was, in fact, still expected to turn.

I have no reason to doubt that she was telling the truth, given the historically disgraceful behavior of TV journalists and meteorologists. They do their best to mischaracterize hurricane news every year.

I have had to tell her more than once that I have been through many storms and watches and that I know what I’m doing. It’s strange that she doesn’t have faith in me. When you’re used to sitting in front of a screen searching out the best and most current hurricane information, you don’t need correction from people who listen to the ranting of TV know-nothings who have a long, long history of lying.

She is trying to help me, but it’s not helpful at all. My duty as a Christian is to fight worry, not to absorb and incubate it.

I’m concerned about the way she focuses on external problems and then magnifies them. She lives a very stress-filled life, and she always has. She needs to be set free.

Dorian is still projected to miss Florida and Georgia entirely. That’s what the ECMWF and GFS models say, and the NAM model agrees, as far as it goes. It doesn’t go past Tuesday, so it doesn’t say what will happen when Dorian passes Florida.

My area is now given about a 45% chance of tropical-storm-force winds. You know what that means? It means there’s a 45% chance that at some point, someone near me will measure a breeze of 39 mph or more lasting at least 60 seconds. So if we have 25-mph winds for a hour, and then we have 39-mph winds for a minute, and then we go back to 25-mph winds, the weather people will say we got tropical-storm-force winds.

It’s not a scary forecast.

Aside from the fact that our best science tells us the storm is very unlikely to hit me, there is also the more important fact that I keep hearing the same thing in prayer. Who tells storms where they can and can’t go? Not the NHC.

I got a little testy yesterday and criticized the hurricane-panic media somewhat more harshly than I should have. I didn’t get the facts wrong, but my tone wasn’t that nice. I was angry from years of being goaded and gaslighted during times of considerable stress, and I let that rule me. I should not have done that. I’ll try to avoid it from here on out.

I’m surprised at how hard people here are still working to prepare. I saw numerous generators at Home Depot yesterday, blocking aisles. Buying things like bread is still a hit-or-miss proposition. I saw some people with a rented truck full of new generators, sitting in the parking lot at Lowe’s. They must be here to price-gouge, which is a crime. You can’t make money paying retail for generators and then selling them for the same price.

Cubans are famous for price-gouging in Miami. The whole county turns into a black market after a storm.

Here’s what I wonder: are the people who are still preparing trying to be extra cautious, or are they just duped because they watch broadcast TV? They may think we’re about to get a direct hit for all I know.

You don’t buy a generator the week before a storm. You buy it when they go on sale or you wait for a Craigslist deal.

My own generator runs like a dream now, which is more evidence that we won’t get hit by major winds. The more you prepare, the less happens.

I got my drill press’s VFD wired up and installed yesterday, and I’m going to drill a hole in my generator’s cord cover so I can start it with a drill without removing any parts. I don’t know why everyone doesn’t do this. Starter cords can be exhausting to pull over and over, and they’re hard on joints and spines. You have to be very sure to pull the drill off the nut when the generator starts. You don’t want the generator spinning you around by the wrist.

When this storm passes, I’m going to look into a big Predator generator that puts out more juice. I want to be able to use big tools out of my truck, and I also want to be able to run one water heater if the power goes out. I haven’t checked my water heater, but the web says they put out 4500 watts. My generator tops out at 5500, which doesn’t leave much room for ceiling fans and the fridge. A big Predator will give me another 1750 watts.

I could actually create a separate 250V outlet for the water heater and use two generators. As long as the circuits are separate, it ought to work. A clever person would create a switch that moves the juice from the water heater to my smaller central air unit. I could turn on the water heater before showers, and at night, I could use the generator to keep my bedroom cool.

Predator is Harbor Freight’s brand. Should I be afraid to use a Harbor Freight generator? I don’t think so. All the Chinese “Chonda” generator brands appear to sell the same products. My generator is a Champion, and it is not particularly impressive. Definitely Chinese. It seems like there are really only two brands of portable generator: Honda, and everyone else. You will pay 4 times as much for a Honda, and the electricity will taste exactly the same.

A Predator will take a battery, too, so there would be no need to cut a hole to crank it with a drill.

You can tell Predator products are good, because Harbor Freight’s standard coupons exclude them. They always exclude the good stuff.

I wish more Christians understood that deliberate worry is a sin, not a virtue. It’s bad when other Christians worry on purpose, thinking it makes them better people, but when they try to put that mess on me, they’re compounding the sin. Trying to worry another Christian is a form of temptation. It’s not acceptable.

Really, if you want to help me, and you think worrying me is a good thing, you and I have different religious beliefs, and you will just offend me.

I’m not worried, although I am out of Pop Tarts. I’ll work on that, and then life should be perfect.

This is Why People Move to Tennessee

The Cone of Certain Death is narrowing, and I am sorry to say it’s narrowing around me.

Originally, Dorian was forecast to hit the coast to my east and then move toward me. Then the forecast path took a huge veer to the south, putting the center of the cone over Boca Raton, more or less. This was great news for me, because it gave the storm a long time to poop out over dry land before getting to me. Now they’ve decided it will still travel a long way over dry land, but they insist it will still have 75-mph maximum winds when it’s maybe 30 miles to my east. That’s just barely a hurricane, but it counts.

Wunderground.com is predicting maximum sustained winds of 40 to 60 mph here, for a few hours. I disagree, for reasons I will put forth below.

In prayer, I get very strong faith for no tropical-storm-force winds at either of my residential properties, but just in case, I have pulled out the big guns: Hillshire Farms smoked beef sausage.

I didn’t want to resort to this, but my hand was forced.

I have a lot of propane and butane, and I expect to have refrigeration no matter what happens. That means I’ll be able to grill. The truth is that I grill most hot meals now; I’m very spoiled by the lack of kitchen cleaning. I prefer the grill to the appliances. If I lose power and can’t rely on my electric stove and oven, I’ll go on with life as it is now, blasting everything with propane.

A couple of days ago, there was very little bottled water available around here. I just went to Publix (major grocery chain) and found pallets of purified water, so I got three cases. That brings me up to 5+, and I’m also going to fill a cooler with clean water on Tuesday night, if the forecast doesn’t look cheery.

They had the smoked sausages on sale for half price, so I snapped those up. It was probably a stupid thing to do, since grocery stores will be open next week no matter what, but it made me feel proactive and manly.

I’ve soured on hot dogs. They’re very small, and they don’t taste that great. Smoked sausages and brats are a lot better.

I got myself a wire for the generator, along with a plug and receptacle. The little 30-amp stuff sold out 15 minutes after Dorian was named, but I am a smart guy with a lot of stuff in his garage, so I didn’t need any of that. I can use one of my welder adapters to hook the generator up to a homemade 50-amp cord, and that will allow me to put the generator outside the workshop.

I’m not assembling the cord yet. I don’t think I’m going to need it, and I would like to return the parts to Lowe’s. I’m stuck with the wire, because they don’t accept wire returns. Maybe I’ll use it for something in the workshop. I still need to set up one more 20-amp socket.

I got myself 6 gallons of socialist ethanol gasoline. The station that sells real gas was out, of course, so I couldn’t buy it for my outdoor power tools. I could have gotten 11 gallons of toxic commie gas, but I didn’t want the hassle of trying to put it in my car’s tank after the storm misses us. I figure I can grab some more if things start to look bad.

While I was at Lowe’s, I met the realtor who sold my dad this house. He was buying romex, so I figured he was rigging up a generator. No, he is building a new workshop. His wife took over his existing shop. He talked about how great my property is and how he hadn’t seen anything else like it. He says the value is going up. I hope so.

He isn’t worried at all about the storm. He thinks Irma wiped out most of the loose trees, and like me, he lacks confidence in Dorian’s ability to stay strong after 200 miles of travel over land.

One nice thing about Dorian is that it’s very small. It may look big on satellite photos, but almost all of what you’re seeing is peripheral clouds that don’t amount to squat. The actual hurricane appears to be less than 10 miles wide. That means that if the eye is over 5 miles away, your winds are below 75 mph. Move out to 20 miles, and they’re much lower.

They say the storm will get bigger, but it’s not going to be a large storm. If it doubles in size, it will still only be 20 miles across, so you will have to be within maybe 25 miles of the eye to get whacked. This means most people in the dreaded cone aren’t going to have any problems at all.

If you watch the computer animations, you will see that Dorian isn’t expected to grow. Journalists say it is, but they always get it wrong. It may well be that the pack of weak, irrelevant clouds around it will grow in diameter, but that stuff is all horse manure. There is very little wind in it.

Journalists say the storm will grow. Guess where their information comes from? The same computer models I’m looking at, and those models say it’s going to stay small.

A storm under 20 miles across has to be pretty accurate to hit you with any real power.

Andrew was a murderous storm with winds not far below 200 mph, but it barely covered the lower half of Dade County. It was not big at all. People in Hollywood, a few miles north of the county line, just got a stiff breeze. Dorian is small and also much weaker than Andrew.

The GFS and ECMWF models are predicting something like 25 knots at my house. Even the places where it is expected to be strongest at this latitude are predicted to get 29 and 33 knots, tops.

Things are looking good. I believe God has told me my properties will be fine, and even if I’m wrong, this is a tiny, weak storm which is expected to miss me.

And I have smoked sausages.

If it quits raining, I will probably go out and confirm that my generator is working. That will be my 15 minutes of work for the day.

I see I forgot to write about my generator’s reanimation.

This generator had more than one problem, and that, coupled with my lack of knowledge, made it hard to diagnose. At first, it had a carb clogged by socialist gasoline full of environment-damaging ethanol. It also had gas in the crankcase. This was caused by the design of the machine, or, rather, by my failure to take heed of it. It has a fuel tank situated above the carb, and gravity is always pushing the gas down toward the engine. There is a valve that allows you to shut off the fuel supply, and if you don’t use it, gas can push past the carb’s float needle and into the crankcase.

I am used to modern engines that don’t flood their crankcases with oil, so I didn’t shut off the fuel petcock. Now I know better.

The original carb was also badly cast and machined, so it was hard to seal.

While I was working on the machine, and before I knew there was gas in the oil, I flooded everything by cranking the engine for long periods with a drill. That made the engine less likely to start.

On top of all this, I worked on the engine with the air filter removed. It would be torture to install and remove it 50 times during a repair job. Removing the air filter won’t keep the engine from starting, but I found out it will make it run lean so you can’t operate it with the choke off. If you do this for long periods, the excess fuel can thin the oil so much you get internal damage.

The first carb was a lemon and also full of ethanol crud. The second carb was probably fine until I worked on it. The third carb had no problems, but by the time I understood what was happening, there was gas and fuel in places where they were not supposed to be.

I finally got the engine running last night, and after it died a few times, I learned that I needed to put the air filter on it in order to make it run correctly. As far as I know, it’s fine now.

Using the drill to crank the engine was a stroke of genius. I plan to modify the generator so I can do this without removing the pull cord apparatus. I may just drill a hole in the apparatus cover, large enough to admit a socket and an extension, which would be attached to the drill.

Here is help for people with Honda-clone engines like mine.

1. Do not use ethanol gas.

2. If you use ethanol gas, use Biobor EB to treat it. Sta-bil does not really work.

3. Do not leave any gas in the generator if you’re going to let it sit for more than three weeks. Run it dry, but don’t stop there. Run a little pure Sea Foam through it, or take it apart and clean it with carb cleaner, including inside all the tiny fuel passages, or do whatever else you have to do to keep it clear. Running it dry, all by itself, will not necessarily prevent varnish from forming. I kid you not.

4. If your engine gets clogged, buy a Chinese carb on Ebay and replace it. They’re very cheap, and they’re generally exactly the same as OEM carbs.

5. If you have a gravity-feed generator, put a fuel filter in the fuel line. It’s very simple. It’s amazing that the manufacturers don’t do this.

6. If you have to work on the engine, remove the cover for the pull cord and crank the engine with a drill and socket.

7. If everything looks good, but the engine won’t start, pull the low-oil sensor wire. It’s on the side of the engine near the oil cap. These sensors screw up and give false readings.

8. If you leave your fuel valve open by mistake, check your oil. If it has gas in it, you need to change it before running the engine.

9. Your local car parts store won’t take oil with gas in it, so buy a galvanized bucket and use it to burn the oil outdoors. I didn’t tell you this.

10. Once you get the engine running, install the air filter before evaluating the speed and mixture and so on. The filter affects these things.

You now owe me more than you can ever repay. Good luck.

I’m not Going to be Taken Out by Something With a Name Like “Dorian”

Yesterday was an eventful day. I prepared for the arrival of Hurricane Dorian, and I also finished wiring up two 250V sockets for my power tools.

When you don’t know anything about hurricanes (or you have a bunch of kids), you prepare by buying several weeks’ worth of groceries, enough water for an army, a battery-powered radio, first aid supplies, 100 pounds of ice, 25 gallons of gas in cans, and 50 pounds of batteries. Leftists and libertarians also buy a lot of weed. I’ve been through a bunch of storms: Andrew, Rita, Wilma, Katrina, and Irma. Here is what I just bought: 5 cans of tuna, a box of Pop Tarts, two cases of bottled water, and a box of protein bars. I also got gas.

It’s just not worth it to overprepare. Even after Andrew, it was possible to drive 30 miles and buy whatever I needed.

There are some things you really do need to get in advance. I’m talking about chainsaws, mainly. The day after Irma, every chainsaw in the western hemisphere changed hands, and it was impossible to find one anywhere. Also, if you want a generator, you need to buy it at least one day before the NHC discovers the depression that will become your hurricane. Predicting that is a little tough.

Here is what I would need, if a storm got me: two ceiling fans, a refrigerator, and a stove. That means I would need a generator capable of supplying maybe 20 amps. The stove wouldn’t be part of the equation, because I have a butane stove and a gas grill. I just bought my second new Chinese carb for my generator, which is leaking gas out the front. The first new Chinese carb was somehow messed up, so I bet another $22 on another one. Beats paying someone a hundred bucks to take a month to fix the old one.

I have been using my supernatural tools to get God’s help with the storm. Yesterday my friend Travis felt the Holy Spirit call him to leave a college class and pray with me, so he walked out and called me. That was excellent.

The storm’s projected path was right over me for a while, but now it’s down by Tampa, and it’s also projected to make landfall pretty far south. Moving over land will sap its strength, and the added distance between me and the storm will reduce the effects here. I think this trend will continue.

I haven’t watched a single news program. What a waste of time that would have been. They always say the same thing: “Wherever you are, no matter what the storm track looks like, you will have hurricane-force winds, and you will probably die.” In order to improve ratings, they wave their hands and shriek like girls who think Justin Bieber may be nearby. It’s disgraceful.

You know who gets hurt in hurricanes? People who have absolutely no judgment. It’s really hard to get hurt in a hurricane. Stay in a sturdy shelter, and avoid flood areas. Keep a safe distance from downed wires. Do not be under falling trees. Bang. You’re safe. It’s really that simple. To hear journalists describe it, you would think hurricanes penetrate concrete bunkers to kill people who have spent years preparing. It’s like they’re confusing hurricanes with ninjas or the Terminator.

Here’s a story you will never read: “Bob Smith was killed by Hurricane Hillary last night. He was sleeping in his code-compliant concrete block home which isn’t in a flood plain, and he was nowhere near falling trees or downed power lines.”

Actually, in a really nasty storm, you can be hit by a tornado that breaks a concrete wall, but there is no way to prepare for that, short of sleeping in a parking garage. It has probably never happened, anyway.

My impression, based on prayer, is that I’m in the clear. Of course, I am praying for other people, too.

I found an amazing site that predicts the future. I went to Heavy.com because Google said they had hurricane info, and they had a “live” radar animation for Dorian. I wanted this because the NHC has stopped issuing updates every three hours. For some reason, they’re farther apart. That’s probably good news for me, because it almost certainly means the NHC is having trouble predicting the storm’s path. If that’s true, then the storm may be headed even farther away from me than I thought.

According to the “live” video, Dorian is going to hit Boca Raton and then move up the state like a spinning, highly destructive suppository. When it gets to me, it will be a mere thunderstorm.

What a great site. I wish I could zoom in really close and maybe get a shot of a newspaper on a park bench, with racing results and stock market reports for next week.

It would be great for me if the storm landed between Miami and Ocala, because it would spare my residential real estate in both areas. Not great for the Bocans, however.

Click to see the future.

I ate some of the Pop Tarts already.

I am now substantially less prepared.

It’s irritating to deal with people who constantly goad you not just to prepare, but to be upset and rushed. It’s not happening. Don’t waste your time. Worry and hurry are for the flesh. I am not an animal. I’m the patience and peace of God, according to his word. I slept like a rock last night, and I plan to remain in peace no matter what.

Thinking that worry, and worrying other people, are good things is a serious character flaw. It’s toxic. Unfortunately, people who carry and spread worry are usually self-righteous about it. They think it’s a virtue, and that people should be admired for it. They think worry proves you’re a good person. Actually, worry is faith in Satan. Sorry to tell you that. Faith in God IS righteousness, so what is faith in Satan? Sin. You can’t impress a knowledgeable Christian with your righteousness by worrying, and you definitely can’t shame me for not worrying. It’s like being ashamed of being potty-trained.

Being proud of worrying is like being proud you don’t bathe.

Over and over in the Bible, God commands his children not to worry. Where, exactly, does he tell them to worry?

Enough about the weather. The real news is that I got my electrical sockets installed. I wish I could convey the relief I feel. You would think something like this wouldn’t mean much to a Christian who is supposed to be all holy and focused on the things of God and whatnot, but it’s a very big deal. I feel I’m breathing again, after two years of having a pillow over my face. It’s wonderful.

I rigged up a 50-amp socket and a 20-amp socket. I can use my welders, my table saw, my band saw, my belt grinder, my drill press, and probably something else I’m forgetting. Without these things, I’ve felt helpless. It was like being handcuffed. I might even be able to cut thin stuff with plasma.

If you can’t weld, life is bad. If you can’t grind, life is bad. If you can’t cut wood, life is bad. If you have no compressor, see previous sentence. There are some things you just need to be able to do. Good tools change lives. A series of $50-$1000 jobs performed by other people (or abandoned) becomes a series of free jobs performed by you, at your convenience.

The sockets are in my workshop. Now I need a couple in my garage, so I can get my lathe and mill moved up here. Man, that will be nice. God willing.

My friend Mike was asking about my belt grinder. You need one of these. If you’re not financially endowed, get a 1″x42″ grinder for $40. It won’t be idea, but it will do a lot more than you know, and it will still be useful after you get a big grinder. If you have money to spend, get a 2″x72″ job with at least two horsepower and a variable frequency drive. You’ll be able to do amazing things with any material you can name.

Belt grinders tend to be expensive. If you buy one off the shelf, you can expect to blow maybe $1500. I spent $500, plus about $80 for a fantastic 3HP motor, plus maybe $200 for the VFD. I put a little money into a plywood platform and a VFD enclosure. That was pretty cheap, and my grinder will do exactly what a $3000 Burr King will do, except mine has more power and much more versatility. You don’t have to have variable speed. You can skip that, get a 2HP 125V motor (totally enclosed, for protection from grit and dust), and do just fine. Save yourself hundreds and then wait to upgrade later.

Most people don’t have 3HP motors. I have one because it was easier to find than a 2HP motor. I bought a beautiful 2HP Mitsubishi motor, and the Ebay seller packed it in a flat rate box with no support. The Postal Service broke a foot off the cast iron base, so a claim was filed, and I got my money back. The Postal Service did not want the broken motor, so I had to do something with it. I used stainless MIG wire to weld the foot back on, and it held perfectly, so now I have a nice 2HP motor doing nothing. I ordered the 3HP motor to replace it.

If you’re a good (or mediocre) woodworker, you can literally make a belt grinder out of plywood, and it will work as well as any 2×72 made. It will last for decades. Belt grinders experience virtually no mechanical stress, except for the relatively light pressure you put on the wheel or platen while grinding. You just need a rigid object that will hold two pulleys and a tool arm in place. You could build one from scrap for almost nothing. I guarantee you, someone on Youtube has done it. I’ll look.

Okay, here it is. One of many.

As long as those wooden pulleys have metal bearings, they will last a hundred years. Pulleys take very little abuse. The contact wheel is another story, since you have to apply pressure to it.

You don’t understand how badly you need a belt grinder unless you have used one.

A vertical band saw is also a greatly underrated tool. You should be able to find a good 14″ saw on the web for $400 or less. It won’t be quite as accurate as a table saw, and it will throw more dust, but it will do many things a band saw will do, plus a lot more. It will cut curves. It will allow you to turn logs into boards. It’s also much, much safer than a table saw, and it takes up less room.

Now I need to repair the mobile base on my table saw. The movers broke it, and I had to order parts. The movers failed to come through with the papers for an insurance claim, so I decided to stop fighting with them and move on. They were really bad at their job, and I have serious doubts about their honesty.

It’s hard to believe I had a less-than-sublime experience with a business running out of Hialeah, but there it is.