Pass the Salt

I never thought I’d be saying this, but I am really sorry for making fun of audiophiles. One look at this site, and you’ll be a high-end believer, too.

http://www.nathanmarciniak.com/elemental

Many, Many Brownies

As much as I would like to be dodging hot strips of 304 stainless, I am up to something else today. Making brownies for church. Tomorrow they’re having some kind of feed after the service, and they solicited food from the congregation. I was hoping Mike would come down so we could do ribs, but he’s been delayed. So it’s all me. That means something easier than ribs.

I just plopped two trays of brownies in the oven. The full boat recipe. Nuts, chips, and coconut. I’m resting while they cook. I can’t fix the next bunch until these come out of the pans.

I tried to save time by making two batches at once, but it doesn’t work all that well. I’m going to have to face the fact that the recipe is a little light on batter. If you put coconut in the middle, you have to reserve half the batter to put on top of it, and if you’ve done this, you know how hard it is to spread. The oven’s heat helps, but it’s still a pain. And if you’ve mixed two batches at once, it’s worse, because you are likely to screw up and put too much batter in the bottom layer. If you do that, fixing the top layer is nearly impossible.

My solution: extra batter on the side. Hope it doesn’t mess up the cooking time.

Nonstick foil is a gift straight from heaven. I used to bake these in wax paper, and I always ended up peeling parts of it off with a knife. Now I line the pan with foil and lift the brownies out. Once they’re cold, the foil almost falls off.

It’s a real pleasure, being able to give something back, apart from dry monetary contributions. I hope people enjoy these. I can’t really recommend they buy the book, but the food is spiritually harmless, if taken in moderation.

Here, Have a Piece

My area is enjoying 93% humidity right now, according to Weather Underground. Is that a typo? Let’s see. It’s 87°, and the heat index is 111°. I think that means it feels like 111.

I suppose there are some whiny people who would have the temerity to call this weather unpleasant.

This is one of those days when, as soon as you go outside, you feel like you’re swimming. That’s how thick the air is. You could fashion it into a club and hit someone with it. This is what like would be like, if the world were a bowl of warm oatmeal.

The bugs are overjoyed. They’re partying. If there’s one thing I really enjoy, it’s setting a heavy saw up in the driveway, putting a heavier piece of metal on it, putting on earmuffs and glasses, turning the saw on and running it with one hand, and having a dozen mosquitoes buzz up and attack me in some area (like inside the glasses) I can’t reach with the free hand. While sweat begins to puddle in the glasses and obscure my vision.

That’s living, my friends. It’s the kind of adventure you will never see on a commercial featuring the World’s Most Interesting Man, because it is the opposite of interesting.

By the way, rumor has it this man saved Chuck Norris’s life with a partial beard transplant.

It’s kind of fitting that this guy hawks beer, because when you drink enough beer, you become convinced that you, yourself, are the Most Interesting Guy in the World. Or at least the most interesting guy on the floor of the bar.

“I always drink beer. And when I do, I prefer what’s on sale.”

Not funny unless you watch beer commercials. They were the only thing I ever enjoyed about watching pro football. I haven’t seen a game in forever. A few months ago, I learned that the World’s Most Interesting Man was still on the air, and it amazed me. That’s how out of touch I am, with important stuff everyone else knows about.

I am sorely tempted to get a horizontal band saw. A guy in my area is selling a good one at a reasonable price. I don’t know too much about these things, but I know enough to suspect that I was an idiot to buy a dry cut saw instead. A horizontal bandsaw is like a miter saw with a band blade. Apparently, you raise it, stick the metal in, turn on the saw, drop the handle, and go eat cookies while it cuts. When it goes through the metal, it shuts off. And you’re in front of the TV, and you’ve had cookies.

I am told that I could cut my 4″ bar of 1018 steel with one of these things in around 15 minutes. SOLD! Especially if I don’t have to be there when it happens.

I’m not sure what I’ll use the dry cut saw for if I get this thing. It gives gorgeous cuts, but if you have a mill and a lathe, you should be able to clean up any cut a band saw makes.

The dry cut saw might turn out to be my first idiot tool buy. My sliding miter saw may be the second; I rarely use it. Oh well. I got great prices on both of them. If you’re going to buy something you don’t need, you should at least get a bargain.

Weird things keep happening to me. It seems like I had a rough spot in my life for a few weeks, and now it’s over. Things were going great, but not as great as the weeks preceding this time. I took care of a few obligations that I felt might be holding me back, and now I feel like I’m on top again.

Last night I saw Perry Stone on David Cerullo’s show. I flopped on the couch because I was tired, and I turned the tube on, and there it was. It turned out to be very helpful to me. This has happened three times this week. Twice I turned on the tube, not knowing what was on, and found myself watching a show produced by the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, which is one of my favorite organizations. I am highly suspicious of many ministries and programs, but I like Perry Stone and the IFCJ a lot. I don’t know of any problems with David Cerullo. People complain that he makes too much money, but that’s not sufficient to upset me.

Stone was talking about Joshua. He led the Hebrews into the Promised Land after the death of Moses. I had forgotten the details. He had the priests carry the Ark of the Covenant across the Jordan, and the waters stopped and stood up like a wall until the Hebrews all got across. Stone believes this (like the flood) is symbolic of Christian baptism. He also suspects this is the place where Jesus was baptized.

He pointed out some things I had not heard before. He said the Jewish priesthood in Herod’s time was not fully legitimate, because it was no longer hereditary. The Romans chose the high priests and forced them on the Jews. John the Baptist was the son of a real priest. Stone believes he therefore had the authority to baptize Jesus and initiate a change from one type of priesthood to another. It’s a long story. You can find out about it in Stone’s DVDs. He also thinks Caiphus, the Roman-approved high priest, may have been aware of the significance of the crucifixion, and that he may have been a sort of silent co-conspirator. Every reasonable, informed Christian knows that blaming the Jewish people for the crucifixion is evil and stupid (It was God’s idea, not man’s), but it may be that even the Jewish leaders many of us routinely criticize were not what anti-Semites portray them to be.

Stone is going to be on Cerullo’s show again tonight.

Many Old Testament stories prefigure New Testament events. For example, the Passover prefigures the crucifixion. Shavuot is a shadow of Pentecost. If I understand Stone correctly, Joshua’s leadership in Israel prefigures Jesus’s leadership in the lives of individuals who live in the kingdom of God while here on earth. Joshua and Jesus even had the same first name; it was just translated differently in different books. And if you see what Zechariah says about “Joshua,” you will see that the connection is even stronger. It’s not even clear that he has the earthly Joshua in mind.

I used to wonder exactly what God was trying to tell us with the stories about the cities Joshua destroyed. It wasn’t done purely by human force. For example, Joshua had the people march around Jericho once a day for seven days, with seven priests blowing seven horns. At the end, the walls fell without human effort.

I think I have an inkling what this is all about. Seven is the number of the Holy Spirit; it’s in the Bible over and over, notably in the structure of the menorah, which has seven lamps fueled by olive oil, which is also symbolic of the Holy Spirit. I think the story of Jericho symbolizes what believers are now expected to do. We are supposed to fight our battles primarily with God’s strength, not our own. Even after we find our way into God’s kingdom, there will be strongholds (like Jericho) we have to get rid of, if we want true dominance. We don’t just flail at them with our puny human tools. We use faith and prayer and so on. And God honors that by moving them for us.

I decided to read Joshua last night, and I found a very startling piece of information in it that relates to my own life. Lately I’ve been asking God to set my family’s feet on the throats of those who try to harm us. Not so we can destroy them, but so we will have the power to resolve things properly. I thought I had come up with this metaphor on my own. But when I read Joshua, I found it there! Look at Joshua 10:24:

And it came to pass, when they brought out those kings unto Joshua, that Joshua called for all the men of Israel, and said unto the captains of the men of war which went with him, Come near, put your feet upon the necks of these kings. And they came near, and put their feet upon the necks of them.

You can imagine how I felt, seeing that. My life is like that of the Hebrews. I’m trying to walk in the kingdom, but there are things I have to conquer through faith and obedience, just as they conquered their enemies through faith and obedience. And in prayer, I happened to choose the image of an action that Joshua and the Hebrews actually performed while living out events presaging the challenges I (and other Christians) would face.

Too strange. But very welcome. It’s hard to ask for a faith-builder any stronger than that.

Christians can’t fight unbelievers on their own terms, because unbelievers have no rules. They will do or say anything to defeat us. They cheat. And our rules are very restrictive; we are encouraged to avoid tactics the rest of the world considers legal and morally right. We have to get connected to God’s power in order to turn back those who attack us. That’s how Jesus got away from the mob in Nazareth. It’s what destroyed Jericho.

This is the difference between merely being saved and living in the kingdom of God. I think so, anyway. So I am working on improving. Sure seems to be paying off.

The Bible does make sense. The problem is that it is being explained to us very slowly, over centuries. We have to believe that the parts we don’t understand yet will eventually be made clear to us.

I think I’ll throw some brownies together for the Fourth of July thing at church tomorrow. I was planning to do some machining, but three or four batches of brownies would be a more profitable product at this time.

Plus Power Feed

I think I finally have the power feed on the lathe figured out.

Reader and fellow blogger Andy recommended a site that has a few projects for beginning machinists. I decided to take a whack at the soft hammer project. I wanted a shorter one, and I don’t know if I want to put synthetic faces on it; I was planning on plain old brass. But this seemed like a good place to start. I’m probably going to end up with a shorter one anyway, because I cut the stock pretty close to the finished length, and I’m almost sure to lose some.

I have a fair amount of scrap now. I decided to use 1″ 304 stainless. I bought a 6′ bar the other day, because it was fairly cheap. I cut it on the vise, using a grinder and cutoff wheel. It was either that or take the dry cut saw out and set it up in the rain.

The steel cut easily. No problems there. I stuck it in the 4-jaw chuck and cleaned up one end. First I parted a tiny bit off, and then I faced the place where I parted it. It worked fine. It seems like I don’t push the metal hard enough, and it affects the finish, and it slows the work down. So I put a good deal of pressure on the 304, and it worked great.

I don’t have any lathe dogs, so I did something that may not be kosher. I center-drilled the tail end of the stock and I slid it out and fixed it so a little bit was clamped in the chuck and the other end was on a dead center. Then I started taking passes by hand, and the results were bad. I knew the tool was centered well, because I had just used it to face the steel, but I had to raise it a little to get it to turn well. Or maybe the problem was shallow cuts. I also increased the cut depth. Whatever helped, helped. But moving the carriage by hand was just not working. It was jerky, and it left a bad finish.

I started screwing with the controls, looking at the notes I had made and the so-called manual. I still don’t quite get it. There’s a speed control on the feed screw, and it has three settings, A, B, and C. B is the fastest. Okay, I’m sure that makes sense.

I kept trying different combinations of knobs and levers, and finally I sort of figured it out. I made a pass that wasn’t half bad.

At first I took 10 thousandths. Then 15. Then I went nuts and took 25 at a shot. Every time I increased the depth, the performance improved.

I wasn’t sure how to reach the final 0.875″ measurement. I haven’t seen any videos or texts explaining that. I know you can sneak up on milling measurements, but on a lathe, going too shallow on a cut will ruin the finish. I decided to go for broke when the calipers said I was 0.030″ away. I cranked the knob 0.030″, and I threw the feed lever, and I turned on the lathe. I ended up within a couple of thousandths. I am as close as I can get without using a mike; the calipers are never better than maybe 0.002″ for me.

Someone warned me about 304 chips, and they were right. This stuff SHOOTS steel at you. It’s like watching snakes try to jump out of a box. And they never end; the chips are three or four feet long before you know what’s happening. I had two bird’s nests so bad I had to stop the lathe.

Now I have a 0.875″ rod of 304 stainless. Tomorrow I’ll try to turn it into something. I don’t know how to do the tapered part. I guess I’ll have to use the compound and set it at the specified angle. The taper is less than 4″ long, so the compound should have enough travel to do it.

My big concern is that when I have to move the work to do other operations, I’ll mar the earlier operations. I suppose planning is the only answer to problems like that, unless you have instructions written in chronological order.

It was very satisfying, and I’m glad to see that the 304 wasn’t a waste of money. Machinists rate metals in terms of how well they respond to tools, and 304 is not a favorite. If it can be worked this easily, I shouldn’t have problems with things like aluminum, 360 brass, and 12L14.

Power feed makes a world of difference. I was going crazy, trying to turn that silly knob smoothly.

Behold my Feet and Drink Your Bathwater!

I hoped to do some work on the lathe today, but I ended up welding.

I started getting the garage ready so I would have some empty horizontal space and not go crazy from clutter, and while I was looking for a spot for my 13″ face plate, I realized I could make a hanger and stick it on the wall.

I can’t even guess what kind of steel and/or lead and melamine and plutonium is in the Chinese 1/2″ dowel I bought from Home Depot, but it has been unbelievably handy. I use pieces of it all the time. Today I sawed one off to use as a prong on the hanger.

I took another piece of scrap and cut it down for a standard (I guess you could call it), and I welded the two parts together, using a makeshift rig that would make Rube Goldberg hang his head in shame. I have a lot of welding magnets, but small parts are hard to deal with. I ended up making the first tack weld while holding the prong at the correct angle with a ballpoint pen. After that, I was home free.

I welded pretty nicely. It doesn’t look bad enough to justify a grinding job.

Once the lathe is in its final position, I’ll run a screw through the hanger and put it on the wall. For now the face plate sits on the floor under the lathe. Oh well.

I tried cutting my huge lump of 1018 steel in pieces today. I thought I would see how fast my dry cut saw did the job. After maybe fifteen minutes, I quit. This saw is great for many things, but you don’t want to cut a 4″ square steel bar with it. I got a third of the way through. I would have made it, but I don’t want to spend an hour on every cut and wear out the blade in the process.

I should go and have it done at a machine shop. HOWEVER, there’s a good used Jet band saw for sale near me. I am told a smaller band saw would do the job in maybe 15 minutes, so this one should be at least as fast. If I can get it for $125, it’s a great deal. The floor space is an issue, however.

I love welding because it’s so forgiving. Getting the angles exactly right is just a matter of using magnets, and sometimes you can even add metal to replace material your stupidity has destroyed. And if your welds aren’t perfect, just make them bigger. Eventually you’ll have something strong enough to work.

I got George Moneo all excited today by letting him know that a man with a lathe can make pointy things to use as feet on snob audio equipment. These things don’t really improve the sound; that would go against everything high-end audio stands for. But audio nerds think they do, so they sell.

He showed me a site that sells brass ones. I can make them a little cheaper, but not much. However…this is the fun part…I told George that what he really needed was cast iron, because it’s known for its inability to transmit vibration well. That would put him one up on the other addicts, and that’s really what it’s all about.

Where would you get a cast iron rod? Beats me. I understand it’s not much fun to machine.

Hammer Time?

Today has that “garage day” feel to it. I’m trying to come up with stuff I can do.

I need to see if I can cut my huge 1018 block into smaller pieces for tool holders. I am also thinking it might be fun to make a hammer from 360 brass, although I don’t know what to use for the handle. I saw a short-handled brass hammer in a machining DVD; I can see how that would be useful to knock things into line on the mill. Maybe I should make an aluminum handle about 4″ long. I hate to use nice brass for the handle.

It’s funny, but when I have to pay a lot for materials, I don’t like to use them up, because they’re expensive, and when I get a good deal, I don’t want to use them up, because they were so cheap.

Next Week?

I have no milling machine. STILL.

I got a message saying it had shipped. Then I got a message saying it was about to ship. Then I got radio silence. People have a way of running off and hiding when they sell you something and then can’t provide it. They know that if they pretend not to see your emails, they can ship whatever it is you bought before you can formally cancel the order. I guess that’s what happened here.

I don’t care; when you get a good price on the exact thing you want, and that thing is something which is a horror to shop for, a couple of weeks’ delay is not something that scares you.

Today I was told the mill will ship–for real–tomorrow. Probably. Maybe.

We shall see.

Sadly, I have a rotary table DVD now. And I can clearly see that without a rotary table, life will never be anything more than slow torture. It is better not to be born than to be born and be unable to acquire a rotary table. At least it looks that way in the video.

A rotary table is a turntable you can bolt parts to. It will turn the parts in tiny angular increments. Or big ones. The table in the video breaks a circle up into 129,000 parts. That seems like a lot. You can use a rotary table to position cuts at the correct angles. Say you’re machining a gear, and you want 34 teeth; the rotary table will let you move the gear just the right amount for each tooth. You can also make curved cuts.

Here’s a video of a guy using a rotary table. Before you look, let me say WARNING! AMATEUR VENTRILOQUIST ALERT! I didn’t know you had to have a dummy in order to machine properly, but coincidentally, I was planning to get a hat exactly like his. In my dreams, this is me in six months.

I don’t know if I’d watch the whole thing. The problem with this video is that the thing you want to see is way over on the other side of the room.

Ordinarily, you expect a ventriloquist dummy to talk. I thought that was the whole point. But I am not an expert.

Here’s a video where you can see a rotary table turning an object while a mill faces it.

I don’t even have to explain why it will be impossible for me to live another week without one of these things. And I blame the shipping delay for this. Instead of fooling with the mill, I’m goofing around online, where I am subject to temptation.

Oddly, rotary tables seem to be available for relatively little money, compared to other insanely expensive items, such as taper attachments. Horizontal tables are cheap to begin with, but horizontal/vertical tables cost a whole lot more. New. On Ebay, used ones are not too steep.

Maybe I’ll snap one up in a month or two. Looks like the smart buy is a used table that does both horizontal and vertical. They say you should get the biggest one you can find, but when you go over 10″, they weigh a ton.

I’m pretty much ready for the mill, except for utterly failing to finish the wiring. I should get on that. I already have the VFD. It’s moldering in a box. I paid extra for fast shipping when I thought the mill was on the way. There’s 22 bucks Obama will never get his hands on.

You can see I need that table, can’t you?

A Form Shall be an Abomination to Thee; Neither Shalt Thou Fill in Bubbles

If I ever get in real trouble in this life, it will probably be because of a form. I am allergic to forms. I cannot fill them out. They lie about me after I send them in. They never have the right blanks for me to say what I need to say. And it gives me ulcers just to look at them.

Today I had to deal with forms. I have some loose ends in my life that I want to clean up. Debts and so on. Nothing big, but I want a clean slate, for spiritual reasons.

The reason I let things go is not that I don’t recognize an obligation to pay. I just hate the forms. So there have been times when I’ve let minor obligations rot, much longer than I should have.

Today I caught up with a tax return I was supposed to file in another state. I thought I was going to have a big bill to pay. I didn’t know if I had the information to fill the forms out correctly. I was tense. I was filled with dread. I wished I could be anywhere else, doing anything but this. I worked on this stuff for almost three hours.

I owed one dollar.

I’m not kidding. It’s less than the postage for the return. I have no idea what the revenue people will think when that check comes in. I hope they don’t think I’m making fun of them. The debt came out to one dollar, and I figured it was better to pay than to let it go.

This reminds me of the times I’ve received bills for $0.00 and similar sums. I never question them. Do what I do. Write a check for $0.00 and send it off. Don’t bother the bureaucrats. They can’t fix it, and you just embarrass them.

Bureaucrats are always hard to figure. Life is full of petty bureaucrat-managed obligations that can end up causing you real grief. Sometimes being honest can cause problems. You know what they say about letting sleeping dogs lie. It is possible to ruin your life by letting a bureaucrat know you owe fifty cents. The followup can be unbearable, and even the bureaucrat may wish you had left it alone. On the other hand, if you leave things to fester, you may eventually discover that a horrible bureaucratic nightmare was secretly gestating the whole time. Like, you’ll try to buy a house, and when you apply for a loan, they find out you forgot to return a library book in 1968, so your assets get frozen and your car gets impounded. Or you get sterilized or something.

I am clearing these niggling items out of the back of my life’s sock drawer. I only have one or two more to attend to.

Okay, I tried to find a great Bible verse about this, but when I searched, this is what I came up with:

12 They shall lament for the teats, for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine.

Who doesn’t lament for the teats? I sure do. Whatever that means. But that’s not what I was looking for. That’s Isaiah 32:12. I was looking for Isaiah 32:17:

17 And the work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance for ever.

18 And my people shall dwell in a peaceable habitation, and in sure dwellings, and in quiet resting places;

19 When it shall hail, coming down on the forest; and the city shall be low in a low place.

20 Blessed are ye that sow beside all waters, that send forth thither the feet of the ox and the ass.

I saw that this morning in a book published by the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews.

It’s true; the better you behave, the better you’ll feel. And the more God will do for you. I don’t just mean your acts; faith is a behavior.

There is nothing like peace. It is the best thing you can get. When you have peace (and you’re not crazy or on drugs or sadly deceived), it means your life is as it should be. I only know of one place to get that feeling.

You know what? There are no forms in heaven. I’m sure of it. I can’t prove it. But how could it be heaven if there were forms there?

I can provide useful input on a lot of this stuff, but you’re on your own with the teats.

Read it and Then Do It

I spent part of the day doing what I felt to be spiritual battle. I have found that some things I’ve done, while moral and legal and ethical by ordinary standards, seem to be lacking by Christian standards. I felt a sudden and powerful compulsion to get on top of one of these things today.

The Bible says we perish for lack of knowledge. I think that is true (“Good IDEA, O Lord!”). We accept salvation, and then many of us let it go at that. Meanwhile, the enemy is not so lazy. He takes advantage of our ignorance and leads us into behavior that seems okay, but actually leads to defeat and stress and loss of power over our lives. For example, maybe you think it’s a good idea to stand up to your parents and fight with them when you disagree with them. Or maybe you’re a wife who thinks it’s okay to improve your husband by lecturing him and refusing to let him lead. When you do things that are against God’s way, you are planting landmines in your future. Going to heaven and living in power are two different things. If you want things to work out while you’re here, you have to learn how to think and behave.

This is what I have come to believe. The Bible makes much more sense when you realize that sins forgiven in heaven can still cause you a terrible problems on earth. Life isn’t supposed to be perfect, but it’s supposed to be good. And you have to mature in order to know what “good” means. Paul was flogged and stoned, but he was also thrilled with what God did with him. Meanwhile, Michael Jackson had fame, extreme wealth, and adoration, but he was so miserable he practically lived on antidepressants and sleep medications.

The Bible says the steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord. If that is true, then once in a while, if you’ve ever done anything wrong, you should expect your mind to vomit up a landmine you need to clear. You should expect God to show things about yourself that you need to fix, in order to stay close to him and be protected and taken care of. As any parent can tell you, correction is a big part of guidance.

Today has been a great day, but it has not been a fun day. I’m going to go relax. I feel so much better now. I’m getting the garbage out of my life.

Before I close, let me add something I just received in a comment:

Steve.
This was mailed to me by our church administrative assistant. It was written by Natalie, a former church member. I figured she wouldn’t mind if I passed it along:

My two year old niece, Morgan Thomas, is in the Seattle children’s hospital. She had a sore ankle, a fever, and was vomiting. My sister took her into the emergency room yesterday where they spent all evening just to find out they needed to take her to the children’s hospital. The doctors performed several tests and found out that she had a staff infection that settled in her joints. Early this morning they could not stabilize her blood pressure or her fever and they moved her into ICU. I spoke with my mom and she said that they won’t have the culture results back for two days but the doctor started Morgan on antibiotics hoping that this is the right medicine. My brother in law just accepted the Lord last week and my family believes it is a spiritual attack on my sister’s family. The other large problem was their insurance is not going into effect until tomorrow. There are several serious things that need prayer right now…

The first one being Morgan’s life. This is a life or death matter and we want prayer for the doctor’s wisdom in which medicines to use. Please pray that God will reign and that the enemy will not prevail in this situation. It has taken years of praying and interceding for my brother-in-law and now that he is a christian, his family is being spiritually attacked in many ways. Please pray for peace and strength for my family as well as the healing of Morgan. I would also like prayer that the financial situation will get worked out and that the insurance company may be willing to work with my family.
–Brad

If doing evil plants bombs in your path, then doing good plants a crop of good things you will harvest later. If that is the case, Brad’s comment is a present to everyone who reads it.

If it Was Gone, You Would Miss It

I have been trying to save money by rehabilitating my old motorcycle helmet, and it has been a struggle.

I left it in the garage, and mildew got into the lining. To get it out, I applied dishwashing liquid, iodophor solution, Febreze, and bleach (twice). Finally, the smell went away. But so did some of the glue that held the helmet together. There’s a strip of vinyl that covers the edge of the helmet so it doesn’t rub the wearer’s neck, and it flat fell out. There’s a scoop on the back of the helmet, for funneling air in, and it fell off, too. A couple of other parts also went AWOL.

It’s really annoying. This is an Arai Quantum helmet, and before I bought it, I read that the lining could be removed for washing. And that is true, if by “removed,” you mean “torn out and completely destroyed.” It’s glued in place. So once the helmet starts to stink, you have a real job on your hands. If you were to buy this helmet now, you could expect to spend $350 or more. It’s not a cheapo. You would think this kind of money would buy better quality.

It also has a horrible mechanism for removing the visor. People who have mastered it say it’s simple. The rest of us break things when we try it. And Arai’s parts site doesn’t work. I broke one of the parts; I hope it isn’t important.

I finally found something that will bond the old parts to the helmet. Rubber cement. So I think it will hold up for a few more months. But in case it doesn’t, I’m researching new ones.

If you’re a rider, you may find this useful. It looks like Shark and OGK make better helmets than Arai, and you can get them cheaper if you look around.

There is a lot of controversy about the best way to make a helmet. Different organizations put out different standards. Examples are the Snell and DOT standards. Based on empirical testing, many people now think the Snell standard causes injuries, because the helmets are so stiff, they shoot g-forces directly to the head instead of absorbing them. That sounds reasonable to me. The Snell people are really in a snit about it, though.

I would not buy another Arai helmet. Mine has been falling apart for years. The scoop on the top is held on by tiny strips of two-sided tape. I’m not kidding. And you can imagine how likely you are to find it when it comes off in the rain. Yesterday I glued my scoop back on permanently. I can’t imagine why Arai didn’t do this the first time around. Maybe they have some concern about the glue weakening the helmet. I tend to doubt that this is a real possibility. Losing the scoop, on the other hand, is nearly a certainty.

I may get a Shark RSX. I can get a discontinued model for a little over $200. It has a removable liner, a safety standard I like better, a thicker visor, better comfort, and…other stuff. It’s made in France, but I can get over that with time and therapy. They made a couple of designs incorporating the stars and stripes, and they also have a plain silver helmet which is not offensive.

Ebay has a few used “like new” helmets. Here’s what my MSF instructor told us: do not buy used. If you drop your helmet, buy a new one. Helmets can sustain damage you can’t see. Then when you need them, they fail. I don’t know if it’s true, but I prefer not to find out.

Oddly, the MSF supplied my class with used helmets which had almost certainly been dropped at least once.

I guess we signed waivers.

Interesting factoid: cheap helmets are as safe as expensive ones. The differences are in features and comfort. I have a spare helmet I bought a long time ago because I knew a girl who kept asking for a ride, and I spent $60. Is it a good helmet, apart from safety? No idea. My head won’t fit in it. You can spend $60 and get a safe helmet, or you can spend $400 and get a safe helmet that looks good and isn’t torture to wear.

You should wear a full-face helmet, because impact on your lower jaw can be transferred to the base of your skull, and that will do bad things to your spine. Like severing it.

Won’t do your jaw a whole lot of good, either.

I got the mildew out of my saddlebags and helmet. The gloves, I wrote off. Green isn’t my color anyway.

More useful info a surprising number of people don’t know: you should wear ear plugs when you ride. Because of exhaust noise, right? Wrong. Plugs will still be needed even after the silent fuel-cell motorcycle is perfected. The noise is from the wind. It’s subtle, but still dangerous.

France. I really need to come to grips with that.

Cancer Progresses

More news RE Dan Howell’s sister Mary Ellen. A while back, her family was requesting prayer. She has advanced cancer. This is a real person, not an Internet fiction. Here’s a new message from Dan; it was relayed to me this morning:

Mel had a rough day today, Pray that God will give her a restful sleep. I will be leaving to go home on Wed, it will be hard to leave my sister. I know that her work here is done, and I am so Blessed to see the fruit that she is bearing. Thanks to all who have lifted my sister up for the 3 years.

Mel had asked to see the new home that she and Mike just bought last week. The new paint and the way that it is arranged..So if the Good Lord will see fit, in the morning, Hospice House has arranged transportation to the house. Lets just Pray that she will be up to the trip. It will be rough on Mike, so please hold him high in your Prayers.. the reality is finally setting in with him. The Dreams that they shared are slowly dying out and he has come to finally realize that. He is hurting bad now. All I can do is hold him and cry with him. I just wish that more of you could have met Mike.. AWESOME is all that I can say.

His frame of mind is mature and exemplary and right. Still, I’ll keep praying for a miracle. I don’t pray for people to go easily. I pray for healing, and that if anything in their or their family’s history has caused the problem, they will be made aware of it and helped to repent and have the condition undone. I remember the story of David, when his son was ill. He prayed for healing, and he fasted and repented and asked for mercy, until the boy died.

I’m all for praying for people’s suffering to be eased, but that’s not really the same thing as giving up and asking for a pleasant passing. Your suffering can be eased, regardless of whether you get a healing.

People don’t always get their threescore and ten, even with prayer. But I see no harm in praying for healing as long as there is hope. I have experienced miraculous healings of minor problems (I’ve never had a major problem), and I know I’m not the only one God cares enough about to help.

Googling around, I see the courts are getting steamed up about “faith healing.” I wish people would quit using that phrase. It sounds like “snake oil” or “time shares” or “pyramid clubs” or any number of other shady phenomena. The issue seems to be whether parents have the right to deprive their kids of medical care while relying on prayer.

I don’t think this conflict should exist. If the courts say your kid should have treatment, and that treatment is not somehow inherently sinful, why not give in? You can pray in a hospital. Besides, medicine often works. You can pray for food while driving around looking for an open drive-thru, can’t you? Maybe by avoiding provoking the courts, you are giving unto Caesar. Nothing wrong with that.

I can understand resisting if a doctor wants to cure your child using parts from an aborted baby. And you shouldn’t buy a kidney taken from a prisoner or a slumdweller in India. You should not let an unhealthy attachment to earthly life–which is fleeting, anyway–drive you to harm others in order to stick around a little longer. Presumably, if you’re a believer, you expect the hereafter to be an improvement, and it’s where you expect to spend the bulk of your existence. You shouldn’t cling to this life as though it were the most important thing in the world. It’s not. But I don’t think things like antibiotics, surgery, and chemotherapy are evil.

Twice in my life, I have been convinced I was going to die. Well, three times, if you count a strange experience I had, which probably fit the description of an anxiety attach. Twice I dreamed I had driven off an elevated roadway, and I looked through the windshield at the ground coming up at me, and I was positive it was over. There was no way out.

It wasn’t terrifying. I wasn’t exactly pleased, but I didn’t lose my composure. I had a very solemn feeling, realizing this was a very serious moment. One phase of my life was over–there was no point in continuing to think about the concerns of that phase–and I was about to start the next. I was curious, and I was nervous, because I didn’t know exactly what to expect. Part of me was relieved that I was about to leave a somewhat putrid world behind and enter a world where everything was right. I looked forward to seeing the change. I was not so alarmed that I would have harmed someone else or done something evil in order to be spared. I knew that what was happening to me was normal and good.

I hope that when my time comes, I react the same way I did in the dream. I hope I’m mature enough to accept death as part of life. I hope I am true to my belief that it’s a birth into a different and better world. I don’t want to go screaming and begging, like an addict who won’t go to rehab. If you’re a Christian, you have to believe that you can’t grow unless you die. This life is like a diaper; you mess it up, and then you mature, and you go on without it. It’s like a beater car you buy a teenager, so he’ll know what he’s doing by the time he gets something better. You can’t hang onto it in an irrational unwillingness to grow up. That’s what death is, for a Christian. Growing up. The earth is a playpen. The real world lies in front of us. Why would you want to stay here too long? I want a few more years, but I don’t want to be a hundred and fifty years old, hooked up to tubes, full of implants and transplants, barely aware of what’s going on. Not when I could be healthy and well and active in God’s presence. Insisting on remaining here would be like being a 50-year-old high school student.

One of the sad things about having no faith is that you are likely to think this short, corrupted, pain-filled life is all there is. You might consider yourself entitled to do absolutely anything in order to stay here. That’s a dangerous mindset. Soon, in societies where God is considered a fantasy, we’re going to see doomed babies conceived solely for the purpose of providing parts. I’m sure there are places where you can buy parts taken from the living, under circumstances amounting to coercion. We already think it’s okay to kill an unborn baby simply because raising it is an inconvenience, so the devaluation will continue, and the rationalizations will probably gain the force of law. People in such societies will be like the Canaanites, who killed their firstborn sons, pickled them in jars, and put them in the walls of their houses to insure good fortune.

You’re going to cross over some day. It won’t be long before it happens. Whether you’re two or ninety, it will be sooner than you think. Your body is deteriorating all the time. It never stops, and it gets faster as you age. Sooner or later, this life will cease to be rewarding. You should try to determine what comes after, and you should limit the things you are willing to do to postpone the inevitable. That’s what I think.

I admire Dan’s attitude. He is having a very painful experience, yet he will not abandon God or accuse God of doing his sister wrong. It’s easy to talk about the way you should act in a crisis. He’s teaching by walking the walk, which is much harder. In the past, I’ve had the temerity to be angry with God, and it was never over something this serious. I was an idiot and an ingrate. I am grateful for Dan’s example.

As for me, I find myself in the enviable yet not always pleasant state of one who suffers as the result of answered prayer. I’ve been asking to be made aware of the things I do wrong, and the things my family has done wrong before me, and over the last few days, I’ve had some surprising revelations. I’m amazed to realize how badly I’ve acted while trying to do what was right. I asked for this, and I am thankful for it, but I can’t say I enjoy it.

I believe you have to let God clean you up in order to experience his protection, blessings, and guidance. The Bible makes that clear. And I want a better life. I want less anxiety and guilt, and I want protection from evil, and I want guidance and success. I want some good deeds in my account when I leave this life. But the cleansing can be a little like the scene in Rambo, where they bathed Sylvester Stallone with a fire hose.

Hopefully the sensation tapers off after a while.

No More Coasters

My most exciting achievement today was installing a new DVD burner. My old one just refused to work. Changing media made no difference. Wouldn’t burn DVDs or CDs. I was tired of throwing out one disk after another, while I tried different things. So now the new one is burning a copy of a milling DVD.

The old machine was IDE, and this one is SATA. Seems much faster. The other one stopped and started, and it seemed to take a while for the PC and the burner to shake hands and get acquainted before burning a disk. And it looks like the burning itself was slower. The new disk just popped out, and the elapsed time was only 4:39.

I’m wondering if bird dust killed the old drive. Marv and Maynard emit dust 24/7. It’s like talc, only it seems finer. Goes everywhere. I don’t think it would do the optics in a burner much good.

The new one was cheap. About $36, delivered. OEM job. I stuck it in there and turned it on, and that was that.

I guess it’s sad when something this trivial makes you feel so good, but that old burner made me crazy, and I had to keep my laptop on the dining table to burn DVDs.

I don’t need a great burner, because I don’t steal movies or music. I record things so I can watch them once and then discard them. I suppose it’s infringement, but it’s a pretty lame type of infringement.

I’m mad with power. I think I’ll burn another one.

Plus Impending Mike Visit

I guess I say this every week, but church was fantastic today.

For the last four weeks, the subject was Philippians 4:8, which says we should try to think about things that are Pure, Praiseworthy, Lovely, Admirable, Noble, True, Excellent, and Right (my mnemonic again: PPLANTER). I’ve been keeping it in mind, but it wasn’t all that easy to apply.Try it. Think about something good for a minute. A couple of minutes later, you may be thinking about something horrendous.

Today, we got a clearer idea how to put it to work. Pastor Wilkerson listed three things that oppose the Philippians 4:8 attitude: contrariness, covetousness, and cynicism.

I’m sure glad no one has ever seen those things on THIS blog.

Shut up.

I guess I don’t have to explain contrariness. It means you have to be a pain in the butt all the time, instead of going with the flow. Here’s a clue that you are contrary. People call you “a pill.”

Obviously, you shouldn’t go along with people when you have a good reason to object, but that’s not what he was talking about. Some people have to be an obstacle all the time, just to look smart or feel important. I have heard wild rumors that sometimes people who post blog comments act this way. I have heard–don’t quote me on this–that if you Google some commenter’s names, you will find an endless number of argumentative and smug yet worthless and fundamentally wrong comments on other people’s blogs.

That’s probably just an Internet legend. No one would really do that. I certainly couldn’t name five such people off the top of my head. No, I could not do that. Don’t even ask.

Covetousness means you’re never happy with what you have. But you’re pretty sure you’d be happy with what other people have. I suppose it makes sense to say it contradicts the spirit of Philippians 4:8, because you can’t be thinking positively about the things God has put in your life, if you’re sure they stink compared to the things he gave your neighbor.

Cynicism–I am so glad I’ve never been guilty of this one–means you are suspicious of other people and have a negative attitude.

The notes we were given say, “He is a champion of innuendos, double meanings, and put-downs.” I may know someone that description fits. But it also says a cynic turns people against a person who tries to “think best.” That’s not me.

I know I’ve gone overboard a lot. On the other hand, I don’t consider myself a true cynic. A true cynic is a kind of bigot. You never get a fair shot from someone like that. I’ve been critical of people I thought were con artists and bloviators, but I don’t question the existence of good people. I don’t automatically assume people are lying when they claim good motives (unless they’re emailing me from Nigeria). But I could do better.

The message I took away from this is that I should quit being negative just for the joy of it. And I should work harder to see the good in people and things. I was working on that already, although it may be far from obvious.

On the way home, I heard some guy on the radio talking about our duty to submit to government. I thought that was interesting. I see two main goals in Christianity. First, you want to get eternal life, and that’s easy, because it’s a matter of asking and believing. Second, you want to live in the kingdom of God here on earth. Not so easy. You have to behave and pray and worship and study, etcetera. It’s like being an Orthodox Jew, only with better food.

This guy pointed out that you can’t be lawless and live in the kingdom of God. You have to submit to government. Here’s a depressing extrapolation that occurred to me: we should probably pay tax on Internet sales.

I realize the states themselves are responsible for the Internet tax problem. They choose not to provide a convenient method of paying, and enforcement is nonexistent, and in actuality, they are complicit in the whole business. Legislators routinely shout down efforts to reform the system, because they know everyone will hate it. You could make a very good argument that we are not obligated to care more about this than the states are. It’s like illegal immigration. The law says “do this,” and our lawmakers say “but we won’t help, and if you don’t do it, we won’t do anything.”

Still, the better choice is to look up the silly forms and pay. At least on big items. Arrgh. I would rather have God’s power flowing in my life than save 6%. I want my prayers answered. I don’t want to bring shame on the church. I want growth. I guess I can cough up 6% in order to keep from screwing that up.

My attitude about taxes is as follows. I have never hated paying taxes. What I have hated is saving receipts and filling out forms. I complain about high taxes all the time, because they wreak havoc on the economy and punish productivity and make for creeping totalitarianism. But I don’t get upset when I have to pay. Maybe I should, but I’m always so happy to know what I owe, I hardly care what the number is. I just want to get the check written and kiss the IRS goodbye for another year.

Next week the church is having a July 4 barbecue thing after church lets out. “Coincidentally,” Mike may be in town. I let him know. We started talking about how we needed to take some food. Mike came up with an argument proving it was our Christian duty to humiliate everyone else with our ribs, in order to keep them from having unrealistically high opinions of themselves. I guess there may be some flaws in his theory, but I think ribs would be a good idea. Not sure how many racks I can get in the Hoginator. I talked to one of the pastors today, and he confirmed that they were soliciting food. I might make four or five batches of brownies, since they can be made several days in advance. Cheesecake would be too decadent, and besides, people would get in fights over it.

I’d like to take some food, because I haven’t gotten involved with the church, beyond showing up. I feel like I keep taking without giving anything. Of course, I provide a little financial support, but there is more to supporting a church than writing an occasional check.

Is it okay to smoke ribs over a pan of beer and then take them to church? We may find out.

I hope Mike makes it down here. My diet is going well, so I think I can survive a visit.

Pushed Aside by Mere PVC

I did not get to use the toilet knob I machined yesterday. Very sad. My dad’s boat guy had claimed the heads were so old it was dangerous to take the old valves off, but while I worked on one of them today, I decided to see what the story was, and the old valve screwed right out. Good, because it meant I could install a new valve. Bad, because the new aluminum knob was no longer needed.

And I just put a set screw in it! This is the first tapping I’ve ever done. I was all excited about fastening the knob onto the old stem, using my home-tapped set screw.

The toilets on the boat will be greatly improved by the new PVC valves I’m installing. Only a guy who installs toilets for a living would choose to put a frequently handled valve at the base of the bowl. Plumbing is a fine and honorable trade, but plumbers tend to be unbelievably dirty. A plumber will eat a sandwich with one hand while fixing your toilet with the other. Since I’m redoing it all, I can put the new valves above the bowl. Not optimal, but considerably less exposed to…whatever.

We got the generator running, with the aid of the guy who installed it. This is the boat’s third generator. You can’t kill Detroit Diesel boat engines, but the little motors that run generators have all sorts of problems that stop them in a hurry. The first Onan we had was balky when starting, and if it didn’t feel like cranking up right away, it was easy to burn up the starter. It also had a very expensive circuit board which could (and did) quit working for no reason at all. The second Onan was no better. Now we have a Westerbeke. Supposedly it’s much simpler, and it has no silly circuit board to blow up. Mating internal combustion engines with complicated electronics has caused a world of expensive problems ordinary people can’t correct, and I don’t think any of the problems it has solved could not be fixed by simple maintenance and common sense. As I understand it, a lot of the improvements in car longevity are due to improved metallurgy and lubricants; I doubt integrated chips helped a lot. Think of all the old slant sixes that ran for eons.

This generator has three fuel filters that I have become aware of so far. First, the Racor. This is a big aftermarket filter which is really more part of the boat than the generator. Then the spool-sized filter on the way into the motor. Then an inline filter farther downstream. I accidentally shut off a fuel valve, starving the engine until it quit, and I assumed getting fuel back into it would fix the problem. I also changed the spool-sized filter, simply because my dad wanted it done. We still couldn’t get the generator to stay on. The generator guy showed us the third filter, which–coincidentally–happened to be plugged up the same week I shut off the fuel by accident.

This is how boats are. You find a problem. You find the obvious cause. You fix the obvious cause. Then it turns out another cause has popped up at the same time, defying odds in a manner that would shame Susan Boyle.

I had to put off church until tomorrow. I didn’t want to leave my dad holding the bag. I’m trying to get this family running right, the same way I’d try to get a generator going, and I believe you have to treat your parents correctly in order to get the blessings going in your life. As the eldest (only) son, I think I have a special responsibility. I am supposed to be second in authority, now that my mother is gone. Feminism isn’t Biblical; neither is the idea that all siblings are the same. I don’t buy that modern nonsense. I think the eldest son still has added privileges and duties, so I am trying to do what I think is right. Running off to church with the generator problem still plaguing my father would be the wrong move. Sometimes you can offend God by trying to fulfill your obligations to him in the wrong way.

I’ve been told that this is the true meaning of the story of the Good Samaritan. I think Perry Stone said that. The two men who passed by on the other side and refrained to help were religious Jews, and they were headed toward Jerusalem. That suggests they were ritually pure and therefore afraid to touch someone who might be dead. They could become unclean and lose the right to participate in whatever was going on at the temple. The Samaritan was motivated by compassion, not his religious routine, and that was a good thing, because believers were expected to know that in an emergency, God valued compassion more than empty observance.

I wish that when I was young, I had understood more about the way people were intended to live. I’m glad some of it is becoming clear to me. It’s sad that I have no one to pass it on to, but if I had had kids at the usual time of life, I suppose I would have had little of value to impart to them.

We had a bad drought for the first few months of this year, but it started raining a month or so ago, and everything greened up fast. Looking around now, you would see no evidence of the problems we were having a while back. I hope life can be like that. I know it can. God can change things so fast, and so unexpectedly; I keep my eyes open all the time. Most of the good changes that happen to me are gradual, but I wouldn’t mind a few quick ones, given my age.

Machining has Occurred

Here it is! I made a knob for the toilet on my dad’s boat!

Feast your eyes on that. It took me three hours. I started with a 2″ aluminum cylinder, and I ended up with a knob that is probably 1 7/8″ in diameter, and I drilled a hole down the middle using my tailstock.

The finish is really nice. I’m surprised. I did it with the HSS tool I made, and it came out fine.

Let’s see. I used that tool to rough it out. I created the basic shape of the stem and the slope on the stem side of the disk. Then I used the compound slide to clean up that side. I cleaned up the circumference of the disk and faced the end. Then I used the compound slide to make a slope on the face, parallel to the slope on the stem side. I used a carbide tool to clean up the stem, and then I polished the stem with the HSS tool. I used a file to break the hard edges. After that, I put a big drill bit in my Albrecht chuck, stuck it in the tailstock, and made a hole for the shaft.

I don’t really know what I’m doing, so I relied on a round-nose tool, which is like the Wonkavator of lathe tools. It sort of does everything.

I made the knob long so it would be easier to reach. I still haven’t made a setscrew hole. I guess I’ll have to do that with a hand drill.

It’s driving me crazy. It’s beautiful, but it’s already picking up scratches and dings. I’ll feel better when it’s on the toilet.

I’d like to turn it into a cross, so it would be easier to grip. No mill, though. It would be very hard to do on a lathe. I guess I could have knurled it. Maybe I still can. I don’t want to mar it up in a chuck, but I could put it on a bolt and chuck the bolt.

I can tell I’m going to love machining. I can’t believe I made this thing. There are a few tool hurdles most men never clear. Welding is one. Routing is another. Machining is pretty much the final frontier. If you can do these things, you can do just about whatever you need to do. You can find weirder things to do, like casting and forging, but unless you’re a pathological nerd you’ll never need that stuff.

Drilling with the lathe is wonderful. The control is amazing. Don’t waste a second wondering how to keep the bit where you want it. It has no choice. It’s too bad you can only drill into the center of the work, unless you want to spend a year playing with clamps and a backplate to get the hole where you want it.

Man, I wish the mill was here. The DRO would make finishing this so simple.