“At the Age of Nine, I Realized Wrestling Alligators was More Than a Casual Hobby…”

I have been finishing up my 2011 continuing legal education obligation. It’s a tough ordeal. There are hard choices.

The way CLE works is like this. Other lawyers cover part of their own requirement by performing in CLE lectures, and then the Florida Bar charges you insane amounts of money to watch them. The cost for this stuff is outrageous. You need 30 hours, and one hour can cost $40. There is other CLE out there. Why not use it? Because the bar places its videos in courthouse libraries. I’m not sure why they charge $1200 if you buy it, while sending it to libraries that give it away, but hey, it’s government in action.

To make matters worse, you can’t order 30 hours. You have to take it in chunks. If you take three courses, and the closest you can come to 30 hours is 34 hours, tough. Consider the extra money a donation.

You can find very short, cheap courses to pad the list. This is very helpful. The bar has a one-hour online ethics program for nothing. That will put me within half an hour of my goal.

Guess what I’m choosing to fill that half hour? It’s gut-wrenching. They offer a $35, 23-minute “historical video” about…Janet Reno. The woman who presided over Dade County’s criminal justice system when you could hardly walk out to get your newspaper without getting shot. The lady who was responsible for Waco.

I don’t care. It’s SHORT. The other ones are an hour long. That’s just too much. And a lot of them are about liberal judges. They would just give me ulcers.

This stuff is nearly worthless. When I practice, I don’t rely on superficial videos. I research until I am convinced I can’t be bitten in the rear end by ignorance. There is no comparison. Any lawyer who relies on CLE in a lawsuit deserves to be sued into the dirt. I hope no such person exists. And if you don’t know this stuff from your own research and simply from talking to the lawyers you work with, you should probably turn in your license.

Maybe the ethics stuff is useful. After all, what lawyer, in the course of his practice, researches the counterintuitive and seemingly capricious reasons the bar uses to punish its members? CLE taught me that you can actually be disbarred for rudeness; I would never have guessed that from what I’ve seen. Most lawyers behave just fine, but jerks are not rare.

I’ve noticed a difference between doctors and lawyers. Maybe I’m wrong; I don’t know too much about medical education. Lawyers almost automatically lionize any low-life bottom-feeder who makes money in tort cases. If you win lawsuits and make big money, you are considered worthy to teach other lawyers. I don’t think doctors idolize other doctors just because they’re rich. I’m pretty sure a doctor has to be good at what he does in order to be asked to teach. You don’t have to be a great lawyer to make money; aggression, narcissism, and a strong stomach will take you a long way.

I did a few tort cases when I worked with my dad, but I don’t think we would have gotten rich from it, had we continued. The reason is that we automatically turned down unsound cases. That’s no way to build a tort practice. Tort lawyers don’t just make money from winning good cases. They make money scaring innocent defendants with bad cases. Like I heard a lawyer say in a CLE recording today, these days, a trial lawyer is lucky if he does two or three trials a year. Most cases are settled. And a really bad case will often get you some “get lost” money.

I had a case where I told the client to go away, as soon as I learned he was lying to me about what happened to him. I could have held on and tried to squeeze cash out of the defendant; it was a losing case, but they would probably have paid me several thousand dollars, in order to avoid paying more money to their own lawyer. As John Edwards demonstrates, not every tort lawyer cares whether a case is well grounded.

I can’t believe I’m going to pay to watch Janet Reno. I may need to spend a little extra. On a pint of tequila, to get me through it.

Fish Fotos

Got some more photos from last weekend’s fishing trip. Note my stylish boating garb.

Even I Can do Better Than a Computer

Will someone please get Speed Date out of my life?

I have a Facebook account; don’t ask me why. I log in about once a month. Facebook has weird features called “apps” that help people annoy each other. One is called “Speed Date.” I do not understand how it works, but somehow I got signed up for it, and it likes to send me possible matches in the Miami area.

You can probably imagine how eager I am to make use of this information. If there is anything worse than an unsuitable woman you choose for yourself because you have no judgment, it’s an unsuitable woman a computer chooses for you, based on variables chosen at random, by the kind of well-adjusted males who work in the IT industry. Today’s menu item: Stestesteph. She lives in Miami and is 99 years old. I am quite sure she has been vetted thoroughly.

I keep getting these annoying matches in my email box. I thought I had deleted this “app,” but it still popped up today. I killed it again. We’ll see if it took. I killed a bunch of my apps. I was tired of waking up in the morning and finding 15 emails saying people I don’t really know had TAKEN THE “WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE DECONGESTANT” QUIZ or whatever.

It’s nice to sort of get to know people online, but the truth is, I don’t care what movies you like or whether your imaginary zombie can beat up my imaginary zombie. And I find it a little creepy when another man “Superpokes” me.

I got a couple of questionable friend requests recently, purportedly from women. One was from an English blond. In her Facebook photo, she wore a white tube top with nothing underneath. Am I a bad person for suspecting this is actually a fat guy who runs a phone sex business? Probably a grizzled Alexei Sayle lookalike who sends friend requests while lounging around in his living room, wearing only the kind of peculiar underwear European men think is normal.

Maybe it’s Alexei himself. I think times have been a little lean for him since “The Bride.”

The guys who pump out bogus Myspace and Facebook friend requests need to understand something. It has probably been 38 years since I realized that really attractive women rarely talk to me or even acknowledge my existence unless they want my money or, maybe, need me to throw water on them because they’re on fire. So when I get gushy friend requests from scantily clad girls named Brittnee or Suzee, I know immediately that I am being scammed.

If you want me to “friend” your imaginary girl, make her fiftyish and more than a little on the heavy side, and put a cat in the photo. Give her a wispy little moustache. Make her about as attractive as I am. I won’t call her for phone sex (or anything else), but I might think she’s real.

Oddly, drawing closer to God has made dealing with women less stressful, primarily by making 99% of them off-limits. I’m all done with non-Christians, and among Christians, I have no interest in the mainstream types who go to churches that preach homosexuality, watered-down Buddhism, and divestment from Israel. And since I don’t really know any women whose beliefs are compatible with mine, in practice, the pool has been reduced to a nice, relaxing zero. The big benefit there is that I get to treat women like men. I’ve often said that as far as I’m concerned, a married woman is a man; for me, she has about as much romantic potential as a hog. The more women you can exclude from your pool, the more women you can consider men. You don’t have to flirt or pretend they’re interesting. You don’t have to lend them money or do favors you wouldn’t do for men. You never have to dance or be subjected to dance music; that’s a huge blessing. You can dress comfortably and inexpensively. You can drive a plain white pickup truck with very few options. Seeing women this way really clarifies your thinking and streamlines your life.

It probably makes bad matches way less likely, too. The more you struggle to make yourself attractive, the less you are yourself. You can’t spend your whole life holding in your gut and pretending you care about whales and that you like Kenny G. I think you’re better off if the woman who chooses you (that’s how life really works) knows what she’s actually getting. And the marriage won’t be based on the sick, destructive idea that she is entitled to tell you what to be. In a relationship, the man is supposed to be the authority. How can you be in charge and do what’s right if you arrange your whole life to suit your partner’s highly dubious notions? If Adam were still alive, he’d have a lot to say about that.

I am wearing $15 cargo shorts and a $5 softball shirt I bought online. I buy lots of these shirts because they’re cheap and comfortable and reduce my sun exposure; I’d say I wear them four days out of every week. I’m about to go put on the great $39 tennis shoes I bought this weekend. I quit putting crap in my hair quite some time ago, and I threw out my stupid-looking upscale sunglasses, replacing them with polarized Ray-Ban aviators. My next car will be a cheap truck. I live in a fashionable city that attracts shallow people, but sooner or later I’m going to get out of here and get a place outside a town where there are still lots of peeling Bush stickers on the cars. At this point, if God wants me to have a wife, he is going to have to have an angel bring her to me tied to a handtruck.

If I pop up in your Speed Date emails, click “ignore.” It has to be a computer glitch.

Brass & Threading

Made myself a couple of new lathe tools. Not sure how well they’ll work.

I started with brass. I used 1/2″ HSS, and I just eyeballed it. I used the grinder and finished on a diamond stone. Here it is.

I wanted to make a tool for internal threading, so I needed a small piece of HSS to start with. I decided to use 1/4″ HSS with 10% cobalt. To get the angle, I put Dykem on the tool, clamped a fish to it, scribed outside of the fish, and ground to the lines. The Dykem turned brown from the heat. I had no idea that was coming. I had assumed it was made to stand up to heat.

Let me know if you see anything wrong with these.

The mill’s delivery date got pushed back a week. Imagine my shock. Should be here about a week from now.

That Felt Wrong

In an earlier post, I referred to a problem that made it impossible for me to drive to church, and I said there had to be a blessing in it. And I was right, so I’m going to blog it.

There was some kind of screwup with my insurance confirmation when I renewed my car tag this year. I didn’t find out about it until two months later. I couldn’t drive until I cleared it up.

I attacked the issue about nine different ways, faxing, calling, and emailing person who could conceivably help, in Tallahassee and also at the company that insures me. I was a bit crabby about it, although I did try to stifle it. You know how motor vehicle departments are. Draconian and perpetually wrong. And when they do wrong, sometimes you’re the one who gets punished.

Today a lady at the department called and said there was inaccurate information in my record. I’ve had a chronic problem with my car insurance failing to register in the records in Tallahassee, and judging from this lady’s remarks, the problem was worse than I knew. Even though I had cleared it up over and over, there were erroneous records of suspensions. This can affect the price you pay for insurance, and your ability to change companies. Knowing the incompetence of the credit bureaus, I would not be surprised if it can affect credit ratings.

I had my insurer fax the government approximately a ton of documents today, and soon this incredible nonsense will be off my record. I was inconvenienced for a couple of days, but something good came of it.

I should not have been grumpy with the government people. It serves no purpose, and in the end, they did much more for me than they had to. I always try to remember to be nice to low-level people who have to answer for problems they didn’t cause and/or can’t fix, but I fail sometimes, and it’s an ugly thing to do. Other people in my family have this habit, to a much worse degree than I do, and I am very aware of the pointless suffering it causes.

I was furious about this, but it looks like God’s hand was in it. So maybe I was angry at other human beings over something God put in motion to help me. That’s not good. That was stupid.

My life used to be under a curse. I don’t care how crazy I sound when I say that. It’s true. Things went wrong over and over, even when I did my best and deserved better. This insurance problem is a great example of the kind of thing that happened to me. I didn’t even know it had happened, and I had done everything right, and it should never have occurred. But there it was, waiting to jump out and bite me in the future.

These days I see the curses rising off my life. My existence is not like it used to be. It’s hard to get used to it–hard to trust it–because I’m so accustomed to being blindsided. I’ve done plenty of stupid things in my life, and I’ve caused problems for myself, but many, many things have gone wrong when the facts said they should go right. Not just little things. Important things.

According to what I have been taught, virtually anyone can receive salvation without a great deal of effort. But getting God to bless you in this life is another matter. You have to change what you do and what you think. Works and feelings are important. And you have to look back at your family and see the things your predecessors and contemporaries have done wrong, because in doing so, you will see that you do some of the same things, even if you don’t realize it. You have to repent. You have to ask to have curses removed. You can’t just sit in a pew once a week and expect things to be okay. That is my belief.

This is one reason Jesus told us to consider our own faults when rebuking others. It’s not that it’s wrong to point out other people’s failings. We’re required to do that sometimes. When we don’t tell people they’re doing wrong, and they continue, we share their guilt. The bigger point is that when you examine yourself, you find things you can repair, and if you do, you will be blessed. More and more, when I pray for other people to realize what they’re doing wrong and stop doing it, I find myself saying, “While you’re at it, please give me a dose of the same medicine.” I think that it you can’t ask God to give you what you ask him to give others, you are usually asking for the wrong thing.

This weekend I read about the story of Cornelius, in Acts 10. He was a Roman centurion. He worked for an empire that did a great deal of evil, including oppression, wholesale murder, and torture. He was a Gentile. But God noticed him because he prayed regularly and was generous to the Jewish poor. An angel came to him and told him as much. And he and members of his household became converts to Christianity without the usual Judaic background,and they were filled with the Holy Spirit. You can’t earn your place in God’s kingdom, but how you live and what you do still matters a great deal. You can attract curses and blessings. And if your ancestors attracted curses, you can expect some of them to befall you as well. People dispute this all the time, but the Bible is packed with examples, and so is my life, and I have seen it in the lives of others. They don’t just fall off the first time you enter a church. You have to put out an effort. When you do, the curses become gifts. The effort of working to undo them improves you and gives you power.

I am free to drive now. I might take the Harley out just because I can.

By the way, I started practicing the piano again. I quit because my memory was not adequate to allow me to remember the pieces I learned. That may have been caused by sleep deprivation, and now I sleep better. It may just be another example of something going wrong in spite of my own best efforts. It was exactly like many other failures I’ve experienced. Whatever the explanation is, my life is different now, so I’m giving it another shot. I’m going to practice sight-reading and nothing else. It’s supposed to be the best way to compensate for memory problems, and you can’t really understand music without it. We’ll see what happens.

Yesterday I bought a tin whistle, after listening to the Uillean pipes. I could not help myself.

In Case You’re Wondering

I’m a little creeped out.

When Mike came down here and we went to church together, the subject of the sermon was signs of the Rapture. I don’t get all that excited about the Rapture, because there is no reason to. You can’t do anything to stop it or make it happen. It causes a lot of venomous arguments, so talking about it isn’t much fun. And knowing it’s coming isn’t all that helpful. You should be ready, but how do you prepare? By living a good Christian life. Which is what you should be doing, regardless of whether the Rapture is coming. I don’t understand the fascination many Christians feel about this subject.

I figure the Rapture is probably real, based on the Biblical references to it. Some are pretty literal and some are prophetic hints. But I don’t have any plans to try to figure out when it’s coming, or to try to convince anyone what they should believe about it.

To get back to Mike, he came down here, and we went to church. And there were some odd “coincidences” surrounding that set of events.

First of all, the mother of one of his employees died while he was here, so he had to go to a Jewish funeral the day before he came to see me. At the funeral, the rabbi made references to “the fig tree,” and Mike started wondering what it was supposed to mean. Just curiosity; nothing beyond that.

The next day, he had to drive down from Delray, and he was supposed to have a meeting in downtown Miami before meeting me. He ran out of gas, which is ridiculously unlikely, and he had to meet the guy up in Miami Gardens. He then came down to see me. He didn’t mention the business about the fig tree.

We went to church, but we got there late because the information on the church’s website was wrong. We only got the last part of the sermon. Rich Wilkerson was telling us about ten signs of the Rapture, and we only got to hear one. I thought the sermon was a washout, and I had blown my chance to get Mike interested in church.

I wanted to get Pastor Wilkerson’s advice on a church for Mike, up near his home in DC. While we were leaving church, Pastor Wilkerson buttonholed us to say hi and so on, and before I could say anything, he recommended a church for Mike.

Mike wanted to talk about the service with me. He said we should find a place to sit down. He knew of a Dunkin’ Donuts that was not far away, so that’s where we went. He told me he was surprised that the sermon had contained information about something that interested him. He was referring to the fig tree. Pastor Wilkerson had mentioned it while discussing the last of the ten signs.

In Matthew 24, Jesus said:

32 Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When his branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh:

33 So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors.

34 Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.

Many Rapture buffs say the tree is Israel, and that this passage refers to the re-creation of Israel in 1948. Mike had not been aware of that. He thought it was remarkable that it had come up in the few minutes he had been in church.

Me, too.

Later, he told me a couple more things. He spoke again to the guy with whom he had had the meeting, and it turned out he was a member of Trinity Church. And the reason Mike knew about the Dunkin’ Donuts is that it was where they ended up meeting, after Mike ran out of gas.

Just plain weird, no matter how you look at it.

As I said, I was not able to drive to church this weekend, so I decided to watch it on TV. They carry it on the local Fox station, on Sunday mornings. I recorded it. I didn’t get upset about not being able to go. I told myself there had to be a reason. I was going to find a blessing in it, sooner or later.

Today I turned the show on, hoping to see this weekend’s message. And you can probably guess what I saw. Rich Wilkerson, talking about ten signs of the Rapture. I thought maybe I was supposed to see it, so I watched.

I just sat down at my computer, and I checked my Sitemeter stats. Someone from New York had arrived here via an Excite search. Guess what they were searching for? Rich Wilkerson and ten signs of the rapture. They landed on the original entry, in which I talked about these coincidences.

Wouldn’t you feel weird after all that?

Maybe it’s not all that weird. I suppose it’s understandable that someone out there who saw the show today would search for the sermon on the web.

I should call Mike and see what he’s up to.

Pour Yourself a Shot and Listen

My dad forwarded one of those Powerpoint inspirational things to me today. Very nice nature photos, backed by a Uillean pipe solo. If you are not familiar with Uillean pipes, the best way to describe them is “the kind of bagpipes that don’t sound like a bunch of cats trying to claw their way out of a hot oven.” Depending on which web source you check, “Uillean” is pronounced “illan” or “illyan.”

Found a nice Youtube for you. This is one of those instruments that make you want to run out and buy one the first time you hear it. Check it out.

More

Cheaper way into the same type of music: the Irish tin whistle.

Pressed Down and Shaken Together and Running Over

My old man wanted to fish, so fish we did. Did we have a good day? You could say so.

Maybe a cellphone shot of the blood in the cockpit will give you an idea.

That’s Val Prieto on the right. Evidently he thinks wearing a belt will queer the fishing.

It’s really sad that the sticks in the mud who make the fish rules put a size and bag limit on dolphin. Had they not, we would have come home with maybe 50 of them. I’m not even sure how many schools we hit. At least four. Maybe six. It got to the point where I was secretly hoping the fish would go away. We caught fish after fish, and because the fish know the size limit is 20″, about 90% of them were 19.92″ long. Over the side they went. By the dozen. I think. I’m not sure. I’m still wiped out. I just got back. There is fish blood on every part of me that was not covered, and some parts that were.

The day surprised us. We started with a school that produced one keeper, and then we had like four hours of nothing. We were so desperate, we started casting at a floating pallet, trying to catch ocean tallies and tripletails. The tallies were too small to eat, and here is the pathetic tripletail I caught. I’ve seen oscars that were bigger.

We were sort of heading in when we decided to try some patches of sargassum in about 1100 feet. We hooked a huge cow. Val’s 88-year-old godfather was with us, and he’s not doing well, and he got to reel it in, which was nice. It was well over three feet long. Judging from past fish of similar length, I’d say it weighed 35 pounds. Maybe 30. That’s a big dolphin. She brought a school with her, but they were tiny. When that school pooped out, we hit another and another. By the end of the day we had the cow plus five little fish.

I still have to wrap my share in foil and freeze it. Here’s a photo of the fish. That’s a 50-gallon cooler. The fish had to be bent to fit.

Saw a sailfish and a bunch of tuna jumping, but we couldn’t troll up anything but dolphin.

I have to go drink more water. I’ve been chugging tiny bottles of store water all day and my mouth is still dry. Kind of warm out there, and I’ve been busy.

Better fish photos later.

Fortunately I Have Loose Specs

I bought a Jacobs Super Chuck on Ebay, used. I had heard that the newer ones weren’t as good. When it arrived, it had a Moore jig borer taper stuck in it.

Jacobs makes cheap hardened wedges to get tapers out. They’re U-shaped pieces of metal that narrow toward the tips of the U. You put one on each side of the chuck, between the chuck and the taper. Then you press them toward each other with a vise or a hammer. I have heard people say a hydraulic press would work, but these things are very wimpy, so I don’t see how the additional force could be used.

The wedges were very blunt on the narrow ends, so I had to grind them to get them to slip past each other. I broke a couple. They bent like cheese. Finally, I put the taper on the anvil of my vise and beat one wedge into it with a blacksmith’s hammer, and out it popped.

Sadly, the wedges gouged my chuck. So I put it in the lathe and removed as much of the damage as I could. Here is the end product. I took off very little metal, and left some of the gouging in order to avoid going too deep.

The results are pretty good. The finish is not much worse than a new chuck. I used an AR tool (indexable carbide) and Ridgid Pipe Cutting Oil, and I didn’t expect great results from carbide, but it looks okay.

I started by facing the flat side. I was able to indicate the chuck in, but I could not index the flat side against anything, so it probably wasn’t all that perpendicular to the lathe’s axis. I don’t know if you can see it, but the flat side is not perfectly symmetrical. Oh well. Life will continue.

Once I had that done, I cleaned up the chamfer. I also did the rest of the face. The part that is angled. I had to break the compound loose, set the tool against the surface, and tighten the compound and tool post. I did the facing by moving the compound slide forward across the chuck, with the lathe in reverse. To go deeper, I drew the cross slide toward me. It worked out okay, so I guess you don’t always have to measure. None of these angles are critical.

I managed to stop the chuck (Jacobs, not lathe) a couple of times by cutting two deep. I think the little nick next to the rectangular-looking gouge occurred at that time, as the tool bit in. I removed most of the nick.

This was a lot of fun. I think the chuck is okay. The amount of metal I removed is like two sheets of aluminum foil.

Weigh Yours While There is Still Time

I’m in for a fun morning. Dentist appointment.

I was thinking about it earlier. I would hate to be a dentist. As disgusting as other types of medicine are, I would still choose most of them over dentistry simply because I could not face handling spit all day. And having big, gaping malodorous mouths open a few inches from my face. I have this notion, correct or not, that physicians usually get to straighten their arms more than dentists and keep the revolting stuff farther from their lips.

I hope he doesn’t find anything. Last time, or time before last, he found a filling that dated back to the Reagan years, at least. Maybe Carter. He didn’t believe me, but it’s true. That got replaced. Time before that, I think, he found places on my incisors where I had ground them away at night. He replaced parts of the teeth with composite. I am hoping that as I get older, he will gradually replace my entire head. That should cut way back on dental expenses as well as nasal allergies, and it will make it easier for me to fit in, in our socialist future. When the last particle of brain is removed, I plan to change my registration to Democrat and propose to Janeane Garofalo. You can’t have a limbic brain if your whole head is made of space-age resin.

I need to get started on the garage wiring today. It’s not going to be hard at all, except for the chore of moving my gigantic bulk to the top of a ladder about three thousand times. Someone pointed out that my method of moving my compressor on rollers resembled the technique Hebrew slaves used to build the pyramids, but I have to be honest and admit that I was allowed to use straw. So it’s not really a fair comparison.

As I become more of a tool nerd, I find that I keep more items in my pants at all times. This morning, curiosity overcame me, and I weighed them. Without my cell phone–I never know where it is, thank God–my pants checked in at 3 pounds, 11 ounces. And they’re shorts. I’m just glad I don’t have one of those ridiculous nerd keychains that are so big they have to be attached to your belt. That would put me over five pounds, for sure.

In the future, when psychiatrists try to determine whether a tool fixation is pathological, pants weight will gain recognition as a fine diagnostic tool. Under four pounds, odd but normal. Four pounds to eight pounds, shock therapy indicated. Over eight pounds, treat for hoarding. Or call Mrs. Berger and have a frank chat.

Time to get up and go. Maybe I should chew an onion first.

75 Pounds of Sexy Iron

My Parlec milling vise arrived. I never realized 75 pounds could be this heavy. I put it on a scale because I was sure it had to weigh more.

Is it a good vise? No way to know. Og had no problem with the choice. Once the mill arrives, I can put the vise on it and do things to it with a dial indicator and a test indicator. That will tell the story.

I’ll say this. The workmanship appears to be spectacular. It’s gorgeous. It’s going to kill me to crud it up with swarf and cutting oil.

Where do you put a thing like this until you have a mill?

Skills and Plumber’s Crack Developing Nicely

I decided the only way to move my compressor was to break down and spend the necessary cash.

It amounted to almost three dollars.

I was thinking about the problem, and I realized I could use conduit as rollers if I could fasten a sheet of plywood to the feet of the compressor. I didn’t need a pallet. This thing only weighs around 550 pounds, or the weight of two fat ladies. It’s not heavy machinery. But I didn’t have a suitable piece of plywood, and I didn’t feel like cutting one. Then it occurred to me that it only needed to have a complete span of wood along one axis, so a couple of pieces of two-by-whatever would do. I could put one on each side of the compressor, put the conduit perpendicular to them, and go.

Here’s the process.

I bought this expensive hardware and added hi-tech fiber shields to prevent marring.

I screwed the boards to the compressor.

I shoved conduit under the boards.

I pushed and sweated. But not too much.

The pads seem to be coming apart. I didn’t know they had a finite lifespan.

Now I have to reposition the bench and the tool cabinet, run some conduit, and wait.

Two years ago I probably would have hired a crew to do this.

Call the Fire Department

I just got terrible news. My milling machine shipped yesterday. And that’s not the worst of it. Checking around the web, I find that coast-to-coast freight shipments sometimes take as little as four days.

I finally have to face reality. I have to move the compressor and redo the wiring.

Arrghh.

The plan is to lay conduit over the garage rafters and run wire from one side of the garage to the other. I think the tops of the rafters are about 12 feet up. You would be surprised. The roof is level with the house roof, but the garage floor is a foot lower, so it adds up to a lot of headroom. My fat body is going to have to go up there in order to put in the conduit. I have to get 30 feet of pricey #8 wire and a new disconnect. Bummer.

I don’t know how to move the compressor. I have a Genielift, but moving it to the garage would be about as much fun as moving the compressor, and anyway, it would only raise the compressor if it were on a pallet. The geometry is not right for the Genielift. And I can’t use pipes as rollers. The compressor rests on little feet a good distance apart. I am afraid I’m going to have to scoot the silly thing twenty feet.

If I could find short, tough casters I could lean the compressor over and bolt one to each foot. I can look into that. They’ll have to be capable of holding around 150 pounds each, but short enough so I can run them up under the feet without tipping the machine over.

An engine hoist with a strap would also work. That would run about 50 bucks.

Wish me a fun day. Maybe I can find a reason to procrastinate. I sure hope so.

I Feel Like Donald O’Connor on His Tenth Take

There are two things you never want to have to pick out for yourself. Taps and drill bits. You would be better off killing yourself. The Enco catalog is mostly taps and dies, I’m pretty sure. The tap and die stuff starts on page 76 and ends on page 114. Drills aren’t quite as bad, but still pretty horrible. All drills and taps look exactly alike. I am still traumatized from going through them.

I ordered a couple of small tap/drill sets in HSS. I ordered the weird tap wrench Og and a forum dude recommended. I am pretending I don’t need drill bits. I don’t want to think about them. Ever.

Actually, I bought a pound or two of them a while back. Some Ebay guy sells mixed new and used bits by the pound. It’s not a bad deal. When I need a drill bit, I rarely know the exact size; I just look for one that will work for me. These will come in handy. They won’t be a good substitute for a real set, but they will allow me to avoid abusing a real set unnecessarily. I can reach for the cheap drills first, whenever possible.

I still haven’t made the final decision on a quality set, for a very good reason. They cost a TON. I’m hoping that if I put it off long enough, science will come up with a cheaper substitute for the drill bit.

Some forum guy says I’ll need a tapping head. I told him some other guy had said I wouldn’t need one, if I had a lathe I could reverse. Oh, no; that was nonsense! I needed a thing called a Procunier tapping head, and…here’s the good part…they come in different sizes, so you can’t just buy one!

Oh, yeah, THAT’S a surprise.

I plan to avoid that purchase even more doggedly than I avoid recycling, margarine, and Jehovah’s Witnesses.

The mill should be here next week. I’m really hoping I can make tool holders. I tried to pick out a 60° dovetail cutter today, but Og showed me this homemade job: look. Might be fun to try to make one.

The only really worthwhile thing I accomplished today, other than a Costco run, was washing out my motorcycle helmet. Damned thing got mildew in the liner during the garage’s raining-indoors phase. Not a pleasure to wear. And new helmets cost over $300. Iodophor really did the job on my saddlebags, so I blasted the helmet with it, too. I stuck it in the sun to dry, and then I picked it up an hour later, and it was still cool and wet on the inside. I should have realized it would insulate like a beer cooler. Helmets are full of foam. In fact, riders sometimes compare riding with a helmet to having a beer cooler on your head.

Do NOT get the idea that a beer cooler is a good helmet substitute. Never mind how I found out.

I stuck the helmet in the house. Hopefully the AC will dry it out eventually.

I better have some fried Costco and relax.

Tool Holders!

I have learned something about machining. You can’t just buy a quick change tool post set and be happy. The set will only have two holders for turning tools. Once you start grinding tools, you’ll end up with a variety. In other words, more than two. So when you want to change tools, you’ll find yourself moving tools in and out of the tool holders.

The upshot of all this is that you need more than two holders.

Some guy on the Chaski forum posted a photo. He has a collection of tool holders, from CDCO Tools. They sell cheap Chinese tooling. The photo showed dozens of these things in a drawer, set in rows. It was like a Communist-bloc tank display. He has a library of tools he has already made, and they’re sitting in their holders ready to go.

Another guy says you have to have at least 10 in order to be happy. And someone said he makes his own.

That got me thinking. This should be an easy project for me, once I have a mill. You buy cold-rolled steel, cut it in suitable chunks, make them pretty with a fly cutter, tap a few holes, cut a few grooves, and you’re done. I doubt I can do it for less than the $9 cost of a CDCO tool holder, but that’s not really relevant. If I wanted to have everything done for me, I wouldn’t be buying machine tools.

I suppose you could make them from aluminum. Tool holders are pretty beefy. I don’t think aluminum ones would be flimsy enough to flex. The threads might be a problem, though. I guess you would have to worry about them holding up.

My set came with two holders suitable for turning and facing. One has a groove in the bottom of the tool slot, to support a boring bar. The other doesn’t. I assume the grooved type must have some disadvantages, because if it didn’t, there would be no reason to manufacture holders without grooves. I have to figure that out. I don’t think I’ll ever want to use this kind of holder for boring, since I have a holder designed especially for boring bars. But versatility is good.

I also want to make some brass knobs for a bathroom cabinet. I realize they probably won’t be as cute as the ones at Home Depot, but it’s an irresistible project.

I have to get some tapping tools. It’s an essential I somehow overlooked.