Dinner Destroyed by Transcription Error

You’re never too old to learn something obvious.

This week, I got a craving for kung pao chicken. I have yet to find decent Chinese food in my area. I learned how to make my own kung pao chicken last year. I have a bunch of non-perishable ingredients on hand. Yesterday I bought chicken and some vegetables, and today I cooked.

It’s a big, big job. Something you don’t want to do every week. I cut up green onions, ginger, chicken, and so on. I minced garlic. I measured stuff out. One of my ingredients was Sichuan peppers. I bought them last year, but I didn’t use them. I figured peppers were peppers, so I used something else.

Today I looked at my ingredient list, and it called for three tablespoons of Sichuan peppers. I decided to use the real thing. I thought they smelled odd, but I figured the Chinese knew what they were doing. I ground some up and added three tablespoons to my sauce.

When I tried to eat the food, it was disgusting. My tongue got numb. I put the whole batch down the garbage disposal. I thought the Chinese had poisoned me, the way they poisoned American pets with melamine and the way they poisoned American houses with bad drywall. I wondered if I would die. I decided that if I lived, I would take the rest of the peppers to the health department and rat out the Chinese grocer, who probably didn’t know she was selling tainted merchandise.

Then I looked at my computer, and I learned two things. Sichuan peppers are not peppers, and I was supposed to use three teaspoons, not three tablespoons.

Sichuan peppers are also called Sichuan peppercorns. They have a chemical in them that causes numbness, especially if you eat three times as much as you should.

Now my dinner is in the septic tank, and I am full of pecan twirls. I had to eat something.

In other news, I feel like I know what to do about getting a new welding table. I have been thinking about buying a factory-made table, but I have also been thinking about saving money by building my own. I just built a 4-foot-square shooting bench from steel tubing, and it’s nearly the same thing as a welding bench, so I know I can do the job. Before I built the bench, I was afraid of the welding job, and once that fear was put to rest, I was only put off by the difficulty of buying steel for the table top.

You can’t just go to the mall and ask for a 12-square-foot piece of 3/8″ steel with a precision-ground surface. People who live in the Rust Belt are lucky (in one way, anyhow) because they are surrounded by businesses that sell tools and materials. If I lived in Pittsburgh, I could probably walk out of my house and throw a rock and hit a place that sold steel for welding tables. Florida is different.

Today, through the magic of Google, I located a business that sells precision-ground plate. It’s in Tampa, 90 minutes away. I emailed and asked if they could help me. Haven’t heard back yet.

This is not the only encouraging information I got. I learned that the density of steel is 0.292 pounds per cubic inch, so the type of top I’m thinking of buying would weigh 188 pounds. Before doing the calculation, I had no idea what a decent table top would weigh, so I was afraid I’d be trying to work with a monumental object. I can deal with 188 pounds. For that matter, I could go up to 1/2″ steel and deal with 250 pounds. Drilling fixturing holes would remove something like 58 pounds from a 3/8″ table and 76 pounds from a 1/2″ table.

The steel for the frame would come in at maybe 100 pounds, which is not bad at all. It wouldn’t be like I was buying a gigantic piece of metalworking equipment I could never take with me if I moved. It would be more like buying a rolling toolbox.

I’ve seen smallish welding tables that weigh 400 or more pounds. I didn’t want to deal with that. Now I’m inclined to think they’re overbuilt. Men who like tools have a weakness for things that are too heavy. They think you can’t have strength or rigidity without lots of iron. This isn’t even close to true. It’s pretty much what the Soviets used to think, and it’s why they built machinery that was way too heavy. It’s poor engineering, based on ignorance.

I’m no engineer, but I used to be a bad physicist, and I can look at a table of figures and tell you don’t need a 300-pound frame to hold up a small welding table. The tubing I used for my bench will deflect 1/16″ if you hang 500 pounds from the end of a 4-foot stretch. That’s assuming you only use one tube, the weight is all on one point at the end, there is no thick steel plate attached to it to add rigidity, and there are no struts or legs under it to resist deflection. Add a few companion elements to your tube and refrain from putting tiny 500-pound objects at one end of it, and you should get, essentially, no deflection.

I should be able to use the exact same 2″-square tubing I used for my bench. I think it would be better to use 1″ by 3″, though, with the long sides oriented vertically. The vertical parts of the tubes would be the parts that resisted deflection, so a 1″ by 3″ tube would be a lot more rigid. It would also fit nicely between the fixturing holes on the table top. I would want 5/8″ holes on 2″ centers, so a 1″ tube would fit between holes without obstructing them.

Based on figures I’ve seen from overpriced online metal dealers, I may be able to get a 1/2″ ground plate for around $400 if I pick it up myself. The tubing would run another $100, and then I’d need paint and about $50 worth of casters. So $550, plus $30 for an annular cutter and the price of renting a magnetic drill press long enough to put holes in the plate.

It sort of looks like I could have a really neat table for maybe $700, along with bragging rights because I designed and built it. Compare that to $2000+ for a factory table.

If only I had a big welding table to build my welding table on.

Anyway, things are looking good. I have not been poisoned, and I may be able to create a nice welding table at a reasonable price. Hope your day has gone well.