Plus Convulsions

News from Israel, RE Mish Weiss:

Doc R said when I spoke with him last, “Mish is still with us through sheer willpower and the power of prayer” thank you, you all have a lot to do with it.

Shabbat Shalom

Marc

If you remember Mish in prayer today, do me a favor and remember my cousin Debbie, too.

More

Leah says the fever is fluctuating, and the lows are getting lower. What a testimony this makes for.

I Got More Power

I’m all excited. Today I get to turn the new air conditioner on. And I need it! I worked in the garage for four or five hours yesterday, and by the end of it, I was really dehydrated. I kept drinking, figuring I would catch up. Before I went to bed, I drank even more, and I assumed I would overdo it and then have to get up in the middle of the night. Yet, to put it delicately, the results defied expectations. I slept all night.

The people at Home Depot probably know my face by now. I have to go over there soon and get a plug so I can fake up a receptacle until the proper stuff can be obtained.

I’m going to get a milling machine next. I don’t care how much aggravation it causes me. I am not going to go to my grave wondering what it would have been like to fulfill my decades-old desire to learn machining. Law school cost me $22,000 per year, and that’s just tuition. I have less than that invested in my tools, and they bring me a thousand times the satisfaction.

I went out to the garage last night and looked over my work. I felt a sense of gratitude I can’t even describe. I know it’s silly. What I have out there isn’t much. A few nice tools, a TV, and an air conditioner. But I feel like I got my own private resort.

Lately I’ve been watching House reruns. For some reason, I DVR’d a bunch of shows for my sister, and they were piling up on the machine, and I started watching them. Wonderful show. Hugh Laurie was already one of my favorite actors because of his work in the Bertie Wooster and Jeeves series and The Blackadder. If you haven’t seen his Prince George, your television has not justified its existence.

Once in a while, Laurie plays music on the show. He’s a pianist and a guitarist. He’s really good, too. He played a version of Georgia on my Mind which made me wish I could buy it on CD.

On House, he plays a rude doctor who solves patient’s problems through pure creativity. He fumbles around for half an hour or more, and then in the last few minutes of the show, he experiences a revelation, and the patient gets well.

I am not a jealous person by nature. I don’t really care what other people have, unless they’re obnoxious about it, or they got something important which really should have gone to someone else. But I started to feel jealous, watching House. I’ve had a lot of problems with my own musical efforts, because my memory and concentration let me down. And here was Hugh Laurie, a man who excelled in his chosen field, playing music beautifully as a hobby. And I know it’s irrational, but because he played a character who solved problems through creativity, he reminded me of myself. A better version of me. Back when I was studying to be a physicist, I used to solve problems by lying down and thinking about other things until the answers came to me.

Last night I read about him on the Internet. Seems like he’s not a particularly happy person. I may be wrong, but that’s the impression I get from the information I found.

I thought about that while I looked at my silly garage. I enjoy it so much, and my life is so pleasant. I could not believe I deserved the garage! You would be amazed at the intensity of the emotions I felt as I looked at it.

On the one hand, I was right, because as a Christian, I know people don’t really deserve the blessings they get. On the other hand, from a human perspective, it’s just a garage. Donald Trump had a 300-foot yacht with gold-plated faucets, and it didn’t make him happy.

I don’t feel jealous now. I got my perspective back. Also, House is a fictional character. And even if he were not, he’s so miserable, no one in his right mind would envy him.

You can’t look at what other people have and assume it would please you. You don’t know how they got it or what it cost them, and you don’t know what problems may prevent them from enjoying it. I see Bentleys and Ferraris and Porsches almost every day. Even though I don’t care much about cars, I used to think the people who drove them were very lucky. Then one day I realized that only a small percentage of them were paid for. And I saw a neighbor’s Porsche on a repo truck a few months back; that made me think. The grass is always greener. It’s good to realize that it’s an illusion. If more people knew that, the world would be a more peaceful place.

The little things I have bring me tremendous pleasure, and even though that is true, I am fortunate enough not to be bound up in them. If they burned in a fire tomorrow, I wouldn’t like it, but I would sleep well tomorrow night. That attitude is a gigantic blessing, and it must come from God, because it’s contrary to human nature.

I don’t think we’re supposed to get everything we want, or that our lives are supposed to be free from problems. But I do believe we’re supposed to be happy, and that overall, we are supposed to succeed. I don’t buy into the idea that all Christians should have piles of wealth, or that we should never get sick, or that everything we try should work right from the start. The TBN nuts used to preach that stuff because it got people to fill their coffers, and it’s wrong. But I think life is supposed to be good, and that we should feel blessed and content. And very often, we do get very good things.

Home Depot is calling. Who am I to resist?

Used Romex for Sale Cheap

I am wiped out.

I pulled out the old 8-3 Romex from my air compressor circuit. I replaced it with about 27 feet of 6-3. I guess that took three hours. Working with 6-3 Romex is a lot like wrestling an alligator, except an alligator can’t give you electric shocks. I probably went up and down the ladder 40 times.

After that, I stripped maybe seven feet of the outer insulation off, made a new 3/4″ conduit, and shoved the Romex through it. I installed the conduit and attached everything to the existing disconnect. That took maybe an hour and a half.

I can’t believe how long it took. This stuff is very hard to work with. And when it was all over, I found I had the wrong kind of circuit breaker. So I stuffed the 40-amp job back in the box. Hey, if it doesn’t blow, I know I don’t need to replace it.

I still don’t have a socket. But the wire and conduit already exist, so it will be a quick job. I’m irritated that Home Depot doesn’t have the right receptacle. I’ve decided to jury-rig it with a receptacle intended for a cord (those, they have), and I’ll order the right part off the Internet. I can’t wait a week for a stupid receptacle.

The whole time I was doing this, I was thinking how wonderful it would be to have air conditioning. I guess that means it was worth it. Next time, I WILL have air conditioning.

Hope I can get by with that 40-amp breaker. Smaller breakers are always better, when you can get away with them.

My Money is in Copper

I have returned from Home Depot. Guess what 6-3 Romex costs? A whopping $2.56 per foot. And I bought 30 feet. Plus some 3/4″ conduit and a 50-amp breaker. All this, just to beef up my compressor circuit by ten amps, so I can add the air conditioner.

At least I didn’t have to buy a 15-amp breaker for the unit itself. When I went out to look at the plug, to find out what kind of receptacle I needed, I saw that it had a breaker built into it. That saved me half an hour and maybe twenty bucks.

My plan is to yank the old 8-3 Romex, put the 6-3 in, upgrade the breaker to 50 amps, run conduit to the disconnect, run conduit from the disconnect to a location near the air conditioner, and install a socket. The 8-3 runs through a foot-long hole in solid concrete. I hope it’s big enough for 6-3. Otherwise…wait, this is no problem…otherwise, I’ll have to get out my mighty rotary hammer and spend TEN SECONDS reaming out the hole. Man, having the right tools is wonderful.

My new 4-jaw chuck arrived. It’s really nice. The grease in it is probably forty years old; it hasn’t been used. Or it has been used so little, you can’t tell. I wonder if I’ll ever be able to make myself use the 3-jaw chuck. Precision is addictive. The 3-jaw chuck says it was made in England, but I haven’t spotted a manufacturer’s name on it. I’m wondering if it’s a Cushman.

Before I got the new chuck, I was concerned about the hollowed-out backside. I had read complaints about this being a light-duty chuck. But now I can see that if it hadn’t been hollowed out, it would weigh seventy pounds. It probably weighs fifty as it is. It’s huge. Much bigger than the 3-jaw chuck. Eight inches, as contrasted with six.

The stuff from Enco arrived. Guess where my new aluminum oxide wheel was made. Israel. I love it.

The remote for the AC will be here soon. Once that arrives, I will be totally worthless. One remote for the AC, one for the stereo and TV and DVD player, and a VFD for the lathe. I’ll barely have to move. That is my life’s goal.

Eventually, I want to be like the baron, in Dune. I want to be carried around by an electronic hovercraft rig, with little anti-gravity things holding up my fat so it doesn’t drag on the floor and collect swarf. That’s for indoor locomotion. Outdoors, I’ll rely on my souped-up fat cart.

Tomorrow the new motor arrives and I can officially close and suture up the lathe. I can get rid of the rat’s nest of wires and put the missing panels back on. Then it will be very hard to come up with excuses for not making anything.

But I’ll bet I manage.

Am I spoiling myself like a hopeless degenerate, or is this what the Bible means when it says, “Delight thyself also in the Lord, and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart?”

I know what I prefer to believe!

It gets even worse. I finally decided to spring for health insurance, so I may start riding my motorcycles again. A big part of the reason I let them rot was that I kept putting off getting insurance, and I was afraid I would mangle myself and have to pay all the expenses. Now I can subject myself to all sorts of hideous physical risks with less trepidation.

I saved all sorts of money by being too cheap to insure myself, but at a certain age, you have to hand the dice off and get a policy before you crap out. Some diseases pretty much disqualify you from insurance, so you have to get hooked up before one of them hits you. Insurance companies hate people like me, because they need healthy young worrywarts to pay the cost of treating old insureds on their last legs. They need insureds who never take money out of the system. But if you can afford most medical problems, you don’t really have a lot of motivation to get insurance when you’re young.

I hope I stay ambulatory until the policy issues. That is the key to making my strategy pay off.

Fever

Mish Weiss has been doing okay since her second bone marrow transplant, but right now she has a fever of 105, and her friends are putting out an emergency prayer request.

Our Creditors Will Now Sell us Cars

Being a conservative is usually a great blessing, because we’re right about nearly everything. But it’s frustrating when we’re right about things the rest of the country did not see coming. Case in point: the Chinese are about to invade our automobile market. Who has been warning about this for ages? Me. Backward little Bible-clinging, meat-eating, non-recycling pistol-carrier that I am. I’m sure other conservatives have said the same thing. You can’t walk down the aisles in Home Depot every week and see row after row of inexpensive, quality Chinese-made tools and not realize Chinese cars are inevitable. You’d have to be remarkably stupid.

Drudgebart links to a story about it today. I figured the Chinese would attack directly and independently. But it’s even worse than that. GM is going to give the market to them! I thought future competition was what we had to worry about, but GM is capitulating before that has a chance to happen. They’re going to import Chinese cars!

The union is angry. Who cares? They were dying anyway. They had no chance whatsoever of remaining viable. Unions are parasitic, and one of the essential properties of a successful parasite is that it can’t kill the host while the host still serves a need. The UAW has never understood this. You can maintain a union like the one at UPS, because they don’t get five times what they’re worth. They permit UPS to make a profit, so UPS stays in business. You can’t maintain a union that causes a company to run at a deficit.

If a tick sucked a quart of blood a day, ticks would be extinct. Isn’t that obvious?

Autoworkers and workers in related industries are going to earn less money from now on, because of a troublesome little thing called supply and demand. They’ve managed to fight it successfully for over 50 years, but it always wins in the end. Ten years from now, you won’t see typical American autoworkers in nice houses with five vehicles. That was an unsustainable aberration.

Here’s a quotation:

“GM should not be taking taxpayers’ money simply to finance the outsourcing of jobs to other countries,” Alan Reuther, the union’s Washington lobbyist, wrote in a letter to U.S. lawmakers.

That’s true, I guess. On the other hand, the government shouldn’t be forcing taxpayers to invest in a company that union labor will eventually kill (or any company, for that matter). Okay, union labor isn’t the only problem. Let’s be fair and admit that GM also has problems because of bad management. That’s especially true now that Barack Obama is the CEO. It’s interesting, if you think about it. This is his first real job. GM is Barack Obama’s lemonade stand!

The story implies GM is SHOCKED that anyone would think they would move manufacturing to China, and they love the unions, and the percentage of cars sold here that will be made in China will be limited…blah, blah, blah. I’ve heard this kind of BS before. “Social Security numbers will only be used in the management of government benefits.” “The income tax will only be in place long enough to pay our war debts.” “None of the money from the state lottery will go to anything but education.”

“You’re the third man I’ve ever slept with.” “Don’t worry, I had a vasectomy.” “My breasts are real.” “I’ll limit myself to public campaign funds.” “My administration will be totally transparent.”

Some lies are so pathetic, on their faces, that no one should ever believe them unless somebody posts a bond.

It’s possible that cars will be made here. IF the wage drops to maybe fifteen bucks an hour. Otherwise, forget it.

Proponents of the pitiable, obnoxious, ludicrous, conceited America-as-master-race theory think the Chinese are hopelessly incompetent. I guess these folks have no idea which nationalities do best in engineering and science. Here’s a clue. When I applied for graduate study in physics, I was told I had an advantage because I was not Chinese. Universities were tired of cluttering their departments with Chinese students. Americans are not better, smarter, more talented, or more industrious. There is nothing special about us, and it is remarkable that Asians have done so poorly up to this point. Like the union thing, it’s an aberration. It’s unnatural. It is a situation that will eventually right itself.

American produced Henry Ford. It also produced the Ayn-Rand-vindicating degenerates who succeeded him. Now China has its own Henry Ford; a battery manufacturer who crushed Sony and who has now set his sights on the Big Three and Toyota. People like that are raised up by God. They don’t occur naturally, and they don’t lift themselves up by their own bootstraps, no matter what their egos tell them. We have had our share of giants, but now they’re popping up abroad, and our supply seems to be running dry. I’d trade twenty sets of Google kids for one Wang Chuan-Fu. In fact, I’d trade the actual Google kids for a good cigar.

We used to have Presidents who built and nurtured and encouraged. Now we have a spoiled, tyrannical boy who cannibalizes and reallocates and salvages and jettisons. A downsizer masquerading as a builder. Like an engineer on a battleship that has been torpedoed, he moves assets around in a vain effort to keep us (and himself) afloat.

Perry Stone thinks the US may have come to the end of its God-given run as the dominant nation in the world. The more time passes, the more I think he’s right. I think from now on, the country will wane, but individual Americans who align themselves with God’s will are going to be blessed.

Nobody wants to hear that. They want to hear “USA! USA!” while they chant along and crush Budweiser cans against their foreheads. But everything we have came from God, not from ourselves. We worked and planned and planted, but human effort is pointless unless it is also blessed.

I think the only way for an American to rise above the developing chaos is to turn back to God. I think God pounded that into my thick skull over the last few years, and I hope I can help other people reach the same conclusion.

You Wimps

Everyone is whining about how I’m going to burn the house down with my new air conditioner, so I guess I’ll give in, to placate them. Pansies.

Actually, I realized that converting my 40-amp circuit to a 60-amp circuit would be fairly easy. I’d have to replace the Romex from the box to the garage, and I’d have to replace six feet of conduit, and I’d have to run a few more feet of conduit, and then I could finish the job with a 20-amp breaker and a socket. This would be very safe, and I wouldn’t have to drill any holes through the foot-thick, solid concrete wall. And there would be no issues with power. This circuit would have my 24-amp compressor and a 9-amp air conditioner on it, so even with starting loads taken into account, it would never trip. And I won’t have to use wire nuts, because the line will fork into two #8 branches. I can screw the #6 directly to the poles or whatever they’re called in the disconnect box. I hate wire nuts.

As Og pointed out, a 60-amp breaker for a 9-amp air conditioner may not be the best possible answer. So the additional breaker will be a nice addition. I should get one for my lathe while I’m at it. Can’t hurt.

I wonder what 30 feet of 6-3 Romex costs. Probably seven thousand dollars, since copper seems to be taking forever to respond to the huge drop in metal prices. I wonder what I’ll do with the 8-3 I’m taking out. I already have twenty feet or so that I don’t know what to do with.

I like big wire. I’d rather pay more now that watch the house burn later.

I got a fun Ebay package today. My solid carbide half-inch center-cutting four-flute cutter arrived. I fondled it for quite a while. It’s used, but I could not see any wear on it. I thought these things were supposed to be insanely expensive, but I think I spent fifteen bucks including shipping. I ought to be able to amass a good starter set for under a hundred bucks. And it’s carbide! American-made carbide! Cool!

How Much Headroom is Enough?

Let’s say you have a plasma cutter which goes as high as 40 amps. And you have a beefy 60-amp circuit. And you have an air conditioner that draws 9 amps.

Would you put a socket for the AC on the plasma circuit and see what happens?

How Jeff Foxworthy Would Run a Lathe

I have an idea for making a base for my quick change tool post. The existing base is too wide. It’s a rectangular piece of metal about 3/8″ thick, maybe 2 1/2″ long, and 2″ wide. There is a rabbet (don’t know what else to call it) about 3/16″ deep down each long side. There is a 5/8″ bolt hole in the center.

I can replace this with a round base; rectangular is better, but round can be made to work. I’m thinking I might make one out of aluminum, since I have 2″ bars on hand.

Here’s the plan.

First–this is the part that will make everyone shriek–I’ll make a 5/8″ hole using a wood spade bit held in the tailstock.

Wait! It will work! I’m sure of it. I have no 5/8″ metal bits, and I’ve used spade bits in aluminum. If I go slow and use lots of WD40, it will work.

Okay, then I turn the bar down until it’s the same width as the tool post slot. Then I put a groove in it about 3/16″ wide, to simulate the rabbety thing in the existing base. Then I part the result off. I end up with a giant washer with a step in the side.

Crap, it has to be threaded on the inside. I’ll never be able to do that. Even if I could thread, the existing bolt is metric.

I guess I better go look at the parts again.

Saying That Makes Any Experience Seem More Meaningful

I posted something about needing a tachometer for my lathe, and I also mentioned it on the Chaski forum, and I got a lot of responses. It looks like many people have had this same idea, so there are all sorts of products. Most of them (maybe all; I haven’t checked carefully) require you to put some kind of marking on a spinning part. An optical sensor observes it and gives you the RPM figure.

This should make life considerably easier. Right now, using the middle setting on my pulleys, I get 900 RPM at 60 Hz. That means 1350 RPM at 90 Hz and 450 RPM at 30 Hz. I can figure that out by myself. But I’d rather know the exact number so I can calculate SFM without so much grief.

There’s a guy who sells a tachometer that automatically turns RPM into SFM. I don’t know how it works. I assume you have to tell it the diameter of the work and so on.

I’ll try to make an intelligent choice. My lathe has a handle sort of thing on the back end of the spindle, and it turns, so it might be a good place to mount whatever the sensor looks at.

Yesterday I chucked a 2″ by 8″ piece of T6 aluminum in the lathe and fiddled with it. I faced and chamfered the end, and I made a little shoulder. The runout was horrendous. I didn’t make much of an effort to chuck it accurately. I just wanted to see how the lathe ran with a big piece of metal in it. Seems fine. I can tell I’m too retentive to be a fan of 3-jaw chucks. The idea of putting something in a chuck crooked and turning it round will never sit well with me.

One VFD problem: I got an “E7” display twice. That means “voltage overload.” Don’t ask me to explain it. I’m working on it. Something about the motor producing back voltage, I think. Maybe the weight of the aluminum and the chuck makes it harder for the lathe to brake, and somehow it’s giving me an error message.

The garage AC project is going well. It turned out I didn’t have to cut the hole myself, so I’ll just handle the wiring. I can’t even explain how great this is. In Miami, in any month between May 31 and October 31, a garage turns into a steam bath. Work is unbearable. In fact, just sitting around is unpleasant. Sweat runs off of you and gets on things you’re working on. With an air conditioner, life will be very, very sweet.

I can’t believe I found an 18000-BTU air conditioner that fits in a two-foot-wide hole and accepts a remote, for $127. That is a dream come true. I wonder if I can make my new universal remote handle the AC. I guess it should work. After that, all I’ll need will be a recliner.

Even if this AC craps out early, this model is so cheap, I could replace it and still end up paying about what an expensive unit would have cost. This baby usually sells for under 300. God bless the Chinese.

These trivial and relatively inexpensive things make me so happy. It’s almost sick. I’m so glad I don’t need a yacht and a Bentley to enjoy life. I’m glad I happened on pleasures that are productive as well as enjoyable. I could have ended up with an expensive golf habit! Can you imagine anything more worthless? Walking around hitting a ball with an ill-designed stick, perpetually failing to live up to your own expectations. It’s like a vision of Hades.

Here is what Winston Churchill supposedly said about golf: “Golf is a game whose aim is to hit a very small ball into an even smaller hole, with weapons singularly ill-designed for the purpose.” Playing golf is such a waste of time, it could reasonably be construed as a gesture of contempt for the value of your own existence.

Maybe my view is jaundiced because I was a golf orphan. At least when you fish, you bring home food.

On my sister’s suggestion, I got some oregano oil for my congestion. Can’t hurt. It’s supposed to do all sorts of good things for you. I just took my first dose, and it’s not unlike swilling Lestoil. I wonder if it’s good for gallstones. It has terpenes in it, I think. Gallstones hate terpenes. Which sound like they should be small tortoises.

Some day when the garage is totally subdued, I’ll post photos.

Ignore Him and He’ll Go Away

Apparent coincidence is one of the hallmarks of effective Christian living. The deeper you get into your faith, and the more trust you put in God, the more weird things happen.

Here are a couple new ones, from my life.

Last week, I got an email from a guy who sells machine tools. I ignored it, because I figured I was being spammed. Also, he had a Millrite listed for over two thousand dollars, which suggested his prices were not too good. I didn’t realize a regular reader of this blog knew this guy, and he had told him about me.

Later on, I got on Ebay, looking for a 4-jaw lathe chuck. I needed an L00 mount, and I needed an 8″ chuck. This is the usual size for a 12″ lathe, which is what I have. A seller had an unused (new old stock) Skinner chuck from a 13″ South Bend, and he also had a back plate. We negotiated, and I bought the parts. I got a good deal, and I didn’t have to buy Asian or used. Guess who the seller is? The guy who emailed me. Out of the hundreds or thousands of people on Ebay selling machine tool parts and tooling, I found him.

What does it mean? I don’t know. It must mean something. It’s not a small coincidence. Many, many people sell lathe chucks on Ebay.

Second story. Last week, I received two self-defense DVDs from Gunvideo.com. Looks like good stuff. But I didn’t order it! Some guy named Ray did. His name was on the invoice. I figured someone who meant well had taken the kind but somewhat creepy step of finding out my real name and where I lived, and that he had sent me the DVDs as a present. Either that, or it was a gay stalker.

I decided to email the people at Gunvideo. They said there was a screwup. I had ordered something from them a year ago, and this Ray person owned the company that produced it. They had it drop-shipped to me from his company. Then recently he ordered something from them, and somehow my address ended up in the ship-to box. They said they’re still trying to figure it out. But they told me to keep the DVDs.

I keep feeling like I’m supposed to have guns and tools. I can’t figure it out. I wonder what’s on those DVDs.

When you’re a Christian and you live by faith, your life becomes like the Bible. Almost everything in it has meaning. It makes it harder to be disappointed or rattled or angry. When something goes wrong, instead of getting mad, you think, “There must be a reason for this. I wonder what it is.” And you look forward to finding out, which usually happens.

This is often extremely irritating to non-Christians, even though there is nothing aggressive or inherently provocative about it. It should elicit no negative response whatsoever. Why should it anger you that another person takes misfortune well? Marcus Aurelius found the complacency of Christian martyrs annoying, and he increased their suffering because of it. Why is it so aggravating to non-believers? I would say, but that would aggravate them even more. Most Christians know; I don’t have to tell them.

Christianity is funny. It looks better from inside than outside. Even backslidden Christians who should remember how rewarding it is tend to forget, and they dread returning. I was there; I know.

“Who’s That Working on That Lathe? It Looks Like Al Jolson!”

I stuck the old motor in the lathe and rigged it up so it would run. Man, I can’t believe how much caked-on grease is in that thing. I finally grabbed a can of brake part cleaner, hosed down the grease, and removed it with paper towels. Don’t worry; this wasn’t on moving parts. It was on the cabinet and so on. Places where it ended up because it flew there thirty years ago.

It stinks, too. When you hit the grease with the brake part cleaner, you get a disgusting compound that smells like fish.

I am really going through the hand cleaner.

I got the drum switch wired up and connected to the logic inputs. Now I have to program the VFD so it knows the switch exists. The braking works great. I won’t need a resistor. It stops in a second or two. I haven’t tried it with a chuck on it, but it’s my understanding that this is a pretty small braking load for this VFD.

The wires are all over the place, and if the lathe is grounded, it’s only through the bolts holding the VFD on. It’s all held together by those screw-on cap things that join wires. I made sure none of the wires could get near the gears or the chuck. When the new motor arrives, I’ll fix it up properly.

I’m trying to figure out how to measure the RPMs at the chuck. There is a belt setting that provides about 900 RPM. I guess I can use that setting, and then the lathe will run at 900 RPM at 60 Hz, so the RPM will always be about 15 times the frequency. That isn’t too hard to calculate. I’ll bet if I check around, I can find some kind of add-on doodad that will count RPMs electronically.

I think I’ll go work on the programming.

Rise of the Machine Tools

I’m the proud new owner of three chunks of T6 aluminum.

I kept hoping scrap metal would magically fall into my hands, the way my Genie Superlift did. But it was not to be. So today I rode over to C&R and asked if they had T6. I got three pieces, 2″ by 8″ in length. It cost almost fifty bucks! Unbelievable. It’s weird, how products made with metal cost less than the same amount of metal in bulk form. Somehow China is at the root of it. That much, I’m sure of.

They don’t sell leaded steel, so the aluminum was all I got. I have to find a place that sells the kind of steel I need. I love using the word “need” when I talk about this stuff. It’s like saying “I can’t” when what you really mean is “I can, but I won’t.” I don’t need metal. I need a diet and a haircut. Metal, I merely want.

Og and Virgil simultaneously informed me that I could use a file to fix the motor shaft. You run the motor and use the file to take the burrs off. That’s a good idea. I have lathe on the brain, so it never occurred to me to use ordinary doofus-grade tools. I guess the old motor is good enough to use to drive a belt grinder, so eventually I’ll take their advice and fix it up. Neither one of them had the presence of mind to mention the sine qua non of motor shaft filing: the Black and Decker Workmate. I guess they just assumed I’d read it in.

I don’t know why the motor quit making noise. Maybe there was a big hunk of rat crap on the windings, and it fell off.

I think I’ll go fire up the lathe and see what it does.

Motor Headed Back to Kansas

Mish Weiss is in a bad state, as should be expected after a bone marrow transplant. I’m hoping this one works better than the last one. You would think marrow from a daughter would be more likely to take hold than marrow from a stranger. It’s comforting to believe, whether or not it’s true. She appreciates all prayers and comments.

I hope some of you will do me a favor and remember my cousin Debbie today. Her cancer involves her brain as well as her lungs. It amazes me, how many people in my family smoke. I can understand the older ones getting caught up in it, because the link between smoking and cancer wasn’t recognized by the US government until 1964. But why did the younger ones start?

Human beings are not driven primarily by reason. If we were, Barack Obama wouldn’t be President, and it would be impossible to get anyone to buy heroin. You would think that intelligence would make us happier and healthier than other creatures, but it hasn’t worked out that way. Intelligence is overrated; I’ve always said so. An ounce of character is worth a ton of intelligence. I’m smart, and I’ve done so many stupid things, I could never hope to remember a tenth of them.

Maybe I shouldn’t write about my lathe problems after saying a thing like that, but I will.

UPS, in its wisdom, sent my damaged motor back to Kansas. They provided no explanation. I have no idea whether they’re paying the seller anything toward the damage. It will be at least a week before I get a replacement.

Yesterday the new VFD arrived. I wired it up and held my breath, wondering if I might accidentally come up with a new way to destroy VFDs. I connected it to the ancient motor the lathe seller sent me, and it ran. Thank God. Literally.

When this motor arrived, it made a bonking sound when the shaft rotated, but now it’s quieter. I don’t know why. The shaft is still a mess, so it’s not possible to align the pulleys well. But the motor works. I’m thinking I should shove it into the lathe cabinet and use it until the Baldor arrives. I could rig it up without conduit for now, in order to make the Baldor installation easier.

If I could get the shaft out, I could use the lathe to take off the shaft burrs that make the pulleys sit at an angle. But I’d need a working motor to do that. I have a single-phase motor I could use, but to do that, I’d need to connect the drum switch. That would be a giant pain. I’ve stripped and degreased the drum switch, in preparation for wiring it to the VFD logic inputs. Besides, I’m sure the motor’s shaft is permanently attached to the rotor or stator or whatever the big thing covered with windings is. You could never mount that in a lathe chuck, unless the lathe was the size of a house.

I suppose a real genius would mount the motor on something solid and use it as a lathe. The shaft would turn, so it would be possible to apply a tool to it. But you’d have to have something solid to mount the tool on, and I think you can see what a Rube Goldberg mess it would be. If I were stranded somewhere and I had to fix the shaft in order to save my life, I’d give it a try, but as it is, it looks like a very bad idea.

I think I have enough crap now–here and in shipment–to use the lathe. I went crazy and sprung for Moly-Dee instead of cheap cutting fluid. The machinery snobs at PM seem to think Tap Magic is only fit for amateurs; they like Accu-lube (nearly impossible to find) and Moly-Dee (expensive). How often am I going to buy fluid? Once a year? I think buying the good stuff is a reasonable expense. I’m also going to get a gallon can of WD-40 for cutting aluminum. They have it at Home Depot.

I Ebayed a used 1/2″ 4-flute center-cutting carbide end mill. I might be able to rig the lathe up so I can use this to trim down the base for my quick change tool post. If not, it’s still a good cutter to have, and I think the total cost is ten bucks. I figured out how to put Enco’s 80-grit aluminum oxide wheels on my half-inch grinder arbors, so I have one of those on the way. I also got a silicon carbide dressing stick. I was not able to get a star-type dresser from Enco, and I didn’t feel like looking elsewhere and paying a big shipping fee for a four-dollar item.

I need some metal to train on. I’ve been watching Craigslist for scrap, but the one promising ad I saw did not produce a return phone call or email. I may have to drive to a metal dealer and pay up. I think I’ll get a couple of feet of bronze, some T6 aluminum, and some leaded steel. With WD-40 on hand, I can work aluminum right now.

What will I do? Don’t know. I guess I’ll start by chucking some aluminum and trying each type of tool, to see how everything works. I have a Clausing manual, but like most manuals for professional tools, it doesn’t tell you how to use the tool. It just tells you where the controls are. I plan to do what I used to do in my old science labs. I’ll make sequential lists of the things I need to do, in order to perform various operations. Then I’ll laminate them and put them near the lathe. This approach is a godsend for absent-minded people. If I had done this when I wired up the first VFD, it would still be working. I ruined that thing simply because I did not accommodate my known failings. The lesson was worth the expense. If you make a dumb mistake while running a lathe, it can mess you up good. A big lathe can roll your arm up like a bedroll, snapping the bones as required. I don’t know if this one can do that, but it can fire a chuck at me at great speed. This lathe should be pretty powerful. I’m using the biggest motor Clausing recommends, and I don’t have the vari-speed drive to sink horsepower. It’s just two belts and a gear or two.

I should make a list of operations I’ll do in order to train myself. That will simplify things and give me direction.

Lists are powerful things, if you have the character to make them and use them. Guess I’m looping now, so I’ll close.

Mite Poop

I managed to take my fried VFD apart, sort of. It’s really something to see. They use screws to unite parts that are also soldered together, so you take the screws out and pull, and then you see the solder, and you wonder if it’s a cruel joke.

It’s still fried. I tested my electricity again (using my magically repaired Fluke “Our Gucci Meters Don’t Need no Steenking Battery Indicators” multimeter), and I rewired the power cord. No change.

There is no real schematic included with this VFD, and even if there were, there are very few parts a mere mortal could hope to replace. I can’t identify the part I fried, and if I could, I couldn’t do anything about it. At least I got the satisfaction of getting the cabinet open.

I’m still waiting for UPS to skulk in with the motor they probably refused a damage claim on. Once it arrives, I’ll be able to order a new conduit box, and that will be the end of my major lathe headaches. The seller has already agreed to cover the cost of the box.

I’m still on hold, lathe-wise, but at least I feel good. A few days ago I got myself a dust-mite-proof mattress cover. When I replaced my pillows, I noticed an improvement in my breathing, but it didn’t last. I figured I had to go whole-hog and cover the mattress. Looks like it worked. I don’t use addictive nasal spray any more, and I sleep all night with no interruptions.

The mattress cover didn’t look too great in the store. I was hoping for cotton. You can find bug-proof cotton covers online, but the one at BBB was made from polyester, and the packaging said it was waterproof, so I was afraid it was just a big plastic bag. I poked around until I found a description of the fabric, and I found something which seemed to suggest it was microfiber. I decided to take a chance; one of my pillow covers was made by the same company, and it works fine. I didn’t want to order a mattress cover online and then wait a week for it to arrive.

The fabric feels awful, but in practice, it presents no problems. It’s under a mattress pad and a sheet, so I can’t feel the revolting texture. And it breathes, so I’m not swimming in sweat all night. The best part is that you can throw it in the washer and dryer without worrying. Some of the covers I found online got complaints because they were fragile.

I wonder how long my sleep has been disturbed. I would guess that I started using this mattress again two years ago, after taking it out of storage.

Dust mites are really something. What I’ve read is that they literally crawl out of mattresses at night to eat dead skin and poop on people. I guess when you imprison them in a mattress cover, they can’t do that. You would think mite-poop vapor would come up through the cover and cause congestion, but it doesn’t.

From now on, every time I buy a mattress, one of these covers is going on it from the first day. Why give the mites a chance to establish a foothold? I keep reading horrifying factoids, like the one that says dust mites can double the weight of a mattress over time. I am not interested in maintaining a mite farm.

The fabric is called Microguard, in case you’re interested in trying it.

I feel a little silly, sleeping on a waterproof mattress cover at my age, but I guess now I’m free to take up bedwetting.