Scrap is Gold

I love my bandsaw.

I decided to make a new zero-clearance throat plate for the Powermatic 66 today. I had half-inch MDF, and I had read that half-inch sheet goods were the thing to use. I used the old worn-out throat plate as a guide. I used it to set the table saw to the right depth to cut an MDF strip for throat plates, and then I put it on the MDF and traced its outline, to use as a pattern.

I stuck it on the bandsaw and cut off the ends, making the plate semicircular on each end. I did it very badly and was still well within a millimeter at every point. I didn’t feel like turning on the compressor and the Dynabrade, so I used the bandsaw to “sand” the sides of the plate until it popped into the table saw hole.

Problem: everyone who said half-inch material was the right choice is crazy. The hole for the throatplate is maybe 13/32″ deep. Now I had an MDF throat plate that was too thick to use.

By the way, I used my outfeed gadget to cut the MDF. It works like a dream.

I didn’t want to put MDF in my planer. It’s not wood, and planer knives are no fun to replace if you screw them up by planing the wrong material. So I was stuck. I could resaw the plate on the table saw, but I pictured kickback sending it whizzing into my face at a hundred miles an hour, propelled by my freakish 5-HP Baldor. No, for once I would be mature and not risk death.

I don’t have a resaw fence on the bandsaw. Yet. I figured it would be impossible to resaw this thing to size, even though it was only 4″ tall when stood on its side. I thought it would be too hard to keep aligned with the blade. But the choice was to pack up the tools and give up, so I gave it a shot. I moved the fence up to the 1/4″ blade, stood the MDF against it, and checked for squareness. Unbelievably, the tuning job I had done on the saw had worked. The blade was perfectly parallel to the MDF.

I started shaving little bits off. The blade didn’t seem to like that. It seemed to drift toward my right, onto the surface of the MDF. I thought I was hogging MDF too fast. The saw was whining a little (I don’t know what a happy bandsaw sounds like), and the cut was not good. But after I got the depth right, I found I actually needed to push the MDF much faster. It squirted right through! I looked at the MDF. The quality of the cut was amazing. Very flat.

I have crammed the plate into the table saw, and I have raised the blade to make a slot. This is what the experts tell you to do. What they don’t tell you is that the Powermatic 66 will not let you lower the blade enough to clear the plate. At least mine won’t. I had to run the saw with the plate halfway into the hole. But it worked.

Now I’m trying to find my Microjig splitter. I finally have a chance to use it. I’m not sure it’s any good, but I want to try it. I think they invented it because it’s an incredible pain in the butt to use their other product–the Gripper–with a regular splitter. Later I’ll go to Home Depot and get Allen screws to use as levelers.

My throat plate isn’t perfect, but to learn that, you’d have to go right up to it and check it pretty carefully. And it’s more than good enough. I plan to baste it with Danish oil. After that, I figure I’ll be done.

I cleaned the cast iron with Break-Free, Sheila Shine, and mineral spirits. I used a Scotchbrite pad, as a reader advised. Then I used car wax on the metal. It’s not really clean, but it sure is better.

I have to make a crosscut sled, before I turn my fingers into seviche. I have been going back to my books and DVDs and refreshing my table saw safety knowledge, and it looks like I’ve been committing a few really horrendous blunders. Example: crosscutting with the miter gauge, using the fence as a stop. Oh well. I’m alive.

That bandsaw is a dream come true. I have to agree with professional woodworkers who say it’s more important than a table saw. If you have a big bandsaw and a circular saw with a guide system, you can survive without a table saw for a very long time. But nothing replaces the bandsaw. And it’s so quiet and safe and handy, and there’s so much less dust. It rocks.

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This shows what a bandsaw can do. You’re looking at the throat plate and the layer I shaved off of it.

Learn From Other People’s Pain

I am skimming a story about the Stanford fraud scandal. Looks like Mr. Stanford is a student of Bernie Madoff. The claim: he took money from investors, paid too-big returns to the first ones in, and in doing so, spent the money invested by those who came along later.

Hey, is he the guy who designed Social Security?

It’s a remarkable business model. It’s even better than taking millions of dollars and paying yourself a huge salary to publish a group blog no one reads.

Not that anyone has ever done that.

The thing that struck me about this was that it confirmed what I suspected when the Madoff scandal popped up. I was talking to my dad about it, and I said I wondered how many other Madoffs were out there waiting to be flushed into the open. I knew the odds were against Bernie Madoff being the only Ponzi broker on Wall Street. And sure enough, here’s a new one.

Does this mean I’m a genius? Yes. Well, no. I wish it did. It means that in middle age, I have finally begun to understand human nature, and to profit by my understanding.

Whenever I have a moment like this, I think of an old Saturday Night Live character, the superhero “Middleagedman.” He ran around with his sidekick, Beer Buddy, solving life’s problems by applying wisdom obtained via sitting around and watching the world. You know the kind of thing I mean. Example: never get an aisle seat on an airplane unless you like being bumped by drink carts. And when you make a reservation, make sure you ask if they’re trying to stick you in one of those seats that don’t recline. Old people know this stuff. In fact, that’s pretty close to Middleagedman’s theme song, which went, “MIDDLEAGEDMAN….he knows a lot of stuff!”

There’s a company called Bottom Line that sells this kind of wisdom. My dad bought a book from them. It’s full of tips other people came up with after lots of misery. It’s sort of like the book of Proverbs, without the religious aspect.

Let’s see. Never give a friend a big loan. Up to maybe three hundred bucks, you’re cool. Above that, you will never see it again, and you will lose the friendship. Never date a woman with children unless their father is dead or in an iron lung. Never date a fat woman who just lost a hundred pounds, unless you wouldn’t mind if she gained it back. Roughly 95% of people who loudly proclaim that they will never desert you in a crisis…will desert you.

This is good material. Save it.

Avoid preachers who talk about God helping you because you give them money, but who rarely mention God helping you for helping the poor. Never, ever leave your kids with a male babysitter or day care attendant unless you want them to be molested; men who love being around kids are generally not normal. If you’re a woman and your boyfriend likes to dance more than you do, ask a male friend if he seems gay. Men generally dance only because they have to, and women have absolutely no gaydar. You might spare yourself an STD later on. If he ever talks about your shoes and seems to know what brand they are, run.

This is gold, I’m telling you.

Shun fantastic deals on used stuff, unless the sellers are clearly idiots or in financial trouble AND they are willing to produce ID and sign receipts. Never wait until Friday afternoon to go to any place where you will have to wait in line; the post office and banks are the worst. Do not EVER let an attractive woman stay with you and your wife for more than one night, especially if it’s a friend of your wife’s and she just had a painful breakup. If you’re a man and your girlfriend flirts with your friends, dump her. Women use men they’re not crazy about to help them meet better men.

Never date anyone who carries a dog everywhere. Never date anyone who tells you everything her friends and relatives have told her in confidence. She does the same thing to you, in spades. If you’re already in such a relationship and you want to find out the most embarrassing thing she has told her friends, pick a fight with one of them and see what she says.

Don’t buy a Chrysler product. Just don’t. They have been crap since about 1972. You can make an exception for a Viper.

Men: never wear a wig. Some of the newer hair transplant surgery methods are pretty good, but there is no such thing as a good toupee. Look at Burt Reynolds and William Shatner. Is that how you want to be remembered? Ladies: do whatever it takes to remove your facial hair, even if the results aren’t that great. Remember this rule: the worst wax job in history was more attractive than the prettiest beard.

If you have gas in public, go stand near the fattest, ugliest person you can find. Everyone will think he or she did it.

If your girlfriend asks you annoying, prying questions and says you should have no secrets from each other, ask yourself whether she tells you as much about herself as you tell her about yourself. Women like to collect information to use against you later. If your boyfriend likes to tell you what to do, it may not be because he feels protective; he may be an Ike Turner in the making.

Never date a man who drives a black car with the windows tinted black, especially if he himself wears black. In his mind, he is about 12 years old, and he will make you suffer. Never date ANYONE who wears black all the time. It’s not chic, and it’s not indicative of depth or intelligence or sophistication. It’s pretentious and creepy. People who wear black all the time crave admiration. Or they’re in the Viet Cong, which is even worse.

A man who is nasty and brutal to other people will treat you the same way sooner or later. Generally, people who mistreat others will eventually give the same treatment to people who trust them.

Never date someone because you feel sorry for them and think you can help them. There is no such thing as a fixer-upper or mechanic’s special.

Man, I wish someone had told me all this stuff years ago.

When you start a charcoal grill, use tons of fluid, assuming you’re a fluid guy and not an electric-starter guy. Get it done the first time; don’t play around so you have to keep adding fluid later. Don’t buy a time share. Don’t buy a boat in partnership with your best friend whom you would trust with your life. Never even think about buying a new boat. Always used.

Never buy small tools; I think I may have mentioned that once or twice in the past. Make them at least two sizes bigger than you think you need. And when it comes to expensive tools, try to buy used. Let someone else eat the depreciation.

In the summer, heavy wool socks are cooler and dryer than thin cotton socks. Some of the best meat is the cheapest; you just need to know how to cook it. When you’re out of mosquito repellant but oddly, you have fresh basil, rub the basil on your skin. Mosquitoes hate it.

Don’t date a person you find physically unattractive. It won’t work.

For digging shallow holes, a sharp hoe is about ten times as fast as a shovel. Never cut down a tree with an axe. It’s not the right tool. Use a saw. Do you think lumberjacks cut trees down with axes? Maybe the stupid ones do. The ones that accept sandwiches from strange, plastic-faced kings who pop up beside them in bed.

I’m not really sure what axes are for. Saws cut much, much better, and axes are useless for splitting wood. A long time ago, I worked for a guy who ran a tree service. He had all sorts of tools in his truck. But if memory serves, he didn’t have an axe. We never had a use for one.

You know, I think I may start a self-help cult. I wonder if I could hire Tom Cruise away from the Scientologists. It’s amazing that I know all these great things, yet somehow fail to apply most of them.

Anyway, the Wall Street scandals probably won’t end with Madoff and Stanford. Middleagedman knows all.

Send the Wife and Kids Out of the Room

I know nothing whatsoever about Sterling Machinery, but I have to congratulate them on this Youtube video.

That’s what a milling machine is and what it does.

The earth moved while I watched that.

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I bought plans for a mobile base for a Bridgeport. I was worrying about rearranging the garage, but then I realized that with a mobile base, there was no point. Shove it behind the Powermatic 66, and you’re all set.

I don’t like the plans, though. I have a neurotic fear that the mill will tip. The plans are for a base that raises it up, and the base is only slightly wider than the mill.

I had an idea, based on a couple of brilliant dollies a guy made. You get 4″ by 6″ angle iron half an inch thick. I know this stuff exists. You cut it so it’s longer than the side of a Bridgeport base. You drill two holes in it, and you thread them for big bolts. You lift each side of the mill high enough to scoot the angle iron under it, and you run bolts down through the base of the mill (pre-drilled holes already exist) into the iron.

Then you take short pieces of the same angle iron, and you weld them to the sides of the angle iron you attached to the mill, so the flat 6″ parts extend horizontally to the sides of the mill, high enough for casters to fit under them. Actually, you might be better off using long pieces of angle iron, since the length won’t hurt anything, and it will make the thing more rigid.

You drill holes in the horizontal tabs and attach swiveling casters. If you can find places to weld in gussets, do it. You probably can’t use casters with brakes, because they’re too big to swivel under the 6″ tabs. So you add tabs close to the floor, threaded for bolts that screw down and anchor the machine.

This should work. The pull on the bolts won’t be much, because of the small moment arm against which the mill presses. The casters can be a foot in front of the mill, which adds up to stability. The anchor things should keep wobble to a minimum. And you don’t have to lift a one-ton mill six inches to get it onto the base. You can do it with a crowbar and some scrap wood or small pipes.

Tell me why it will be a disaster.

Explain Yourselves

While I’m dealing with pet peeves, can someone tell me when the English decided to rewrite the rules of subject/verb agreement?

I just read a headline I cannot understand. It says “England refuse to force follow on as Windies are bowled out.” WHAT? WHAT? “Bowled out?” “Windies”? Am I hallucinating?

Must be a cricket story. I refuse to click. Oops, I mean “Steve refuse to click.”

Anyway, it’s an example of what I’m complaining about. “England” is a singular noun, and the writer treats it like a plural noun.

This ungrammatical BS is a new thing. It has to be. The Bible mentions a lot of nations, and it was written in England, and it doesn’t say things like “Israel also WERE had in abomination with the Philistines.” Look for yourself. Here’s another one: “Egypt WAS glad when they departed: for the fear of them fell upon them.”

Stop it, English people. Or else pretentious Americans who say “cheers” instead of “bye” and write “colour” instead of “color” will start doing it, too.

Picture Barack Obama Falling Out of a Palm Tree

Can I point something out, just to keep my hairline from receding? Here it is: there is such a thing as a logical fallacy which is, in and of itself, a fallacy. Sort of.

Very often, web denizens toss out Latin phrases which are names for recognized logical fallacies, and then they sit back all smug, thinking they’ve won the argument. Which never happens on the Internet regardless of how right you are, unless of course you’re me. Even then, I’m the only one who agrees that I’m right, which doesn’t matter, because I’m right about that, too.

Here’s the particular fallacy I’m thinking about: argumentum ad hominem. It means you attack the person instead of the man. The inverse or converse or whatever of this is “appeal to authority,” which means you cite some big bloviating authority and claim his apparent agreement with your sniveling blog comment makes you right.

You know what? Ad hominem arguments are often–maybe usually–totally valid. Maybe not in the strictest technical sense, but in application. And like Mr. Spock used to say, “A difference that makes no difference is no difference.” Which isn’t actually true, but let’s go on.

I’ll give you an example. Charles Manson walks into your house with a severed head in his hand, and he says, “You should put all your money in soybean futures, because the Chinese are going to outlaw oral contraceptives, and they’re going to need a lot of tofu.”

Now, you realize right away that this argument is crap. Why? Because you’re an expert on soybeans and the Chinese birthrate? No. Because Charles Manson is an idiot, and nothing he says should be taken seriously. Implicit in your reasoning–which is perfectly sound–is a heavy-duty ad hominem argument. A logic professor might get his sexually ambiguous drawers in a knot and point out that Charles Manson’s argument could be correct, and that you haven’t really refuted it. Who cares? You’re right, and you have better things to do than argue with Charles Manson.

Appeal to authority works the same way. Today I put up Youtubes of Jim Rogers, one of the world’s most successful and sophisticated investors, as evidence of Barack Obama’s economic foolishness. And I impugned the Obamessiah’s crazy approach to fixing the recession by pointing out that he is not a skilled investor.

Jim Rogers is an authority on money. My imaginary logic professor can whine all he wants; anything Jim Rogers says about money automatically carries weight. His reputation may not prove he’s right, but it makes listening to him much, much smarter than listening to Barack Obama.

The legal system recognizes the fact that a person’s qualifications determine the weight of his statements. Am I appealing to authority again? Maybe, although like Bumble said, “The law is a ass. A idiot.” If you look at the Federal Rules of Evidence, you’ll find that they heartily endorse argumentum ad hominem and appeal to authority. For example, only people whose credentials are proven extraordinary are allowed to testify as experts. On the other hand, a person who can’t prove his credentials is shut out not because of the validity of his testimony, but because of his nature.

We also have ethical rules that reflect the same basic idea. Example: usually you shouldn’t represent codefendants in a criminal case, because they may come to have adverse interests. Then when you argue on behalf of one, you may let the other one down. So you’re supposed to push your clients to hire separate attorneys, OR, much more importantly, to sign a paper saying they know the risks and still want to give you all their money. That’s actually true; I’m not saying it the way the bar associations like to see it presented, but it’s correct. You can represent two people with conflicting interests as long as you inform them and get them to agree. Anyway, without consent, you are presumed to be ineffective when arguing on their behalf, not because of the merits of your arguments and decisions (which probably don’t exist at the time the conflict arises and therefore can’t be evaluated), but because of your position as an advocate for both defendants. The system PRESUMES you will do or say something stupid.

Pointing out recognized logical fallacies (or, more often, what you mistakenly think are logical fallacies) doesn’t really win arguments most of the time. It’s a cheesy way to help you avoid arguing in the first place. It’s a cop-out, unless it’s so obvious that your objections are valid that you can be excused. I think most logic, in the real world of soft and unknown variables, is ultimately fuzzy. Things like intuition and emotion aren’t always unproductive. Sometimes they get you to the truth faster than your puny reasoning skills. It’s a lot more convincing to stay in the game than to hop up and down screeching “TU QUOQUE!”, which nobody even understands.

It’s like another cheap tactic, which always makes me chuckle. You post this: “SOURCE? LINK?”

Right, I’m supposed to spend a week Googling, in order to back up, say, my assertion that peas are better for you than rat poison, or my claim that Canada is bigger than Thailand. How much did you research in order to come up with “SOURCE? LINK?” You didn’t research at all. That’s the whole reason you typed it. You’re lazy, and you know putting people on the defensive is easier than making a real argument. Isn’t it? Well, isn’t it? Prove it’s not. SOURCE? LINK?

See what I mean? No matter what the other person is saying, you can always say “SOURCE? LINK?” Even when it’s clearly inappropriate.

Argument is overrated, anyway. As a means of getting to the truth, it scores pretty low. I mean the kind of argument that involves short, informal exchanges. Like debates. When two people argue and one wins, very often, all it proves is that he argues better than the other guy. O.J. Simpson told me that. No, he didn’t, but he knows it. He tried to push it a little farther than he should have, but it worked for him against Chris Darden and Marcia Clark. I think the best way to get at the truth is for people to put their pitches in written form, in great detail, and let other people look at them. This way, they get to think more about what they say. They don’t get flustered and lose arguments because they’re too mad to think.

Anyway, Barack Obama is the Gilligan of economics. Time will prove me and Jim Rogers right.

Roger That

The Dow is sliding again today. It’s interesting; the lower the index goes, the more serious a three-digit loss seems. At 12,000-14,000, it didn’t seem like a big deal to lose 500 points in a day. Now it looks a lot worse. There are only about 15 500-point days between the current index level and zero.

Obama’s socialist policies, which, oddly, George Bush agreed with, are already killing us. And the pain is only beginning. Socialism doesn’t work. Socialism doesn’t work. I can’t say it enough. It didn’t work in good times. It is bizarre that people have decided it will work in bad times, when capitalism is more important than ever.

Obama is not a financial guru; he’s a hack politician who has never defied his handlers and Illinois-machine patrons. It’s amazing that he succeeded in billing himself as the agent of change, because he is the personification of reactionary liberalism. I can’t think of a politician who is more opposed to change. He’s giving us exactly what a pre-Reagan liberal would have given us in 1976: pork, big government, excess regulation, debt without reward, and paternalism. Obama is a leftist; therefore, all his ideas about prosperity are diametrically opposed to what works. If he knew anything about wealth, he’d be a successful investor, but he is not. He survives on high income and sweetheart deals. When you have those things going for you, you don’t learn anything about investing. He’s in the same class as people like Britney Spears. We shouldn’t be listening to them. We should be listening to people who have proven they can invest.

Case in point: Jim Rogers. If you don’t know who he is, you might as well quit reading now. Here are a couple of recent interviews.

Jim Rogers is rich. He will die rich, in all likelihood, and it won’t be because he was a powerful politician to whom people funneled money. It won’t be because his fame as a rock-star politician allowed him to sell five million copies of a self-worshiping autobiography. It will be because he knew what he was doing.

Look what he’s telling us. Let the bad businesses fail. Let the bad executives be fired, so they can be replaced by competent executives who will lead their companies to success. Don’t pile up debt with bailouts that prolong the agony and make things worse. And he’s telling us America is going to keep declining for a good long time, so he’s betting on continued losses in our most respected stocks. And he has moved to Singapore. He says moving to Asia now is like moving to New York in 1907.

What can I tell you? Jim Rogers is shorting blue chips, and we’re both shorting Obama.

Weight

Help me out here.

I want to build a revolving table. On one side, I’ll have my 12″ sliding miter saw. It weighs about 85 pounds. On the other, I’ll have my dry-cut saw and bench grinder. Between the two of them, it’s probably 130 pounds. I want the grinder and dry-cut saw on one surface, and the miter saw on the other. If you don’t know what I mean, I’m talking about a table that revolves on an axle. When one set of tools is upside-down, the other is ready for work.

I was thinking I’d make the table part from two pieces of thick plywood sandwiched around maybe four pieces of lumber going across the plywood. What should I use for the axle?

I have a piece of galvanized fence post about 1 1/2″ in diameter. It would cost me some rigidity, as the big 1 1/2″ hole would go through the crossmembers. But I think it’s strong enough to support the tools.

Outfeed

If you’re wondering whether I ever finished the gadget I made to receive outfeed from my wood machines, the answer is yes. Today I mounted it on my sawhorses.

Here’s the result:

I was too lazy to actually plane something to test the gadget, but I ran my planing sled over it, and it’s very obvious that it’s going to work. I need to replace the spacers with something harder than softwood, but they’re okay for now.

Sweet.

Did I Just Feel a Sprinkle?

Am I the only person who has noticed these two inconsistent facts? 1. Since taking office, Barack Obama has consistently made stupid and obvious mistakes with regard to both major and minor issues, and one thing he has done may turn out to have catastrophic results. 2. Obama worshipers are more convinced than ever that he is The One.

Odd.

I thought I would expand a little on yesterday’s post about the real estate deal. Without bogging down in details, it goes like this. I inherited an interest in a little piece of commercial property. Some relatives with shares in the land need money; some don’t. Some really like to sell property; some don’t. There have always been conflicts regarding the disposition of pieces of property we own in common. There has never been any possibility that we would keep all the land and manage it and profit from it; it’s not even worth discussing. It would clearly be the intelligent thing to do, but you can’t herd cats.

When talk of selling this piece started, I was disturbed. It generates a little income. It’s in a great location. It’s in a place where flat land is rare and valuable, so it’ s not like there are a lot of properties like it. And I was concerned about the motivations and judgment of family members who wanted to get rid of it.

Nonetheless, I think the US is headed for a depression or deep recession, followed by a permanently lowered standard of living. We have never had the problems we face today. We have never had hungry, capable competitors like China and India, with their own vast internal markets and an endless supply of cheap, well-educated, grateful, eager labor. There is no reason why we should continue to lead the world economically. And we have aborted millions of babies, and we are getting into all sorts of disgusting religions, and we are proud and downright gross, and we are helping cut up Israel, so unless the Bible is nonsense, we should expect serious economic problems.

So while I like the idea of holding onto good land, I think unemployment is going to shoot up, businesses are going to close, commercial properties are going to be vacant, and we may continue to experience deflation. It’s hard to say, because the Fed needs to print money to cover the insane Bush/Obama Incompetence and Laziness Encouragement Plan. On the whole, however, I think cash is going to be a great thing to have over the next few years, and it’s probably a good time to sell commercial real estate, unless you have it leased to someone solvent.

There was disagreement about how to handle the sale. I thought it would be smart to divide the property. There are no comparable sales to speak of in the area where the property lies, so you can inflate the price of a piece of land by selling one part at a high price and then using the high price as leverage when you negotiate the prices of remaining pieces. But no one else in the family thought this was a good idea. They wanted to sell, period.

I was afraid that if I pushed my viewpoint, I would cause such conflict that relationships would be damaged. As a Christian, I realized this would be wrong. When you are confronted with obstinance and bad thinking, you may have to give way and trust God to fix it. For example, say your daughter wasn’t elected captain of the cheerleading squad, and the girl who got the position is a fat skeeze with no talent, not that you are judgmental or envious. You can’t firebomb the other girl’s house. You have to accept what happened and attack with prayer and faith.

So I restrained myself and did not push. I was afraid the other partners would jump at a crummy offer, just to get the cash, but I resolved to trust God rather than get in their faces. And I reminded myself that I might be wrong, and they might be right.

Well, the negotiations have taken place. We wanted X as a minimum price for the whole thing. The buyers can’t pay X. But they can pay a nice sum for part of the land, and they want an option on the rest, and if they buy it all, we’ll get about 1.6X. That’s just crazy. The most logical expectation was a miserable offer for the whole package. But the buyers are happy, and we’re happy, and unless there is some catch I don’t know about, I’m all for the deal.

So look what appears to be happening. I managed to control myself, and in the end, aren’t we getting the result I wanted in the first place?

Here’s another thing. One thing I prayed for was that my interest would be separated from everyone else’s. Why? For the same reason I would not date a non-Christian. Because partnering with people who don’t believe is a bad idea. They lead you into acts that are contrary to God’s will. They interfere with your blessings. So a sale is a good thing, because it separates my money, so I will be free to dispose of it as I see fit. I don’t have to worry about my relatives voting to rent the property to a whorehouse or something.

We’ll see if it works out. I’m assuming I understand the facts correctly.

Incidentally, some people think my gloomy assessment of the future of our country is unjustified. Some guy linked to my blog, called me “asshat,” and suggested I move to China. And his intelligent argument for the continued prosperity of America was the well-known title of a song made famous in a South Park movie featuring puppets. It’s always good to hear an opposing view which is clearly based on logic.

Some people think I’m unpatriotic for pointing out that God may be judging our nation, and that we may well be on our way to Second World status. They think pumping their fists and yelling “USA! USA!” will somehow put us back on top. But that’s exactly the attitude that put our economy in the toilet. When people said UAW workers were paid too much, and that the auto industry would fail, the autoworkers said, “USA! USA!” Now they’re saying “SOS! SOS!” and “OMG! OMG!” And soon they’ll be saying these things at the welfare office. The handouts are not going to save them. When your rowboat has a hole in it the size of a basketball, you don’t bail. You take it out of the water and patch the hole. The Big Three still have all the problems they had before two of them chose to become charity recipients, and they will continue to fail. Why would anyone expect them to succeed?

It’s just like Pajamas Media. I said it was a stupid idea, and people said I was a jerk, and they said I was too dumb to appreciate the genius of the PJs, and they quit talking to me, and they quit linking to my blog. Then PJM failed, exactly as I and the other non-sheep predicted, and Roger Simon sent all the member bloggers an email telling them they were off what he later described as “the dole”! Yes, yes, I was the enemy of conservatism. I was “the evil in the periphery”; that’s the funniest thing I was called. But who was right? Me or the cheerleaders?

Anyway, to get back to the economy…let’s get it through our heads. We didn’t become rich and powerful because we’re the master race. We are not better than foreigners. If we were, they wouldn’t come here penniless, out-compete us, and end up owning our businesses. There is nothing special about Americans. Absolutely nothing. Our educational system is second-rate. We are not the world’s hardest workers. The Bell Curve guys claim Asians are smarter than we are. We only did well because God helped us, and when he stops, we will stop doing well. That’s not unpatriotic. It’s truth. And once again, as it was in the PJ story, people like me are not the problem, any more than spots on an X-ray are the problem when you have cancer. Touch up the spots; the problem remains.

In the Bible, there were prophets who always said Israel and Judah were going to prosper. The kings and the people did all sorts of horrible things, and then the true prophets told them they were in deep trouble. So they called on the false prophets–the “patriots”–and the false prophets beat up the real prophets and said everything was going to be fine. It was after an episode like this that the king of Babylon took the king of Judah captive, murdered his sons while he watched, had him held down while his eyes were gouged out, and took him and a bunch of other Jews to Babylon in chains.

I’ll bet there were Jews listening to the false prophets, pumping their fists and yelling “JU-DAH! JU-DAH!”

As for moving to China, I don’t think it will be necessary. China is coming here. About half of it is in my garage. And I’m typing on some of it right now, while I read the words on yet another piece of it.

I wrote that without checking, and then I turned over my keyboard and looked. Sure enough: “Made in China.”

While I’m walking down this path, I’ll mention one other thing. A commenter scolded me for thinking the success of my gardening efforts was connected to my behavior as a Christian. I can’t figure that out. Open a Bible. See what it says about people who behave. Your crops will do well. Grapes, wheat, corn, whatever. “Running over.” “Abundance.” “Plenty.” It’s not figurative language, either. Not exclusively. It really does refer to things you plant. And you can look at Joel or Numbers 28 to see what happens to the things you plant, when you aren’t living right.

I bring this up because I checked on my yard today. For a long time, I could not get anywhere with fruit, and it didn’t seem to matter what I did to help things grow. Today I was shocked by what I saw. A ponkan tree which I thought I had wiped out sprouted blossoms unexpectedly, and I’m going to have tangerines. My older tangerine tree, which I nearly killed, has little fruit on it. My key limes are sprouting blossoms which I did not foresee. My cara cara has so many tiny fruit on it, I’m afraid I’ll have to cut a bunch off to keep them from killing it. My lychee is covered in blossoms. Even my pathetic tangelo tree is getting ready to bear. And get this: I found fruit on a MALE papaya tree. Is that even possible? I think my tree is gay. The other trees have produced one papaya after another, and this one has just generated doomed blossoms, but now it has fruit on it. And I have all sorts of little Persian limes on the way. My sole surviving tomato plant has no blossoms, but suddenly it’s very healthy, which is a near-impossibility here.

My lantana bushes, which I bought because they reminded me of Israel, are exploding with flowers. Even the weakest one, which I was worried about. I think it’s going to do well from now on. And my mango trees are lush and healthy, and there are a lot of little mangoes on them.

I think when you say God doesn’t affect little things like this, in effect, you’re saying God doesn’t do anything at all, which is what most Christians really believe. But if God is God, he does things, right? Isn’t that common sense? I think people develop a weird, hands-off picture of God because it enables them to keep believing in him when their prayers consistently go unanswered. You pray and pray, and nothing happens, and you say, “That’s okay, because God is really more of a big-picture guy, and he’s very busy running the world. It’s only natural that he would have no interest in my problems.”

Whatever. When I pray, I want to see some action.

Incidentally, I would be interested in knowing whether I’m the only one who has the impression that a lot of Christians are getting interested in guns, tools, and growing things. It’s crazy, but I keep running into people who have these interests. I have to wonder if we’re being prepared for something. Maybe when times get really bad, it will be good to have a bunch of tools, plenty of firearms and ammunition, and food growing on your land.

Here’s something crazy: my grandfather left me a big heavy bag of silver. He was a judge, and there was a toll road through the counties he served, and when we went off silver coins, he used his clout to get the toll collectors to save silver for him, and he bought it. Very odd thing to do; he was not a big metals investor. And now here I am, with bad times probably on the way, sitting on a hefty pile of silver coins. Is there a reason for it?

That’s all for this morning. I have to buy some steel and some welding gas, and I have a bunch of ideas for mounting tools on roller carts. Time is wasting.

Technorati Profile

Must…Have…Bridgeport

Today I was thinking about the cool new gadget I made for my planer outfeed. And I realized I am starting to encounter situations in which machine tools could be really useful.

Look at what I did. It will work; no reason to doubt it. But it could be so much better. I could have used the dry-cut saw and a drill press or mill to put the casters on a piece of angle iron instead of wood, and that would have saved me an inch and a quarter in wasted vertical material. I could have used two pieces of angle iron for the upright parts with slots, had I been able to make slots in metal. I’m going to have to make wooden wedges for spacers, and they will eventually wear and may split. I could have machined them out of aluminum; they’d last forever.

I bought a 2″ square piece of poplar for my router fence. It does the job. But it would be much better to have one made from steel or cast iron. I could find me a piece of surplus metal, put T-tracks in it, mill one side smooth (not sure if a mill will do a job this big, but maybe), cut out a cavity for the router bit, make some nice horizontal bits and weld them to the back so they’d rest on the table, and I’d be all set. Or I could make a fence from aluminum, but then I could forget about using magnetic accessories.

I would imagine a mill would be much faster and better for preparing parts to be welded. When I made the mobile base for my bandsaw, most of the work was grinding and shaping. I had to rough out the parts with the dry cut saw and plasma cutter. After that, it was grind, grind, grind. With a mill, you could make the stuff the correct size to begin with.

I am beginning to see just how useful machine tools would be, and how much use I’d get from them.

“Time is an Illusion; Lunchtime, Doubly So.”

I want to thank everyone with regard to the post I put up the other day about the property sale my family is negotiating. I asked for prayer. I come from a family in which people don’t do a very good job of structuring their estates. This is a tremendous evil to thrust on your kids. I have a cousin who was cut out of his father’s will in favor of his brother. He cornered his brother in the front seat of his truck and blew his guts out with a deer rifle and one or two other weapons. You really need to set your estate up, if you have anyone to leave money to.

It looks like the deal is working out much better than expected, and if it goes through, it will get a big source of conflict out of our lives. This, more than the money, is what concerned me. I give credit to God. I have to; it’s not like we’ve done anything shrewd or even competent in managing what was left to us.

I learned something amazing tonight. I have always said my family was cursed. Today I found out that someone in my line of descent–the last person you would imagine, if you knew my family–used an occult method to plan investments. No wonder we have had problems with the property. I can’t tell you how shocked I am.

I keep thinking about machine tools. I know you will think I’m nuts, and you probably do, regardless, but I keep feeling as though big tools are part of God’s plan for my life. I wish I also felt that way about Pop Tarts.

The Millrite I looked at was very nice, and I am tempted to jump on it. But I keep reading about the various ways in which it is inferior to a Bridgeport. And you have to see what someone mentioned to me. Click this link.

That is the business of a man who “scrapes” machine tools. Don’t even ask me to explain. Science will allow you to build a nice machine tool, but to make it accurate, you have to resort to art. Scraping is a bizarre process that prepares metal surfaces to work properly together, and people do it with hand tools.

Anyway, he takes old mills apart, scrapes them down, and rebuilds them. They are gorgeous. And the prices are very good. I’m so tempted.

This guy has a great reputation, for ethics as well as skill. I picked that up from reading the forums. That makes the deals harder to resist.

I contacted Plaza Machinery about a lathe. People say great things about this company. The owner says he’s in the hospital. Has a lathe I might want to buy, but it may take time.

Speaking of time, it has been on Mish Weiss’s mind. Her doctors seem to be debating about how much time she has left. The truth is, they don’t know. I hope she realizes that. And even if doctors were able to make predictions with any accuracy, in the end, God is in charge.

Please keep praying for Mish, and while you’re at it, throw in the guy from Plaza Machinery. Can’t hurt.

Feast Your Unworthy Eyes

This has been a day of triumph mixed with slapstick.

I wanted to make a rack for my saw blades, so I went to Home Depot and bought a steel dowel to use to go through the arbors. I realize how ridiculous this is. I have started eyeing trash heaps very carefully as I drive, but I still have to buy metal all the time.

I cut pieces of the dowel to length, filed off the burrs, cleaned off the scale, polished up two pieces of scrap I intended to use for the bodies of two racks, turned on the gas for the welder, and realized…the valve had been open for about a week. I knew I would do this eventually. I need a checklist, and I probably need to have it tattooed on the back of my hand.

Okay, no welding today. This week I go to Airgas.

I moved on to another project. Luckily, I had picked up the materials while I was at Home Depot.

By way of background, I give you the sad tale of the planer sled. I bought a beautiful reconditioned Dewalt planer which turned out to be new. I made myself a planer sled so I would be able to put off buying a jointer. I ran wood through the planer on the sled. I discovered I got four inches of snipe, because it was very hard to support the outfeed well.

I went to Sawmill Creek and asked around, and I was referred to a device sold by a company called Lee Valley. It’s like a roller stand, but instead of one roller, which can steer the outfeed and make you crazy, it had a bunch of swiveled casters. They can’t steer the work. Brilliant. And I would have been thrilled to pay for one. But from the pictures, it looked like it would be impossible to get it close to the planer.

I realized I could make something similar, myself. That’s what I did today. It was a festival of testosterone, swearing, and tools. I got to use the bandsaw, table saw, impact driver, drill, and even the ROUTER!

I am just amazing. I don’t know how to bear it.

Here’s the router. This is really the first time I’ve used it since I put it in the table. I’ve screwed around with it a little, but until today I didn’t really accomplish anything. I needed a nice clean slot in this board, for a bolt to go through. I used stop blocks and plunge-routed the opening. That router plate is part of a lift, and the crank goes in the little hole with the small red dial around it. You crank to move the router up and down. I routed and cranked, moving the bit upward a tiny bit with every couple of passes. It’s amazing; when you get to the end, you can actually see the router bit and the new slot through the last layers of wood.

Here is the finished frame for the gadget. Now I can explain the idea. I wanted to put this on top of my sawhorses, and I wanted the height to be infinitely adjustable. Problem: the cross supports on the sawhorses are wide at the bottom and thin at the top. This means you can’t have a gadget with parallel sides that slides up and down on the support so you can clamp it at any height you like. The answer was to measure the angles of the support sides and make a frame that would rest flat against them. So I took the table saw and cut a slice off a two-by-four at 18 degrees. The slice will go behind the supports. The big part of the two-by-four will be part of the gadget’s frame. I’ll drill two holes in the support, and I’ll run a bolt through each slot and and the support. On the back side, I’ll have the slice, with holes for the bolts. Washers and wingnuts will go on the bolts. The slice will keep the washers flat against the wood surface.

Here are the casters. I can’t finish the gadget until I get the bolts, nuts, and washers. But it’s fairly clear that it will work. When I got the casters screwed it, I took the boards off the front, added Titebond III, and put them back together. I did that because I wanted to use three screws per board, but the slots make it likely that they would split the wood, which is softwood scrap.

The Lee Valley gadget has a metal plate on the “in” side, to steer stuff up onto the rollers. I’m sure I can fix something up that will do the same thing. They really need to make a version like the one I made. I would have bought it in a heartbeat.

The bandsaw is an amazing tool. If you can just remember to use it, it can do things that will surprise you. I’ll bet a metal bandsaw would be fantastic, if I were fabricating a lot of stuff. The plasma cutter is great for a lot of things, but it’s no bandsaw.

I can’t believe I made this thing, and that it was so easy. Looks pretty good, doesn’t it? A router will probably do more than any other tool to make your woodworking look professional. If you think about it, most of the crappy details that set an amateurish piece of woodworking apart can be blamed on the lack of a router.

Let’s not talk about the welding gas, okay? We’ll just let it be our secret.

Reason not the Need

People keep asking me why I’m not building anything with my tools. Or they ask me what it is that I plan to build. They don’t get it. I’ll provide the answer. I am building a SHOP.

Here’s what I want. When I get an idea about something I want to build or do, I want to be able to walk out into the garage and see that I have the tools I need to do it. You can never really reach this point, but you can get very close to it, unless you plan to build your own space station or make your own surface-mount circuit boards or silicon chips.

This is why I don’t know what to say when people tell me I have to have a job in mind before I can choose a tool. What I have in mind isn’t a particular job. I want to be able to handle a reasonable range of jobs. “What do you plan to do with the tool?” isn’t a smart question. What you should ask is, “What do you think you might want to do over the next thirty years?”

You can reach a point where you can make a smoker, a door, a metal fence, a table, a humidor, a steel rack for your yard tools–or any number of other handy things–without leaving the house. You can fix it so you can raise your own car and put a new exhaust system on it or replace your brake pads. I don’t think that’s much to ask from life. You can blow twenty thousand dollars, total, and be set for life, except for odds and ends. Is that really too much to spend? Let’s see what a decent fishing boat costs. Haven’t I done this before?

Okay, I pulled up a boat on Boat Trader’s site. It’s a Boston Whaler. I wouldn’t have a Boston Whaler; they ride rough. The design is obsolete, and they’re very ugly. But it’s a quality boat, and the price is representative of the class. The one I’m looking at is a 2001, and it’s 26 feet long, which is really the minimum size for fishing in Miami. Asking price? About forty thousand. Let’s check the fuel capacity. It’s 200 gallons, or $500 per fill-up (unless you find a marina that doesn’t overcharge). The electronics suck. If you don’t have a fishfinder that works reliably to 2000 feet, you bought a toy. You don’t need radar here, but you need a real (i.e. $2000) GPS and a good radio and an EPIRB. Figure four thousand to put all that together. Figure, conservatively, ten thousand for decent rods and reels and tackle. And let’s not even talk about maintenance and repairs.

You also have to store the boat. If you trailer it in your yard, you’ll never use it, and you’ll have to buy a pickup and trailering stuff. The only realistic way is to find an in-water marina. At worst, a marina with racks and a forklift. That will cost you.

Compared to fishing, tools are a bargain. And when you fish, you get nothing of concrete value in return. And the skills you learn are completely worthless. You’re not going to fish in the open ocean to feed your family; there is absolutely no way to come out ahead. You can fish from shore and catch things like grunts and snook, but on the whole, you’d be better off raising chickens. But no one ever looks at a little 26-foot open fisherman and says, “You must be CRAZY, spending all that money!”

I have a project in mind right now. I have to sort through my table saw blades. I have no idea what I have. I have to make two cuts with each, to see what the kerfs look like and check the finish they leave, and then I have to mark them and make a list of their characteristics. Then I have to get them off the Rubbermaid stool where they now live. So I plan to make a steel thing I can hang on the wall, on which I can hang the blades like weights at a gym. I figure I’ll need three or four spindles on a piece of square steel tubing. I already have the tubing. I haven’t checked the size of the arbor holes on the blades, but I may be able to use my surplus electrical conduit to make spindles. It’s more than strong enough.

Imagine trying to do this in a house with no tools. Forget it. It’s a simple task which should take two hours with my limited skills, but if you don’t have a welder and a dry cut saw or some other decent cutting tool, it would be impossible. For me, it’s a pleasant two hours. For you, if you don’t have tools, it might as well be the construction of the pyramids. You can’t do it.

People keep saying, “Gee, you can buy the thing you want to make.” Sure, and I can eat at McDonald’s three times a day instead of cooking my own food. The point isn’t to get stuff, or even to save money. The point is to be able to make stuff.

If I wanted to play golf (thank God, I don’t), would you tell me I could watch golf on TV instead? Would you tell me to pay someone else to play golf for me? Of course not. And you wouldn’t tell Tiger Woods to walk to the hole and drop his ball in the cup, just because it’s faster and cheaper. The process, not the result, is the destination.

I Want Sprinkles on That

I went and looked at some milling machines today. Here is my report.

The place I went to had several Series I Bridgeports, two Wells Indexes (“Indices”?), and a Powermatic Millrite. Their other machines were of no interest.

The Millrite needed to be put together; there were bits here and there. Most of it was in place. Just about every machine there had at least one piece that needed to be reinstalled.

I think I finally understand how backlash works. I keep reading about machines having this much or that much backlash, measured in thousandths of an inch. I always wondered how they arrived at the figures. I pictured someone crawling all over the machines with a feeler gauge.

Today I tried the dials or cranks or whatever they’re called on a bunch of machines. I mean the things that make the tables move. On all but two of the machines, the handles went through pretty large arcs before the tables started moving. And there are little graduations around the handles. I assume the free movement is backlash, and the graduations are thousandths, so it’s easy to measure the backlash accurately. I should have looked to be sure, I guess. I’m sure people will be glad to correct me.

The Millrite appeared very solid. The paint was grey, and it looked like original paint, although I have seen Powermatic-green Millrites. Maybe I’m wrong. I could see no real problems with the table. Most of the machines had nicks and chips and so on. I didn’t see anything like that on the Millrite. And when I turned the handles, the table moved instantly. I lowered the quill, and it worked fine. I really don’t see any problems with it. Judging by the prices I’ve seen on Millrites, this thing is probably worth $1500. Unfortunately, they want $1950.

I was surprised to see how compact it was. I knew it would be smaller than a Bridgeport, but the difference is greater than I thought. I would say it takes up 50% more room than a 17″ drill press. It’s longer from back to front. And it’s not that tall; everything is right down where you can see it.

The Bridgeports were not so big they would not work well in my garage. The only one they had that looked like it was in good shape was a machine that had an old DRO and power feeds. Like the Millrite, it had a table that moved instantly when you turned the handles.

Here are some Millrite cellphone photos. Oddly, the metal looks better in photos than in real life, while the paint looks worse.

Here is the Bridgeport. It had chromed ways, and the scrapy marks were clearly visible. I thought this meant it was in better shape than the other mills, on which I could not see this stuff, but the guy who showed me the machines seemed to indicate that he felt the ways were worn. He said the power feeds and so on worked. The paint was horrible. It looks like someone applied house paint with a brush. One nice thing: variable speed.

They want $4750 for this thing. That is not going to work. I assume they would part with it for $4K, but that’s still pretty bad, unless I am seriously deceived by the mills I’ve seen online. I realize it has a lot of stuff on it, but that DRO appears to be Flintstone-era, and I am not very confident that it will last another month.

The mill’s serial number was 240xxx. I should look that up. I have read that some people make the mistake of checking the number on the head. I checked the number on the knee, which is the correct one.

The Millrite is really nice. It’s probably much newer, in terms of wear, than the Bridgeports. People don’t use Millrites for production, the way they do Bridgeports. But it’s small. And now that I’ve seen these things up close, I realize a Bridgeport is a viable option for me.

Of course, if I can get them to deal on the Millrite, and I can clean it up and make it beautiful, I should be able to resell it eventually for about what I’d pay. And I have to say, it looks like a sweet machine. Fits in a garage nicely, and the size makes it easy to reach everything. The pulleys are a bummer. A VFD would reduce the misery, but I’d have to shell out maybe two-fifty for a little one plus a motor.

A Wells Index would be a smart buy. I should go back and look them over more carefully. They run cheaper than Bridgeports, and they’re just as good, and the company is alive and eager to give good service. But it’s a bigger machine.

Delivery is not a problem. They have a guy who does it for 80 bucks an hour, so figure $240 with the obligatory super-slow pace of a savvy hourly worker. If he’s honest, $120.

I also looked at their Clausing lathe. They have a 12″ 1982 job that would fit beside a wall of my garage. Not very pretty, however, and I have read some unflattering things about Clausing lathes.

This was a fun trip. I have to figure out what to do now. The white Bridgeport is probably a good machine, but look what I can have in my garage for $1857 plus a grand for shipping: CLICK. Granted, it’s not a variable speed machine, and it doesn’t have a DRO, but it appears to be in much better condition, and those other things can be snapped up as deals become available.

It will be nice to have milling and drilling capability, and it will be even nicer to be able to turn things. Once I have a mill and a lathe, I should be able to consider my shop fundamentally complete. Other stuff will come later, to be sure, but I can’t think of any other big items I’ll need. I’ll be able to cut, shape and join wood and metal in enough ways to get just about any job done.

Fun sign at M&M Discount Liquors, which I saw on the way home: “OBAMA’S SECRET PLAN TO FIX ECONOMIC CRACKS / MAKE HIS NOMINEES PAY THEIR BACK TAXES.”

To be Read by the Light of a Coleman Lantern

Kim du Toit still has some copies of his book, Family Fortunes, available for purchase. At the low, low price of $5.95, this is the biggest bargain since the U.S. bought Alaska for $7.2 million and secured the future rights to Sarah Palin.