Mill Nearly Here

The milling machine is eight minutes late.

I can’t stand it. Oh, the suspense. And the dread. What if my measurements are wrong and I can’t park in the garage after this?

This morning I realized I should have bought T nuts to attach my vise to the machine. I have a clamping set, so I’ll be okay, but I should have some studs and nuts that are dedicated to the job.

Now it’s nine minutes late.

I wonder what the day holds for me. A lot of cleaning, I would think. This machine may be slathered in cosmoline. I hope there are no problems with it. If these people take seven weeks to ship a mill, imagine how long they take to fix one if it’s busted.

Ten minutes late.

I’ll have to tram it. That will be my first real challenge. After that, I install the vise. Then I may throw some metal in the vise and see if I can square it up.

I’m really pathetic. Last night, I went to the marina with my dad to try to get his GPS working. It turns out that Garmin GPSs are extremely finicky about power supplies, and a lot of people have problems because of it. The sloppy guy who installed this one has it on the same circuit as at least two other pieces of marine electronics. The Garmin tech said we should run a wire to the battery, just for the GPS. Right. That will only take five hours and forty feet of wire.

Here is the pathetic part. Someone had left a big tubular aluminum thing near the trash. Maybe an antenna. Naturally, I grabbed it. Hey, five pounds of free aluminum, and several feet are anodized. Black. Very pretty.

Fourteen minutes late.

Mike will be here tonight. Maybe I’ll fix a Costco prime rib eye for him. They’re very nice, but truthfully, the choice steaks I got last week were so good, I don’t think there is much point in buying prime for everyday dinners. The prime jobs are better, but not way, way, WAY better.

Fifteen minutes late. I better go out and look up and down the street. Just to be helpful.

Ready for the Forklift

I moved a bunch of crap around in the garage, and now there is room for my milling machine. I am freaking out for the second time in two days. Maybe I’ll freak out every day from now on.

If I use this thing five times and then sell it at a loss, it will still be fantastic. I have dreamed of this for ages. One way or the other, the story will finally have an ending.

I want to make my crab-cracking thing. I want to make the world’s first worthwhile garlic press. I have dreams about milling the heads on the Harley; supposedly the 2001 engines were manufactured so they didn’t get enough air, and you can fix it with a mill.

I watched the ATI lathe videos for a while today, while taking notes. It was fairly dull, but I paid for it, so I was determined to get my money’s worth. He ground a bunch of tools on his belt grinder. I have to give him credit. I have seen three video guys grind tools so far, and it’s always boring, but this guy seems to have the best approach. IF you don’t mind shelling out for a Burr King. That would be the hitch. You can spend like $1500 for a hotshot belt machine, or you can buy a bench grinder for under a hundred. Hmm…tough choice.

I’ll bore you with the lowdown on grinding. Rudy Kouhoupt has a video where he uses a bench grinder. He milled himself a special tool support with a sliding doodad with an arm on it which you can adjust with a protractor. You screw the doodad down and rest the tool on it as you grind. I think. It would take like a day for a skilled machinist to make his special grinding table, but when it’s done, you get tool angles that are accurate to within a degree. And your tools are probably way more accurate than they need to be.

Adrian Pendergast has a video where he walks up to a spinning grinder with no guards on it, jams a tool into it, and gives it hell. He guesses at the angles. Sparks fly all over the place. Seems to work.

Then there’s the ATI guy, who does about three times the amount of work Pendergast does, switching belts twice to get a high polish on his tools.

The Pendergast way looks pretty tempting.

Get ready for some interesting posts tomorrow.

Obama Roars; God Snickers

Jews in Israel are finally rallying against Obama. From Dani Dayan, leader of the Council of Jewish Communities of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip:

David Ben-Gurion founded Israel in spite of American pressure… Menachem Begin destroyed Osirak in spite of American opposition, and Yitzhak Shamir rejected American demands to stop construction.

Amen! When America’s President is an anti-Christian, anti-Semitic Chicago machine veteran who spent 20 years warming a pew in a non-church where hostility to the Jews was preached openly, Israel owes it to herself to stand up to him.

Look at the reward Jews got for backing this cohort of Nation of Islam bigots. Will they learn? Some seem to be getting the picture. I can’t believe they got fooled in the first place.

When has currying favor paid off for the Jews? Liberalism is never going to make them popular. If you want to make good policy, forget the Democrats. Remember God and the M.S. St. Louis.

Let’s see. Who has Obama stabbed in the back, to date? The UAW. Doctors. Jews. The police unions. His own grandmother. Why would anyone trust this man? His record of promise-breaking is reminiscent of Hitler’s.

Build in the West Bank! If God is with you, who cares what Obama thinks? God is eternal. Obama is a Cabbage Patch Doll wrapped in a hula hoop. His term will be over before you know it.

Note: while I was writing this entry, I learned that the proper name for the ship I mentioned is “M.S. St. Louis,” not “S.S. St. Louis.” Something to do with the diesel engines.

MILL!!!

The rigger called! Looks like I will have a mill in my garage tomorrow!

Then I have to move the lathe and wire up the compressor and decide what to do with my workbench. And wire up the VFD. And clean the mill. And ask myself if I’m crazy.

I can’t believe this day is going to come.

So This is Ecstasy

Costco had prime beef today.

This is EASILY the greatest day of my life.

They had boneless rib eye steaks for $10 a pound. Not bad at all. That’s not far from half price. But they had rib eye ROASTS for $7.27! Oh, man. You can get a roast two feet long for a hundred bucks. Maybe ten decent steaks. If that isn’t a good reason to convert a beer cooler into a deep freeze, I don’t know what is.

The sad thing: Costco probably had prime beef the last time I went. I think I looked in the wrong place.

Unusual Combination

I have to catch up on a few things.

Og’s friend Ken has cancer. It has invaded his femur. He stumbled the other day, and the femur broke. Send up some prayers.

A guy who refers to himself as “Gorak” just popped up on the Chaski forum. He says:

I live in a suburb of Vancouver, British Columbia. Professionally, I work for a large consumer electronics company at an R&D facility managing all of the test laboratories. Outside of work, I am an avid sea kayaker, woodworker and wood turner and am in the planning stages of building an 18′ cedar strip sea kayak. My current hobby time however is severely limited as I also act as primary caregiver for my wife who is fighting an advanced terminal cancer.

Couldn’t hurt to pray.

Longtime reader Ruth has started a blog. You must begin reading it immediately.

Back to business. Sort of. Sondra has blogged my blogging of her excursion to church. So if you want, you can go over and leave a comment. I don’t know if she realized how many of her readers were Christians, but she definitely knows now.

I feel like I am partly responsible for helping Sondra decide to go to church. But who helped me? I have tended to think my own prayers made the difference in my life, but I now understand that that’s wrong. I was not the only one praying. Looking at Sondra’s blog comments, I have to wonder how many of my readers prayed for me all these years, trying to straighten me out. Keep it up. It obviously works. And thanks.

I think I’ve found the solution to my metric threading problem. I considered buying dies, but that would be a limited answer. I would have to buy a die for each thread I planned to cut, and I would have no choice about the diameters of the stock I threaded. I don’t know if there is any point in putting a thread on a rod of unusual diameter, but why give up the option? I also considered getting a 7 x 14 lathe and setting it up for metric threading. This would be great, but it’s one more machine. Someone on the Chaski forum suggested I look into a new idea: the electronic lead screw (ELS). I checked it out, and I think it’s the way to go.

Here’s how it works. You buy a stepper motor and a little digital controller, and you connect the motor to your lead screw. You also put a sensor on your spindle to tell the control box how fast the lathe is turning. Now you can move the carriage back and forth at any ratio you want. I assume there is some error, but it would be insignificant. This works so well, people who use ELS boxes commonly thread at 500 RPM. I have no idea why they would want to do this, but they do.

You can also wire it up to your cross slide to get a cheap version of CNC. This means you can cut tapers without a taper attachment. That’s a great thing. A used Clausing taper attachment would cost a grand. I can make one, but it would be a pain in the butt to store when not in use, and I’d have to put it on and take it off.

There are lots of other ways to get metric on my lathe. You can buy a 30-piece metric attachment, if you’re lucky enough to find one. They pop up about once a year. This lathe requires a metric quadrant and a bunch of other stuff, so you can’t just stick a gear in there and hope for the best. Getting a metric attachment is totally unrealistic. The ELS, on the other hand, goes on with a few bolts. And when you don’t need it, it disconnects. It won’t ruin the lathe, either. If I hate it, I can take it off and throw it in the trash.

It sounds very sweet, not to mention relatively cheap. I would have to find a way to couple the motor to the screw; that’s the only challenge. The screw on my lathe is completely covered at the right end, except for the end surface. I would have to machine into that surface to make a way to put a pulley on the screw. I guess it can be done. It’s supposed to be pretty hard to machine a square hole into a flat surface, so that probably won’t work. A tapped hole won’t work, because the screw needs to reverse, and that will make the threads come undone. Maybe I could bore a hole and put a set screw in from the side, with the screw sunk into the side of the screw, so it wouldn’t interfere with the thing the end of the screw spins in. Then I could make a shaft with a flat on one side and stick it in there. I have to make sure the screw hole would not have any ill effects on the lubrication. I suppose if it did, I could fill it with epoxy or something.

Funny, I had no idea how to do this, and then this idea came to me while I blogged it.

How do I bore a hole in the end of a lead screw with no lead screw in the lathe? Angle attachment on the mill? Arrghh.

Wait, I don’t need a lead screw. I use the ram on the tailstock.

I feel better now. That was a close one. I’ll bet the steel in that screw will eat drill bits like candy. But I have a carbide end mill I can use.

The milling machine should be at the rigger’s RIGHT NOW. Can you believe it? I feel faint. I am dying to crank that thing up.

Go visit Sondra. I mean it.

Over and Over and Over and Over

Seems like every time I go to Trinity Church, there is some sort of “coincidence” that freaks me out. This week, I have a doozy.

Perhaps you’re familiar with Sondra K. If you’re a male blog reader, I’m sure you know who she is. She has one of the best conservative blogs. Sondra and I are friends. She is, or was, a pagan. You can imagine how I felt about that. No Christian wants a friend of his to worship trees or rocks or whatever it is pagans worship. When you proactively try to contact and please “gods” and “goddesses,” you are essentially inviting malevolent spirits to infect your life.

Naturally, Sondra and her husband JR have been on my prayer list.

I was surprised a few months back when Sondra said she planned to attend a Catholic mass. I couldn’t believe it. People tend to be pretty loyal to their religions. I thought it was a great omen.

This week, in an email, she said she felt God had been calling her for about a year. I guess I don’t have to tell you I was excited. I suggested she check out some kind of pentecostal church to see what she thought. I said I would contact my church and ask them if they could recommend a place near her. Sondra is near Olympia, Washington, which is around an hour from Seattle.

I procrastinated. I thought I would look stupid, asking these people if they could recommend a church near Seattle. What were the odds that they knew anyone up there? Vanishingly small.

On Saturday night, I went to church. The sermon was about direction. A big part of Christianity is “walking by faith.” That means you try to do what God wants, even when you have no idea what the point is. Sometimes it will seem like you’re doing something silly or counterproductive, but over your life, God will keep stepping in at these times and making things work out. He’s like Mr. Miyagi. You’re doing “wax on, wax off” all day, wondering if the one who told you to do it is crazy, and when it’s over, it turns out you were learning karate. Something like that.

I was really happy to see that Pastor Rich was talking about the very thing that was on my mind. I practiced law, I got a few books published, and then I drew closer to God, and now I need direction. Should I become a mediator? Should I try to write Christian books and articles? I don’t know. I do not want to litigate. That much I am sure of. I do it well, but it’s like mud wrestling for a living.

He talked about the Israelites at the first Passover. They needed to get away from Pharaoh, and instead of a rational plan, God told them to cook and eat lambs, put the blood on their doorposts, and wait. And you know how it worked out. They left Egypt immediately, and the Egyptians loaded them down with money and weapons. Then God took them to the shore of a sea, where they were trapped with Pharaoh’s army in hot pursuit. And again, you know what happened. God opened the sea and led them across the floor, and then he drowned the Egyptians. And after that, God stayed before them, in a cloud or a pillar of flame, leading them around in the wilderness.

I hadn’t thought about it, but the notion of walking by faith applies to waiting for direction. You have to assume God will eventually show you which way to go. So I’ll wait.

As an illustration of how this works, Pastor Rich talked about coming to Miami, in 1998. He and his wife lived in another state, in a 5000-square-foot house that was built for them as a gift. They had a son who was a senior in high school, and they had four other sons. They had family in their area. It seemed like they were right where they needed to be, but then they became convinced that God wanted them to move to Miami, and he didn’t supply a big pile of money to help them make the move.

Keep this in mind: for some reason, I had been under the impression that they were from Minnesota.

He started talking about the length of the trip. He said they traveled 4,000 miles, from one end of the country to the other. And I sat up in my seat. Then he said they moved from one corner of the country to the opposite corner. And I thought, “No, it can’t be.” And toward the end of the sermon, he confirmed it. They came here from Seattle.

I had been waffling about accosting him and asking about a church for Sondra, but now I had no choice. At the end of the sermon, I told him I knew someone near Seattle, and I said this person needed a church. He recommended a place called City Church. Then I said she was actually near Olympia. And he said she needed to try Evergreen Church, in Olympia. And the pastor there was his brother-in-law.

Think about this. There are fifty states. There are many, many cities. Thousands and thousands. The population of Olympia is roughly 40,000; it’s not a big town. And my pastor’s brother-in-law runs a church there. Just happens to.

If this doesn’t make an impression on you, you are beyond reach.

I emailed Sondra and told her she had to go and take a look, because if she didn’t, I would not be able to sleep. I am hoping she’ll sneak in today.

It may be a good choice for her. Catholics have a big problem with liberalism in the clergy. It’s very disturbing, seeing men of the cloth side with Marxists and pacifists and people who favor convenience abortion. In an Assemblies of God church, a conservative is a drop-in part. In spirit-filled churches, leftists are a tiny minority, as they should be. It’s amazing that any Christian could vote for Barack Obama, who voted to withhold life support from abortion victims born alive, and who spent 20 years in an openly anti-Semitic church run by a former member (and current ally) of the Nation of Islam.

Today I became a member of Trinity Church. I went to a class, and then the new people had to sit up front and be presented to the rest of the church. I hate being a spectacle, but it’s something they wanted to do, so I stayed. Even though I heard the same sermon last night. I am hoping they’ll find a use for me, beyond holding down a chair. For now, I’m pooped. Three and a half hours of church is enough for anyone.

I told Sondra, “If you end up converting, this kind of thing will never stop happening to you.” She said “coincidences” had been happening to her all her life. Maybe God has had his hand on her. I hope something comes of this. Say a prayer. She gave me permission to blog this.

Now I have to flop on the couch.

More

From Sondra:

I met the pastor Dale and he is wonderful.
Yes, I went and survived….and will be going back next week
[snip]
Thank you, Steve 🙂 Life is so grand.

“Freaked out” doesn’t begin to describe how I feel. I can’t believe Sondra and JR listened to me!

When He’s Ten Feet Wide

What IS it they put in McDonald’s breakfasts?

I just ate a McMuffin, a greasy biscuit sandwich, and three hash browns, and I’m pretty sure I’m high. I can’t get enough of this stuff. The only breakfast I like better is a big Southern breakfast with country ham and biscuits and gravy. And jelly. And honey. And red eye gravy. And Dr. Pepper.

There has to be a drug in this stuff. It can’t just be grease and flour and eggs.

I look forward to this all week, because I diet every day except Saturday. All week long, it has been oatmeal, oatmeal, oatmeal, OATMEAL. I have breakfast with my dad on Tuesdays, and on those days, I have a tuna sandwich, because eggs are bad for my gall bladder. Once a week, I have to have something I can actually taste.

I stopped losing weight. I guess I manage to eat so much on Saturdays, it kills the rest of the week. I may have to adjust my calories downward. But I’m not giving up Saturdays. I don’t care if the other days go down to three hundred calories each. I have to have decent food on occasion.

Speaking of decent food, I had a magnificent Costco steak this week. I went down there hoping the local Costcos was one of the stores where they had started selling prime beef. Sadly, it was not. But I picked up some choice rib eyes, and beef grading is not an exact science, and what I ended up with was pretty much the same thing as prime. I pan-fried one for dinner, and it made my eyes roll back in my head. I think it pays to study the beef you buy, because you will occasionally find something better than the grade on the label indicates.

Dinner is pretty dull for me these days. Roasted chicken, grilled fish, pork chops, or pan-fried steak, plus a couple of boring vegetables that are low in carbs. The food is good, but there is no imagination in it. And it’s a little monotonous. Lunch is almost always a tuna salad or salmon salad sandwich and a little fruit. If I didn’t break loose on Saturday, I’d go insane.

Imagine eating a gorgeous rib eye with steamed snap peas and Brussels sprouts. This is what I am reduced to.

In my book, I advised people to cook steaks outdoors on a propane-powered griddle, and that gives incredible results, but lately I’ve been using a cast-iron skillet on the stove, right under the vent fan. The smoke has been tolerable. Seems like a piece of cast iron will start imparting a wonderful flavor to steak, if you cook steak in it regularly. Maybe I should dedicate that skillet to rib eyes and CFS.

I believe a Christian has to have self-control, and that means you can’t eat everything you want. Like Jim from SOTW says, it’s irritating to hear a big, fat, sloppy preacher with a 50-inch waist and giant wattles make the ridiculous claim that it’s a sin to drink moderately.

Why are Christians so fat? Is it my imagination? The people at my church look pretty normal, but if you turn on religious TV, you will see some real porkers punishing the pews. I guess we take the energy we can’t channel into other sins and put it into gluttony. If you’re letting your physical urges ruin your life, you’re sinning, aren’t you? How is weighing 300 pounds significantly different from taking drugs or being a drunk? I realize obesity has fewer ill effects on you and your family, but it will still kill you and make everyone around you miserable. Have you ever sat next to a fat person on an airplane? Do you have a fat relative who ruins your meals because of the way he or she eats? Do you have someone who makes it impossible for anyone else in the house to get anything good to eat, because he or she nails it as soon as it comes in the door? Do you have a fat relative who always gets the best seat in the car because he can’t get in the other ones? Fat people hog the bathroom, because they have to. They ruin furniture. Fat women destroy wooden floors with their tiny heels. If you’re huge, you’re probably making your family suffer. You should try to do something about it.

I wrote that silly cookbook, but it wasn’t intended to be a set of rules to guide you through every day of your life. I am fat, and I will never claim it’s okay, and while I will continue cooking good food as often as I can get away with it, I will never stop working on my weight.

Speaking of drinking, I haven’t made beer in ages, and I really need to get back to it. I rarely drink, but it would be a shame to get so good at homebrewing and then throw it all away. When you drink very little, you ought to make it count. Have something really good. I can’t remember my last drink of hard liquor, but I can promise you it was something excellent. I can afford it because one bottle lasts two years.

I wish it were next Saturday already, so I could hit the drive-through again.

Patriotism no Cure for Stupidity

As a machining hobbyist, I find that I have one problem that is very difficult to overcome. Of course, I am referring to stupidity.

Today I was determined to do something with the lathe. I went out to the garage, and I saw a part on my Moto Guzzi which needed to be replaced. It’s a simple rod with threading at each end. It connects the shifter to the transmission. The original part is chrome-plated, and the chrome fell off. And I just happen to have a lot of stainless rod for machining. Stainless is obviously better than chrome.

I got all excited and decided to take a whack at it. It was just a matter of turning some stainless to the right size and threading both ends.

Then I remembered: I bought a standard lathe, and this is a metric bike. Arrgh.

I rooted around on the web, trying to find out what I could do. It turns out you can get metric gears for the Clausing 5936, but only if you can FIND them. And then you’re likely to get robbed. I found a partial set, but that was no good.

I felt dejected. I decided to quit. I started cursing myself (again) for not listening to Og when he told me to get a Grizzly lathe. I don’t know what I was thinking. That lathe came with a follow rest, steady rest, and metric gears. And a warranty. I still think I should get rid of the Clausing. Antiques are fun, but I am paying a big price for sticking with “old iron.”

Then I remembered something. I had stuff for metric threading! A while back, I bought drill and tap sets. Stupidity had prevented me from remembering.

I took the part off the bike and measured it. I laid it on the workbench and reached for the taps and drills. Then I realized…no dies. I can’t do external metric threading.

So while stupidity had gone into remission on one level, it was still hard at work on another.

Now I have to put the part back on and look around on the web for metric dies.

On top of that, I have no follow rest, because I bought a piece of ancient American history instead of a working tool. The rod I need to make is 0.272″ in diameter and about 7″ long. I’ll bet I can’t make that without a follow rest.

I should sell this thing. Problems like this are going to keep popping up, and the parts are impossible to find. I started searching for a steady rest and follow rest weeks ago, and nothing has turned up.

Crowley Bringing the Kryptonite?

This thing with Obama and Cambridge cop James Crowley is amazing. Crowley may possibly be the worst person on earth Obama could have picked on. Crowley’s initial interview on TV was nothing short of astounding; no attorney or handler could have improved on it. And he looks like a movie star; if they made a movie about Russell Crowe, Crowley could play him. And he was picked by his black police chief to teach about racial profiling. On top of that, he tried to save a black NBA star by giving him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. And he didn’t play that card! His mother did!

The class and shrewdness Crowley displayed in his interview are exactly the types of traits Obama lacks. The contrast between the Crowley video and the video of Obama’s idiotic slander is instructive.

I think many events in life have a supernatural origin. This guy may have been fated to breach Obama’s hull. He is almost too perfect for the purpose.

The cops are demanding an apology, and there is absolutely no doubt that one is necessary. Obama doesn’t have a leg to stand on.

Obama is a very small, insecure, and arrogant person, so I see three possible outcomes, ranked in order of descending likelihood:

1. No apology; the Messiah can do no wrong. The unbelievers are the problem! Attacks on Crowley and those demanding an apology will be mounted, if at all possible. Robert Gibbs sends out for a fresh crate of Maalox and ends up looking even more slimy and condescending than usual.

2. Mealy-mouthing tarted up as an apology. “I regret the misunderstanding.” “I am sorry the Cambridge police [stupidly] took it this way.”

3. An apology which looks sincere when displayed on a teleprompter, but which Obama will be unable to deliver without making his contempt and anger obvious. Followed by a quick exit and a weekend of pouting.

Maybe 2 should be on top. Depends on whether the handlers have any luck when they beseech the Anointed One.

Whatever

The rigger just emailed. He says the company that is bringing my milling machine says the mill will be at the rigger’s place on Monday morning. That puts it here on Tuesday.

Truth, or more cruel machine-tool industry humor?

I Decipher the Lathe Chart

Time for the world’s worst machinist to pose a stupid question.

I have been complaining that my lathe doesn’t tell me how fast the power feed moves. It has a threading chart, and I assumed the little measurements on the chart, below the thread pitch numbers, indicated the distance the carriage moved per revolution when threading. However, I didn’t bother to see whether the measurements made sense. Yesterday I realized they did not. For example, at 4 threads per inch, the measurement is 0.0367″, which is not even close to the 0.25″ each thread would require.

Are these numbers power feed speeds? They have to be. The manual doesn’t say, but it’s the only thing that makes sense.

I got amazing news from my rigger today. He says the mill should arrive at his place by 1:00 p.m. This is like waiting for the Second Coming. There have been so many false labors, I find it hard to believe that it will ever get here.

I wish I had some metal on hand for a project. I have lots of round stock, plus a little thin rectangular bar, but my only meaningful piece of milling fodder is my 72-pound chunk of mild steel, which is the size of a loaf of Wonder Bread. I had the chance to get a Jet band saw at a great price, but I failed utterly, so I have no practical way of making smaller pieces from the loaf. I can use the mill, but that would take a century and waste a lot of metal. I guess I could part it in the lathe! That would be pretty terrifying.

I was kidding just now, but I suppose it’s possible. Mount it in the 4-jaw chuck, center-drill it, stick it on my poor beat-up dead center, and pray. I’d have to back the tailstock off every time I got close to the center of the work, because you’re not supposed to part using a center. I’d also have to drill over and over, because each slice would take a drill hole with it, and then I’d have slices with drill holes in them, so I’d have to face the material down to the point where the holes disappeared, wasting metal.

I wonder how slowly I’d have to run the lathe. Like 20 RPM, unless I wanted to dodge a 72-pound missile as it came off the chuck.

No, this is not a great idea. I may as well get a band saw or find someone to cut this thing. If I pay someone, I have to decide in advance exactly how big the pieces will be.

I parted my pathetic hammer handle project with one end in a chuck and one end on a dead center, but I pulled the dead center out before I got close to the end. I hope that’s not insanely dangerous. It seemed to make sense. The center kept things working through most of the cut, and at the end, it wasn’t necessary.

The VFD is pretty great. Combine it with the back gear, and you could probably turn slowly enough to roast a pig. Helpful when parting.

VFD…pig roasting…help! I’m having an awful idea! I have a crappy 3-phase motor I’ll never be able to sell. How cheap can I get a VFD for it? I’d be the bull goose pig roaster of all time.

Thank God, the VFD is too expensive. It’s $144. There is no way I would do that. Tempting idea, though. Low frequencies for slow cooking; crank it up to throw excess grease off the pig. I guess the motor would burn up at 1 RPM.

I never followed up with my pig roaster idea. A long time ago I planned to weld one up, out of fence posts. But the motor I ordered never arrived. They discontinued it or something. I should check Grainger. Fence posts cost virtually nothing, and I already have a couple. The motor is the only real expense.

Ebay Wins Again

I gave up and ordered myself a better knurling tool. I think part of my knurling problem was that I was using 304 stainless, which is not all that soft. You need to use a lot of pressure. My lathe is only a 12″ job; there is a limit to the pressure it can exert on a part held between centers. I decided to try a tool that applies pressure all by itself. I found a knockoff of the Eagle Rock scissors-type knurling tool, which has two knurls that apply pressure from opposite sides of the work. The tool I have now has two knurls on the same side, and the lathe does the pushing.

I could have gone with the real Eagle Rock tool, but these things look pretty simple, and I think I should be able to make a perfectly good one once I have a mill. I would at least like to try it before spending money needlessly.

Another problem is that 304 stainless hardens when you apply force to it, so I was clearly an idiot for trying to do multiple turns. On the first turn, you harden the work, and then you’re in trouble.

Some people make their own knurls. A guy named Frank Ford posts regularly on the Chaski forum, and he made his own rope knurl. This is a knurl that goes around the edges of things like cabinet door knobs, leaving a surface that looks a lot like rope.

I have been told that I should use my power feed to move knurls down a workpiece, but as far as I can tell, there is no way to know how fast my power feed moves. The threading chart has speeds listed in thousandths per turn, but that’s not the power feed. Maybe there’s something in the manual. I don’t see why I couldn’t use the threading feed instead.

Someone somewhere said you can move knurls down a workpiece by applying pressure with the handwheel. The knurls try to pull the carriage, but they can’t do it by themselves, so you give them a boost. I haven’t tried that.

I’ve also been told–by a very respected machinist–that when you make diamond knurling, you don’t have to worry about the diameter of the work. Uh…okay. I know he has to be right, but I will have to see it happen in front of me before I’ll get the idea.

I made a lot of notes while watching the ATI lathe videos today. One nice thing about that series is that the instructor uses a puny 10″ lathe, so I don’t have to worry that he might be teaching me things that I can’t do on my 12″ Clausing. The other DVDs I have feature a giant lathe, by my standards. I think it’s a 15″ Leblond, but I forget.

I need to get out in the garage and try to knurl something. The tool I have is probably not good for stainless, but I have other stuff. I would hate to waste good aluminum, which is expensive, but I can grab some crummy steel.

The mill is supposed to be within the city limits tomorrow. After waiting seven weeks, I think I should sell tickets.

“Stupidly”

What is it with Barack Obama and his junior high attitude? Why does a sitting President do Jay Leno, let his daughter wear a leftist peace symbol on a visit to Russia, and attack private citizens? Next he’ll be judging American Idol. “Uh, your singing isn’t very good. Uh, I would go so far as to say, ‘No, you can’t.'”

I was amazed when he stooped to bad-mouth Rush Limbaugh. Is this Presidential conduct? Maybe Obama should start a blog and post at Democratic Underground. Now he’s sullying his office by making wild accusations against the Cambridge, Massachusetts, police. He says they acted “stupidly” when they arrested Professor Henry Gates. And in the same breath, Obama admits HE DOESN’T KNOW THE FACTS.

Forget the Presidency. Let’s pretend Obama is just a lawyer, acting in his professional capacity, on television. No lawyer who deserves a license offers legal opinions without doing his homework. It’s fine, if you’re blathering on a blog or ranting in a bar with your beer buddies, but when you put on your suit and go to work, that kind of thing is supposed to cease.

Look at the result. We have a lowly Massachusetts police sergeant at the mercy of the liberal press, and their newest ally is the President of the United States. And Obama admits he’s going after Crowley BEFORE determining whether Crowley did anything wrong.

Imagine how that feels. Imagine being accused of screwing up at your job, and going home, and turning on the tube, and seeing Barack Obama flapping his lips about what a bad employee you are.

Instead of saying, “I am the President, and it is not my job to investigate, or comment on, trivial arrrests made by local peace officers,” he convicted the entire Cambridge PD without hesitation, and he used very harsh language while doing it. He didn’t even allow for the possibility of an honest mistake.

I would hate to be fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan right now, depending on this immature, approval-craving pop idol to back me up when I do my job.

Newsbusters put the police report up. Predictably and credibly, it says Gates acted like a jerk. He essentially dared the police to arrest him. If the facts alleged in the report are true, Crowley showed up to prevent Gates’s home from being burglarized, asked to see some identification, and tried to leave. Gates pursued him into the yard and berated him in front of the public. I find that very believable. The police can be obnoxious and tyrannical, but it’s pretty unusual for them to fabricate a reason for an arrest, in front of a gawking crowd.

Gates was cited for disorderly conduct. I don’t know what the elements of disorderly conduct are, under the controlling law in Cambridge. I would guess that wearing a McCain button would suffice. Before Obama pronounced judgment, he should have had one of his lackeys check the law and read the arrest report, and he should have spent fifteen or twenty seconds performing an analysis. Some law professor.

Obama went on to convict the entire American law enforcement establishment. He said this:

“What I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there’s a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. That’s just a fact.”

What he didn’t point out is that we also have a long history of insincere minority activists slandering the police. Maybe that’s what happened here. But why wait to find out? President “I Won” doesn’t have to check the facts. He rules by prejudice, assumption, and fiat.

We also have a long history of cops showing up when people break into houses, as Professor Gates did. Maybe that’s relevant here.

The cops are hard on minorities. No question. The other day, someone told me someone he knew had been pulled over for having a light out on his car, and I interrupted and said, “That HAS to be a black person.” And sure enough, it was. I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck. I know a lot of cops look for reasons to pull black people over. But if I were President, would I go on TV and indict millions of workers who constitute the front-line troops in the domestic part of my own branch of government? Uh–as Barack would say–NO.

I might say, “We need to continue working to treat minorities as well as the majority under the law.” I might say, “There is a continuing effort in our police departments to prevent disparate treatment of minorities.” I would not turn on the cops as a whole, sapping their morale and giving the green light to race-card players all over the nation.

Imagine if Obama had said this before the Simpson murders. O.J. was already spoiled by police (white and black) who refused to follow up on his transgressions against his wife. Think how happy he would have been, knowing the cops were intimidated by a kneejerk pronouncement from a President who doesn’t think. Ask yourself whether prosecutors would have been as likely to prosecute Simpson. From now on, every cop who has a legitimate reason to arrest a prominent black person will think twice before doing his duty.

This is a man with no maturity and no understanding. He’s like a green piece of fruit. The words “class” and “grace” are beyond his comprehension. His Presidency is coming to resemble the Jerry Springer Show.

How can anyone be surprised? This is a man who turned on the white grandmother who raised him, while penning a book in praise of a black man who abandoned him. What kind of treachery can be beyond a person like that?

I hope all the union-brainwashed cops who voted for Obama understand that their throats have been cut. I hope they realize they have been betrayed, and I hope they won’t be stupid enough to let their unions choose their candidates in the future. He sandbagged the Jews by putting the screws to Israel. Now he’s turning on the police unions. I wonder whose back will feel the knife next.

DVDs Deceive

Man, I am irate. I have two sets of lathe DVDs, and neither one has the right information about knurling.

As I noted earlier, I did not understand how the machinists in the videos got the knurls to track in the same cuts, over and over as they turned the workpieces. When I do it, on successive turns of the workpiece, the knurls make new marks overlaying the marks made on the earlier turns. You don’t get a sharp diamond pattern this way. You get a mess. The guys in the videos say nothing about this. They just knurl away, and everything comes out perfect.

I just found an article which explains it. Apparently, you have to measure the distance between the ridges on the knurls and then turn your work to a circumference that is a multiple of that distance. Why don’t they mention this in the videos?

The more I read about this, the more I see that I don’t know anything. I’ll quit until tomorrow. But I’m pretty sure I should get a scissor-type tool.