When China Fails, Cambodia Comes Through

Once again, Harbor Freight’s army of Chinese factory workers has come to my rescue. Or has it?

Some years back, I decided to turn a mini lathe into a CNC lathe. I bought a set of plans and went to work, and I got it to work, sort of.

I highly recommend not doing what I did. The plans I bought said to use a long piece of a peculiar type of threaded rod instead of a ball screw, and I ended up with a great deal of backlash. They say you can program it out, but I moved on to other things before I did that. I have considered putting a ball screw in it, but I haven’t done it.

It is possible to make one of these project lathes work, but it may not be worth the effort once you get done. Depends on what you want to do. Lathes are inferior to mills, regardless of what most hobby machinists believe, and this is the reason why CNC mills are much, much more popular than lathes. If you absolutely have to make your own CNC machine, it should be a mill.

Anyway, I brought the lathe up here from Miami either 5 years ago or 3 years ago, and I plopped it on the same Black & Decker Workmate it occupied in Miami. And as it did in Miami, it collected dust and sat in the way.

I considered building a wheeled cart for the lathe, but I never did it. I also considered selling it, but it seems like I always have a hard time drawing people who will pay reasonable prices for things. And I kept thinking the lathe might be worth keeping if I put a good screw in it and learned how to program it better.

Okay, I hate selling tools. There. Now I’m being honest. Happy?

I’m glad I didn’t build a cart, because I just put a new acquisition under it. I bought me a FOURTH Harbor Freight tool chest.

My first two chests are the small US General kind, and they’re Taiwanese. They are holding up my welders now while sitting on custom welded bases I made. The third chest is a bigger US General. It’s Chinese, even though it looks like it was made in the same factory as the other ones. Only the wheels are different. The one I bought today turned out to be from Cambodia, of all places.

I didn’t know the Cambodians made anything. Harbor Freight is certainly playing the field these days. I wonder if the Chinese know they sell Taiwanese products.

The line my new chest belongs to is called Yukon, and it’s supposed to be one tier lower than US General, which produces very, very good chests at excellent prices. I looked the new one over, and my verdict is that there is very little difference in quality, if any. I would say the sheet metal is slightly wavier in places, and the chest is only 18″ deep, whereas the US Generals are 22″ deep.

I wanted a chest that took up less room and consumed less cash than US General, so Yukon’s chest fit the bill perfectly.

The nice thing about Yukon chests is that they have solid hardwood tops, which US General doesn’t provide. It’s easy to screw stuff to hardwood, it’s more ridgid, and it’s easier to replace than steel.

The neat thing about this story is that I used another Harbor Freight tool to get the chest out of my car. Ordinarily, I would have drafted my friend Mike, but he’s out of town.

The employees at my local store assumed doubtful expressions when I told them I had an SUV with no trailer outside, but I had measured the car, so I thought I had a good chance. By way of encouragement, I told them they could just refund the money and take it back if it wouldn’t fit. That didn’t seem to excite them much.

Anyway, the Harbor Freight guy and I shoved the chest into my car, and when I got home, I removed it by pushing it onto my Harbor Freight Central Machinery hydraulic cart. This thing will lift 500 pounds from about 9″ from the ground to maybe 30″.

Everyone needs one of these. Or the bigger one, which lifts 1000 pounds. They are unbelievably handy. And they can be modified. You can put a big table top on one and use it for a workbench. You can attach ramps to one and push or drive mowers and so on onto it. I have repaired and installed wall ovens singlehandedly with one.

I got one end of the chest on the cart, and then I put a $17 Gorilla collapsible aluminum bench behind my bumper. I got the box out so one end was on the cart and the other was on the bench. Then I managed to lower one end onto the floor by myself. The box weighed about 170 pounds according to Harbor Freight’s site, so handling one end was not impossible.

Putting the casters on a heavy tool chest by yourself is an interesting experience, but I came up with tactics that worked, and I didn’t put a scratch or dent on anything.

Getting the lathe off the Workmate was a joy. I didn’t enjoy lifting it, because with the stepper motors, it probably weighs over 100 pounds, but I was glad to put it onto a wheeled platform so I could move it around instead of killing workshop space permanently with it. Also, a lot of junk and crud had accumulated in its part of the shop, and I got to clean it all out. The filth was amazing.

Now I have good access to the lathe, and I can put all my mini-lathe tooling and parts in handy, spacious drawers instead of using the ridiculous toolbox I bought years ago. Toolboxes tend to cling tenaciously to shelves and the floor and discourage the use of whatever is in them. Chests are warm and giving. They practically throw their contents into your arms. In other words, they’re convenient, and convenience is at least a third of getting any job done.

I now think I need to get a ball screw, and I should also think about putting Mach 3, the CNC program I used, on my ancient 2005 laptop. I have never been able to make myself throw this laptop out, and now I have a valid use for it which it is well able to perform.

The big controller box I made for the lathe fits in the chest’s bottom drawer, which is fantastic. It won’t be able to collect any more crud there.

I am now up to…let’s see…SIX tool chests. And I regret nothing. Storage is extremely important if you actually want to get anything done in a shop. Without it, things get damaged and lost, and the things that aren’t lost are impossible to find. Instead of working, you spend half your time walking in circles looking for what you need.

As the photo shows, the chest I bought is blue. I am making a real effort to add color to the shop.

I am now planning to put in a split unit for cooling, and I will have to add a ceiling and insulate the doors. Once these things are done, there will be nearly no reason for me to ever go in the house.

I credit God with my success. When you can’t get things done, there is usually a supernatural reason. Rhodah and I have started seeing things returned and restored.

Now I have to finish putting my tractor back together. That’s easy now that I managed to put it in my shop. It seems like we have torrential rain here every day now. Well…we DO, actually. But now that the tractor is indoors, it’s no big deal.

In other news, I got trolled after my last post. I wrote about the vision my wife had, in which God said the royals would have a funeral soon. The vision occurred on June 22, and I wrote about it a couple of days later. Some guy showed up and made fun of us, and he also ridiculed the gift of tongues and the vision, so he blasphemed the Holy Spirit Himself.

I decided to publish the comment because sometimes when someone does something they will later be embarrassed about, it’s best to see to it they get the exposure they wanted at the time. What he said will not age well.

It’s strange that he ridiculed a documented vision that clearly came true, but I guess he wasn’t concerned with being analytical. I can understand ridiculing people whose predictions fail, especially when they insist they didn’t fail. I’m thinking of the people who still predict a 2020 Trump win. I don’t understand ridiculing someone whose prediction came true, especially when that person’s husband revealed the prediction without making any claims about the source and without asking for money or a new jet.

Anyway, we have prayed for him. As I heard a preacher say recently, everyone will believe in God eventually. Here’s hoping my commenter comes to believe before it’s too late.