I’m in the Pink

Insulation WORKS. Somehow, I am surprised. I knew it was supposed to work, but it’s still weird to see it happening.

I stuck an air conditioner in the garage. It worked, but the garage doors are sheet steel, and they do not make for ideal cold retention. So I ordered a couple of kits from Home Depot. You can’t get this stuff down here. I guess no one in Miami uses garage insulation.

I installed the first kit. The second one was missing parts, so I had to send it back. Still, even with one door uninsulated, the temperature down to under 74 degrees in the middle of the garage. It wasn’t cold near the air conditioner and warmer near the doors, as it used to be. I guess things will get even better when the second door is done.

Now that I’ve seen what the kits consist of, I think I could have gotten the same results with a roll of insulation and some duct tape. I don’t know if it would have been cheaper. At over $60 a garage door, the kits seem expensive to me. You can also buy foam and stick it up there, but it isn’t as good.

I hope there isn’t a reason why no one else in Miami does this. I hope the fiberglass won’t trap water or anything. I blocked some vents, but I think I have enough of them already. It would be simple enough to alter the insulation and let the air out.

Sitting next to the insulated door, I feel much more “indoors” than I did before. A sheet of metal isn’t much of a sound barrier. There is something oddly comforting about the fiberglass. Which, aptly enough, resembles a comforter.

My new lathe challenge is parting. The lathe came with a parting tool, but it goes with a rocker post which doesn’t really work. I tried to fake it up using washers to support the tool post, but the work started barking at me, so I quit. I have some cheap parting blades on the way from Enco. That should fix the problem.

I have no idea what I’m trying to do. I stuck aluminum in the chuck and started playing. I don’t have an objective, except to get familiar with the lathe. I want to start by cutting one of these dangerous 8″ aluminum bars down to 4″. So parting is important.

I considered doing it on the dry cut saw, but that’s a good way to ruin the blade, and I think that blade runs about $140. I’ve read that some people part by holding a hacksaw over a piece of work while it turns. I don’t think they do this with 2″ T6. I gave it a shot, and all I managed to do was cut a shallow groove surrounded by random scratches.

I want to do some boring, just to say I did it. This is a can of worms. The manly way to bore is to find a piece of metal, make a boring tool to fit in the end of it, add a set screw, anneal the end of the tool so the screw will bite into it, and get to work. Something like that. I would rather do that than buy a boring bar right off the bat, because it would teach me something (maybe that buying boring bars is smart). But I don’t have any 1/4″ cobalt or HSS to turn into boring tools, nor do I have a way to create a slot for the tool, nor do I have any way to install a set screw. I don’t have a tap and die set. And I can’t part off a suitable piece of the scrap dowel I was hoping to use.

I ordered a few bits of cobalt, just to play with. Plus a cheap protractor, to help me grind tools.

I have learned how to harden tools. I watched W.R. Smith video. He does it with a piece of steel wire, some roach powder, and a torch. But I guess I don’t need to harden anything. Lathe tool blanks are hard to start with, aren’t they? I’ll have to check. I assume hardening is useful if you overheat a tool, isn’t it? Danged if I know.

I now have a workspace that could be considered functional. It’s a big step forward. Toward being a completely eccentric goof with a garage that rivals Bob Vila’s worst drunken fantasies.

I’m pooped. I had to cut and hang all that fiberglass, and I had to take off and reinstall a garage door part to make it work, and I had to clean up and then shower the fiberglass off. I’d say one door is a two-hour job.

Working on the milling issue. This will be the final piece of evidence they use at my competency hearing. I don’t care. I will mill or die trying.

Time for food.

Barns of Aggression

In case everyone has forgotten, let me remind you of something.

North Korea just exploded an atom bomb, their leader is crazier than a tree full of coons, and they are working on ballistic missiles that can hit Los Angeles. Iran just sent six warships out into the ocean for no apparent reason, their leader keeps telling audiences he plans to destroy Israel, he has missiles that can hit Jerusalem, and he is running a big nuclear program in order to amass material for bombs. Plus he looks like he got away from a guy who grinds an organ.

Those things are true, but keep this in mind.

This man is the real threat to peace, because he wants to let a few eccentric Jews build barns and chicken houses in the desert. A desert Israel only possesses as the result of a war of unprovoked Muslim aggression. It’s a good thing the Arabs quit attacking the Jews, because if they hadn’t, the Jews would own Amman, Mecca, Beirut, Kuwait City, Damascus, and parts of Detroit. Plus a good percentage of New York City’s taxis.

That miserable bastard. Who does he think he is? Putting highly provocative BARNS up, in the middle of that gorgeous expanse of valuable rocks and sand! I can’t believe we haven’t nuked him already! Why, this is just like what Hitler did!

I know how to solve the problem. We need to send him the guy who wrote the building code here in Coral Gables. Of course I am referring to Building and Zoning Department Obergruppenführer Emeritus, Karl Goebbels. I believe he retired to Argentina. And they are trying to send him back.

Karl Goebbels: I hear you plan to change a light bulb in an outhouse in the West Bank.

Netanhayu: It is “reasonable growth.”

Karl Goebbels: I assume you pulled all the proper permits?

Netanyahu: “Permits”?

Karl Goebbels: We’ll need the Board of Architects to look this over. Have an architect do an elevation of the outhouse, and hire a team of electrical engineers to do a report on the light bulb.

Netanyahu: Board? What is this “board”? We want to screw in a light bulb.

Karl Goebbels: We only allow fluorescents now, and they’re full of mercury, so you’ll have to hire a Gables-approved company to dispose of the bulb when it burns out.

Netanyahu: Can I have a list of the companies?

Karl Goebbels: We haven’t approved any yet. They don’t actually exist. But when they do, you can have a licensed contractor screw in that light bulb. Give it three years. Call us every day during our three business hours to check. Leave a voicemail, which we’ll delete immediately.

Netanyahu: Forget it. I’ll tell them to use a candle.

Karl Goebbels: You’ll have to come down and look at an approved chart of candle colors. You know, you could also build a nice shower room. Warm showers. Clean, fresh water. Nothing to be afraid of.

Netanyahu: I think I’ll go join a mosque.

Karl Goebbels: If you want a minaret, you’ll need a variance.

If Auschwitz had had a building and zoning department like the one here in Coral Gables, Hitler would never have gotten his concentration camp built, and there is a good chance he would have blown his brains out ten years earlier.

Hitler: I want to build a breakfast nook and add onto my liebensraum.

Karl Goebbels: It would be easier to annex the Sudetenland.

Always remember the true reason Israel gets the blame for everything in the Middle East: the Muslims are degenerates who cannot be reasoned with and who will set off bombs inside any country that stands up for Israel. Like I have always said, the UN is like a couple of parents who always beat their better child, because they don’t have the spine to deal with the one that actually causes the problems. You’ve seen these parents. One kid has horns and a tail, and the other is fairly normal, and when the rotten one tortures the good one, the parents say something stupid like, “I don’t care who started it,” i.e. “I am too selfish and lazy to teach my kids the concept of justice.” We know we can push Israel around, so that’s what we do. They won’t blow us up.

I guess it’s not acceptable to call people like the Saudis degenerates, but I think it’s better than flogging old ladies and beating women in the street for displaying their calves. Which is what mainstream Muslims in places like Saudi Arabia do.

Last night I was thinking about the way people claim God doesn’t exist and that the Bible is a load of nonsense. Then I thought about what’s going on in the world. Troops from the United States, way over in the Western Hemisphere, are fighting a war in BABYLON, and we succeeded in deposing the king of Babylon and getting him hanged, and we killed his sons. He’s a lot like Haman (another figure who went after the Jews).

Alll that is literally true. Iraq is the ancient kingdom of Babylon, and Saddam Hussein was the king, just like Nebuchadnezzar. He called himself a president, but that doesn’t change what he was.

We’re fighting in Babylon, and the main thing that causes unrest in the world is a dispute over parts of the tiny, resource-poor, cash-poor, militarily insignificant, geographically unimportant nation of Israel. But God is imaginary, right? It’s all coincidence. Keep aborting your babies and doing drugs. Have all the loose sex you want, don’t tithe, and forget charity. Everything is swell.

Man, those barns are still making me mad.

And Have Burt Ward Wax the Batmobile

I can’t believe how much I rock. Check this out.

That’s the lathe, with a new old light installed, plus a 4-jaw chuck. And I added a couple of new wrenches. I think when you have a lathe, your best bet is to buy a couple of wrenches that fit the things you turn most often and just leave them where you can reach them. It beats running back and forth from the tool chest.

That light is from my old desk; the one I used when I was getting my bachelor’s degree. It was in a storage hole over a closet. Came in handy.

The light is attached to a piece of scrap I bolted to the wall. I had a 4″ section of 2″ by 3/16″ angle iron lying on the floor, so I drilled three holes in it and fastened it to the wall. Then I clamped the lamp base to it.

I also replaced the fine wheel on my bench grinder. Baldor ships these with fairly crappy wheels. It’s not that they’re cheap, although maybe they are. The quality is not the issue. The problem is that they’re not right for grinding lathe tools. I got an 80-grit aluminum oxide wheel from Enco, and I trued it (I think) with a silicon carbide stick. I’ll get one of those star wheel things if I can ever find a place that sells them AND has them in stock.

The spray bottle is WD40, from a Home Depot gallon jug.

I have replaced the worthless gear selection lever the lathe came with, and that white thing on the headstock is Moly-Dee. It is conceivable that I could turn something, if I knew how.

The 4-jaw chuck is mysterious. I tried to true up that piece of aluminum in it, but the weight makes it difficult. If you loosen one jaw so you can tighten another and move the aluminum, the aluminum likes to flop downward at the end and make things worse. Getting it within three or four thousandths of straight seems relatively easy, but I believe you’re supposed to be able to eliminate measurable error with one of these chucks.

I have the electrical parts to pretty up the wiring and put it away. Maybe tomorrow. In the photo it looks like the wiring is near the spinning stuff, but it really isn’t.

This week the insulation for the garage doors arrives. It’s very nice in the garage already, but insulation will probably make it even better.

I have to move the compressor to make room for the mill. That means running conduit over the rafters, about 14 feet off the ground. I can hardly wait! Maybe I should wait until my medical insurance kicks in.

I Laid me Down and Slept

Is this a wonderful morning, or what?

I used to think there were NO wonderful mornings. I had problems sleeping, and it drove me crazy. I had a hard mattress and mysterious on-and-off nasal congestion, and–this is disgusting–hard stuff accumulated in my nose, at the narrowest points in the air passages. The only way to cope with that was to get up and remove it. I woke over and over during the night. Sometimes when I woke up, I felt as if a giant magnet were sucking me down into the mattress. That’s how tired I was. I would get up and literally stumble because my nervous system wasn’t working yet.

I started taking steps. I gave away a $2000 mattress that felt like cement and replaced it with the much nicer, cheaper one I use to use when I lived in Texas. I lifted the head of the bed six inches. I got synthetic pillows, because when I was a kid, a useless allergist told my mother to get them for me.

I got improvements, but not real success. I wondered if the problem was mold or dirty air conduits or pollen. I decided to treat the one thing I could be sure of beating: dust mites. I got a microfiber mattress cover. It doesn’t kill mites, but it prevents them from getting at their food: me. It cut back on congestion to the point where I didn’t need anything to help me sleep. I quit using nasal spray, including that worthless saline stuff.

I still had one improvement to make. When I got new pillows, I saw mite-proof covers on display at the store. I picked one up. What the hell. The pillows improved my sleep, but one of them worked better than the other. One was a memory foam pillow that came with its own cover, and the other was a fake down pillow, which I put inside the cover I bought. The fake down pillow remained problem-free, but after a while, I noticed that I could feel congestion starting whenever I rolled over onto the foam pillow. I realized what was happening. Mites can’t grow in a foam pillow (I am told), but they can grow in the materials covering it. Any new pillow will kill your allergies, but if mites can get through the cover, they’ll grow on the fabric, and the protection will fade. Yesterday, I invested in two more pillow covers. I put one on the foam pillow, and I cleaned one of my old down pillows and stuck the other cover on it.

Last night was perfect. I have no idea when I fell asleep. I remember absolutely nothing that happened during the night. When I awoke, I felt great. And I had a down pillow to help me cope with the fake ones, which really are not as good.

I can’t express the feeling of freedom. It’s like I’ve been cured of leprosy. Poor sleep affects your blood pressure, your weight, your memory, your concentration, your energy, your mood, and your body’s ability to heal and renew itself. It’s a very big deal. It looks like it’s behind me.

If you want to try one of these products, go to Bed, Bath and Beyond and get a Microguard mattress cover and pillow covers. Pay no attention to the way they feel in the store. You can’t feel the fabric’s creepy texture when you use it, and it breathes, so you will not sweat. The only thing I’ve noticed is that the fake down pillow tends to expand like a balloon, because air passes out of the cover slowly. The pillow blows up from its natural loft, and then when you put your head on it, it deflates like a tire with a pinhole. That isn’t a problem with the other pillows.

I can go back to down now, although I want to keep the foam pillow for variety. I want varied pillow materials on hand so I will have choices every night when I engineer my pillow structure.

Next health challenge: I have to resume counting calories. I think the pizza crisis is over, so I won’t be making it every day and ruining my diet. Last night I checked my blood pressure, and it scared me to death. I assume something I had done or eaten was affecting it, because it was behaving strangely. The diastolic number varied between 89 and 113. I got up today, and my pressure was 114 over 76. I don’t trust blood pressure measurements. As a scientist, I can’t believe a gauge as silly as the sphygmomanometer could ever be reliable. How can things like subcutaneous fat, muscularity, and arm position fail to affect it? But I want to be thinner, just in case. I ate unsweetened oatmeal for breakfast today. I guess I could have just boiled a newspaper.

Church was good but not fantastic last night. They had a guest preacher, and he was too much like a standup comedian for my tastes. He started joking about PMS and other things not relevant to Christianity. That’s not what I go to church for, and I don’t want to be encouraged in my own habit of ridiculing people and their weaknesses. He didn’t follow his notes, and his sermon was disjointed and way too long. One of the reasons I left my last church was that the services lasted three hours. Like I’ve said before, there is a thin line between a long church service and a hostage situation. At the end, he asked everybody to give the church a special gift, which annoyed me. They want a special gift next week, for Pentecost. This is too much. I think he knew it. You could see the certainty leave his face when he brought it up. I think he knew he was making a mistake. I guess he just got carried away and then decided to bull his way through. I gave a little something out of respect for his authority, but I felt used. Not a big deal. Good people make mistakes, and I won’t miss the token amount I gave.

I figured there had to be some good things in his message. I don’t think God lets people go to an effective church and leave with nothing, just because it’s an off week. And I picked up some things. I think my prayer life needs a shot in the arm. I have not restored my routine; it comes and goes. So in the morning, I am not always spending time in prayer. He also talked about temptation, and how we are sifted and pulled away from the church. That was a useful reminder.

It certainly beats what I would have gotten had I stayed home, i.e. nothing.

He said Christians screw up by pursuing marriage too doggedly. He claimed that when the Bible refers to “he who finds a wife,” the word “find” means to come across inadvertently. Try to serve God, and wait for someone to show up. That was the message. Maybe he’s right. That’s the way it works with other needs, to some extent. God provided mates for people in the Old Testament. I think of the stories of Isaac, Jacob, and Ruth. Human effort was involved, but it was guided from above.

Mancow and Hitchens Say So

I saw something interesting on the web last night. Looks like Eric “Mancow” Muller submitted to waterboarding and decided it was torture. After six seconds. That’s how long he lasted before giving up and asking to be released. And Christopher Hitchens, who was also waterboarded, agrees. Hitchens won’t even say how long he lasted. He’s embarrassed. Muller was trying to prove waterboarding is not torture. Now he is sure that it is. That proves his sincerity, when he says torture is the right word.

This is not a big surprise to me. What surprises me is that conservatives keep claiming it’s not torture. It is wrong to compare it to certain things our enemies have done, such as lowering live people into plastic-shredding machines, but that doesn’t mean it’s not torture.

A long time ago, I read that the CIA record for withstanding waterboarding was something like 20 seconds. I mean that a CIA employee who was voluntarily waterboarded lasted that long. After I saw that, I was content to agree that it was torture. Anything so unpleasant a serious government intelligence operative (no doubt trying to win a bet and impress his buddies) can’t stand it for half a minute is probably torture.

I’ve joked about how great it was that we were waterboarding the inbred idiots who were trying to destroy our cities, but I never said it in a serious way, because I thought waterboarding was a bad idea. Maybe I shouldn’t have joked about it, but hey, I’m human, and this isn’t the New York Times, and I’m no journalist. This is just a blog. I have joked about cancer and blindness and AIDS and God only knows what else, and so have most Americans. Doesn’t mean anything.

Now conservatives look silly, because people who mean well are using stupid phrases like “having a little water poured up your nose” to describe waterboarding. I can’t understand why waterboarding is so unpleasant. It doesn’t sound all that bad. But it’s clearly a terrible experience, and we ought to admit it.

I remember reading Jacobo Timerman’s books. He was an Argentinian Jew. He as kidnapped by his government, and they tortured him by applying electrodes to his bare skin and cranking up the voltage. I believe this is totally harmless, from a physical standpoint, because the amperage is tiny. Doesn’t sound all that bad, does it? But when he described his response, he said you don’t shout when they turn on the power. You howl. Apparently, the pain is so great, your self-control completely disappears instantaneously. So you don’t have to do anything invasive or disfiguring to torture a person. A little water may be more than sufficient.

I’ve thought about this a little, and it seems to me that the level of discourse on the subject is pretty low. People aren’t saying anything really intelligent. Just “torture bad” or “water up nose okay.”

I’m not sure I would back a total ban on torture. I would have to know more about it. I believe we should consider the possibility that the morality of torture depends on the circumstances. For example, I would not back torturing an enemy soldier to find out where his army planned to hit our troops, even if thousands of lives were at stake. But what about a terrorist who knows which Manhattan address is the location of a Muslim atom bomb? What if you had a few hours to get that kind of information? Would you seriously expect to rely on things like sleep deprivation and insults?

We should probably have one set of standards for uniformed enemies and another for terrorists who target civilians for no legitimate military purpose. We have long accepted the notion that ordinary soldier-to-soldier warfare has rules, even when a nation’s autonomy is at stake. But when an illiterate boob in a khaffiyah decides to roast several hundred thousand civilians alive, maybe he should be deemed to have given up his rights under the usual rules.

Think about this. Imagine you are attacked by a violent criminal, and you believe you’re in danger of serious injury, which, under the law, includes sexual assault. The law says you can do absolutely anything to that person, to incapacitate him and prevent the harm. You can push a knife through his eyeball. You can throw boiling oil in his face. You can set him on fire. You can park your car on him. Anything. His suffering isn’t even a legal consideration. Whatever means you have at hand, you are allowed to use, provided what you do is reasonable and not excessive under the circumstances. Maybe a person who tries to murder or maim a large number of noncombatants should have no more rights than a rapist or mugger.

But if that is true, even then, it is only true when no other methods will work.

Perhaps refraining from torture isn’t the way to maintain the moral high ground. Maybe the reasons we do it are what properly distinguish us from the backward savages who are trying to exterminate us.

You Can’t Lead Without Serving

I just realized this is the weekend when rappers descend on Miami Beach. If there ever was a good time to visit South Beach, this is not it. Unless you want to see fights and a lot of confused young black women in front of video cameras, shaking their bare rear ends to bad music. I wonder if we’ll ever give up the stupid notion that all music is inherently good. You can’t separate a musical genre from the sentiments expressed in its song lyrics or the culture of depravity embraced by its adherents. Let me know when classical music punks flock to a city and make fools of themselves for three days, and I’ll say I was wrong.

I wonder if I’ll hear about this weekend’s festivities when I go to church tonight. “Christian rap” is the only thing about that place about which I can complain. That, and the giant bread factory next door that makes the whole neighborhood smell and always makes me want to get food.

Has rap produced even one “artist” who can play a musical instrument? Jazz gave us Art Tatum and Charlie Christian. Who has rap produced? Far as I can tell, when rappers want music in their tracks, they find it and steal it.

My family is going through a rough spot, and I would appreciate prayer. It’s something I saw coming. I consider it a growth pain. I can’t be specific because I am so important, a malevolent individual who is too scared of me to confront me scrutinizes my blog daily for items that can be used to drive me and my sister apart.

Every family has problems, and one problem that is extremely common is a kinked-up chain of authority. Two symptoms are feminism and the arrogance of youth. God designed authority to run in this direction: God, pastor, man, wife, oldest son, other kids, dog, Satan. The family is like the human body, which has a dominant hand. The left hand is just as important as the right, but the body works better when the right hand leads. This should be obvious from human nature. For example, women expect men to tell them what to do from time to time. They like it and need it. I’ve had women thank me for it. If you refuse to lead, a woman will feel contempt for you, and she will resent you. Publicly, women claim this isn’t true, but privately, they admit it. On the other hand, a woman who dominates her husband will make him miserable and destroy the confidence he needs to satisfy her physical needs. She’ll drive him to women with whom he feels stronger. And kids are happier when their parents give them clear, strict rules. And few things can make your life more miserable than a untrained dog that believes it’s as good as a person.

A man who won’t submit to God and his pastor will rot inside, and he’ll leave his family starved for guidance. The error that made feminism possible was the insane notion that a position at the head of the family was purely a reward and a privilege. That’s idiotic. It’s a tremendous duty. It’s a burden. You’re supposed to put your wife and kids first, but a lot of men think being born male entitles them to give orders and lie on the couch watching TV for six hours a night. No wonder feminists found an opening.

A couple that isn’t led by the husband is like a man with a right hand that has lost its cunning. That is a metaphor with more than one level to it.

My mother is gone, but my dad is still around. In my daily prayers, I ask that he be restored to his proper position as our spiritual leader. I ask that my sister and I be helped to honor and even obey him, and that he be guided to give us good counsel. I ask that God restore the correct order in this family. Judging from the Bible, that order is supposed to persist even after a child becomes an adult. Think about it. Isaac was supposedly in his late thirties when he was bound up for sacrifice, and Jacob was in his sixties when he left his father to marry.

Authority issues have been a problem for us. My dad is not a Christian, so I used to think the proper thing was to behave as though he were out of commission as head of the family. I thought I should do as I saw fit, because I was enlightened and so on. But now I believe that’s a dangerous, fatuous oversimplification. I think a father is always a father, unless he is hopelessly corrupt, and the correct thing is for a child to work with his father and try to help him become a strong, unselfish, God-fearing family leader. I believe God will honor that kind of effort by changing the father and the rest of the family. Sooner or later, God’s wisdom will start to flow to the family through the father, as God intended from the start. Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s how I see it.

My sister and I have both been too willful. It has been easier for me to change. She is having more trouble than I am, and that’s why we’re having problems right now.

We’re both single, even though we both believe in marriage. I think we may have sabotaged ourselves through our attitudes toward authority. My sister has never been willing to let a man lead, and I have not understood the importance of being a leader. I was corrupted by feminism. I bought into the poisonous total equality myth. If you really believe that nonsense, it can drive women away. They sense that you won’t give them what they truly want. A lot of men only pretend to believe it, so it isn’t a major problem for them. Women will usually give you what you want, if you’re willing to tell them comforting lies. It’s no way to live, but it works.

Again, I can’t go into what is actually happening, but a tangled chain of authority is at the root of it. A family is like a pipe through which God’s power and blessings flow. The members of the family are like the axe heads through which Odysseus fired his famous arrow. Everything has to line up reasonably well, or nothing can pass through. We are not aligned correctly at this moment. It will eventually pass, but I don’t know how long it will take.

By the way, according to Mish Weiss’s blog, cancer isn’t her biggest threat right now. On Mother’s Day, she got a bone marrow transplant from a far-off daughter she gave up over a decade ago, and it appears to be taking. But she is weak and has to be concerned about infection. That sounds like real progress, even if she is still extremely ill. I hope you’ll remember her in your prayers today.

Get me Taiwanese!

I got my milling machine puzzle solved. I thought I had it solved yesterday, but it’s more solved today. It is now just a question of deciding which Asian mill to get. I learned a few things that might be helpful to other people who are Googling around, trying to figure out which milling machine is the best buy. This may not be absolutely correct, but it’s close enough.

Forget Bridgeport. Forget all American machines. If you find a great deal on a mill some nutcase bought new and only used as a music stand, great, but generally, American machines are overpriced, and it can be very hard to find one that isn’t pretty worn where it counts. It might be worth the effort if there was something special about American milling machines, but there is not. They are not the best. So don’t bother.

You want a Taiwanese mill. Chinese mills are also okay, but they’re generally not quite as good, and Taiwanese is a safer bet. Sharp and Acer are two brands you can trust. If you Google, you will find a number of experienced machinists who say the better Taiwanese mills are superior to Bridgeports. Not “nearly as good.” Superior. And they definitely have more features. So whatever the truth is, they’re good enough for your garage.

You can get a top name brand for seven thousand and up. Something like that. You will never wear it out in your home shop. It will do anything a Bridgeport can do. Parts are readily available. It is not a risky buy.

There are cheaper Taiwanese mills that are fundamentally just as good. Made in the same factories, to the same tolerances. They may not be as pretty, and they may have fewer doodads on them. But under the bells and whistles…same machine, from the same assembly line, made by the same people, from the same parts.

One example–I may get one of these–is GMC. This is a company that split off from Birmingham. They will put a very nice Taiwanese mill in your hands for under five thousand dollars. They have customer service, but even if they did not, parts for the various Taiwanese mills tend to be interchangeable, because they are THE SAME PARTS.

There is some confusion (in my mind, at least) about where the final assembly is done on these things. I think some are finished off in China. But it probably does not matter.

The mills GMC resells are also sold by MSC as their proprietary Vectrax line. I checked, and these things go for over eleven grand. They come with DROs, but that doesn’t justify a $6000+ price difference. They’re also sold as Precision Matthews.

It ought to be obvious what I plan to get. A reconditioned (not fully restored) Bridgeport with an ancient motor and no warranty will cost around $4500, delivered. Any way you slice it, I have to pay a thousand dollars just to get it here, so that jacks up the price. It will have no DRO and no power feed, and it will be lighter and less rigid than a Taiwanese mill, and it will probably have a smaller table with less travel. The motor will probably be 1 1/2 HP or less, whereas the Asian jobs typically have 3 HP. The Asian spindles are bigger and stronger. A new Taiwanese mill with a warranty, a DRO, a power feed, and pretty new paint will run six hundred dollars more than a highly dubious Bridgeport. The resale won’t be as good (unless the Bridgeport really craps out), but it’s a better machine, and I am not planning to sell it. It’s a lifetime buy. Would you consider the resale value on an artificial hip?

It looks like Taiwanese for me. I might spend a little more and get a better DRO, but probably not, because thousandths are thousandths, no matter who designs the chip that measures them.

Grizzly and Shop Fox (Grizzly in white paint) sell Chinese mills. People seem to like the more recent ones. They’re a little cheaper than a GMC, and Grizzly has great service. But the product is probably not quite as good as Taiwanese, and the price is nearly the same. If you buy a Taiwanese Grizzly, I think they start at about 8K. So forget Grizzly and Shop Fox.

One other good option is the Millrite I saw locally. I can probably put that in the garage for under two thousand, and it probably has very little wear. It has the original paint, it looks great, and Millrites aren’t generally used for production. But sooner or later, it will limit me because of its size. And can you put a DRO or a power feed on a Millrite? I don’t even know.

That’s the summary. There may be little factual problems with it, but I’m satisfied that Taiwanese is my nearly perfect machining answer. I wanted a neat old American machine, but we just can’t compete with Asians any more. We can’t even come close. I bought a 35-year-old American lathe, and it looks like it has been through hell, and I had to replace the motor. I did the “buy American” thing, and I feel like I have been punished enough. I was a moron. Now I want a cheap tool I can actually use.

Also: Milling Epiphany

I had an interesting thought last night.

The general rule in my life has been that the worse things get, the closer I draw to God. But lately, I have been drawing closer to God because things are getting better.

People often ask why God doesn’t treat them better. Why he doesn’t fix their problems, when they have faith and go to church and pray and so on. Maybe I know the answer. If you forget God when things go well, you give him incentive to let you suffer. If you get more excited about God when life is pleasant, you give him incentive to keep blessing you. Doesn’t that make sense? After all, what’s important to God? Your income? Your health? Your peace of mind? Of course not. The most important thing is that you have a close relationship with him and walk in faith. So shouldn’t you expect him to do whatever causes that to happen?

I feel stupid for not seeing this earlier in my life. It should be obvious from reading the Bible. When the ancient Israelites did well, they started worshiping idols and ascribing their success to their own merit. And God withdrew his blessings, and they suffered. Then they returned to him. But God was content to keep blessing them, as long as they were faithful.

Seems to me that the wise thing is to credit God with your successes, keep up with your tithes and offerings and alms, pray and study regularly, live by faith, and get your butt to church every week. Maybe being a foxhole Christian just guarantees that you’ll spend your whole life in a foxhole.

I guess you can try to make an end-run around this kind of thinking. You can say, “If God is all-powerful, he can create a world where everybody is blessed no matter how they act,” or some such thing. All I can say is, we don’t make the rules. The Bible makes it pretty clear that God is not going to magically erase all suffering just because we don’t feel like doing things his way, so I think it’s stupid to fight the house rules. If you want that kind of God, you were born in the wrong universe. Maybe you should be worshiping Barack Obama instead. He doesn’t believe in suffering or consequences. Yet.

Now, what about my fevered search for a milling machine? I finally figured it out.

I don’t want a Bridgeport. The used ones I’ve seen are generally crap, and they have no warranties. It’s a sucker game, and the prices are way out of line with what you get. The reconditioned one I found might be perfect, but it’s too risky; someone who bought one from the rebuilder gave me information that put me off the buy. I might go for the high school machine, if I can get a good inspection.

Best choice: used Taiwanese. These machines are actually superior to Bridgeports, and gorgeous used ones are affordable.

Second best choice: new Birmingham with Chicom body and Taiwan head. I can get this locally and save on shipping.

Third: Shop Fox or Grizzly. People who own recent Shop Fox/Grizzly products say great things about them, and the customer service is top notch.

Turns out the Chaiwanese machines are heavier and more rigid than Bridgeports. How about that?

The puzzling is over, which is good, because my puzzler is sore. Now I have to find a mill I like.

Alert the Media

The quest for a milling machine gets more frustrating, the further I get into it. Ordinarily you expect to get CLOSER to an answer as you work on a problem, but it isn’t turning out that way.

I thought I had the solution. A guy selling “rebuilt” machines. I contacted him and talked to him. He said the machines were not rebuilt. They were reconditioned. That means they’ve had much less work than rebuilt machines, and according to one of his former customers, the reconditioning does not restore lost accuracy. So apparently, most of the money you pay for reconditioning doesn’t buy you any improvement in function. The former customer said he regretted the buy, and that he had to have the head on his machine rebuilt. And he said it privately, because he knew the “America first” crowd would get in his face if he did it publicly.

Guess what a rebuilt machine really costs? Roughly eight grand, plus shipping. So call it $9500. No thanks. I can get a new Taiwanese mill for that.

I started looking at Chinese machines and reading up on them. I’ve only learned one fact for certain: the people who always say you are better off with old American machines have to be ignored, because everything they say is useless drivel. Some of them hate Chinese people. Some are old union guys who can’t accept the fact that the free market proved they were wrong and drove machine tool makers overseas. Whatever drives them, they are all fools, and nothing they say has any value. Some Chinese machines are very good, and most are at least okay. Some Taiwanese machines are better than some American machines. And we are never going to have a big machine-tool industry in America again, so people who are upset about that need to shut up and deal with it.

Grizzly/Shop Fox has a few nice mainland-Chinese mills about the size of a Bridgeport, and some are cheaper than a RECONDITIONED Series I. So I am considering getting one. I’ll have a warranty, I’ll have someone to complain to if there are problems, I won’t have any worn-out parts lurking in the head or under the table, and delivery will be free or very cheap. How can you go wrong with a deal like that? The castings may not be as pretty as the old Bridgeport iron, but what good is a pretty machine that craps out and requires expensive repairs I can’t do? I can’t scrape or rebuild a mill, and how would I find someone near me who could do it? In Miami, you can’t find people qualified to run a weedeater. Seriously, that is no exaggeration. I had to build little shields around the bases of my trees. Skilled labor does not exist here. I think people come here because they are considered unemployable in Guatemala and El Salvador. So I’d have to sell the mill, because buying a new one would be a better deal than shipping it to someone who could repair it.

I wasn’t asleep during my ordeal with the “barely used” 1974 lathe I bought. I paid attention. I noticed that I was miserable. I am not eager to repeat that experience with a more expensive machine.

People are telling me I don’t need to worry about accuracy (i.e., a new or little-used machine), because it will be a long time before I’ll be good enough to take advantage of an accurate machine’s abilities. Does that make sense to you? To me it sounds like, “Spend four figures on a crappy machine, sell it at a four-figure loss, and then spend four figures on a better machine.” I have never understood people who say you should buy “beginner tools.” They invariably turn out to be disappointments, you always lose money when you sell them, and then you have to get used to their expensive replacements. It would make sense if cheap mills were cheap. But they aren’t. A good Millrite or BP clone, suitable for use by a serious home machinist, costs $3000-$4000, and a good “beginner mill” costs at least $2000. And a beginner Bridgeport costs $4000, delivered.

Why spend eight thousand dollars to get a four-thousand-dollar tool? Am I crazy?

I have two table saws. One cost $300, and the other cost $500. I will probably never use the cheap one again. The other one will handle any job I will be able to throw at it for the rest of my life, even if I use it commercially. I have two miter saws. One cost $200, and the one I should have bought in the first place cost $373. Is this a pattern I should repeat, with a decimal point added? Uh…NO.

People are also telling me a good machinist can do great work on a bad mill. Okay, and Jim Thorpe once ran the hundred-yard dash with another man on his back. Generally, though, he ran by himself. I’m pretty sure. Why make life harder than it has to be? Aren’t better tools BETTER? If bad tools are just as good, why do they cost less? I don’t want to do great work on a bad mill. I want to do bad work on a good mill, and then good work on a good mill. The same people who tell me I don’t need a good mill because I have no skills and can’t appreciate it seem to think that once I get the skills to appreciate it, I won’t want it. Does that even begin to make sense?

There is a used Bridgeport in Connecticut that interests me. If I can get a guy to inspect it and report on it for a hundred bucks, I may buy it. I’ve arbitrarily decided I won’t buy a mill that won’t hold five tenths, because I needed a standard, and five tenths seemed right. If the seller opines that an inspection will confirm that the machine meets the standard, I’ll spring for the checkup. If not, I guess it’s time to order Chinese.

Still Kicking

If you follow Mish Weiss’s blog, you have seen this wonderful news already:

There is a slight rise in the white cell count! Doctor cautions that Mish is still critically ill.
What this means is engraftment has begun. Abby’s cells are beginning to grow new cells for Mish.

A day or two ago, Leah put up a post indicating the doctors believed Mish was “slipping away.” I was afraid people would be discouraged from praying for her recovery. Here is what I posted in her comments.

From Numbers 14:

2 And all the children of Israel murmured against Moses and against Aaron: and the whole congregation said unto them, Would God that we had died in the land of Egypt! or would God we had died in this wilderness!

3 And wherefore hath the LORD brought us unto this land, to fall by the sword, that our wives and our children should be a prey? were it not better for us to return into Egypt?

4 And they said one to another, Let us make a captain, and let us return into Egypt.

5 Then Moses and Aaron fell on their faces before all the assembly of the congregation of the children of Israel.

6 And Joshua the son of Nun, and Caleb the son of Jephunneh, which were of them that searched the land, rent their clothes:

7 And they spake unto all the company of the children of Israel, saying, The land, which we passed through to search it, is an exceeding good land.

8 If the LORD delight in us, then he will bring us into this land, and give it us; a land which floweth with milk and honey.

9 Only rebel not ye against the LORD, neither fear ye the people of the land; for they are bread for us: their defence is departed from them, and the LORD is with us: fear them not.

Don’t be too quick to accept a bad report.

There is a peculiar phenomenon we see in the modern church, which is not evident in the Bible. People who pray for things give up while there is still hope. I don’t do that. I pray until there is no point in praying any more. There is nothing to be gained from saying, “Well, it looks like you’re not going to give me what I need, so I’ll pray for something that seems more likely.”

Garrison Keillor once said that if a sheep ever does what you tell it to, it only means you guessed right. God is not a sheep. I don’t try to guess what he’s going to do, so I can pray for it. I pray for what I need, and I try to have faith that he’ll do it. I’m no authority, but I think I’m right about this.

People have a way of trying to guess what’s going to happen, and then shaping their prayers accordingly. It’s a way of making excuses for God. They don’t want to have their faith shaken by failure, so they pray for things that seem easier for God to provide, or which he is more likely to do. So a person might pray for someone like Mish to be healed, and then when things got tough, he might back down and merely pray that she not suffer.

I can’t think of a Biblical example of a person doing that. I can’t picture Moses saying, “Look, if you can’t part the Red Sea, at least give us better working conditions back in Egypt.” There are examples of Biblical figures failing to get what they asked God for, but the general rule is that God provided explanations or at least warnings. Paul wasn’t healed of his thorn in the flesh, but it was needed to keep him humble. John the Baptist wasn’t delivered from prison, but Jesus took the time to inform him that he wasn’t getting out. That’s really not the same as giving up on a prayer and having to guess why it wasn’t answered.

I know people don’t like seeing their hopes dashed, but so what? It’s not fatal. Why is it wrong to continue having faith, through a sick person’s death? What is the advantage of quitting?

Jews say what you do matters more than what you believe, but Christians are different. We think faith itself has power. We think it is the conduit through which God exercises his strength. If you’re a Christian, you have to believe that when you stop having faith, God’s power stops working. So why would you stop believing? Faith doesn’t cost anything. All you risk is disappointment.

We always say we walk by faith, not by sight. But do we, really?

One of the things that makes it impossible for me to deny God is a miracle I received. I decided to join a church, and immediately, I got a flu-like sickness. A severe cold which would not go away. It lasted weeks. I prayed, and I refused to accept the illness, and I always, ALWAYS said I was healed, regardless of how it looked. And one day I saw a dark shape leave my body and exit the house through a door, and I was instantly healed. If I had just gone by my symptoms, that would never have happened. So how can I let myself pray that a sick person has a nice time until she dies? My own experience tells me that guarantees failure.

We’re like the Jews in the time of Jesus. They hadn’t had a prophet in hundreds of years, and they didn’t expect to see God work with great power, the way he did for Moses and Joshua. The Christian church abandoned the Holy Spirit centuries ago, we started substituting man-made rules for true, personal relationships with God, and we started making excuses for the almighty. He won’t heal for this reason. He won’t heal for that reason. Have faith, but don’t actually expect anything to happen. Because apparently, the word “faith” means something other than “faith.” Somewhere along the line, we decided that as long as we were sure of going to heaven, we didn’t need to get to know God or obey him or see his power in our lives. In fact, we tended to persecute people who expected God to behave the way he did in the Bible. As if they were the problem. Yet somehow we still consider ourselves more enlightened than first-century Jews who rejected Jesus.

What’s the difference?

I will not pray for Mish to die happily. She doesn’t need prayer to do that. She can get that from morphine. I don’t pray for God to pass me the salt, when I can reach for it myself. I pray for things only God can do.

I’m sticking to my guns. I don’t know what else to do.

By the way, here is the base I machined to fit my lathe. I’ve been fondling it all morning.

Victory

Man, this is incredible. I finally have a lathe!

I just did the finishing touches on the base for the quick change tool post. Now I have something to mount my tools on, and I guess I can throw my useless rocker post in the trash. Look:

The part I fixed is under the base, in the T-slot. I had to make cut after cut today, to get it in there. Finally, I had to finish it off with a file. I could have used the lathe, but it’s so hard to mount parts in the compound, the file was actually easier. And incredibly, it’s more accurate. I believe the part may have bowed a little when I torqued down the bolt that held it in place. On top of that, sometimes when I re-mounted the part, I didn’t get the exact height I wanted. So the part had some cuts that were essentially perfect, and some that were flawed enough to make it fit badly.

Believe it or not, it looks fantastic now. The file took out the little swirly marks the cutter left, and it flattened the imperfect surfaces.

What a relief this is. I was not able to use the lathe without a tool post. As of fifteen minutes ago, I have a machine tool that actually functions!

The base fits in the slot very tightly. There isn’t any friction to speak of when you shove it in, but if it were ten thousandths bigger, it wouldn’t go in. And if you turn it 180 degrees, forget it. It only fits one way.

Maybe that’s a good thing. I don’t want it wobbling around in there. And I can claim I made it tight on purpose.

If there had been any way to finish it on the lathe, I would have done it, believe me. But the file gave a better result, so I might as well pretend I planned it this way.

I love machining. It is easily the coolest thing I have ever done with tools.

Nothing is Simple

How big a deal is replacing a feed screw in a Bridgeport mill? I have my eye on a mill with a cheesy old power feed, and I am told I’d need a new feed screw if I upgraded to a Servo.

Bad Report

From Mish Weiss’s blog, posted by Leah:

I spoke with the doctors a few minutes ago and they informed me that Mish is slipping away. I am having a hard time accepting this. Even though, I’m sorry I can’t post right now.
Please pray for her.

“Slipping away” means “still alive” to me. I don’t presume to know when another person is going to leave this world. When David’s son passed away, David got up and put himself together and went on with life. But until that moment, he prayed. So I will continue, and I hope you will, too.

Base Taking Shape

I know everyone on earth is dying to know how I did with the tool post base.

I just quit. I have one side of the base completely done, and I have one cut left to do. I’ll be going back soon. The reason I’m not doing it now is that I started having swarf problems. I foolishly chose to wear flip-flops this morning, and I figured I’d change them if the chips really started flying. A few minutes ago, I became aware that if I walked normally, I stood a good chance of driving the collected chips into the balls of my feet and the skin between my toes. So I stopped, got in the shower, and washed my feet.

The lathe is not the world’s greatest mill. If I had a real collet, a milling attachment, and parallels, we might be getting more impressive results. But all I have is one bolt, holding the workpiece down on two pieces of wood, and I’m holding the cutter in a 3-jaw chuck, which can’t be the best possible way to do it. If it were, it would be hard to sell collets.

It’s a real pain, getting the layout lines on the work parallel to the motion of the compound. I have to keep adjusting the work. Also, it’s impossible to repeat a height adjustment precisely. Maybe paper shims or wood blocks deform too much under pressure. Nonetheless, the base will look pretty good when I’m done, and it will work perfectly.

I’m glad I came up with this jig, because without it, I would have to find a machinist…in Miami…who understands ENGLISH…who would take on a miniscule job.

I may start up again tomorrow. Food time is nearly here.

Gonzo Machinist Strikes Again

Raise your hand if you are one of the idiots who took me seriously when I said I was going to quit trying to mill the base for my tool post.

SHAME ON YOU. You KNOW I don’t have any common sense.

Here is the jig I came up with.

I have one tool which I am actually capable of using to make precision cuts, so I used it. I refer to the table saw. I cut two pieces of red oak a few thousandths over an inch in depth. I stuck them under the base. I enlarged a hole in an old piece of steel scrap, ran a bolt through it, and put it in the compound with the bolt pointing upward. I dropped the base over the bolt and added a washer and nut. Then I used a feeler gauge to figure out how many paper shims I needed under the base to get it to the right height. The base was too high as well as too wide, so I had to use the side of the cutter, not just the end.

Base after a few passes:

Final result:

I used a few drops of Moly-Dee (per pass) as cutting fluid, since that was all I had.

I was terrified the whole time. You can imagine what would happen if the cutter had managed to turn the base. I took tiny passes. Probably ten of them, plus a final climb-cut pass.

I know I did this all wrong, but the tools dictated the method. The result is fine. The major imperfections in the cut are from two sources: the sad effort I made the other day, and the sad efforts of the Chinese people who made the base.

I had to rest. It’s exhausting, focusing your attention on a cutter while making tiny, slow cuts.

I have three more cuts to make. Maybe I can find a way to use the dry cut saw to do the final ones. This doesn’t have to be pretty. It just has to fit in the slot in the compound.

If I succeed at this, I’ll have a functioning lathe!