A: Who Created it?

Last night I realized there had been a change in my life. I’m pretty happy about it. I am no longer having bad dreams.

For a long time, I had bad dreams most nights. To make things worse, I had the same dreams over and over.

Often I dreamed I was back in Austin, Texas, where I lived when I was in graduate school studying physics. I got burned out and quit, and apart from my childhood, it was the most miserable time of my life. I was separated from God. My prayers didn’t go anywhere.

In the dreams, I went back to my old apartment, which was, mysteriously, still mine. I would find huge rooms hidden in it. It was full of great tools. The space and the tools sound nice, but the apartment was a depressing mess. Things were piled up on the furniture; it was as if I had left in a hurry, after living like a slob.

In the dream, I had no friends in Austin. That’s what it was like in real life, unfortunately. The physics guys were very socially inept, and a lot of them were downright creepy. Some were full of anger, possibly because of all the wedgies and red bellies they received while they were growing up. In the dreams, I felt the isolation of Austin again.

When I went to law school, I had lots of friends. I still don’t understand the physics personality.

Sometimes I dreamed I was in a big airport, which I took to be DFW. I never actually got anywhere. I was just moving around in the terminal, as though changing planes. When you’re on a journey, you don’t want to spend an entire day in an airport. You want to board a plane, fly, get off, and do whatever you wanted to do at your destination. I never flew or arrived. I just walked, past endless book kiosks, smelly bars, and Cinnabon stands.

I also dreamed I was back in college. I would find myself walking around on campus, or going to and from campus. The disturbing thing was that it was late in the semester, and I had forgotten about one or two courses. I had dropped them, but I hadn’t filed the paperwork, so as far as the school knew, I was just failing. I kept wondering what I was going to do. I wondered if they would give me a break.

I hated these annoying, persistent dreams. Life was getting better and better, but my nights were unpleasant.

It wasn’t the first time I had been plagued by bad dreams. When I was young–say before the age of eight–I had nightmares every night. I would find myself at parties, surrounded by relatives I loved. When they came close to me to greet me, their bodies would twist apart so they were unrecognizable. They were impostors, sent to scare me. I also dreamed a pure white devil would come up through a manhole under my bed and torment me; sometimes he chased me in a van. He always had a big smile. Making a defenseless child suffer brought him glee.

My worst dreams took place while I was awake. I would wake up and see enormous bugs, snakes, and lizards climbing all over the bedroom. They were on the walls, ceiling, floor, and furniture. They crawled over me on the bed.

One night I woke from a nightmare and yelled for my mother. When she got to the bedroom door, she suddenly shrank in size, down to a height of two or three feet. It showed me she was powerless to help me. That was the point.

It’s wonderful to have peaceful dreams again. I’m not sure what the significance is. I believe spirits that have access to us give us bad dreams. I’ve been attacked by spirits during dreams.

Sometimes I wish my dreams were less vivid. When I’m awake, I remember visiting places that don’t exist. Sometimes I have to ask myself whether I went to a certain place or just dreamed it. It can be very hard to tell.

It seems like I’m going over a hump. Behind me, there were a lot of bad experiences I had to go through in order to be corrected and made strong. Ahead of me, there is more peace and help. I feel that way during the day, not just at night. I expect things to continue to improve.

If you lack peace, there are spirits behind it. You can count on that. If you ever get into the presence of God, you will feel overwhelming peace. That proves that anxiety and agitation come from the other spirits. They are not like him. Other spirits nag, threaten, and manipulate you. They try to make you afraid not to obey. God offers you peace and rest in exchange for preferring him.

You should always be aware that anyone who torments you in order to make you comply is doing evil. God doesn’t work that way. It’s beneath him. God wants free consent. He does not like coercion. Something to think about when other people try to get you to do things.

I would go further than that. If anyone has the power to coerce you, and they use it, there is a kink in your relationship with God. He is jealous; he doesn’t want anyone else to be your master or your father.

I don’t have complete peace, but things get better all the time. I have plenty of incentive to continue, and I have overwhelming incentive not to go back. Some ex-cons are willing to die before being sent back to prison; I feel that way about the powerless life I led before I started doing things God’s way. You can have this planet. You can have the prestige and riches. You can have the fame. Just give me my peace and power.

Like a Dental Cleaning That Never Ends

I’m not quite ready to get moving today, so here I am, procrastinating.

I’m still slogging through Augustine’s Confessions. Some of it is fairly good. Most of it is tedious.

I’m somewhere around page 150, and Augustine has finally gotten to the point where he appears to be about to convert. He tells the story of a pagan sage named Victorinus. This man came around after talking to Ambrose the bishop or whatever of Milan. He then decided to proclaim his conversion publicly. Ambrose offered him the option of proclaiming it privately, which seems a little stupid. Victorinus declined.

Back in Augustine’s day, proclaiming yourself a Christian could have repercussions. It seems that Christians were tolerated fairly well when Victorinus came out, but the church still permitted former pagans to announce their conversions privately, so clearly, there were dangers. Call me crazy, but if you come out in a locked room in front of a few old men, I believe you’ve done pretty much the opposite of coming out. Victorinus seems to have agreed.

Augustine felt like a coward, because he didn’t have the guts to convert. At the point where I stopped reading today, he said he was trying to man up and join the church, but he was having trouble making himself do it.

He says: “The mind commands the body and is instantly obeyed. The mind commands itself and meets resistance.”

Here is his problem: he believes willpower is the answer. That’s pride. No one but God has ever done the right thing consistently with willpower. That’s not how Christianity works. If you could make yourself do right without God’s help, you would have the right to stand in front of God and tell him you didn’t need him.

Old-school Christians adore pride. They can’t get enough of self-righteousness. Work hard! Struggle! Don’t ask God to do what you should do for yourself! It’s all lies and poison, but we swallow it because we know we’re bad, and we want to turn around and do things for God.

The Bible makes it clear that we are not required to be strong without help. One of the fruit of the Holy Spirit is self-control. If it’s a fruit of the Holy Spirit, why would you expect to manifest it without him?

The more you pray in tongues, the more faith and authority you’ll have. Sooner or later, you will start to develop the ability to command your flesh and your mind. Jesus even commanded his spirit. He sent it to God when he died: “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.”

I have found this ability rising up in me, and it’s a wonderful thing. I find I can command my mind to stop thinking about things I don’t want to think about. This is impossible for people who don’t have God’s help. If you don’t believe me, take the challenge Dostoevsky use to give people: sit still and try not to think of a big white bear.

One of the big problems with lust is that once thoughts of sex get into a man’s mind, they stick around until he obeys. When you develop the ability to command your mind, that problem goes away. You can command your mind to stop thinking about sex. You can command it not to be angry. You can command it not to worry.

Augustine didn’t know this, because by the time he was born, the church had already abandoned the Holy Spirit. They had given up the powerful knowledge that gave the apostles victory, so they were about like the Jews who lived between the prophets and Jesus.

The human body is a house, and even if you don’t choose a side, spirits will fill it. You will be led by spirits. If you’re not led by the Holy Spirit, you will be led by other spirits. They will sit on little thrones you gave them and rule you. The purpose of the baptism with the Holy Spirit is to deport these illegal aliens and put God back on the throne.

The keys to all power lie in the supernatural realm. If you keep relying on your natural strength, you will never find the control panel that gives you power over your life.

The devil hates salvation, but he really REALLY hates the truth I’m sharing with you. Most Christians who are saved have virtually no authority or victory in this life. They’re like soldiers without radios, who carry whistles instead of guns. Spirits that oppose God walk through them unseen and unhindered, just as Jesus walked through the crowd of Nazarenes who wanted to murder him.

They say a pistol is just a weapon you use to fight your way to a rifle; a rifle is a much more effective weapon. The strength you have in your own right is a tool you use to get to the power of the Holy Spirit. Most Christians don’t realize this, so they receive salvation and then live in weakness and defeat.

The gospel of pride sounds righteous. That’s why it’s so easy to fool people with it. What sounds better? Lying back and letting God do things for you, or getting up and working your rear end off to prove you’re grateful? To most people, the second option is clearly the righteous choice, but it’s the opposite of what the New Testament teaches.

In the Revelation, John saw the elders in heaven throwing their crowns at the feet of Jesus. Why? Because he was the one who had earned the crowns. They were just his heirs. They received what he built.

The Catholic church has always been very big on pride. Catholics have beaten themselves with clubs. They have made pilgrimages over stones on their knees. One “saint” cut her own eyes out. Catholics have always given clerics fancy costumes and big hats. They worship people they call “saints.” The rest of us…we are lesser beings. It’s okay if we never dedicate ourselves to God, because we’re just riff-raff. We will sit in the cheap seats in heaven.

The Baptists are the same way. So are most churches. “If you’re not willing to earn God’s help, get out of the church!” “God helps those who help themselves!” It’s completely perverse. God is burdened with treasures he wants to give us, and we reject them so we can present him with our mud pies and then demand praise and rewards.

It’s nice to read that ancient Christians shared certain types of experiences with us, but overall, Augustine is a stumbling block. He is stuck in the pride of the mind, just like the Jews who sit around studying the Talmud all day. God is for everyone; not just the brilliant, and not just the strong-willed.

When you try to lift yourself up, you bring strange fire to the altar. God rejects it.

I don’t know when I’m going to be freed from this book, but I look forward to it. I’m glad to know Christians don’t have to make themselves miserable reading stuffy volumes like Confessions in order to get to know God.

I hope Dante’s Inferno is more entertaining. It will be loaded with errors, but maybe there will at least be an amusing story.

I Should Probably Quit Cussing the Innocent Now

Man, this is embarrassing.

For days, I have been trying to get my 3HP 3-phase motor to work with a 3HP TECO variable frequency drive (VFD). I have had no end of problems.

The drive kept pooping out at high RPM’s. I could not figure it out. I disabled DC braking and did all sorts of other things. I got really intimate with the Chinglish owner’s manual. I changed this setting. I changed that setting. I even made a new drive pulley for my 2HP motor, in case I had to go back to it.

Tonight someone suggested there might be a “wiring fault.” I could not figure out what he meant, but I went back to the motor itself, to check what I could.

It was wired for the wrong voltage.

Many 3-phase motors come ready to accept either 230V or 460V. Or 220V or 440V. For some reason, we can’t seem to settle on a number for voltage which is double the usual American household voltage. Sometimes we call it 220; sometimes we call it 250. Whatever. A lot of motors come ready to handle twice OR four times the standard wall socket voltage.

When you use a motor, you have to fiddle with the wires coming out of it in order to make sure it knows which voltage is coming. I didn’t do that this time. I’ve dealt with a number of 3-phase motors, and none showed up wired for 440. Or 460. Whatever. It was always 240.

The one I just bought was wired for 460.

The motor wanted twice the voltage I was giving it, so naturally, it kept running out of joie de vivre.

I feel so stupid. I should have checked this carefully.

Now I have to add to my Google legacy, for other belt grinder owners. Yes, you CAN run a 4-pole 3-phase 3HP motor at 120 Hz on a VFD. You can probably go somewhat higher.

I rewired it. It runs great. It has a ton of power. I’m happy.

With that behind me, here is an obvious question: do you really need a 3HP motor on a 2×72 grinder? My feeling is that you don’t. I fired up a 2HP motor tonight, and I had a hard time bogging it down. The 3HP motor is significantly stronger, but I can’t say I felt like I needed the added grunt.

I think you want 3HP if you plan to go above 5000 FPM, for sure. To do that, I would want a pulley over five inches in diameter, in order to avoid revving the life out of the motor. The added torque of a 3HP motor would allow you to work very aggressively at high belt speed, in spite of the tension you would lose to the big pulley.

The thing is, if you shop for motors on Ebay, you’re likely to find a 3HP motor for the same money you’d pay for 2HP, so why not go for it? The only real down side is the weight. Moving a motor that weighs over eighty pounds gets old.

This grinder is unstoppable now. It is a seriously impressive machine, by garage-doofus standards.

Guess I should make something with it.

Pulley Nearly Finished

I guess everyone is wondering how to make a crowned pulley for a belt grinder.

I am still mired in the belt grinder project. I’m sort of thinking my best bet is a 3HP 2-pole motor, but I have a 2HP 4-pole motor sitting around, and I want to test it to see how well it works. Maybe it’s the answer.

I tried the 3HP motor at 167 Hz (5000 feet per minute on the belt), and the VFD couldn’t deal with it. I know for a fact it can run the 2HP motor that fast.

It’s too bad I don’t know much about electrical motors. I sort of suspect that the people who have been giving me advice don’t know much either. Some have told me that when you double the speed of a motor, you halve the torque. I have no idea whether that’s true or not. It’s not that easy to find information on 3-phase motors online. I am planning to try to educate myself, but I haven’t succeeded yet.

I had a drive pulley which fit the 2HP motor, but I bored it out to fit the 3HP motor, so I can’t use it on the small motor. That meant I had to make a new drive wheel. Simple, right? Turn a 4″-thick pulley on the lathe, bore a hole, add a set screw…done. Actually, that would probably work, but I wanted to be totally certain the belt would track correctly, so I made a crowned wheel. I finished it a few minutes ago. But for the set screw hole, it’s done.

I have read that you only need one crowned wheel on a machine to make the belt track, but everyone seems to use crowned drive pulleys as well as crowned tracking pulleys, so I don’t want to rock the boat just yet.

Making the pulley was a bit of a pain. In case someone Googles the process in the future, I will leave some information.

First of all, as I said above, you may be wasting your time. You may be able to use a cylindrical pulley. Check it out, if you can.

Once you decide to make a crowned pulley, you need to know a couple of things. The crown doesn’t need to go all the way to the center of the wheel. You can just crown it toward the outside. How far toward the outside? I don’t know.

Also, for a 2″-wide belt, you want about 0.030″ of crowning. That’s radius, not diameter. Sadly, I didn’t pay attention, and I took 0.030″ off the diameter. I forgot that my lathe reads diameter measurements, not radial ones. I’m sure it will still work, though, since there is a ton of slack in the suggested measurements.

I did not have 4″ round aluminum stock lying around, so I used 4″ square stock. That was fun. I had to cut 3.5″ off on the band saw, and then I had to put it in the 4-jaw chuck. I turned part of it down to a 4″ cylinder (slightly smaller due to inevitable chucking error). Then I drilled a hole deep enough for the motor shaft. After that, I crowned one end.

The crowning job was simple. I set the compound slide to around 1/2 a degree, so it would come toward me very slowly as I moved the tool toward the headstock. With this setup, I could start the crowning cut 0.030″ into the work, and it would back out completely as I cut about an inch toward the headstock. This worked perfectly; I had a cylinder with one end that was very slightly tapered.

Then I made my mistake. I parted the cylinder off of the square bit.

I should have crowned the other end at that point, because it was firmly chucked, and everything was completely concentric with the lathe’s axis. Oh, well.

Because I now had a cylinder with one cruddy-looking, parted-off end, and it wasn’t chucked, I had some extra work to do.

First, I chucked it, used a dial indicator to get it concentric, and faced the rough end. I knew this was the best grip I would ever have on the part, so I took this opportunity to bore the hole to size. I opened it to 5/8″ with an S&D bit, and then I finished it up with a boring bar.

It’s frustrating, boring things to size when you can’t test fit them. The motor could not be lifted onto the lathe, and I could not take the part out of the chuck without messing things up. I had to run between the lathe and motor with dial calipers, which are not all that accurate. When it was all said and done, I was still a thousandth or two over the size of the shaft. A totally snug fit would have been nicer, but what I got was perfectly acceptable.

When that was done, I had to shove the part way out in the chuck’s jaws, with the tapered side toward the headstock. That means the chuck was gripping a tapered part. Usually, this is a really bad idea, because chuck jaws are very straight. If a part is smaller toward the headstock end, the jaws will only grip farther toward the tailstock, and if you don’t get a good grip, the part can move or even fall out. But the taper on my part was very small, I am brave, and I am too lazy to make an arbor or take other extraordinary measures to get it perfect.

I managed to put a taper on the exposed end, and then I rested a straightedge on the wheel and rocked it to see where the crown’s apex was. It was a bit off center, so I used emery cloth to sand the wheel until there was no pointy apex and the crowning appeared symmetrical.

Great.

With all that done, I had to put a 3/16″ keyway in the wheel.

Keyways are tight slots made with broaches. A broach is sort of like a really thick saw blade that only cuts in one direction. You use a special bushing to hold it in the wheel, and you push it with a press.

In Youtube videos, this is really easy. People use crummy, small Chinese arbor presses and broach things in no time. That didn’t work for me. It will work with a thin wheel, but the thicker a wheel is, the more pressure you need. Earlier this week, I broached a 1/4″ keyway, and I had to use a 20-ton press. Today I broached a 3/16″ keyway, which should be easier, and my 3-ton arbor press was just barely enough.

I learned something disturbing: broaches aren’t made for fat wheels. If a wheel is too thick, a broach will not be finished cutting when you push it until the end is flush with the top of the wheel. I had to put a punch on top of the broach and push it the rest of the way through. On top of that, I had to broach it from both sides. Very aggravating. A 1/4″ broach is maybe 1.5 times as long as a 3/16″ broach, so the smaller your keyway is, the more likely you are to get stuck.

I finally got it done, and now I have a beautiful wheel that needs a set screw hole. Once that’s done, I’ll throw it on the little motor and fire it up.

I suspect this wheel is actually better than the one I bought, and having made it myself, I can see how hard it is to make one with accurate dimensions.

I still have the little motor the Post Office broke. The seller filed a claim, and they paid it. He didn’t want the motor back. The Post Office didn’t ask for it. Now it’s here, with one broken bolt hole. I managed to get the fan working, so the motor can be used. I’m almost afraid that if I turn it on, the Post Office Fraud Squad will swoop in and arrest me.

I don’t know what to say about that. They did screw up the motor, and it was non-functional. It’s still seriously damaged, so I didn’t get what I paid for. But I feel weird, sitting here with a working motor I didn’t pay for.

I guess all parties are happy, so let the good times roll. And even if it works, I plan to replace it, because the broken base is depressing to look it.

The information I have received about motors and speeds and VFD’s has been inconsistent and tinged with ignorance, so I’m still going by trial and error. Anyway, I should be up and grinding tonight, and then I’ll have more data.

I’m excited that I can make crowned pulleys. I’m even more excited to know that I probably don’t have to.

Some day, possibly years from now, I will post a photo of a finished knife I made.

That’s all I have. You can stop pretending to be interested now.

Charlotte Sacrificed on the Altar of Pride

What’s happening in Charlotte is remarkable, but it’s not surprising. I expect things like this to happen more and more often, in Obama’s stuck-in-1968 America. I expect black people to riot over and over, regardless of the consequences or the slenderness of the rationale.

It’s just how things work these days. It’s now normal.

We should all take note of the facts in the Charlotte shooting.

1. The black man police shot was holding a pistol, which he refused to drop.

2. The officer who shot him is black.

3. The dead man’s brother blamed white people, saying we are all “f______ devils.”

4. The BLM crowd is rioting and targeting white people.

None of it makes any sense. Sometimes the police have to shoot people, and this was one of those times. The shooting was completely justified, and the dead man is 100% responsible for what happened to him. The cop is completely innocent. No one should be protesting.

If people are determined to protest, they should be angry at the police, not white people. This was a black-on-black shooting. White people were not featured players.

It’s as though white people and black people are married, and white people are the husband. Women tend to blame their husbands for all of their problems. It’s raining, so go and nag the husband. A black cop shot a black man in self-defense, so go and protest the existence of the white race.

Black people in America are self-destructing. The people who are rioting and promoting racism think they’re hurting whites, but they’re actually hurting themselves and everyone who looks like them. They’re driving businesses out of their areas. They’re making themselves unemployable. They’re driving their own property values down. They’re making it harder for black people to assimilate and share in the blessings this country offers.

When those problems manifest, that will be the fault of white people, too.

You can’t succeed if you insist on blaming others all the time. In order to fix a problem you caused, you have to take responsibility for it. What’s happening in black America right now is highly erosive. Black people are discouraging each other from taking the only attitude that will lift them up.

It’s bizarre, how BLM keeps choosing the wrong battles. Tamir Rice was killed by police in Cleveland, and it was murder, but the rioters didn’t get very excited there. Michael Brown was a vicious criminal who was killed in self-defense, but he became the face of the St. Louis riots. Black people in America are like Jews; as a group, they make very bad choices.

It’s frustrating for black people who see through the craziness. I know, because I talk to them and I see what they say online. They live inside gauntlets, where speaking their minds can lead to quick repercussions.

Suddenly, white racism is on the rise. There have always been nuts out there with far-out hateful views, but these days they are much more common. I keep seeing Internet comments containing words like “monkeys” and “animals.”

As a white man, I’m not worried about myself or other white people. Personally, I have God’s protection. Other white people are protected by superior numbers, superior wealth, superior power, and geographical separation. Most of us don’t have to spend a lot of time in areas where we will be subject to racist violence. There is no possibility that black people will rise up and destroy us; the worst possible outcome is that more of us will be subjected to violence. We will absorb it and survive.

We will prevail, but that’s not a good outcome, because we will live in a country where there is more hatred than ever.

Here’s the real problem: people can’t identify races correctly. They think the races are black, white, yellow, and red. That’s not how it works. There are only two real races: children of God and children of Satan. As long as we persist in identifying with our biological races, we will have unnecessary conflict and defeat.

In this country, black people have been taught that racism is okay. They’ve been taught to stick together against the non-black enemy. That won’t work, any more than becoming a skinhead will work for a white person. We have to start dropping our polluted, worldly cultures and unite in the culture of God.

I know black Christians, and they have a lot of issues with the people they know. They have friends and relatives with a lot of negative attitudes and behaviors. They struggle, because they want to improve themselves, but they will be called race traitors if they don’t toe the line. They are afraid of social isolation and guilt. These things hold them prisoner and pull them back into counterproductive habits.

People who are related biologically are united by a few strands of DNA. People who belong to God’s family can only be united by the Holy Spirit. You have to receive the baptism with the Holy Spirit. You have to pray in tongues so he can change you and help you to be aligned with other Spirit-led believers. Christians don’t teach these things; we’re too busy focusing on stupid, useless notions like hard work, the false prosperity gospel, positive thinking, and social justice. Those things don’t come from God. They are distractions that keep us divided.

It always makes me groan when a Christian gives his opinion about God, as if it matters. Where opinions exist, disunity exists. We are not supposed to have opinions. We are supposed to hear from God and adopt his positions, which are correct. Two Spirit-led Christians can’t have a serious, prolonged disagreement. The Holy Spirit will always lead us to the same conclusions, if we can hear him.

A lot of the lawless people burning buildings and attacking people think they’re Christians. So do a lot of the disgraceful characters posting racist comments about black people. In reality, they’re all in rebellion. They are disconnected from God.

I disavow my culture. I started some time ago. I used to be proud of my Southern heritage, and I was proud to be from Eastern Kentucky. I was insane. Eastern Kentucky is a white ghetto with trees. The culture is backward and unsuccessful. There are also some problems with Southern culture, and it’s important for me to reject them. Your culture has problems, too. Rejecting them isn’t disloyalty. It’s maturity and humility. It’s the way to break your chains.

No one on TV will speak honestly about what’s happening right now. They will coddle black people, and they will look for ways the government to fix things. They will issue ridiculous, empty cries for unity. I’m telling the truth. Riots are not protests. White people are not the problem. Insulting black people is not going to do anything to improve the situation. The Holy Spirit is the only way out, and that way out is only for individuals, not communities or ethnic groups.

Twenty years from now, if God hasn’t returned, black people will still be poor, and their neighborhoods will still be full of crime and poverty. Rioting will probably increase. That’s just reality. But individuals can rise out of that, with God’s help. We should focus on what we can get, not what we wish we could have.

It’s strange how the first black president presided over this predicament and even contributed to it. What a pitiable legacy.

Whatever your culture is, get over it. If you’re a believer, your race is Christian, and your hometown is heaven. Get in touch with the mayor, and he will tell you what to do.

Or keep floundering and enjoy your pride. Nobody can make you help yourself.

Your Tentative Guide to not Making Stupid Mistakes About Belt Grinders

I continue learning things about belt grinders, sometimes too late to capitalize. I might as well keep documenting my discoveries so other people will benefit.

To get everyone back up to speed:

I bought an Oregon Blade Maker 2″ x 72″ grinder. I set it up with a VFD and an 1800-RPM motor. I found out that you need an enclosed motor (TEFC or TENV) to do it right, because the crud the grinder throws will get into open motors and kill them. I bought a new TEFC motor, and the Post Office broke it. I bought a second motor, and this time I went to 3HP. The other motors were 2HP.

I might as well point out that I use “1800-RPM” to describe any motor that has a speed anywhere near 1800. The actual speed of a 3-phase 4-pole motor running at 60 Hz will be somewhere below 1800, but the difference isn’t worth getting worked up about.

Okay.

I did a lot of research, trying to choose the right motor. Some guy who is a big banana on a knife-making forum claimed 1800-RPM was the way to go. Something about 1800-RPM motors being built better with regard to the stress of high speeds.

Right away, I should have realized that didn’t make sense. But I trusted him.

I don’t know a whole lot about electric motors. When I was getting my degree, we went through the principles of electric motors, but the things they teach you in physics are generally a long way from practical. That’s why we also have engineering classes. Not the same thing.

I was too lazy to sit around studying the 3-phase motor; I figured any guy who has the awe and admiration of a whole bunch of people on a knife forum ought to know which motor to use.

A person with common sense would have looked at the motors that come with turnkey grinders; they’re 3600-RPM motors. Dohhh!

Arbitrarily, I had decided I wanted the belt to move at 5000 feet per minute (FPM). With a 4″ drive pulley, that required 4775 RPM. With slippage, that’s probably not quite accurate, but that was the figure I chose. To get 4775 RPM, I would have to run the motor at 167 Hz, or almost 3 times the motor’s rated speed.

I didn’t think this was a problem. I knew the bearings were probably good for over 14,000 RPM. The armature–the thing that turns inside the motor–was probably made to the same specs as a 3600-RPM armature, and at 4775 RPM, it would only experience something like 1.7 times the centripetal force. I didn’t think it would fly apart.

The 2HP motors I had ran around 40 pounds. I found a wonderful deal on a 3HP model with nearly the same NEMA frame as one of the 2HP jobs. “Hey,” I figured, “same frame…can’t weigh much more.” WRONG. It’s 84 pounds. Also, NEMA frame specs don’t tell you the overall length of a motor casing. This motor is maybe four inches longer than the others.

The new motor was a real joy to carry to the garage and hoist onto the grinder cart.

I got the motor going, with a lovely jury-rig wiring job, just to make sure it was okay so I could kiss the Ebay seller goodbye. It ran fine up to 150 Hz, but after that, it decided to slow back down on its own. The 2HP motors hadn’t done that.

I went to Practical Machinist, a forum I dread. These guys can be ruthless to hobbyists. But they know a lot. They told me I was lucky the motor hadn’t blown up. I think they were wrong about that, but they also said the motor would probably act as a frequency filter at high speeds, killing the speed. They said the torque would also drop off pretty badly.

I can’t have that. Daddy needs his torque.

No word on why the 2HP motors didn’t act crazy.

What do I do now? I can get over 3500 FPM as it is, no problem. I can also make a new 6″ wheel, which will get me to whatever 3/2 of 3500 FPM is. Okay, I’ll work it out, since it’s a two-second math problem: 5250 FPM.

If I go to a 6″ wheel, surely the force applied to the belt will be 2/3 of what it was (at a given RPM figure) at 4″. That’s just basic physics. On the other hand, it will be going 2/3 as fast at a give FPM figure, and if torque drops with speed, then there ought to be some compensation.

You can see why I need an engineer. They have little books with tables that answer questions like this. Physicists have to derive the answers using calculus and tensor analysis and God knows what else.

One reason I went to 3HP is that I wanted to start with something strong, so it would make up for any losses I had due to the VFD or overclocking or…whatever. I believe 2HP is the most common size motor for a 2×72, but people who use belt grinders seem unanimous: get 3HP if you can.

Now I have to make a decision: leave it alone, make a 6″ wheel (cost of metal: $33), or get a 3600-RPM motor.

I think I’ll just use what I have and see what happens.

The weird thing is, my second motor helped pay for my third one. The seller refunded my money, included shipping, and the Post Office paid his claim. Now I have a free 2HP motor. The Post Office isn’t coming to take it away. That means I can put it on Craigslist, where I can surely get $50 for it.

The big motor only cost about $130, including shipping. It’s a magnificent motor; the unit itself was only $65, which is ridiculous. If I choose to sell it, I can fully expect to recover almost all of what I paid.

Summing up, it doesn’t really matter what I do. In the end, changing motors might run me $100, net. By that I mean the most I can expect to put into a motor, after all the deductions and whatever are included, is about $100. I would probably make money by selling the motor I have and buying a new one.

If you want a 2×72 grinder, here is my advice:

1. Don’t build one unless you’re incredibly handy and have free metal. A nice grinder costs only slightly more than the parts required to make it.

2. Get a 3-HP TEFC or TENV motor.

3. Use a VFD.

4. Make sure the motor’s rated speed is 3600 RPM.

5. Don’t worry about getting an inverter-rated motor, because nobody else does. If the added cost is not much, sure, go ahead and get one, but in practice, you will probably never have a problem with a random 3-phase motor of good quality.

If you have an OSHA shop, I’m sure they don’t do what I did. I mounted the grinder on a board and put the board on a foam shop cart which has a 250-pound shelf capacity. I don’t plan to fasten it down. It’s heavy, and it’s not going anywhere. I could push it over if I really wanted to or I was just stupid, but those things don’t apply, so I don’t intend to worry about having a top-notch professional imbecile-proof installation.

Sadly, I have even more advice.

I looked into crowning, which is what they do to at least some of the pulleys on a typical belt grinder. This will sound crazy, but if you make a pulley bigger in the middle (with a “crown” like a crowned road), belts will try to move toward the crown, not off to the side. This helps them track well. If you have a belt grinder, and it’s not made with tremendous precision, you will want to have at least one crowned wheel.

There are people out there who do great business selling crowned aluminum wheels to knife makers. A lot of folks can make a non-crowned wheel, but making a crowned wheel is intimidating, so the appeal of having it done for you is obvious. I fell for it myself.

If you have a lathe, you can make a crowned wheel, fast. The guys who sell crowned wheels tend to use CNC to make wheels with a rounded profile (radiused from one end to the other). That’s not easy to do on a manual lathe. But you don’t have to do it. In fact, you can make two very shallow straight cuts on a wheel and take it straight to your grinder.

For a 2″ wide wheel, you want the radius (or maybe it’s the diameter; look it up) to be about 0.030″ less on the sides than it is in the middle. I haven’t checked, but I have read that you need about a 0.5-degree angle to do this. That’s simple; just use your compound slide.

If you want, you can pretty it up with a file so it looks round.

You do not want to cut all the way to the middle so the pulley has a pointy ridge in the center. It’s unnecessary, and it doesn’t work as well.

Here’s a jim-dandy link that will tell you what you need to know, while correcting whatever errors I made while trying to paraphrase it above: CLICK.

If you have a VFD, you will want to make sure flying crud can’t get in. You may want to build a box for it, or just move it away from the grinder.

I think that covers it.

Oh…also, don’t buy a grinder with a platen as your first tool. Get a contact wheel 8″ or 10″ in diameter. That’s what most people use most of the time when making knives.

I may be mistaken about some of this stuff, but it’s a lot better than what I thought I knew a week ago. You can’t trust knife makers when it comes to tools, because they don’t know much about them. They make wonderful knives, but that doesn’t make them tool experts.

Hope for an Early Flight

I guess it’s weird to post two blog entries a few minutes apart, but I felt like I had something else to say.

One of the Youtube people I watch is convinced that Christians will be here during the Tribulation. I felt I should add my two cents. I do not believe Christians who are walking by faith will be here.

I will give you my reasons.

God loves to foreshadow what he does. He works in repetitive patterns, so people who have understanding given by the Holy Spirit will understand the way the universe works, and so they will not be taken by surprise. In the past, he has foreshadowed the Rapture and Tribulation, and he has indicated an intention to remove Christians from the earth before things get really bad.

Example 1: the flood.

The world became corrupted before the flood. Angels reproduced with women and gave rise to beings which were superior to human beings. They were bigger and stronger. They were presumably smarter and more talented. They polluted the earth with angel worship, and they probably received worship, themselves. They polluted our DNA and our morals.

People got so filthy, they wrote marriage contracts between human beings and animals. It sounds a lot like what’s happening today. We are already seeing incestuous marriages between parents and children. It has happened at least once; look it up.

God decided to purify the earth, just as he will purify it during the Tribulation. He drowned everyone except for eight people, and seven of those eight only survived because they were close to Noah.

They were removed from the earth, in a boat that floated above the waves. They were not drowned. They were preserved so they could repopulate the planet and restore the worship of God.

Did they suffer at the hands of the people who later drowned? Surely they must have. There had to be persecution. The world was disgusting. People hated God, and here was Noah, honoring God by building a boat in the desert, on a planet where it had never rained. If the wicked didn’t insult and abuse Noah and his family, it would be a major deviation from the general pattern of life on earth.

Surely, the good were mistreated, but they were not here when the real misery started. They were here while halfbreeds and angels were inflicting suffering, but they weren’t here when suffering started pouring down from God.

Another example: Sodom and Gomorrah.

Lot lived near Sodom, which was near Gomorrah. The people in these cities were cruel and sexually perverted. They were heavily into homosexuality, and not the gentle kind. God agreed to spare the cities if five decent people could be found, but those people could not be found. God sent angels to Lot, and the gay men of Sodom tried to rape them.

That bit about five people is important. If God would spare Sodom and Gomorrah for five people, why would he rain fire on the entire earth while millions of Spirit-led Christians still lived there?

God told Lot to get his family out before the destruction began. He didn’t burn the cities until Lot was safely on his way to a new home.

Third example: the parting of the Red Sea.

God told the Hebrews to flee Egypt. He led them to the edge of the Red Sea, and the Egyptian army chased them, intending to kill them. God opened the water, waited for the Hebrews to cross (with dry shoes), and then he closed the water on the Egyptians. He didn’t close the water on everyone and pick a few Hebrews out of it.

The pattern is very clear, and it would be out of character for God to deviate from it during the Tribulation.

The Tribulation can’t come while Christians are here in large numbers, because we pray all the time. We are the salt of the earth; our presence preserves it. God isn’t going to pour fire on the earth while millions of us are praying for him to have mercy on us and our neighbors. We have to be removed first; we would be a hindrance.

Does this mean everything is rosy for Christians? Sadly, no.

The Tribulation will be a time when God himself torments humanity. It will be worse than anything that has ever happened. But it won’t be the only suffering that will take place before Jesus comes. The ungodly will rain misery on Christians before the Tribulation begins. It’s already here. Gays are destroying Christian careers and businesses. We are absorbing huge numbers of illegal immigrants who will eventually vote for candidates belonging to the party that fights God the most. The strongholds of God are breaking down, and we are not protected the way we used to be.

It’s going to get worse. Many of us will be killed, tortured, imprisoned, robbed, and raped. But we will not be here when the real agony starts.

The things that will happen before the Tribulation will be bad enough. The weaker you are as a Christian, the worse it will be for you.

God refused to flood the world until Methuselah was safe with him. He refused to burn Sodom until Lot was safe. There is a limit to what he will do to people while his children are among them.

The good news: you may not be here when God burns the world. The bad news: you may be here to be tortured and killed. And it appears that bad things are going to happen to Israel; God will have to step in to prevent complete destruction.

Prepare, prepare, prepare. Don’t find yourself watching porn and doing lines of coke when the world really turns against you. A lot of Christians are storing food and guns. Great, but you should put prayer and repentance first. Your primary fortress is you.

Hope this is helpful.

Get That Stupid Cat off my Screen

What is Youtube for? It’s for posting boring videos of your cat. We all know this. Or it’s about posting clickbait in order to make money.

Those are clearly the main purposes of Youtube, but there is also a lot of useful content. You can study many, many subjects using Youtube. You can learn about almost any hobby. On top of all that, and most exciting: people are using Youtube to talk about God.

Christian Youtube videos didn’t make much of an impression on me until week before last. I knew there were bootleg videos of greedy prosperity preachers, and a few ambitious preachers put their own videos up, simply because not every preacher has a TV network that will accommodate him. The videos I’ve mentioned didn’t have a huge impact on me, but last week I started watching videos by random individuals, in which they gave their testimony and taught what God had shared with them.

That’s pretty neat.

These people aren’t pushing the prosperity lie. They don’t charge money. They don’t sell DVD’s. They’re not trying to turn God into a career. They have very little to gain, and if their employers catch them, they have a lot to lose. Many of them are more credible than the narcissists we see on TV.

A surprising number of people are posting videos about prophetic dreams and so on. There are a ton of videos warning Christians about Obama’s anti-God tendencies. A lot of the videos were made relatively recently. Here’s refreshing news: many of these videos were made by black people.

One of the frustrations I’ve endured while attending church in South Florida is dealing with liberal charismatic Christians. They don’t pray much, so they don’t get much guidance from God. As a result, they tend to hold onto the poisonous political beliefs of their parents and friends. They vote for abortion, homosexuality, and the persecution of the church. They see nothing wrong with it, because they have a supernatural blindness. They’re too proud to listen to correction from people who know better. This is a very big problem among blacks and Puerto Ricans, who traditionally hate Republicans.

It’s great to turn on Youtube and see that for some, the blue ice is melting.

I found a lady named Beverly Moore. I don’t know much about her. She sits at her laptop and shares dreams, and she offers correction to other women. She talks too slow, so her videos are longer than they need to be, but other than that, they’re a pleasure to watch. They prove not everyone is crazy.

She posted an interesting video criticizing Obama. She said she had voted for the man twice, which was upsetting, but since then she has come around. She says he may not be “the” Antichrist, but he is surely “an” antichrist. And she mentions the same issues I do; you can’t vote for one thing on Sunday and then vote for its opposite on Tuesday. I’ll embed the video. It’s long, so I completely understand if you don’t watch it, but it’s there in case you decide it’s worth it.

She posted another video about a wonderful dream she had. In the dream, she was a man’s girlfriend. The man was helping her move. Two professional movers were also helping. She kept complaining and shrieking. She was ungrateful and disrespectful. She was emasculating. Then God switched her roles, and she became the boyfriend. She got to see what men experience when they deal with…I’m not going to use the B-word…contentious women. In the video, she lays into women who won’t let men be men.

Good for her! You would think this would be obvious to women, but it’s not. Any woman who has dealt with a child who ridiculed and disobeyed her should know what it’s like for a man to deal with an emasculating woman, but somehow, many don’t make the connection.

You can’t be in charge unless people allow you to be in charge. You need a certain amount of respect. This is one of the reasons God throws people into hell. He can’t permit people who try to emasculate him to pollute heaven with their filthy presence.

Women complain about men not being men, but ungodly women won’t let men be men. And ungodly men can’t get relief, because they don’t treat God with respect. When you’re walking in God’s will, things start to line up and work in harmony.

I also found a guy named Shawn Weed. He’s a former marine. When he was in the corps, his friends killed him. They put a noose around his neck as a prank, and he died. He encountered a huge demon that grabbed him and started running toward the flames of hell.

He thought he was a Christian, and he thought he was a pretty good guy, so he was very confused by his experience. Fortunately for him, God sent him back, and now he tells other people what he knows, in order to save them. He’s pretty long-winded, but if you have time, his video is great.

He’s not charging. He’s not making a career out of it. He’s not telling the poor to max out their credit cards. In other words, he is not like Rod Parsley or Jerry Savelle.

Here’s a third Youtube warrior: Billy Hobbs. I mentioned him here a week ago. He was a drug addict and outlaw biker. He had to have neck surgery, and the surgeon made a mistake. He suffered some paralysis, and he lost the ability to work full time. He spent 21 days in a coma, fighting a spirit that wanted to take him.

Needless to say, he’s not an outlaw biker or an addict any more. He has a lot of insight into the things God really cares about.

These people aren’t right about everything. One interesting thing about people who have supernatural visitations and so on is that God will not always tell them every important truth. He allows some error to remain, because human beings failed in their responsibility to preserve knowledge. There are a lot of things we are supposed to know already, and it’s not his job to keep presenting all of it to us, over and over. We’re responsible for that. The people in the videos above don’t know everything, but they do seem to understand faith, humility, and teachability. That’s more than TV preachers can say.

Billy Hobbs thinks tongues aren’t for everyone, and that’s not true. The gift can be blocked, but you’re entitled to it. Pride can block it, and so can unbelief. Fortunately for me, I managed to receive it in spite of pride. Don’t ask me to explain; God does what he wants.

He says many people who speak in tongues don’t lead godly lives. That’s certainly true. One of the purposes of prayer in tongues is to cleanse you. It won’t happen instantaneously, and if you don’t use the gift assiduously, you can remain filthy. It doesn’t mean the gift isn’t essential or effective. It just means you wasted it.

For a few years now, I’ve been telling people that the age of the big church was dead. Prominent preachers are just too crooked and evil. They are killing and eating the people they’re supposed to help. I believe God showed me that what he really wanted was a grassroots church, where one person reaches ten people, correctly, instead of ten thousand, badly. The gospel should spread like the flu, from one ordinary person to another. When I see these videos, I consider it confirmation.

Satan’s method of spreading things works really well. One homosexual airline steward infected the whole world with AIDS. Supposedly, he killed 20% of the gay population in some major cities. If disease can spread that way, so can salvation. God doesn’t actually need TV. Paul didn’t have it. God doesn’t need gigantic churches, either. Greedy preachers need gigantic churches.

The funny thing about this is that God is using social media, which is generally a counterproductive thing. Facebook and Twitter are big drains. Youtube seems different. Perhaps it’s because Youtube doesn’t have a newsfeed that pours garbage into your heart every time you turn it on.

Sooner or later, Christians will be banned from the Internet. I often wonder…will our digital presence be preserved in some way, to help people who are trapped on earth during the Tribulation, or will it disappear entirely? If so, will that disappearance be part of humanity’s punishment?

God allowed the teaching he gave our predecessors to disappear.

Anyway, for now, Christian Youtubers are doing a lot of good. They may be beholden to Google, which is a somewhat evil, anti-God enterprise, but they’re not beholden to Mammon or narcissism, which are even worse. Many of the TV preachers are in the grip of something they will never be able to overcome…because they don’t want to overcome.

I started coming across these videos because I was watching videos about people’s visits to hell and heaven. A lot of people have claimed they’ve been to hell in visions or in the spirit. Some are lying; others are telling the truth. For two or three weeks, I was very caught up in this material.

Last week, a relative of mine had a near-death experience. I heard two different stories about it. The first said he didn’t go to work, and his boss found him unconscious, incapacitated by a diabetic coma. The second story, which appears to be correct, is that he was unconscious because he had an intestinal infection and vomited up a lot of blood.

He has been in the hospital for some time. My aunt called me and asked for prayer, and I had friends pray for him. He was on life support. At first I thought they expected him to be fine, but yesterday they told me they were having a meeting about his condition, and that they were going to have to test him for brain activity.

We were afraid he was going to die. Things looked very bad.

I had slacked off on prayer, because I had thought things were going well. Yesterday I resumed, and I spoke defeat to the spirits that wanted to take him. I asked God to bring him back and give him another chance. He’s a former yoga instructor; he has opened occult doors, and he was likely to go to hell.

I felt tremendous faith surging through me. Just crazy faith, like water through a fire hose. Prayer in tongues causes you to develop that.

My aunt called me again later in the day, and she said he was awake and speaking. He asked them to turn the TV on so he could watch football. He has some kidney problems and cirrhosis (he’s not a drinker), but they expect him to go home in a day or two. She said it was miraculous.

I don’t know if God had me watch the hell videos to give me motivation or what, but I’m very glad my cousin is still here.

If you have a testimony, maybe you should put it on Youtube. The world can only stand so many cat videos.

I Think I Hear Spitballs Bouncing off the Hull of the Ark

I am reviewing the news after a tasty McDonald’s breakfast coupled with an episode of Dennis Gage’s cable show, My Classic Car. What do I see before me? Yet another ridiculous attempt to discredit Jesus.

A few years back, James Cameron, who, having directed a successful movie about a sinking ship, is clearly an authority on ancient history, said he had found the tomb of Jesus. Now, we all know Jesus had a tomb. In fact, you can go to Jerusalem and visit TWO tombs of Jesus. If the line at one is too long, why, just go to the other one! But the one Cameron was pushing was different; he claimed the dead body of Jesus stayed in it permanently. If that were true, it would put a serious dent in Christianity.

Now a Jewish geologist–hello, Jewish–says he has proof Cameron’s tomb belongs to Jesus. Actually, here is what he says: “I think I’ve got really powerful, virtually unequivocal evidence that the James ossuary spent most of its lifetime, or death time, in the Talpiot Tomb.”

Not really the same as, “I proved this is the tomb of Jesus,” but that hasn’t kept the press from treating it as a conclusive debunking of Christianity.

People really need to stop falling for stories like this. Let me explain why we will never be presented with a legitimate permanent tomb of Jesus: if the Jews had known the location of his body, we would have been hearing about it for 2,000 years.

People seem to forget that religious Jews absolutely hate Jesus. They’re so angry at him, they’ll acknowledge a Satanist Jew or an atheist Jew, but they call Christian Jews “Christians of Jewish birth.” They say they are not Jewish. In reference to Jesus, they have said, “May his name be blotted out forever.” He is not popular with them.

They don’t talk about this much, because they believe persecution is strongly connected to their behavior. They don’t want to provoke anyone. In truth, they would still be persecuted even if they sewed their mouths shut and went to live in huts without electricity or telephones, because their real enemy is Satan, and he really doesn’t care what Jews do. He wants to eradicate them, period, and he will always have lots of servants handy who are willing to do the job.

Jews work very hard, to this day, to prove Jesus was a fake. The idea that they would sit around for two millennia, keeping quiet about the location of his dead body, is patently absurd. If someone proved Jesus was a fake, the parties in Israel and Brooklyn would last a month.

When Christians began to outnumber Jews, they persecuted Jews. Back when Jews outnumbered Christians, it was the other way around. They rounded us up and murdered us. Paul did this for a living; Christians were as terrified of him as European Jews were of Hitler. In the first century A.D., Jesus was already considered to be an enormous problem. If Jesus had been buried permanently in Jerusalem, Paul and his friends would have known, and they would have publicized it. We would still be hearing about it today. We are not.

There is a book called The Passover Plot. It suggests Christians paid off the Romans who guarded the tomb of Jesus. The idea is that Christians stole the body, hid it, and claimed Jesus was resurrected. Because they really wanted to dedicate their lives to a false religion, lose their jobs and property, lose all their friends, and be stoned to death.

Hal Lindsey, a Biblical scholar who makes guesses about eschatology, pointed out the obvious flaw in this theory. Aside from the fact that there is no evidence to back the story up, Roman soldiers were subject to the death penalty for relatively minor acts of disobedience. You can pay a guard to let you sneak into the movies, because very little will happen to him if you get caught. Paying a Roman soldier to face the death penalty would not be that easy. You can’t spend a bribe when you’re dead.

This “debunking” stuff has been going on for centuries. It’s asinine.

For some reason, the deniers love to claim Jesus married Mary Magdalene. It’s as if they read a bunch of Archie comic books and assumed that because the only women the books mentioned were Betty and Veronica, Archie must have married one of them. He could also have married Midge, but Moose would have beaten him to a pulp. In all likelihood, a lot of the motivation to pair Jesus with Mary Magdalene comes from the perverse pleasure of accusing him of having sex with a former prostitute.

It’s like the false stories about him, calling him “Jesus ben Pandera,” suggesting Mary was a prostitute and Pandera was the Roman soldier who fathered Jesus. Ho hum. Business as usual.

Jesus didn’t promote celibacy, but he didn’t marry, because God sent him to be the husband of the church. Also, his wife and children would have been worshiped; God didn’t want that. The Catholics already worship everyone he knew. His descendants would have been worshiped. His tomb would have become an object of idolatry. Actually, the two tombs promoted as his have already become objects of idolatry; people kiss and fondle the rock in order to absorb supernatural power.

Maybe there is a tomb belonging to a man with the common first name “Jesus,” and maybe his mother’s name was Mary and his dad’s name was Joseph. In a country where people don’t have last names, you would expect to find more than one tomb fitting that description, especially if you hated Christianity and made a point of searching. There must be two million graves like that in Mexico. “Here lies Jesus, son of Jose and Maria.” There are probably a thousand in Hialeah.

If you believe Jesus and serve him, he will eventually manifest himself to you, making all this noise irrelevant. He has manifested himself to me twice.

James Cameron hasn’t manifested himself to me even once; maybe he’s a myth, like The Most Interesting Man in the World.

Don’t pay any attention to the nonsense. If you’re relying on newspapers and Jews to teach you about Jesus, you are going to have a lot of problems. It’s like relying on Naomi Wolf to teach you about masculinity. Not that I’m thinking about anyone in particular. Certainly not a former Vice President.

But I digress.

The tomb of Jesus is a fake. The tomb of James Cameron will be very real. That about sums it up.

Can’t Wait

I’m still working my way through the Columbia University Literature Humanities syllabus. The latest obstacle on the confidence course: Augustine’s Confessions.

The book is supposedly about Augustine’s conversion to Catholicism, but I’m only about 40% of the way through, so I can’t confirm that with confidence. A lot of it is random interjections in which he praises God, and a good deal of it is filled with musing about this and that. It’s not what I would call “a story,” in the conventional sense. It’s not like Charlotte’s Web, where Wilbur wakes up every day and has interactions with Charlotte and Templeton and inches perceptibly closer to his pivotal appearance at the fair.

Augustine was a very smart guy. That surprised me. Christian scholarship is not always the sort of thing that shines in juxtaposition with Descartes and Kant. It’s definitely better than the little bits of Muslim scholarship I’ve been exposed to, and by that I mean it’s not something an objective eight-year-old would find ridiculous, but the Christian arguments I’ve seen have not been all that sophisticated.

Augustine is sufficiently bright to drive a thinking person to underline quotations, in the vain hope of remembering and using them later. That’s about the highest praise I can offer.

I don’t actually remember any of the things I underlined. I didn’t like them enough to go back and prolong the experience of reading the book by memorizing them.

This is the problem with a reading list. You always think about the destination, not the journey.

Augustine was raised by a Catholic (his mother, Monica), but he became a Manichee. This is important, at least to me, because it explains why my Lit. Hum. professor kept ranting about Manicheism and eating cucumbers on the rare occasions when I visited the class. I thought he just had a weird obsession.

Manicheism is a cult, founded by a guy named Mani. Don’t ask me what they believed. I get bits and pieces of it here and there, but if it’s not on Wikipedia, I probably don’t know it. They believed something about the universe being composed of light and darkness, and people were supposed to eat foods that contained light. Cucumbers figured prominently on the list.

The Manichees were against animal sacrifice, and they thought the Christian scriptures were screwed up, because, of course, the Old Testament is full of sacrifices. Augustine made a pretty shrewd observation after he joined the Catholics. The Manichees held that the scriptures had been altered, but they were never able to produce a copy of the unaltered text.

I can relate to Augustine. He listened to silly people who believed silly things, and his natural intelligence didn’t prevent him from being fooled. I listened to televangelists and megachurch pimps.

Augustine was a player. He was obsessed with sex. He manages to make it boring, however.

Here’s something that surprised me: he had an illegitimate son. He began turning toward the church, and his mom tried to fix him up with a ten-year-old fiancee. In the meantime, Augustine was still getting busy–on a steady basis–with a woman to whom he was not married.

So far, I have not seen any indication that he was horrified by this. How can that be? He was getting ready to get very serious about a relationship with God, and here he was, running around with a chippie.

I could understand if he acted under compulsion. If he said, “I told the servants to lock me up, but at three in the morning, I gave in again, kicked the screen out of the window, and ran over to Lulu’s place.” That’s not how it reads. It seems more like he decided to give up his mistress as a practical matter, like a man who sells his golf clubs in order to make room for snow skis.

I don’t think anyone ever calls Augustine a pedophile. We call Mohammed a pedophile all the time; he married a girl who was 6 years old, and he had sex with her three years later. Augustine decided to become engaged to a girl who was 10, and he would have been allowed to consummate the marriage when she was 12. Not a huge difference.

Many of his experiences resonate with me. He complains constantly about his regret over having believed lies. Right there with you, pal. I believed Satan’s lies outside the church, and then I went to church, where I believed the lies he spread through preachers.

I’ve come to realize something: God loves it when you see the truth. He really hates being disbelieved, and he hates it when people believe Satan. He loves it when people say, “Satan is a liar.” It’s what he has been waiting to hear.

Even though I myself have lied, I hate liars. I love exposing them. I love showing people they’ve been lied to. God is the same way. Most of Satan’s damage has been done with lies. God tells people the truth, and they spit at him. Satan tells them ridiculous lies, and they believe him and give him their lives. I see why God loves faith so much. Don’t you hate it when you tell the truth and people don’t believe you?

I guess it seems like I pick on my sister a lot, but here I go again. She taught me what it was like to deal with liars. She lies about me all the time. She has done it since I was very small. I’ve spent a tremendous amount of time defending myself to other people, refuting her lies. I’ve spent a lot of time talking to other people about the lies she has told me about them. It’s exasperating. I know exactly what God goes through.

A person who spreads lies is like a thief who runs away while knocking over furniture and leaving it in the path of his pursuers. The thief just runs and pulls things over. The pursuer has to stop, lift things up, and put them in order. Lying is very efficient, in that way. It forces truthful people to waste time and do a lot of work. They have to fix the mess the lies create. That’s why liars love lying. If you have to deal with liars all the time, you’re constantly untying knots they tied with their forked tongues.

I get it, God. I know what you deal with every day. I see how Satan managed to delay you so many times.

I understand why hell exists. Liars and murderers require a storage bin where they can be confined, so they can’t spread their vexation to heaven. As for the fire, well…it will keep them busy so they can’t plot. I would rather see them suffer than see them arm themselves, because righteousness has to be preserved.

I won’t criticize God’s plan.

I have two problems with Augustine. First, he’s boring. Surprise, surprise. If he’s on the Lit. Hum. syllabus, it should surprise no one that he can’t write a paragraph that scans cleanly. That’s almost a given. He is very windy; he never knows when to give it a rest. Editors are the lowest form of life, but he could use one.

Second, he tries to understand God with the unaided mind, which is the unfortunate tool that got him into Manicheism. It doesn’t work. He reasons and reasons, and he only gets so far. You can’t learn about God through reason. The Holy Spirit has to impart understanding to you. You have to pray in tongues. You have to get God’s help. I guess by Augustine’s time, the devil had already managed to convince Christians tongues were no longer needed.

Augustine didn’t know all that much about God. It’s frustrating to see people call him “saint,” as though he were an exalted being with knowledge the rest of us can never receive. Any ditchdigger who prays in tongues can learn more about God than Augustine knew.

Christianity is not for scholars; it’s for people of faith who are willing to pray and submit. Take a look at the bell curve. Do you really believe God only wanted to know the people on the far right? Of course not.

I don’t understand how Columbia University can give people one week to read Augustine. I can do about twenty pages per day without losing my mind. That makes it a two-week ordeal. No one with a realistic courseload could read all these boring books in time for exams. No wonder people cheat.

I guess before I wrap up, I’ll say one more positive thing about Augustine. He makes fools of the people who claim morality isn’t a Jewish/Christian invention.

Academics hate God, so they’re always looking for ways to pull him down. They love to tell us morality is universal. The things one major culture thinks are right are also esteemed by other cultures. Ten Commandments…Code of Hammurabi…it’s all the same. WRONG.

I’ve gone through the Greek and Roman syllabus offerings. They showed me that the ancients who were neither Christian nor Jewish were depraved and barbaric.

Homer’s protagonists were disgusting, and they were just like Virgil’s. They were murderers. They were rapists. They loved invading other people’s cities, raping everyone in sight, demolishing all the buildings, and take the citizens as slaves. They called men who did this “blameless.” They called them “pious”!

Come on. Wake up. Their mores were nothing like those of Christians and Jews. God’s people were much more civilized than they were. The Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians were coarse and cruel. They were inferior. Without the Jews and Christians, their perverted ethos would now be universal.

The Jewish God is the only God, and the culture that came from Judaism is superior. Not “different.” Not “better in some ways.” Superior. Admit it. Or stand up for rape, torture, pillage, and wars of conquest. Without the Jewish God, earth becomes like hell. The tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.

America’s culture is rotting because we don’t acknowledge that the values that saved us are Jewish. We denied the source of our blessings, so now the river runs black and fetid.

It’s funny how God-hating liberals fight God while proclaiming values that came from God. Love, patience, kindness, self-sacrifice…these concepts, when found in Greek and Roman culture, are stunted and perverted, at best. In Judaism and Christianity, they flower and dominate.

But the children of darkness will never admit it. A supernatural blindfold can’t be pierced by logic or common sense. Okay, fine. You’re right about everything. Bruce Jenner, a man who won the Olympic decathlon, is a woman. A four-year-old who thinks he’s a girl should receive sex hormones that prevent him from going through a normal puberty. Have it your way.

I look forward to Dante, and that’s only because I want to be done with Augustine.

Who’s Sharing YOUR Bed?

Something fascinating happened last night.

First, some background. For some time now, I’ve been waking up–consistently–between six and seven in the morning. I thought it was God, waking me up to pray. Also, I have been asking God to expose the people and spirits who are against him in my life, and I have asked him to defeat them and drive them away, no matter who they are.

This morning, I woke up, as usual. This time, I heard a voice. It was as though I had answered the phone and someone was speaking to me. Just after I awoke, I heard a woman with an American accent say something I no longer remember, and then she said, “See you later.”

She said it with a smug, hostile tone, like someone who was tormenting me and who expected to be able to come back and torment me in the future.

It got me thinking.

My prayer life has gone nuts over the last few years, and it keeps getting more powerful. More and more, I spend time on the offensive, attacking people and spirits that work against God. It works. That has to make demons and fallen angels very angry.

When Eve fell, evil spirits received the keys to the earth. It wasn’t supposed to be theirs, but they won it by fooling a carnal woman. Since then, Satan has ruled the world, and the spoiled, vicious children of the fallen angels have tormented human beings.

We talk about evil spirits (when we admit they exist) as though they’re isolated rogues, out of control. In reality, they have every right to be here and to abuse us. We gave it to them. In fact, demons are human. They are our brothers and sisters. They were created when angels had sex with human beings. The fight between demons and humans is actually a family squabble; it’s sibling rivalry.

It’s crazy to think you can give yourself to God and go on the attack without infuriating the beings you’re humiliating and driving out. They’ve had it good. They haven’t been pitched into the lake of fire. They can’t die. They are allowed to wander the earth, hidden from us, torturing and killing the beings they hate the most.

They don’t want to have that taken away from them. It’s the best thing they’ll ever have. They have no other hope of pleasure or safety. Soon they’re going to find themselves burning forever, in complete humiliation and powerlessness. It should be obvious that they will fight back.

Christians don’t like to talk about this. When you mention demons and angels, people who call themselves Christians–people who claim to worship a spirit–tell you you’re mentally ill. That’s the way Satan likes it. The best way to divert attack is to convince your enemy you aren’t there.

I see why God hates lukewarmness. If you’re lukewarm, you’re probably praying every other day and doing pretty much as you please. You’re not aware of the supernatural. You’re not doing anything to defeat Satan. You’re just lying back on the couch, allowing the enemy to have his way with you. You’re like a drunken college girl, lying beside a dumpster, exposed, with her legs up.

A lukewarm person doesn’t fight back, and God doesn’t do all that much fighting for him.

I have problems. I have had failures that were extremely improbable and damaging, in spite of my carnal efforts. No wonder! I blew my front door off the hinges and lay down on the floor, waiting passively. What did I expect?

This defeated, worthless, doomed thing has been coming to me every morning, and I haven’t done enough to get rid of it. What else is coming to me? What other problems are caused by trespassers I welcomed and fed?

When Jesus sent the disciples out (Matthew 10), he ordered them to do four things: “Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out demons.” Those were his priorities at the time. He didn’t say, “Buy 20 purple suits for $3000.00 each, build a pink megachurch, and start a TV show.” The things he told them to do were important. They’re still important. He said he had come to set the captives free. He wasn’t just referring to salvation. You can’t be free in this life until you dethrone the spirits that control you.

This message draws all kinds of resistance, because demons do not like being humiliated. Their inheritance is weakness, servitude, and pain, and they do not want to receive it. They will come after anyone who speaks against them, and they will use Christians to shut such people down, because Christians have credibility among Christians.

I felt I should pass this information along, because chances are, you are not doing much about your spirit problem.

I want whatever authority and deliverance I can get. I plan to keep going forward so I can get whatever is available.

These things are real. Don’t expect them to go away just because they’re bored.

Or Another Box of Parts?

I am still working on the belt grinder.

As I lamented a day or two back, I found a really nice Mitsubishi TEFC motor for peanuts, and the Post Office broke it. It’s a mystery to me why people who transport other people’s things are so careless; it seems like those jobs bring out the ape and vandal in about half of the folks who take them. Look out an airplane window, and you can pretty much count on seeing a sullen twenty-something throwing suitcases just for fun. That’s a fact of life. The only solutions are heavy-duty packaging and damage claims.

The Mitsubishi was a 2-horse motor, intended to replace the open 2-HP motor I already had. I did not want metal filings and bits of abrasive going into the motor and killing it, so I had to get something that was enclosed. The Mitsubishi looked like a good deal. It was very cheap, and it was Japanese. Americans make better stuff than most people in the world, and the Japanese make stuff better than we do.

Once it was busted I had to go back to Ebay and search. The 2-HP offerings were not too bad, but they were limited. I had a thought: why not try 3-HP? That would expand the possibilities.

I was afraid it was too much motor for a belt grinder, but I Googled around and asked questions, and it turns out 3 is just about optimal. My VFD’s are rated for 3 HP, so there is no reason why I can’t move up. With effort, it is possible for a human being to bog a 2-HP grinder down somewhat. This doesn’t happen as easily with more power. Also, and I don’t know why this would be true, you can get more life out of belts with a bigger motor.

I can’t guarantee that last part, but it’s what I read. Something about bearing down on belts being better for them than light pressure. Maybe they load up less?

It sounds crazy.

I looked for brands that were well-made yet which didn’t receive the attention they deserved. You can find bargains that way. In the end, though, I went with an American-made Dayton motor. The price was great, and it looked nearly new. Now I’m hoping American Daytons are better than Taiwan and China Daytons. Not that I have had any problems with my late-model Dayton grinder, which is from one of those countries (I forget which).

The Dayton has a 182T frame, which has a different bolt pattern than the 184-frame Doerr I’ve been using. I’ll have to make a new platform. Also, a 182T frame has a bigger shaft, so I’ll have to bore out the drive wheel I bought, and then I’ll have to broach a keyway into it.

I found out what the “T” in motor frame names means. It means “thick.” It probably doesn’t really mean that, but if you see a “T” in a frame designation, it means the shaft is thicker than it would be without the “T.” A 182 frame has a 7/8″ shaft, like my drive wheel. A 182T has a 1 1/8″ shaft.

I deeply, deeply regret using Dupli-Color water-based Bed Armor truck bed paint on the first platform. It looks bad, it grabs dirt and grease, it peels, and I just found out it has another problem. It’s glue.

If you paint something with Bed Armor, and then a few days later you bolt a motor to it, the motor becomes attached to it permanently. It’s ridiculous. I had to remove the old motor from my grinder platform, and I found I couldn’t pull it off. I had to lift the motor, platform, and grinder together and put them on the floor. Then I was able to get the motor and grinder loose by pulling while standing on the platform. The paint where they had been sitting looked awful when I tore them off.

I have been wondering whether I could get away with cutting out a circle of air conditioner filter material and taping it over the air intake on the old motor, to stop crud from going in. I’ve learned that some people use pantyhose for this. But it would look stupid, and it might cut down the air flow too much, so why not get a motor that works without filtration?

I’m selling the Mitsubishi. The seller didn’t ask for it back, so I’m Craigslisting it. I figure I can get $50 for it. That will bring the effective price of the Dayton down pretty low.

As long as I’m talking about things no one cares about, let me walk back my rave review of Rust-Oleum Forged hammer finish paint. I still like it, but I learned something about it: you can’t put pressure on it for quite some time after it dries. Days after my motor’s paint job dried, I left the power cord looped over the top of the motor for a day or two, and the paint sort of tore. I don’t know how long it has to cure, but I would give it at least two weeks before putting pressure on it again. I sanded out the messed-up bit and sprayed over it with no problems, so the paint is very forgiving.

I intend to use the grinder the way it is until the new motor gets here. Then I’ll make a new platform and paint it, and I’ll bore out the drive wheel. Sounds like a day’s work.

It’s going to be cool, having a 2×72 grinder handy. It will change my life. There is no end of the problems you can solve by ripping material off of things with abrasive belts.

I’m hoping to finish off the knives I’m making. Shouldn’t take long at all. Then off they go to be hardened. I will post photos.

That’s it for this Wednesday. Pray my new motor arrives in one box.

The Epistle of Barnabas

I don’t have complete faith in the people who decided which books were to be included in the Bible. I believe all of the Protestant choices are valid, but the Catholics and Orthodox churches have included some bizarre items, and some of them are definitely wrong.

Example: the book of Judith. Even Catholics admit this one is full of errors. I assume Catholics don’t believe the Bible is inerrant. It is also believed that The Wisdom of Solomon is a forgery.

I went through most of the Catholic choices Protestants don’t like, and so far, I haven’t come across anything that appears to be inspired by the Holy Spirit. I haven’t read the books of Maccabees and Baruch yet.

Why did I do this? Because someone sent me looking for a book by Barnabas, an early apostle.

I found a Youtube channel belonging to a man named Billy Hobbs, and I’ve been watching his stuff. He understands things most Christians don’t get. For example, he knows demons are the spirits of the offspring of men and angels. Most people think they’re fallen angels.

He talks about extra-Biblical books, and he mentioned Enoch and Barnabas, so I had to see what Barnabas had to say.

At first I was very disappointed, because there is a bogus book called The Gospel of Barnabas, and that’s the first book I found. It’s a ridiculous forgery denying the divinity of Jesus. Muslims love it because they believe Jesus is not the son of God.

Looking at that book, I wondered if Billy Hobbs knew what he was doing. Then I came across The Epistle of Barnabas, which is a different book. I read it last night.

This one seems to be the real McCoy. Some of the Catholic books are clearly self-help and fables, and they don’t have the ring of truth. They are not moving to read, because they don’t resonate with the experience of a person who knows the Holy Spirit. Barnabas, however, is very consistent with the other apostles, and he teaches the way Holy-Spirit-led teachers teach, with insight that appears to come from God.

Barnabas mentions something which I thought was a modern revelation; he says the age of man is divided into thousand-year periods, and that these periods are like days of the week. The seventh period will be a Sabbath–a time of rest and peace–and the eighth period will be a time of new creation. This is consistent with what I believe. I expect Jesus to return for the seventh age and rule for a thousand years.

Here we are, in the Jewish year 5776, 223 years and change away from 6000. That makes me wonder: do we have 223 years of suffering in front of us? Is the end actually coming sooner, and is the Jewish calendar off by two centuries? Will the seventh period begin before 6000, just as Jewish days start on the preceding evening?

Jesus said only the Father knew when everything was going to wrap up, but it would be nice to narrow it down a little.

I can understand why God won’t be specific. For one thing, everyone would set a timer, sin like crazy, and then repent two minutes before the bell. You know they would; it’s not even debatable.

You can find Barnabas online. Check it out and see what you think.

Candidate Lifted into Vehicle After Fainting Spell

I have friends who are in a tizzy about the upcoming presidential election. It’s an extremely important election, because if a Democrat wins, the Supreme Court will be taken over–almost instantaneously–by liberal extremists who will make life harder on Christians, Jews, and conservatives.

I would guess that less than 10% of the American people understand that. Presidents appoint all federal judges, and federal judges run the country, because they decide what the law means.

It’s pointless to harp on that, because even intelligent people can’t seem to understand it.

You can write a law that says, “Every male over the age of thirteen has to wear blue pants on Thursday,” and a judge can conclude that it means, “From now on, lobster has to be served with ketchup.” Once a judge decides what a law means, that’s what it means, until another judge or a legislative body slaps him down.

I don’t get very worked up about politics. I don’t write about it much. I dropped the silly game of exchanging links with bloggers who thought they were changing the world. I don’t give money to candidates. I don’t always vote in local elections, because I don’t identify with my area, and I don’t care that much what happens to it.

God has shown me that you have to fight things in supernatural ways, because all events have supernatural roots.

Every day, I curse the political left with defeat, and I curse the Clinton campaign, in the name of Jesus. That’s my big contribution. To non-believers and most Christians, that sounds silly. Well, we’re even. To me, scrambling around making ineffective efforts with my natural strength seems silly.

Today I got some encouraging news. Hillary Clinton fell down at a 9/11 commemoration.

Some outlets are saying she “got overheated.” They want Hillary to win, and “overheated” sounds better than “incapacitated,” which is the accurate term. Unfortunately for the left, there is video of Hillary leaving the event.

She was carried into a vehicle. You can see it in the video below.

At first, she is leaning on a concrete post for support, probably at her own insistence. It appears to be an effort to make herself look steady and nonchalant. It looks better than having people hold her up.

When the vehicle arrives, she falls forward, and you can see people reaching down to lift her into the vehicle.

That’s a serious medical event. It’s not right-wing wishful thinking or conspiracy theorizing, which is the dishonest explanation the leftist press has been giving us.

I do not want to appear glad that someone is ill. That’s not the issue. I’m glad 1) the liars who falsely accused conservatives of making up health stories have been put in their place, and 2) Clinton is going to lose votes or conceivably withdraw because she is not well. I’m also glad to see supernatural warfare pay off.

Eventually, people like Clinton will take the White House and hold onto it. They will take the judicial branch and Congress, too. That has to happen, because America has failed God. But it doesn’t have to happen in November. It can be delayed. During the delay, Spirit-led Christians can improve and work. They can reach people. They can put themselves in a better posture to endure the Nazi-style persecution that lies ahead. Cursing Democrat campaigns and turning back to God in a way that is more than superficial are worthwhile pursuits. It’s like bailing a sinking raft; you may not be able to keep it afloat permanently, but you may be able to make it to shore.

Today The Washington Post published a piece admitting the health issue is real. That’s a huge victory.

The Clintons are ruthless and selfish, like megachurch pastors. I don’t know if it’s true that they or their allies kill political enemies, but the Machiavellian nature of the Clintons has been proven by history. My best guess is that Democrats have been concerned about her health, too, but they were overruled by the Clinton machine, because IT’S HILLARY’S TURN, PERIOD. Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems likely, based on human nature.

She probably thought she could suck it up until the election. Now that hope is dashed.

My advice to anyone who believes in faith and the Holy Spirit is to curse the Clinton campaign daily and ask God to help his servants get it together so our enemies will not have so much power over us. It’s nice to stockpile guns and MRE’s, but those things won’t really save us. We need the approval and help of the living God.

I also pray for God to help Donald Trump and his crew to shape up spiritually. I don’t know how much hope for that. Cyrus is probably in hell, and maybe Trump (our new Cyrus) is headed that way, too, but I have an obligation to try. Whatever they do, they will certainly be better for Christians and Jews than the left.

God still rises up to fight our enemies. Don’t doubt it just because we deserve to lose. Maybe we can’t get all the help we want, but we can certainly do better than we are doing right now.

The Bible says God stops fighting our enemies when we gloat, so I’m not doing that. But I think I should be willing to point out the obvious.

Introducing Our First Model

A few people actually commented on my last blog post, which involved a motor I cleaned up for use with a grinder. Now that I realize what a giant hit my motor essays are, I have decided to post another photo.

Here is the motor, sitting on the platform I have to re-drill and repaint, with the variable frequency drive I have to put in an enclosure.

You have to admit, it looks nice considering what it used to be. The new used wave spring I ordered arrived yesterday, so I’ll be installing that later.

I finally realized that you restore a lumpy shaft by filing in the axial direction, not across the shaft, so I may try to polish this motor’s shaft a little more. It’s not perfect. A real man would put it on the lathe, but that involves pressing the bearings off, so I would have to get new bearings.

The new used motor I ordered is supposed to arrive today, so I’m not sure why I did all that work, but if I ever need a 2-HP Totally Open to Crap motor, I’ll have one on deck.

Out of curiosity, I looked into motor longevity. Apparently, no one actually knows how long a motor should last. For one thing, no one has defined “motor death.” Is it when the bearings go bad? Is it when the wiring burns up? There is no consensus.

Leeson (DISCLAIMER: a company that really wants you to trash your old motors and buy the new ones it makes) says you can hope for something like 15 years of operation, and I assume that’s in industrial applications. If not, a lot of people who buy Leeson motors will be hopping mad, because a motor that lasts 15 years in a factory will last three months in your house.

When bearings go bad, you can replace them for a few dollars. Bearing death is not motor death. If I understand things correctly, the real problem comes when the insulation on the stator breaks down, and this can be accelerated by heat or current spikes (which, actually, equal heat).

I wondered about this, because there are always tons of used motors available on Ebay. How do you know what condition the stator is in? You don’t. A motor can look really nice on the outside without telling you much abot the inside. Maybe some of those 75%-discounted Ebay motors aren’t great deals. Or maybe they are, if insulation breakdown takes several decades. Some motors appear to be immortal, continuing to run after nearly a century, so it may be that there are motors out there with insulation so wonderful they are very hard to ruin.

I do not know.

In my garage, even a Chinese motor made the day after a major drunken holiday will probably outlive me, because I don’t use them much.

You shouldn’t use a belt grinder which isn’t anchored correctly, or which doesn’t have proper protection for the motor or VFD, so of course, I am already using this grinder. I’m not using it much, though. I used it at about 600 RPM to clean the remaining milling marks off a knife I’m making. It worked great. It was slow, because I refused to turn the speed up, but it beat the daylights out of using sandpaper or a whetstone.

A surface grinder would have knocked it out in 10 minutes, and it would have left the knife with a very precise thickness, but I don’t have a surface grinder.

This project is going really well. Even when I do the wrong things, I am succeeding at them.

Some day you’ll see a finished knife here. And won’t that be special?

Update

The new motor arrived. Check it out.

Can you believe that? The seller jammed it into a flat rate box. Naturally, the Post Office destroyed it. I wonder if they do that deliberately, just to punish people for mailing things they don’t want to carry.

The base is broken, and the fan shroud is crushed. The shaft will not turn.

To his credit, the seller refunded the cost of the motor plus shipping.

Back to Ebay, I guess.