Two Things

Do me a little favor.

My family is negotiating to sell a piece of property. A bunch of us own it together. I was not all that happy about the decision to sell it, but for various reasons, it may be a good idea. That all hinges on the price, of course. If the buyer thinks the economy is going to recover quickly, we may get a good price. I think our economic problems haven’t really started yet, and that real estate is going to continue to fall, and that cash is a good thing to have at this time.

Would you mind saying a prayer that God would watch over the negotiations and give us a good result, whatever that may be? I would truly appreciate it. I’m not sure selling is the right move, but if we do sell, we need to be paid fairly, and we need guidance with the disposition of the proceeds. These days I am trying to remember that my money belongs to God, and that when I spend or invest it, I should ask myself if I’m doing something of which he would approve.

Also, don’t forget Mish, who is depending on your prayers in Israel.

Thanks.

I Sort of Made Something

I had a magnificent day with my saws.

I took my amazing new board–which I created using a planer sled–and I turned it into a box. Sort of. It’s the worst box ever made, and I haven’t figured out how to do the top, but it is, in fact, a box.

I was hoping to use the router and the bandsaw a lot, but the table saw is a jealous mistress. It seems like it’s almost always easier to think up a table saw method than a bandsaw method, and I think I have a phobia about the router. I have never been able to make one work well.

I cut myself four box sides, and I managed to miter them with a jig consisting of a strip of scrap screwed to the miter fence. Then I used the table saw to make dadoes for the bottom of the box to fit into. After that, I hooked up the new Dynabrade orbital sander to polish up the pieces, and I glued them together using packing tape instead of clamps. This is what Doug Stowe does, and it’s genius.

Unfortunately, I had some problems. First of all, I really have to clean up my table saw top. Grime is getting on the wood. Also, my throat plate is crap. I have aligned it as well as possible, but the reality is, it’s worn out. It has to be replaced. I was cutting soft wood today, and it made the problems with the throat plate obvious. It scores wood as the wood goes over it, because the wear has made it irregular.

I also need a real splitter. The one I have works fine, but it’s a pain to take out when I use my Gripper push thing. Maybe the answer is to make myself a new throat plate from scrap MDF and install my Microjig splitter, which I have never used.

The Dynabrade is pretty cool. At first, it didn’t turn all that fast; I must have screwed the air connection up somehow. I didn’t know anything was wrong. It seemed to work okay, but it wasn’t impressive. Then I unhooked it for a minute to add machine oil, and when I hooked it up again, it took off! That thing is fierce!

I should have watched Doug Stowe’s box-making DVD again before trying to make a box, but I was just fooling around, so I didn’t bother. I’m sure it would have answered some questions for me. For example, he puts splines and miter keys in his boxes, using his table saw to cut the dadoes. So far, all the blades I’ve tried leave a kerf that has a top that isn’t flat. I don’t know how he gets around that.

Today I pulled a Festool blade out of the pile of blades that came with my saw. Seems very nice, but it didn’t give me a kerf with a flat top.

I wanted to do splines or miter keys, but cutting the dadoes was difficult for two reasons. First, the kerf problem. Second, the difficulty of putting splines in 1/4″-thick wood. I didn’t even try the table saw. I tried the bandsaw, but the blade likes to turn a little if you cut into a tall piece of wood. I keep adjusting the bearings; they seem to need more work now that I run the saw occasionally.

I can’t recall, but I am pretty sure Doug Stowe used much thicker wood when he made splines in the video.

I guess I should butch up and buy a piece of hardwood. I’ll need to make a resaw fence first.

Even though I didn’t really achieve anything, I learned a lot. Not just about technique, but about safety. It’s wonderful, having tools.

Three Hundred Million Blind Mice

I am somewhat leery of the practice of opening the Bible at random and asking God to tell me what to read. But sometimes I do it anyway, because I can’t decide what to look at. And I have to admit, it seems to work. Usually my eye lands on something very useful or appropriate.

Here’s something I stumbled on a few days back. It’s from the 12th chapter of Job:

9 Who knoweth not in all these that the hand of the Lord hath wrought this?

10 In whose hand is the soul of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind.

11 Doth not the ear try words? and the mouth taste his meat?

12 With the ancient is wisdom; and in length of days understanding.

13 With him is wisdom and strength, he hath counsel and understanding.

14 Behold, he breaketh down, and it cannot be built again: he shutteth up a man, and there can be no opening.

15 Behold, he withholdeth the waters, and they dry up: also he sendeth them out, and they overturn the earth.

16 With him is strength and wisdom: the deceived and the deceiver are his.

17 He leadeth counsellors away spoiled, and maketh the judges fools.

18 He looseth the bond of kings, and girdeth their loins with a girdle.

19 He leadeth princes away spoiled, and overthroweth the mighty.

20 He removeth away the speech of the trusty, and taketh away the understanding of the aged.

21 He poureth contempt upon princes, and weakeneth the strength of the mighty.

22 He discovereth deep things out of darkness, and bringeth out to light the shadow of death.

23 He increaseth the nations, and destroyeth them: he enlargeth the nations, and straiteneth them again.

24 He taketh away the heart of the chief of the people of the earth, and causeth them to wander in a wilderness where there is no way.

25 They grope in the dark without light, and he maketh them to stagger like a drunken man.

This stuff is true. Job said some things that were wrong, and God corrected him, but much of what he said is consistent with the rest of the Bible.

Naturally, I thought of the current economic mess. Barack Obama is doing everything wrong, and leftist cheerleaders are issuing shrill but unconvincing screams of approval. Before Obama came along, liberals in our government screwed up by coercing banks to lend money to people who clearly could not pay. The people who ran our lending institutions made the bad loans, which is really astounding, if you consider what an obvious mistake it was. And George Bush made a bizarre eleventh-hour dive into the cesspool of socialism, rewarding those who helped put us in this mess and encouraging others like them to continue eroding our economy.

Electing Obama, in and of itself, was a remarkable mistake. He’s a career academic and politician with virtually no experience, and his only “qualification” is that he did well in law school. And the more time passes, the more inadequate and immature he appears.

How can you look at a string of boneheaded mistakes like this and not ask yourself if something beyond the natural is at work? The stupidity of the things we’ve done is powerfully evident, and to many people, it was evident before we did them. Can mere human error explain it? I find it hard to believe.

The world is like a rat maze, and we are like the rats. We can’t see over the sides of the partitions. We can only guess at the locations of the cheese and the electrodes that deliver electric shocks. When we find the cheese, we take the credit. We declare our superiority over the rats who have no cheese, and we say our success was due to a combination of hard work and extraordinary ability. Those things matter, but they are worthless unless someone who can see the maze from above gives us guidance. And if you don’t get that guidance, or, worse, you are guided toward the shocks, all your wonderful efforts and attributes amount to nothing.

It looks like Netanyahu is going to win the election in Israel. I am told he has his faults, but surely he will be an improvement over his naive land-ceding opponents. With any luck, he will work to rebuild Eretz Israel, and he will manage to get Obama on board, and our fortunes will improve, because we will no longer be working to undo God’s promise to Abraham.

Of course, if that happens, we will be told that the great genius Obama saved our hides.

Prophecy tells us nations that help divide Israel will be punished. I believe it wholeheartedly. I hope we change course before times get so hard Americans end up smuggling themselves to China in shipping containers.

Perfect Fit

I think I’ve found the ideal lathe. Logan made a bunch of 12″ cabinet lathes back in the Sixties. A couple are on Ebay now. One is a Model 2557, and the other is a Model 2957. I think. They go 35″ between centers, and they are reasonably compact.

It looks like you have to pop for quite a bit of change to get one, but the up side is that if you get a reasonable deal, you don’t eat it too badly on resale. And we don’t make many lathes in America any more, so it’s not like they’re going to crank out new ones and saturate the market.

I’m Awesome

I made a board. Wait, it’s more exciting than it sounds. I bought a planer a while back, and I made myself a planer sled so I could use it as a face jointer. Today I put the final parts in (screws to hold some shims in place), and I tried out the planer. It works! I took a three-foot piece of scrap spruce that was 3/4″ thick, and I turned it into a three-foot piece of scrap spruce that is 1/4″ thick and very flat.

I’m so proud of it, I plan to turn it into something. Probably a box. I see no point in splurging on real wood when I can learn from crap I have lying around the garage. I have scrap coming out of my butt, and I need to get rid of it. Maybe I’ll find a way to use 3/16″ angle iron in a welded base for a 5″ box.

I love the planer, but boy, does it make shavings. For some reason the dust thing on it doesn’t want to connect to my shop-vac, so I let it fly, right out into the yard. Mulch, you know. When it was over, it looked like it had been snowing. I actually had to vacuum the yard.

I can tell I need to get some kind of outfeed support. The sawhorses work great for the table saw, but for the planer, I need something that is has less friction and can be adjusted very accurately so it’s at exactly the same height as the planer’s feed area. Rollers, I suppose.

I got like four inches of snipe, because I could not control the sled and wood on the way out of the planer. But when I took the board off the sled and flipped it and began thicknessing it, the snipe completely disappeared. I can’t find it now. Very odd. I suppose for light, short pieces of wood, the planer acts like a guide.

I still have to learn edge jointing. I bought some crap to make a jig for the table saw.

I’m going to sit down and draw up plans for a box. It will have to be small. I have 36″ by 8″ to work with, total. I don’t care. It’s a start.

Now that I see how the planer corrects short pieces of wood, I’m thinking I might be able to skip the sled sometimes.

I love this piece of wood. I keep carrying it around with me so I can fondle it.

I just talked to Great Aunt Gladys up in Frostproof. It’s her 93rd birthday. She says I should come up there and let her give me some woodworking lessons. I better do that.

This is for me:

Keep up the Prayer

Mish Weiss’s liver has improved, which is very good news, but overall, she is not feeling optimistic.

Don’t forget her.

I was Robbed

I know you’re all dying to hear a status report on my search for a lathe.

When I started looking around, a mammoth Sheldon lathe with a six-foot bed was available for $550. But some vulture got it before I could. Some miserable, evil, slimy person. Anyone who gets a good buy before I do fits that description.

Right now, I have two interesting options. One is an old South Bend Model A 9″ lathe with a bunch of tooling, for $650. It belonged to an old inventor who used it in his business. The obvious question is how hard he used it. Hopefully, his business was really bad and he rarely turned it on. The other option is a Logan Model 820 10″ lathe, which has a big pan and feet on it. It has some tooling, too.

The thing I noticed right away is that 10 is bigger than 9. This is the kind of thing my keen eye can sometimes be counted on to pick up.

I am tempted to get the Logan, because it’s twenty minutes away, and it’s bigger than the other lathe, and it has a stand. But I keep thinking about it, and I am worried that it will be too danged small.

This isn’t such a big problem with the South Bend. Unless it’s a complete bag of garbage, I can get my $650 back when I sell it. But the Logan guy wants $1100. And if that were a good price, he would have sold it by now. He has been advertising it since Christmas, at least. If I get a crappy price, I’ll feel like I have to hang onto the lathe, because the resale will be an exercise in something lathes are good at: reaming.

While either of these machines would probably make me happy, I live in horror of buying tools that are too small. And these things measure under 20″ between the centers. A lot of lathes go 36″. Maybe I would be smarter to wait for, say, an 11″ lathe with a longer bed. Otherwise, you know what will happen. The first thing I make with the lathe will be no problem, and the second one will have to be 20.1″ long, and I’ll have to kill myself, because it won’t fit on the lathe.

I can go to a dealer and get anything I want. For three times the Craigslist price. A dealer probably nailed that big Sheldon. I’ll probably see it for sale for $9000.

I guess the smart thing is to sit around until some more lathes pop up. The economy is tanking, and people are selling their business tools as well as their home-shop toys. Bargains will be easier to find in a month. President Obama and Speaker Pelosi are going to see to that.

No More Autopsy Photos of Che

Cafepress can be a nasty place. But it doesn’t have to be.

Check it out.

New stuff is going up over time.

Dance 3, Faith 10

I used to belong to an Assemblies of God church. That ended in 1989. The pastor said some things that gave me the impression that he hadn’t put his criminal past completely behind him. He had been a petty criminal in his youth, and he told a story about how he and two friends had picked up a hitchhiker and beaten him and taken his money. And the way he told the story suggested he thought it was funny.

That disturbed me, and there were other problems with the church. For example, we often had services that lasted three hours, for no clear reason. It seemed as if the paster were out of control and out of touch with our needs.

I tried to find a new church, but I didn’t try very hard, and procrastination eventually led to years on my own. And one reason I stayed away was that there were problems with the churches I knew. For example, the charismatic churches seemed obsessed with getting God to do stuff for people, and they didn’t teach all that much about our duties to God. And the non-charismatic churches seemed like a waste of time. I was convinced that the baptism of the Holy Spirit was real, and the churches charismatics referred to as “dead”–the places where the gifts of the Holy Spirit were criticized and “debunked”–were pretty awful. Those are the places that now have gay pastors and even bishops, and which call God “she,” and which tell us Jesus was kind of a benevolent mental case who hallucinated a lot but gave us a lot of useful teaching about being nice and thinking positive.

I found clergymen disappointing. Some were clearly grifters. Others were, at best, hypocrites. Many had gigantic egos incompatible with Christian teaching. I don’t have to tell you the ways in which ministers let us down. Open a newspaper; it’s all there.

This weekend, I watched a DVD of a charismatic preacher, and I was disappointed again. Something about this guy bothered me. I finally nailed it down. First, he kept talking about his amazing respect and devotion to various highly spiritual people he had known, and he talked about how he “sat at their feet” and asked them stuff. It was a little like listening to a Michael Jackson fan talking about how he once touched a chair in which the Gloved One had sat. It seemed like this guy was praising himself for loving these people so much, and for knowing them personally. It’s a very bad sign when a Christian tells you how amazing his faith and devotion are, as if he were telling you something of real value, while expecting you to applaud. It’s not the same thing as giving your testimony in order to help other people’s faith, even though it may seem similar.

Also, he kept talking about amazing miracles he had seen or heard of. Now, miracles happen. People get healed and so on. But bad things happen, too. Sometimes you pray for people and they drop dead anyway. I’m sorry, but it happens. And there was something about the way this guy talked that seemed to suggest that we should always expect to get exactly what we ask for. I felt like he was pumping people’s hopes up, just to make them happy and raise his own profile and get him more preaching gigs.

And he was pushing people to dance and yell and sing. I resented that. I find it extremely annoying and presumptuous when a preacher tells people they have to make fools of themselves in church. I have felt God’s presence, but I have never felt like hopping up and down in a church aisle, and I prefer not to scream or sing really loud. And I don’t think I have to do those things to make God happy. I’ve always hated dancing in clubs and so on, because I was only doing it in order to gain acceptance; there was never anything sincere about it, except when it was real dancing, like salsa and merengue. Jerking around like a monkey always made me feel stupid, and let’s be honest, virtually everyone you see in the floor when you go to a disco looks like an idiot. It’s not just me. I always resented being told I had to participate in this degrading ritual in order to be normal. And I don’t want to hear the same shtick when I go to church. I don’t recall reading about Moses or Elijah or Jesus break-dancing in the street, and I see no need to do it, myself. If I decide I feel like it, I’ll do it. Until then, leave me alone.

A lot of flamboyant closeted gays choose to deny their impulses and go into preaching, and they have certain extroverted tendencies with regard to performing and singing and dancing, and they think the rest of us should share them. I don’t want any part of that. The Bible does not require me to moonwalk, so leave me alone. The fact that I’m not jumping up and down like an attention-starved XTC-popping pinhead at a rave does not mean I’m “ashamed of God” or that I’m less spiritual than you are. And your ostentatious display of passion and devotion may have more to do with pride than faith. If you’re doing it for the wrong reason, save it for Soul Train.

I’m not knocking these guys for their nature; it could be worse. They could be working as female impersonators, singing at bathhouses. They’re apparently controlling their urges. They marry and so on. But still, they are different, and they should realize that not every compulsion they feel is shared by other people.

Maybe I’m completely wrong about this man. That’s not the point I’m getting at. Here’s where I’m headed: I have been very disappointed in many, many clergymen, and I’ll bet you have too. And we’re often right to be disappointed. You don’t have to be a genius to know when a preacher has severe failings.

There is a famous “Word of Faith” preacher out there who appears to have gone completely around the bend. I mean, Colonel Kurtz territory. He says no end of nutty things, and he’s obscenely rich, and he tells people, essentially, that their lives should be perfect. If they’re not, it means they’re not sending him enough money, or they’re not praying enough, or they’re not wearing the right color socks when they pray, or SOMETHING is wrong, and it’s their fault. Critics are now claiming that a lot of his stuff is plagiarized directly from the works of a man named E.W. Kenyon, and some of it is just gnosticism painted up to resemble Christianity. And this man and his crew don’t take criticism well. His daughter compared a Senator’s request for information to Kristallnacht. I am not kidding. And it’s funny, these guys never–NEVER, as far as I know–tell people they need to give more money to charity. If they’re mentioning charity, they’re not mentioning it very much, because I’ve been looking for it, and I haven’t seen it. No, you’re supposed to send your money to the ministry. Because yachts need diesel, and it’s not free.

Hmm…God helped Cornelius the centurion because of his prayers and ALMS. Not because he bought Jesus a ridiculous private jet. Something to think about. “By their fruits,” right? And God didn’t send Cornelius a big check, which is what the prosperity preachers would have told him to expect. No, he and his house were saved and filled with the Spirit. I guess they weren’t believing for the right kind of miracle.

This weekend, I realized something. Jesus said the first would be last and the last would be first, in the kingdom of God. I always thought that meant there were poor or unknown people out there who would amount to more in the kingdom than prominent Christians who were not as righteous. And I think that’s true, but I think it also means that the strongest Christians are usually found in front of the pulpit, not behind it. The guys with the big churches and the big names are making a splash now, but generally they will not be as special or prominent after the judgment. Life can be like high school. Sometimes the quarterback ends up pumping gas in his forties.

This is a useful thing to know. Back when I belonged to that Assemblies of God church, the pastor disappointed me. But the congregants never did! I mean, never. I’m sure there were people there who were hypocrites or who had bad intentions in one way or another, but I never saw any of that. I saw sincerity and real effort. In this life, congregants have less honor than preachers. But many ordinary churchgoers are people of very great virtue, and many perfectly adequate pastors are not.

Here’s something else that occurred to me. There is a big difference between preachers and congregants. Preachers get paid to be in church. They benefit in lots of ways. People give them cars. People tell them how wonderful they are. But what about congregants? They pay to be there! No one praises them. No one knows who they are. So it naturally follows that you should expect to find stronger, more trustworthy Christians in the pews. Not on the platforms. The fact that a man is leading a church doesn’t mean he’s the most virtuous person there.

History is full of insincere clergymen. But how many people will attend church, and pay for the privilege, out of insincerity? The percentage has to be much lower. Why would you waste your time and money, if you don’t believe? Tithing and alms are expensive. And it’s a pain, spending a fourth of your weekend on church, when you don’t believe. You’d have to be a masochist, if you didn’t think what you were doing was right.

Of course, there are people who get venal rewards from church. Some people want attention, and they see to it that they get to sing solos and lead choirs. Some people just like to feel like they’re better than the rest of us, so they buy really big Bibles and carry them around and tell the rest of us what we’re doing wrong. But in all likelihood, churchgoers are probably more sincere than ministers and other church leaders.

If you keep this in mind, maybe it will be easier to accept the problems you’ve discovered in your church. Every church has flaws; you have to find the best one you can and stick with it. If your experience is like mine, you’ll find that the people you meet make your church’s little imperfections worth putting up with. They will bless your life as much or more than the guy up front. If I had thought about that back in ’89, I would surely have found a new church.

This is Why I Was Put on Earth

Today I’m doing the unthinkable. Making strawberry cheesecake and Champagne chicken for the second time in a month. A friend of the family lost his wife a while back, and my dad and my sister and I wanted to get him out of his house for a while. Naturally, the cooking fell to me.

I made the cheesecake last night, except for the topping. That’s in the works right now, and I’m brining the chicken.

I wish I could find Lucerne brand cream cheese here. A reader says it’s better than Philly, and that the cheesecake doesn’t crack as much. but I guess I’ll be okay. I also wish I had a Tupperware container big enough to hold the remains of a 10″ cheesecake.

I keep Googling lathes. I’m learning all sorts of stuff.

First, you can rehabilitate a lathe by scraping the bed ways. This costs over a thousand dollars if you have someone else do it. All you have to do is buy some obscure hand tools–not power tools, believe it or not–and get a book and practice for a long time. Weird. I have no interest in doing this, but it’s an interesting topic. I would have thought there was some kind of giant milling machine jig for this purpose. And I can’t understand how you can do this accurately with a blade on the end of a stick.

Second, Atlas lathes aren’t all that great. People who own them complain a lot about flexing and cheap parts that break. Right now, I can get a Craftsman lathe built by Atlas, within two-hour drive, for $850. But it’s only worth maybe $350, and it will never be a good lathe. Atlas did not apply its usual standards when making stuff for Sears, so this thing is a step down from Atlas, which is a step down from South Bend and so on.

Third, Rockwell and Sheldon made really fantastic lathes, but parts can be hard to find and/or expensive. I can’t understand why Delta wouldn’t continue making parts for Rockwell lathes, but that’s the way it is. These machines are supposed to be stiffer than other lathes, and the ways on the Rockwell models are very hard and resist wear. But if you can’t keep them running, what’s the point?

Some retired toolmaker not far from here is selling a huge toolbox full of machining stuff. Maybe I should check it out. I assume it’s things like tooling and calipers. But I really don’t want a freezer-sized toolbox in my garage.

This dinner is going to be TOO good. I really don’t know how food can get any better than this. I just put the goop on the strawberry topping, and I wish I could climb into the refrigerator and swim in the cheesecake.

Lathe?

The more I look at machine tools, the more confused I get.

I think a mill is a necessity, if I ever expect to think of myself as a man. But I was hoping to avoid buying a metal lathe.

Well, look what I have learned.

You can use a metal lathe on wood. Also, really good used metal lathes sell for very low prices. Finally, you can get a 9 x 20 Chinese job that will do a lot of stuff and teach you a great deal…for $700. Now, I realize you can get a used South Bend for less than that if you watch the ads. BUT, unless what I’ve read is nonsense, it’s a very bad idea to buy a used lathe unless you have some experience using this kind of tool. So this may be an example of one of the rare occasions when buying small, cheap, and Chinese may be a great idea. What do you lose when you resell one of these things? No more than $700. Probably more like $300. For that, you get a course in using a lathe. My cheapness gene is alert and ready to pounce.

I believe it should be possible to make pulleys on a machine this size. The “9” refers to the diameter of the largest possible object you can turn. You can’t really go that high, but you can get close. So 6″ should be no problem. HF sells a metal cabinet, but I have a bunch of two-by-sixes I need to get rid of, and this thing only weighs 300 pounds or so, which means wood is way more than adequate.

Dang, I may do this. The local HF could get it for me, saving me money on shipping. I could learn a little bit about machining, and I could get smart enough to evaluate a real American used lathe, and then I could upgrade for a few hundred bucks. Maybe this is smarter than farting around with mills right off the bat. Right now, there are some really fine machines on Craigslist. It’s too bad I’m not competent to buy one.

More

Let’s say I have a spiffy HF 45861 lathe, as well as a pulley that is 6″ wide and 6″ across. Can I use the lathe to drill a hole for an axle, centered correctly in the pulley and going from one side to the other?

Warning: This Blog Does not Conform to the Fairness Doctrine

In the morning, I always look at Drudgebart.tv.com to see what’s happening in the world. Today a headline says one of the morning news shows is dedicating a whole day to the guy who landed the plane in the Hudson River. Let me get his name right. Okay, it’s Chesley Sullenberger.

Now, I don’t want to diminish this man’s achievement. He pulled off what is supposedly a very hard maneuver. He landed a big jet in water without breaking it up or harming the passengers. He kept a lot of people alive. That being said, can someone please tell me what all the fuss is about? Why are people calling him a hero?

Think about this. If he had crashed the plane, he would have been the first to die. The pilot sits right up front. If the plane had been totally empty but for the cockpit, he would still have worked very hard to land the plane safely, to save his own life.

Is every person who saves lives a hero? Shouldn’t the term be reserved for people who subject themselves to special risks, or who help others with no expectation of reward? I’ve seen film of the plane that went down in the Potomac a long time ago. It was winter. People driving by got out of their cars and walked into the freezing water to save crash survivors. Cold water can kill you in a very short time. Those people are heroes. They risked their own lives, saved other human beings, and got nothing in return.

What Chesley Sullenberger did was wonderful, and by all accounts, he demonstrated real courage and character as well as skill. But a purely selfish person in the same position would have been just as determined to land the plane safely.

For contrast, consider another man who lost a plane in the water. I refer to Bush I. He joined the Navy as a volunteer, fresh out of high school, instead of sitting around waiting to see if he would be drafted. He became a bomber pilot, which is a high-risk job. He was shot down while flying a mission for the benefit of his countrymen. He didn’t have to be there. He exposed himself to machine gun fire and flak and so on, when he could have been safe at home, minding his own business. By the time he was finished, he had served 58 missions.

That’s a hero. Maybe not the greatest hero in American history, but certainly, a hero. His actions beat anything I expect to do in this life.

What else is going on? I’m still rethinking my tool strategy. I am convinced that my life will be complete if I have a milling machine and a belt grinder (and an acetylene rig and a Bobcat*), but it’s hard to decide which way to turn first. I would very much like to have a mobile base for the milling machine, and if I get a mill before I build a base, it will be mighty hard to get it onto a base later. A mill will weigh 1000 to 2000 pounds. I can’t hoist it. I’ll have to come up with another answer.

A belt grinder would be very helpful while I build the mobile base. I’ve built one base already, and I used a 6″ bench grinder to clean up the parts, and it was pretty slow, and it wasn’t always possible to get to the surfaces I wanted to fix.

The conclusion so far? Belt grinder first.

But wait. A belt grinder has a lot of holes in it. And I would have to make metal parts for the thing that tensions the belt and makes it track correctly. At the very least, a drill press is called for. A mill would be perfect.

On top of that, if I want real freedom in the design of the grinder, machine tools are a must. For example, I’d like to have 4″ or 6″ rollers, so I could use the machine for a wide variety of belts. For metalworking, I would only have enough juice to make use of a 2″ belt, but for woodworking, you can easily run a 6″ belt with 1 1/2 horsepower. I know of no reason why you couldn’t use the same machine. You’d have to have a couple of different tool arms, that’s all.

It’s my understanding–correct me if I’m wrong–that a milling machine can also be used as a lathe, provided you stay within certain limitations. It must be true; people use drill presses for turning small bits of wood. If I can turn small metal objects on a mill, I can make my own pulleys. Think how much easier that is than trying to make them with a welder and a plasma cutter. I can make pulleys by cutting pieces of 6″ tubing to length and welding hubs into them, but imagine how hard it would be to get them centered correctly. I can buy other people’s pulleys, but then I have to live with whatever hubs they have in them, and they may be a pain to match up to the other stuff.

I suppose, then, that a milling machine would be a good first step. Maybe I’d end up with a less-pretty mobile base, because I wouldn’t have a grinder to make it beautiful, but having an ugly mobile base is better than suffering for two weeks trying to make pulleys with, as Spock put it, stone knives and bearskins.

I was thinking about getting a Bridgeport, but I don’t know if I want to utterly destroy a whole corner of the garage, and I’m a little nervous about pushing a one-ton machine around on wheels. Supposedly they like to tip forward. I was considering a Bridgeport because it seems like all mills cost roughly the same amount of money, and you might as well go big. But now I’m thinking Millrite again. I can get one locally, and it’s considerably more compact than a Bridgeport, and–here’s the best thing–I should be able to sell it without losing much, if I get tired of it.

The fun thing about all this is that I am still not making anything not related to tools. I’m starting to wonder if anyone ever does. Has anyone ever really made a bookshelf or a dresser? Okay, I know they have. My great aunt did. So did my great-grandfather. But from reading my comments and checking out forums, you would think every job mechanically inclined people do is something intended to help them use tools.

By the way, I appreciate the suggestions that I try McMaster-Carr and Grainger and MSC for parts. But if you can think of a place I should try, don’t be surprised if I’ve already been there.

* And a hydraulic press.

Nothing Matches

Man, it’s impossible mating motors to drive pulleys.

Here’s what I have. I can get a nice motor with a 7/8″ shaft. But the best drive pulley I’ve found is right here. As you can see, it has a bore larger than 7/8″.

I guess this would be a big ol’ joke to a person who owns a mill and a lathe. You pop your metal into the lathe, make yourself a cylinder that fits around the shaft, and then mill a keyway in it. For that matter, I guess you could make the pulley itself, with the right size hole.

Irritating.

I’ve had other ideas. One is to get a go-kart drive wheel with a 5″ diameter and weld it inside a piece of steel pipe with a 5″ ID. The pipe wouldn’t be crowned, but I have a theory about that. You put it on the motor, bolt the motor down, fire it up, and put a crown on it. You use the motor as a lathe to turn the pulley while you shape it. Would it work? I’ll never know, unless a source of 5″ ID pipe falls into my lap. I think go-kart wheels would be good for idlers, because the bearings are made to put up with high speeds and heavy loads over long periods of time.

The idler pulleys are not a problem, regardless. I can get 4″ belt sander pulleys and bearings cheap. If they’ll work on belt sanders, surely they’ll work on a grinder. The big challenge will be to get them mounted right.

Insane

I’m going to do it. I’m going to order me a 2 HP Baldor 3-phase motor and a VFD. Sometimes you have to jump into a job on the assumption that a miracle will happen and you’ll succeed. Surely I can build a belt grinder if I try hard enough. I need the motor before I can set up the grinder; the motor’s measurements will affect everything. I could just download the blueprints from the Baldor site, but it’s way easier to plop the motor on the grinder base (2 sheets of plywood glued together, I think) and go from there.

WHOO HOO.

Tell me I’m not crazy. I dare you.

Now I have to go back over the motors I’m watching on Ebay, to figure out which one is right. I’ve decided I need 3450 RPMs, 2 horsepower, 3 phase, TEFC, and 230 volts. Oh, and a 5/8″ shaft, if at all possible. For fifty cents.

Some guy at Practicalmachinist made his own belt grinder. It’s amazing. It’s mostly rust and clamps, but he says it works. He has a 2″ belt on it, but the idlers are at least 6″ wide, and he says he can use different belts on it. THAT got the wheels turning. What if I get a couple of pulleys from a 4″ portable belt sander and use them as my idlers? Presumably, I’d be able to use 2″ belts for metal and 4″ belts for wood. The pulleys and bearings aren’t very expensive.

It’s nearly impossible to find suitable idlers 4″ wide, unless you steal from existing products. I guess I’d also need a belt sander drive pulley.

I also found a guy who built his own drive wheel. He found a piece of 7″ steel pipe, cut it to length, welded a hub into it, and stuck it on the shaft of a Baldor motor. Seems to work. No fancy machining needed. Incredible.

My Bet: the Dance Will Continue

I have questions for my fellow conservatives.

If the government barges into a private business that doesn’t take government money, and it tries to set a limit on the CEO’s pay, that’s interference with the right to contract, and it’s (at least currently) unconstitutional. But if your company is a failure, and you greedily rush the trough when Uncle Sam offers to take other people’s money and give it to you, so you can escape the justice of the free market and avoid the consequences of your incompetence, and Uncle Sam tells you that you have to have a salary cap, how is THAT interference with the right to contract?

It’s not.

In fact, it IS a contract. Uncle Sam gives you money, and in return, you agree to a salary cap. And such other conditions as Uncle Sam chooses to impose. For example–and I think it’s a shame this hasn’t occurred to Obama–the government might make you go to work every day in a chicken costume.

Conservatives hate welfare, or at least we hate giving welfare handouts to people who don’t deserve help. We are constantly clamoring for oversight, and we love yelling that the government needs to put conditions on welfare money. I have to ask, then: if the government is giving welfare to companies which are unquestionably undeserving, why shouldn’t it put conditions on the handouts?

It should. That’s the very least it should do.

It’s an embarrassment, the way some conservatives are complaining about the caps. It shows they can’t tell the difference between independent private businesses and charity cases.

The executives affected by the Obama salary cap have a lot of gall, complaining that they’ll have to suffer with the paltry sum of $500,000 per year. In a capitalist country, they’d all be out of work. That’s where they should be. They’re just going to continue running their companies into the ground. If they were capable of succeeding, they would have done so already. Guess what the salary cap for successful CEOs is? THERE ISN’T ONE. If you want unlimited compensation, all you have to do is turn a profit. If you can’t do that, shut up.

The bailouts will prolong our economic problems, because they will keep inept people in control of major businesses, and they will also permit overpaid workers to continue charging too much for their work. They’ll also hurt good businesses by preventing them from taking the places of their failed competitors. In a healthy economy, bad companies fail, and good companies take their places, and everyone is better off. In the Bush-Obama socialist utopia, we keep bad companies alive and prevent good companies from replacing them. It’s like having the opposite of an immune system. We are generating antibodies to success and attacking it without mercy.

If Bush and Obama were running the NFL, Terry Bradshaw would still be starting quarterback for the Pittsburgh Steelers. In an iron lung, if necessary. Ben Roethlisberger would be working at a gas station, because his youth and superior ability would not suffice to overcome the NFL’s discriminatory and counterproductive retention policies.

It reminds me of the comic strip business. What do you see when you look at the comics page? Dead people. Or at least their work. You see Peanuts and Li’l Abner and BC and so on. The artists are dead; some have been dead for decades. It’s disgusting and pathetic, but it’s also tradition.

Some of the dead people are clearing out; I think they finally got rid of Beetle Baily, for example. But there are still a good number of strips by dead people on the comics pages. Why is this a problem? It’s not, unless you’re a cartoonist. It makes it harder for talented new people to make it. It’s as if movie distributors were cluttering up screens with old films like City Lights and The Jazz Singer, to the point where the studios had a hard time marketing new work.

The only cartoonist I know of who has had the guts to complain publicly about the dead people is Stephan Pastis, the guy who draws Pearls Before Swine. He openly makes fun of bad strips that have no business on the funny pages. I’ll bet there are a lot of dead-cartoonist heirs who hate his guts, because he is threatening their meal tickets.

I guess that’s irrelevant to discussion of the bailouts, except that it illustrates what happens when competition is impossible. We lose good products. We punish people who try to create them, and they quit.

The execs are complaining now, but my depressing knowledge of human nature tells me that won’t last. Why? Because the thing every bureaucrat and desk jockey hates more than anything is the free market. The thing they love more than anything is job security. And bailouts equal job security, for people who, by all rights, should be unemployed. We will see a contest between two primal drives: greed and the desire to be taken care of. I believe the desire to be taken care of will win. The general public hasn’t bought into it completely; we still favor capitalism by a slim margin, probably because many of us are not doing as well as we want, and we think capitalism gives us a chance to do better. But people who are already in cushy positions have a different view. They are desperate to keep what they have. It’s like musical chairs. If you’re sitting down, you don’t want to hear the music start up again.

We are living out Ayn Rand’s worst nightmare. A world in which competition, which is our strength, is considered destructive and dangerous. If Ellsworth Toohey were brought to life in the flesh, we would probably elect him President. In fact, we may have just done that.

Hard times push people in one direction or the other. The right direction, or the direction of socialism, which is a secular religion which assures that hard times never go away. Under FDR, we veered too far to the left, and it damaged our system and prolonged our misery. Maybe Obama will finish his work and drive us so deep into Marxist territory we will never find our way out.

Like I’ve said before, welcome to the Second World. Liberals think Western Europe is paradise. I hope they’re right, because our standard of living is probably going to be just like Europe’s. And I don’t mean Switzerland.

Anyway, the salary caps were to be expected. When the government began investing in failed businesses, every intelligent and insightful person on earth realized the government would come to control those businesses.

Of course, the CEOs who are taking the hit were not intelligent and insightful. If they had been, they would not have destroyed their companies.