Still Waffling

Mish Weiss’s blood cell counts are showing some improvement, but she has another cold and a very high fever. Here’s what a faithful prayer warrior has to say in her comments:

Of course, we will pray. Thanks for the specific info so we know exactly how to pray. I believe G_d answers our specific prayers. So we will pray that Mish’s counts continue to go up and the fever goes down the the cold goes away.

I’m joining in these prayers, and I hope you will do the same. Posting for Mish, Marc says “I know that I don’t even have to ask for prayer, thank you in advance.” What a day we live in, when Christians and Jews cooperate like this and see each other as allies. Many denominations, especially mainstream churches, display disturbing hostility to Jews and Israel, but there are at least 800 million Christians who have been taught that the Jews are the apple of God’s eye, and that we are to help them whenever we can.

In other news, I’m dithering on the lathe issue. A certain sum will buy me one of these three items: a Grizzly G4003G with a stand and a warranty, a used Clausing 5914 that came from a prison, and a South Bend 13 x 36. Og says the Chinese stuff is as good as ours now. If that’s true, the Grizzly is a good move. It will have a warranty and great customer support, and presumably, it will work right out of the crate. Still, I’ve read about little quality issues where the old US stuff is much better, and it’s possible that I might be better off with an old lathe.

I should point out that the G4003G is a gunsmith’s lathe. It’s a G4003 with better bearings and a few gewgaws. It should be considerably better than most non-Taiwan Grizzly offerings.

I’ve decided I’m not comfortable buying a used local machine unless I can be completely sure it will perform as well as a new Chinese job. The risk is too big, unless the machine is so cheap I can’t justify not trying it. A person of limited skills can’t really restore an old lathe, unless it has damage limited to certain areas. The Clausing and South Bend come from a dealer with a great reputation; I’d rather pay him a fair price than buy an iffy lathe really cheap.

Complicating the issue, I keep thinking the smart move might be to drop a few hundred on a Harbor Freight job and learn about machining. If I did that, presumably in a few months I’d be knowledgeable enough about lathes to evaluate used tools.

I hope my next round of Smartflix DVDs arrives today.