Three Cheers for the Invincible Master Race

I have been thinking about the Chrysler mess for a couple of days, and two obvious questions come up.

1. Shouldn’t people be angry that Bush and Obama gave these incompetents billions of dollars, knowing it was a complete waste? I knew it, and I’m not even President. And so did tens of millions of other Americans. But the press’s reaction is barely audible.

2. Doesn’t this prove that conservatives were right when we said the failure of a Big Three company would not kill the economy, and if that is true, isn’t bailing the automakers out a stupid idea? Shouldn’t we cease all efforts to keep these parasitic, terminally ill companies going?

We were told (by Bush as well as Obama) that we had to keep the Big Three alive, because a failure would have ripple effects that would destroy our economy. Chrysler has failed, and the stock market is up, and nobody is rioting in the streets. Hmm…looks like the socialists were WRONG, doesn’t it? A lot of businessmen are actually happy that Chrysler is going bankrupt. It’s the normal, healthy thing for a failed company to do.

Why did Bush do this? McCain was already dead; it couldn’t help him. The bailout was approved after the election. What possible reason could Bush have had to become an eleventh-hour socialist? The man is not stupid. Surely he didn’t think this would work. Doesn’t he have any faith in the free market?

I guess there are no capitalists in foxholes. When times get rough, politicians pray to their true messiah. Karl Marx.

This is all foolishness. The incompetence and obsolescence of the Big Three are only one part of the problem, and they are far and away the lesser part. The Chinese are going to eat our car industry. Accept it. Let’s let the Big Three die in the cheapest possible way, because it’s foreordained. There are two possibilities. America will not make cars, or we will pay our auto workers so little we can compete with China. There is no third choice, and the second choice is pretty unlikely. Actually, the third choice is a never-ending subsidy that bleeds us dry, but I believe that even Obama is smart enough to see that that won’t fly. Besides, he has the heart of a tyrant, and he didn’t like the way the UAW refused to toe the line.

What we are doing right now is not investment. It’s welfare. We are not going to get our money back from the carmakers, because they’re not going to make a profit. We’re just enabling them. Keeping them alive a little longer. Delaying a constructive move toward redeployment of their work force in industries that have some hope of prospering.

I have a prediction about Obama’s choice to replace Ruth Ginsberg. It’s going to be someone so offensive to conservatives that we will utterly stunned, and whoever it is, she will be confirmed. We are going to have to drink our own bathwater one more time. But for the fact that a woman has to get the job, I’d predict Laurence Tribe or Alan Dershowitz. If Hillary Clinton were not busy already, I’d expect her to be on the list. Maybe it will be someone from the Ninth Circuit. They have three female judges. They’re all white, however, so maybe they aren’t strong candidates. I’m glad Rosie O’Donnell doesn’t have a law degree.

I feel certain it will be a God-hating idiot of such colossal stature that conservatives will vomit for at least a month. We are going to miss Ruth Ginsberg. America is rotting from within, like a cancer patient, and the new associate justice will be part of the rot. Just like the illegal aliens who are becoming more and more powerful, even obtaining the right to vote. Our enemies are crawling inside us to gestate and metastasize, because our walls are down.

Why do I say Obama is going to appoint someone awful? Because America has lost its blessing. Discarded it, in fact. Obama is a divine punishment, and so are his appointees.

I have this strange feeling that our judiciary is going to go to hell, but we will somehow retain our gun rights. So many Christians are getting into shooting; I think there has to be a reason for it, and it wouldn’t make sense, if we were going to lose our guns in the near future.

I also think the Chinese are going to gain such a military advantage over us that we will be helpless before them when we finally have a showdown. They’ve infiltrated our military technology, and they are already able to destroy our vital military satellites in a single day, and Obama has announced that he plans to kill weapons R&D as well as the missile shield. Even Carter was smarter than that.

I see it this way: America is in trouble; Christians within America are not. And Israel will survive without us, because her blessing, unlike ours, is eternal. We’re probably going to shrivel into insignificance and chaos, but Israel is going to survive and grow closer to God. I suspect that Iran is going to get nuclear weapons soon, and that Obama will prevent the Israelis from doing anything about it. And maybe Iran will use them. But in the end, whatever her trials may be, Israel will prevail.

People keep saying we’re going to pull out or our tailspin, because we’ve always recovered in the past. But the past was different. We were not as proud and decadent, and we didn’t have powerful, wealthy enemies whose strength was on the rise. The Nazis were creampuffs compared to China, India, and Russia. The Third Reich had no legs. Neither did the USSR or the 20th-century Chicoms. Our new enemies have capitalist engines driving them, and they have inexhaustible manpower and natural resources. All we have is an idiotic, offensive presumption that Americans are the master race. I guess the Jews felt the same way, right before the Babylonians crushed them. We didn’t make America great; human beings don’t have the power to do things like that. But we do have the power to destroy her.

I know I sound like a pessimist, but that only applies to my country. I’m extremely optimistic for myself and my family. Besides, the prophets were generally pessimists, so I’m in good company. It’s funny, but God never raises up a voice to tell a nation that everything they’re doing is just swell. If God were a parent in an SUV, and he had a rotten kid who was too lazy to get good grades and an honor roll bumper sticker, he wouldn’t have one of those ridiculous consolation-prize “Terrific Kid” stickers on his bumper, to pump up the little brat’s self-esteem. He tells it like it is, and I don’t think he really cares if we have low self-esteem. If anything, he is displeased when we have too much.

Fredo Fished in the Wrong Spot

I want to thank the enabler who mentioned the 200-lumen flashlights Home Depot is selling. On the way home from church, I bought one for me and one for my dad. I hope you’re pleased with yourself.

Church was really good. The pastor seemed completely lost at first. He was talking about the Beatles and celebrities and so on, and I figured, “He didn’t prepare this week, and he’s winging it.” But toward the end, he drew it together. The theme was people’s need to see Jesus, or at least be aware of his presence. That is something I strive for all the time, because, well, why wouldn’t you? Once you’ve had it, you want it again. That pretty much sums it up.

He ended up talking about Arthur Blessitt. This is a man who made himself a cross and spent his life carrying it around the world. I guess he’s still doing it. It’s an amazing story. He used to be on TBN all the time, back in the 80s. I don’t watch TBN any more, because so many of the people on the network seemed like liars and…I’m trying to think of a nice word for “pimps,” but it’s not coming. I thought they preached a very harmful brand of prosperity theology, and I believed it was intended to help them live obscene lifestyles, not to help people get closer to God.

I have seen a lot of people on TBN whom I would urge Christians to avoid following, but I have never heard anyone say a bad word about Arthur Blessitt.

Anyway, here is the story Arthur told Pastor Wilkerson. Arthur said that when he was about 20, he visited a church near Lake Tahoe, and while the pastor of that church was driving him some place, Jesus spoke to Arthur and told him to go down on the beach. The pastor didn’t want to go, so he got a subordinate to take him. So they went to the beach, and while they were walking, they looked out onto the water and saw Jesus standing on it. And they immediately turned away from him, because they were freaked out.

They turned back eventually, and they went into the freezing water and worshiped him. And after a time, they didn’t know what to do, so they started walking away. And Arthur went back once more, and Jesus was still standing there, and he had his back turned to Arthur. And Arthur called out to him, or something, and he turned back to Arthur, and Arthur asked for a blessing. And without speaking, Jesus communicated the following idea to Arthur: Arthur was never to be afraid of anything, because Jesus would always be beside him. And if I recall the story correctly, Jesus held his hands out toward Arthur, and somehow power went from Jesus to Arthur, through Jesus’s hands.

Now, I have heard a lot of nonsense on TBN. I have been told that I should send money to a preacher who drove a Rolls-Royce, for example. And I think Robert Tilton, who is a liar and also crazy as a tree full of coons, used to be on TBN. But maybe Arthur Blessitt really did see Jesus. Some people do. He’s real, after all.

I had a couple of experiences in which I was convinced that Jesus was with me. On one occasion, I felt an invisible beam of love, warmth, and power playing over my body as I tried to sleep, and I fell asleep and then awakened, and when I awakened, my hands were raised, and I felt energy pouring into the palms from up above. I never figured out what that meant, but it definitely happened, and Arthur’s story is similar, in that power moved through a pair of hands. In his case, it moved out of Jesus’s hands, and in my case, it moved into mine.

Don’t ask me what it means. If I were a televangelist in white shoes and an orange suit, I’m sure I’d be able to make something up and convince you to pay me for telling you. But I don’t lie nearly that well. I’m merely a lawyer. I guess I should say that ever since that day, I’ve been able to do something special with power from my hands. Healing the sick, or bending spoons, or taking really stubborn stains out of neckties. But that is not the case.

It was a great sermon, because it reminded me that we are to believe God is real, and that we can actually get away with doing the things he told us to, because he will help us. That’s extremely important. Like Pastor Wilkerson said tonight, it has nothing to do with your ticket to heaven. It has to do with what you achieve here.

After all the things I’ve seen, I should have faith like Arthur Blessitt’s, but I do not. I couldn’t be happy facing a firing squad, for example. He pulled that off. I do manage to come through once in a while, though.

My sister no longer goes to Trinity Church. She felt their message was a little basic. If you watch Perry Stone (one of her favorites), and then you go to Trinity, you will see that Perry Stone digs deeper into the mysteries of the Bible. No doubt about it. But every time I go to this church, I get something I need. It doesn’t seem to matter how simple the sermon is. So I’m still attending. Maybe I have a stronger interest in the fundamentals.

This blog entry made me think of the third psalm, so here it is.

1 Lord, how are they increased that trouble me! many are they that rise up against me.
2 Many there be which say of my soul, There is no help for him in God. Selah.
3 But thou, O Lord, art a shield for me; my glory, and the lifter up of mine head.
4 I cried unto the Lord with my voice, and he heard me out of his holy hill. Selah.
5 I laid me down and slept; I awaked; for the Lord sustained me.
6 I will not be afraid of ten thousands of people, that have set themselves against me round about.
7 Arise, O Lord; save me, O my God: for thou hast smitten all mine enemies upon the cheek bone; thou hast broken the teeth of the ungodly.
8 Salvation belongeth unto the Lord: thy blessing is upon thy people. Selah.

I have managed to memorize 13 psalms so far, but I’m starting to lose some of them, so I guess I better start going back over them.

Lathe Gets Heart Transplant

I decided to do the predictable thing, give up, spend money, and get a new motor for the lathe. The motor the seller sent me runs, but it makes a bonking sound at low speed, and it just doesn’t look healthy. Also, the marred-up spindle appears to be incapable of holding the pulley stack so it spins true. I don’t think that will be good for the lower belt, and I’m sure it will make noise.

The smart thing would be to leave it in the lathe until it melted, but I just don’t have the patience to see if it gives good service. The lathe’s guts are in great shape. The ways look good. I think the compound and the other moving parts are okay. Mating all that to a junky motor just feels wrong. And like I said, somebody just happens to be Ebaying the exact type of motor I need, for less than 20% of list, including shipping. DONE. The peace is worth it.

Hopefully I will never have to interact with the seller again. He’s supposed to send me a replacement knob for the thread selection lever, and I think he’ll actually do it. I may sell the 1-phase motor back to him. I’ll try to find a use for the old 3-phase motor, or sell it. That’s the end. I guess I have to install the stupid thing and use it while I wait for the new one. That will help me get the bugs out of the wiring, I suppose.

I Think I Hear the Ice Cream Truck!

The lathe has absorbed my life. I rented a tool grinding video from Smartflix, and the disk was corrupted, so I could not copy it and return it right away. I have been spending whatever time I can find, sitting and making notes, but it’s taking forever. Sometimes it doesn’t play correctly, which is irritating. I received two other disks with it, and I decided to go ahead and send them back.

I now have two lathe motors, and neither is in a lathe. I have to put the “new” motor in and rig up the VFD. I was going to dump the drum switch and use the VFD for forward/reverse control, but I now think that would be stupid. The lever on the front of the lathe is super convenient, and the buttons on the VFD will never be as easy to use. I figure all I have to do is arrange the drum switch so it switches two wires on the motor’s input. I should be able to figure that out. I don’t see why the VFD would object. I don’t think it will know the difference.

I think the best thing is to dump both motors and install a Baldor. The perfect motor (nearly so, anyway) is available on Ebay very cheap. I’ll check the shaft size to be sure, but that’s the only variable that could give me trouble.

Being unable to learn from painful experience, I have contacted another dealer about a milling machine. He’s going to root around in his stock and tell me what he can offer. He has two nice-looking mills with DROs on his site, with all sorts of scrapy marks visible on the saddles and beds. The other possibility is to get a restored mill which is in better shape but costs more.

I told the guy with the DRO machines I wanted to use an escrow company or pay a mechanic look the machines over. That much, I have learned.

Og says virtually all machine tool dealers are jerks. The guy I’m dealing with now sent me a big long email packed with information, and he didn’t resent me flat-out stating that I was afraid he would screw me over. He must be a freak of nature.

If I ever create anything with the lathe (beyond the amazing 5/8″ bolt with no head), I will post it so you can admire it.

Chucks on Sale at Enco!

Here’s a clever tool question.

I clearly need a 4-jaw chuck for my lathe. I have been holding out for a used American chuck. But it has occurred to me that since the jaws are completely independent, this should be a relatively low-precision device compared to a 3-jaw chuck. The jaws don’t have to be in any particular relationship to each other. If that’s true, shouldn’t an import be just as good?

Programming a VFD is a Waste of my Giant Cranium

Today the new old motor for my lathe arrived. It looked like it came from Al Capone’s vault. The paint was in bad shape, and it was beaten up. But when I connected the VFD, it ran. Not smoothly, but it did run.

I had to get down on the garage floor to get the bolts out of the base of the old motor. Then I had to contort myself into the space behind the lathe to get the wiring hacked out of the conduit and boxes. Getting the pulley stack off the old shaft was a joy, believe me. Then I had to persuade the key to come out of the shaft keyway with a hammer and punch. I cleaned the pulleys with the last of my orange-based gun spray, and I put the pulleys on the “new” motor. I guess I’m ready to install it in the lathe. TOMORROW.

The motor I got today is nothing to write home about. People talk about how great old industrial motors are. I have my doubts. This thing makes a sound on every revolution, so my guess is that the bearings are not great, and the shaft looks like someone used it as a johnson bar.

When I put it on the VFD, it made a whistling sound so loud and shrill it was not acceptable. It would drive you crazy to use the lathe with that noise going on. I figured something was loose in the motor, but it turns out the signal to the motor has a pulse frequency, and that’s the problem. Apparently the waveform of each phase is made up of spiky digital pulses at a much higher frequency. I’m guessing here from a picture I saw. Somehow, if you let the pulses get too far apart, it makes your motor whistle. If you let them get too close together, it creates RF interference. On my VFD, you can vary it between 5 KHz and 14 KHz. I decided to ramp it right up to 14. To hell with the radio. Then I felt bad about my neighbors, and I decided to test it. The RF made Todd Schnitt’s show sound bad in the garage, but in my car, twenty feet away, he sounded fine. Who cares about radio interference that disappears after twenty feet? I ran it right back up to 14, and now the whistle is very quiet and sort of pleasant.

I found a really nice Baldor on Ebay for a small fraction of retail. I am considering buying it. The frame is the same. It should work fine. But I want to be sure the VFD won’t kill it. I know I can get an inverter-ready motor, but I’ll have to wait until one becomes available at a price I like. I’m not sure if it’s necessary.

I loves me some Baldor.

A thread on Practical Machinist says failure of a standard motor due to inverter use is nearly unheard-of, so maybe this is the thing to get. I can sell both of the motors the lathe seller gave me. Maybe I’ll get part of my investment back. I’ll say they APPEAR TO HAVE VERY LITTLE USE. That phrase worked on me. Maybe it will work on someone else.

A company called Orion makes add-on fans for motors running on VFDs. Neat.

I guess I haven’t learned my lesson, because I am corresponding with another machinery dealer. And it looks like I can get a Chinese split air conditioner for the same price as an American unit, without cutting giant holes in the wall. I don’t know if it will really cool 600 square feet, but I’d be happy if it even came close. It’s 12000 BTUs. I guess I could sit right next to it and pour ice down my pants.

If the garage gets too swanky, I’m afraid I’ll never leave.

I have been trying to find the best way to mount the VFD, and I think the answer is to get rid of the drum switch completely (using the VFD to reverse the motor), mount a piece of stiff sheet metal to the back of the headstock (over existing bolts) and mount the VFD to the metal. It would be right in my face, ready to use. Beautiful. Oddly, I happen to have a piece of sheet metal that would be perfect. This would be a good excuse to make a template and do some plasma cutting. Or I could make a plywood support instead, which would give me an excuse to run the mighty Powermatic.

This will be sweet. Some day I may even make something.

Thanks to You, I Stocked Up

Every morning, out of habit, I check the Classic Arms site. I got my C&R license quite some time ago, and I almost immediately lost all desire to use it, but I’m so used to looking at Classic Arms, I can’t stop.

All week, they’ve been writing about the ammunition crisis. I don’t understand it. I have all the ammunition a person could want, and I got it at great prices. I even have primers. If I were a truly accomplished right wing Christian potential possible terrorist, instead of a highly ineffective one, I could mount a really spectacular standoff and shoot up every cop car in Coral Gables.

That’s what leftist nutballs think bulk ammunition buys are for. But sane, intelligent people realize that the real motivation is stinginess. Why pay seventy-five cents each for 20 bullets when you can pay thirty cents each for a thousand? I don’t run around taking hostages and shouting about Ruby Ridge. I go to the range and shoot targets. That takes a lot of ammunition. Actual murderers generally spend very little on bullets. It’s probably pretty rare for 90-pound crackheads and career burglars to go to gun shops and load up on the latest frangible rounds. “How many Cor-Bons can I has for this Blaupunkt?”

Honestly, I don’t know what goes on in the heads of urban liberals. They seem to think that if you have one gun and one bullet, you’re armed as well as you could ever need to be. That’s because most of them have never fired a gun and know nothing about firearms. They don’t realize that people miss, or that criminals usually can’t be incapacitated with one shot, or that you need a lot of ammunition just to learn how to use your weapon safely, accurately, and responsibly.

You know what? Liberals who know nothing about guns should quit telling the rest of us what to do with them. Do I go to their houses and tell them how to work their bongs and bondage gear? Do I tell them how to apply their VD ointment or cook their heroin or beat their three-tooth-having common-law wives in front of their subsidized housing? Do I point at their buttcrack tattoos and say, “That’s not how you spell ‘Obama'”?

“I really think you have too many bullwhips and ball gags. I honestly believe you don’t need this much weed and smack. I think four guys in a men’s room stall is plenty. How many decks of tarot cards can one person use?” Imagine me, butting in to liberals’ lives to say these things. It’s like Dr. Phil telling people how to lose weight. Stick to what you KNOW.

I realized last night that I really need a pistol laser. Some strange person parked in the driveway while doing something that made their car make odd sounds. I went outside with a pistol to check the car out. I kept it concealed, but it was ready to fire. I realized the darkness was a real handicap. The car pulled away, but what if there had been a problem? A laser would have simplified things greatly. I better look into that.

I have long weapons with lasers (finally), but I am not quite ready to walk out onto the porch waving a shotgun every time someone comes near the house. That kind of thing doesn’t fly with the neighbors, and it’s a bit of an overreaction. I’ve paused in people’s driveways for perfectly legitimate reasons; I would have been highly disturbed had they come out brandishing long guns. But it’s proper and correct to have a gun handy when you investigate a problem on your property (after all, I carry mine when I shop for groceries), and you need to be confident of hitting your target.

I also realized that when you go onto another person’s property at night–a bad idea to begin with–you really need to be nice. This individual probably had no idea he was ten seconds and one mistake away from the Promised Land. I would do just about anything to avoid harming another person physically, but sometimes situations go bad in a hurry, and in a contest with some doofus who doesn’t train with his gun, I will prevail in a big way. And when the cops arrive, they will give me a high five (or as we call it in Miami, a “cinco alto”). This is Florida.

I got my rifle and shotgun lasers dirt cheap, but I doubt Hong Kong has caught up with Glock laser technology, so I’ll probably have to spend some coin to get ready. Maybe I should grit my teeth and move to a different caliber, too. The 9mm isn’t all that great for shooting through car doors, and last night I saw that such things can be legitimate concerns. I used to assume there would be no reason to shoot through a door, since a person in a car is not likely to be on your property. But what if you go out to check on a suspicious car, and they shoot? They can be completely off your property and still require a response. Maybe the best answer is to stick a laser on the .38 Super, which does a bang-up job on sheet metal, and use it in those situations. If you use the right caliber and load, a car is about as hard to penetrate as a styrofoam cooler.

One more reason to be nice when you drive.

Anyway, there is no ammunition crisis in my house. Unless you’re talking about closet space.

Be Sure to Bend Over Backwards to Please Businesses You Patronize

I have been working on the lathe. Now that I’m a master machinist, I’m pretty comfortable out there, dismantling and greasing and oiling. It may be hard for a lay person to understand.

I contacted the seller–PBUH–about the useless thread selector knob, and my best guess from his response is that he plans to replace it. He is expressing impatience and a desire to get this over with. Imagine how much quicker it would have gone, had he sent me the right lathe and spent, oh, seven minutes inspecting it before shoving it out the door. But you can’t ask for the world.

Seriously, think about it. Until yesterday, I had no idea how this thing worked. But he’s upset because I haven’t taken it completely apart, checked every function, and discovered every single way in which he failed to live up to the bargain. Dude, I would have checked the power feed, thread indicator dial, thread selector lever, back gear, sliding gear shifter handle, and a ton of other things, IF I HAD HAD ANY IDEA HOW TO LOCATE AND OPERATE THEM. Maybe with your 9,000 years of experience, you could have taken a tiny fraction of the time it takes me, looked the lathe over, and fixed it up.

While I was waiting for this thing, he said something about how it was going to be cleaned and checked over. I am not sure how you can clean something and leave a thick layer of ostensibly undisturbed crud all over it, but some people have gifts I lack. Maybe he means he hit it with the leaf blower, Carl Spackler style. As for checking it, the nonfunctioning thread selector knob would appear to indicate that the check consisted of driving by and glancing at it through a car window.

This is the same guy who sent me three “new” micrometers which were completely petrified. He didn’t even open the box and give the thimbles a turn. Just FOOMP! Into the box and onto the pallet. NEXT!

If there’s one thing a customer loves, it’s a vendor who causes terrible problems and then complains that the customer hasn’t fixed them fast enough.

In brighter news, I haven’t found anything else that really scares me. I got up my nerve and opened the headstock up. The lid on that thing is machined cast iron, even though stamped steel would do fine. It probably weighs 12 pounds. I took it off and looked in there and saw…1974. That’s the year the lathe was made. I traveled back in time. If I had been wearing long pants, they would have instantly gotten three inches wider at the ankle.

The inside of the cast metal headstock was brown; I suppose they get that way before they leave the factory. I may be wrong; cast iron rusts really fast. But the steel parts–the gears and shafts and pinions–looked almost as if they had just been made. They glistened and winked above a pool of fragrant oil, as if they had no idea it was 2009.

So it looks like there is nothing wrong with the guts of the machine. Only those parts that have been subjected to the ignorance of prisoners are beaten up.

I had the speed set pretty slow, so I figured it was safe to turn it on and see if it had splash lubrication. It did. And it splashes real good, even at low speeds. I had to jump out of the way to avoid getting a nice stripe of oil down the front of my clothes. The biggest gear caught it and sprayed it vertically into the air.

I tried to lubricate the lathe. I got out my new grease gun and loaded it up and went to work. And it looks like I shot grease into two fittings intended for oil. Oh, well. Two of the big gears outside the headstock had fittings, and I misunderstood the manual, and there you go. I couldn’t get them apart to the point where I could scrape the grease out, so I left it in there. Hopefully the lathe won’t explode right away.

I oiled all the other bits as well as I could, and I used solvent to get the crusty grease off the ways and other moving parts. You wouldn’t believe the difference it makes. The grime the seller left on this thing as about as slippery as cold peanut butter mixed with molasses, so when I tried to move the tailstock, for example, it required a good shove. Now everything slides all happy-like. And some of the noise has disappeared. I’m starting to see how this could turn out to be a good machine instead of a nightmare.

I may have to take the carriage off. There’s a little clamp that fell off, and even though a simple bolt holds it on, it’s a bear to hold in place while you attach the bolt. I’d like to apologize to the seller for letting that clamp fall off! I’m so sorry I didn’t see that he left it loose, causing it to drop as the lathe was put in place in the garage. That was irresponsible of me.

I sure hope there were no problems with my money, which has been in his bank account for over three weeks. I sure hope it wasn’t the wrong size, and that it wasn’t defective.

This gives me more confidence about buying a mill. It shouldn’t. But it does. This only worked out by God’s grace, and I was an idiot for trusting this guy. But somehow it gives me hope that I’ll be able to get this stuff done.

God Bless the Bureaucrats

I got absolutely nothing done today, with regard to the lathe. I had to go with my father to bring his boat home from the yard. The bridge Nazis have decided Miami’s Brickell Avenue bridge will now open and close based on random readings from a plethysmograph attached to the bridgetender’s goiter, so the big signs on the side of the bridge, which used to have some relationship to the bridge schedule, are now purely ornamental. The signs say the bridge stays down between 4:30 and 6:00 p.m., so it should open on demand before 4:30, but at 3:05, the genius in the tower told us she felt like having an opening at 3:30, so we had to wait. While she watched Oprah. I guess.

I sat there on the flybridge trying to figure out what the purpose of the bizarre new policy was. Then it hit me: I’ll bet it’s GREEN. It takes a lot of juice to open a drawbridge. I’ll bet some pea-brain in the city government decided to save forty dollars a week by holding up traffic.

Of course, you have to use your boat’s motors to fight the current and wind while you sit there waiting, and if you add up all the boats that get stuck, that takes more energy than the policy saves. And then there’s the obvious cost in lost man-hours. The Miami River is very important to commercial boat traffic, and they need to get in and out in a timely manner. So the green hypothesis doesn’t make any sense at all.

That’s why it’s probably true. None of this green crap is correct. “Recycled” newspapers go to the dump. There is no such thing as global warming. “Green” jobs kill regular jobs. It’s all a feel-good fantasy.

I guess I shouldn’t be this irritated about something I merely guessed at.

I’m rooting around on Google, and it looks like the Coast Guard is in charge of the bridges. That explains everything. The Coast Guard dances for the Obamessiah, so maybe some of his “progressive” foolishness has trickled down and infected the bridge schedule.

I took the side cover off the lathe and looked the gears over. I can’t see anything missing. The lathe was going “tonk tonk tonk” when it ran, and someone told me it could be a missing gear tooth, so I had to look. It turns out the lathe only makes this sound with the chuck attached. I’m thinking maybe some filth between the spindle and chuck kept it from seating tightly, so it rocks a little and makes noise. Or there could be a loose part in the chuck. Or I don’t know how to seat the chuck. I used the spanner wrench that came with the lathe, but I was only guessing.

The chuck spins on, so you have to wonder what happens when you use the lathe in the direction that unspins the chuck. It has to be fun when that hunk of steel flies off at 1800 RPM with a workpiece attached to it. It weighs maybe 30 pounds. My guess is that a smart lathe operator never operates the lathe in this mode unless held at gunpoint. Or because his federal-employee boss tells him Obama Almighty says counterclockwise is green and diverse.

Is this bad engineering at its worst, or is there some way to lock the chuck on the spindle? I’ll try to find out.

I think the bearings on the motor shafts may be giving out. Something down there doesn’t sound healthy. I assume they’re reasonably cheap, since they’re on the cheap side of the drive train. The precision stuff is up top. I’ll look them over when I replace the motor. I’ll bet it’s some kind of standard bearing you can buy from MSC.

While I was at the boatyard, I asked the owner if he knew of anyone up there who had bits of appetizing scrap suitable for scrounging by a metalworking hobbyist. He told me to leave my number with the receptionist. I don’t know what types of round stock they use, except for aluminum tubing. Propeller shops make a lot of custom shafts from stainless, so they have to end up with lots of short scraps, but this yard doesn’t do that type of work. I think Miami Propeller is the only place around here.

There are a lot of stainless “Aquamet” scraps on Ebay. I have a hunch that’s propeller-shaft material. It sure sounds like it. “Aqua.” I looked this stuff up on the web, and it sounds like fine metal. Maybe I could make interesting kitchen tools from it.

I once threw out a four-foot long, three-inch thick shaft stub. I feel pretty bad about that now. But you can’t keep crap like that lying around, on the assumption that one day you might go insane and buy a lathe.

I’m pooped and the birds are squawking. I better deal with them.

No Wonder Apple is Doing Well

My computer has been driving me nuts. It used to boot in 30 seconds, and now it takes all day. I found one of the reasons, and I thought I’d share it with you.

Windows XP has a feature called “search indexing” or something similar. It makes your computer root through its hard drive all day, looking for stuff and recording in it in order to make searches faster.

I am finally ready to assert, without reservation, that Microsoft’s people are hopelessly incompetent. I used to think the bizarre problems with their products had to be justified by considerations lay people can’t understand, but that’s not true. These people are just second-rate. The search thing is proof. No one in his right mind would put a thing like this in an operating system. How many times per week do you search your computer? I probably do it twice. If it’s slow, I don’t care. What I do care about is having my CPU run at 99% for half an hour, slowing everything to a crawl, so searches will be faster. It’s just plain stupid. You don’t have to be a computer whiz to realize how dumb this is. It’s like paying a maid to dust your entire house five times a day. The benefit can’t begin to measure up to the cost.

The thing that really used to make me question their ability was the unbelievably bad and unreliable networking software, coupled with help files so weak it is completely pointless to try to use them. But this is even dumber. It’s like something GM or Chrysler would do. The people at Apple are bumblers of the first order, but they can’t top this.

Well, maybe they can. I’m sure an angry Mac user will chime in. They exist. The Kool-Aid doesn’t work on everyone.

If you open the “Run” window and type “services.msc” and hit the Enter key, you’ll get a long list of things your computer does without asking you. Go down to the search indexing entry, stop it, and disable it. Your computer will run like Bill Gates chasing somebody else’s money.

I wish I had Windows 3.1. It was much better.

For Fifty Cents You May Touch my Finger

The boatyard trip did not pan out, so I fiddled with the lathe. It’s actually running.

I know you’re amazed that I installed and programmed a VFD and got the lathe running so fast. I would be amazed, too. If that were true. But it isn’t. The lathe story has more kinks and turns than an Obama campaign promise.

The seller sold me a Clausing 5914. The photo he showed me was actually a 5936. The differences? The 5936 has no clutch, a smaller motor, and no variable speed drive. There is one more difference, which I’ll get to in a minute.

The lathe arrived, and I complained, and this guy insists I got a better lathe than the one I wanted, which may be true, but I spent money on a bigger VFD than I needed (sort of; you’ll understand in a minute), which cost me a lot of money. The seller will not take it back unless I pay shipping. He’s completely wrong on the law, but if this lathe can be made to do what I want, it would be a waste of time and money to take him to court.

I got the VFD out today and started reading the manual. The box had a sticker that said I couldn’t return the VFD if it had been opened. Fine. I had to open it, right? So I started reading up on it, and then I went to look at the lathe’s wiring and motor. I had to find out what size the motor really was; I had been hearing 1 HP and 1 1/2 HP. You need this information to make the VFD work.

I located the motor’s plate, and I removed a panel covering it, and I cleaned the grime off the plate, and lo and behold, it was a 1-phase motor. I am not kidding. You can’t use a VFD with this kind of motor. So instead of spending $125 more for a bigger VFD, I had spent $350 for a VFD I couldn’t use at all. Which is a lot worse.

The seller had offered to send a 2 HP motor for nothing. This was back when I was complaining to him about the small motor. We both thought everything was three-phase at that time. I emailed the seller today and told him to go ahead and ship it. His explanation for the 1-phase motor was that they had replaced the 3-phase job and wired the new 1-phase motor up so it would work with a 3-phase plug and socket. I figured I had a really worn-out lathe, because three-phase motors are very tough, and this lathe had buried one.

I emailed the seller again and suggested I return the lathe and we split the cost of shipping, since it wasn’t much more than what he would have to spend to make this right. He wasn’t having any of that. He claims he received the email after he shipped the motor, but I wouldn’t believe him if he said Barney Frank loved show tunes.

In the midst of all this, I emailed the manufacturer. They got right back to me. Guess what kind of motor this lathe originally shipped with? SINGLE-PHASE. I think you know what that means. This is the original motor. So I got this guy to send me a bigger three-phase motor, on the theory that the old motor had been replaced, when the lathe was actually stock.

Am I going to tell him? Of course not. He promised me a lathe with a 2 HP 3-phase motor, and I am entitled to it. I’ll keep the extra motor and see if I can use it on a mill or a bench grinder or something. Or I’ll sell it. From what I’ve seen so far, I don’t know that this seller would be honest enough to admit that I’m entitled to the motor, so I’m not planning to help him find out it’s not what the lathe came with. For all I know, he’d get on the horn to UPS and beg them to bring it back to him. At this point, if he shipped me a gold Rolex by mistake, I’d sell it, make the deal right, and send him a nice note and the excess money. Minus the price of half a dozen expensive bird toys.

I think the odds that he reads this blog are about like the odds that I’m going to get a refund, so I’m not afraid to say this stuff here.

I tried to measure the runout on the spindle, and if the indicator is right, it’s very low, so I am hoping the lathe isn’t a basket case.

I don’t know where I’m going to get a four-conductor cord or a plug for the new motor, but it looks like I don’t have to worry about that right away.

Okay, I’m stupid. I don’t need a four-conductor cord, do I? The power to the VFD will be single-phase.

I’m turning into a real Fred Sanford/Tim Taylor. When I realized the existing cord was too short, I walked across the garage to the unnecessary forty-foot length of 50-amp 3-conductor cord I bought for my welder, sliced off a piece, put a Home Depot plug on it, and hooked it up. I actually have things like that lying around. Well, I didn’t have the plug. I had a receptacle, for some reason. I had it half wired up before I realized it was a receptacle and had to get in the car. Still, I think I’m pretty amazing. I had my cable cutters and Ideal wire strippers right there at hand. And I bought my first grease gun today.

Please don’t feel inferior.

I can tell I’m going to be a great machinist, because I have already nearly thrown a heavy workpiece across the garage (I dove for cover while the lathe spun down), and I also left the key in the chuck once. I didn’t turn the lathe on, but the sight of the key still in the chuck was enough to put the fear of God in me. And I turned the back gear on without disengaging the direct-drive thing, which didn’t make the drive belt very happy.

Time to eat some Costco chicken.

The Book of Jasher

Can’t write too much. My dad’s boat is in the yard, and I have to get up and go to the boatyard with him so we can run it back to the marina. It had oysters on the hull when we took it in. Oysters! I can’t convince him bottom paint isn’t permanent.

Mish Weiss is not enjoying radiation treatment, and some of her blood counts are not good. Keep her in your prayers.

Yesterday I read a big chunk of the book of Jasher. This is an old document which is supposedly a sort of companion to the Torah. Some people claim it’s a forgery, but I believe there are references to it in the Bible. After reading it, I have a very hard time believing it’s not genuine. It’s a long book, and it’s loaded with obscure details and “begots” and so on, and it seems very consistent with the style and message of the Bible. It’s not considered part of the canon, however, so I guess you have to be careful with it.

It’s full of fascinating stuff. For example, it describes the “images” Rachel stole from Laban. It says people used to kill firstborn males and preserve their heads, and they put metal tablets with “the name” inscribed on them under the tongues of the heads. Then they consulted the heads and asked them things, and the heads spoke. Creepy, to say the least. It says an image belonging to someone Laban knew (“Can I borrow your severed head for a minute?”) told Laban where Jacob went when he fled.

The Jews have a lot of stories about the power of “the name,” meaning the true name of God. Supposedly a person who knows it can work wonders, not all of them good. The Torah says something about testing an accused adulteress by making her a drink containing the dissolved name of God. If she’s innocent, no problem, but if not, she gets a disgusting disease reminiscent of the worst types of VD. Maybe Aaron will chime in on the subject.

I hate to say this, but it reminds me of the Coca-Cola formula. Supposedly only two people know it, and they’re not allowed to fly together.

Am I the only one who prefers the term “VD” to the more modern “STD”? It’s amazing how we’re rearranging the language to keep morality out of it. In the past, “whores” used to get “the pox” and “the clap.” Now “sex workers” get “STDs.” Calling it something clean-sounding doesn’t make it morally equivalent to an earache.

Prostitution isn’t “sex work.” It’s a degrading, sinful, disgusting, depraved lifestyle that leads to disease, drug addiction, self-hatred, social isolation, and early death. I guess those are “sexually transmitted adverse results.”

Some books that are not universally recognized as scripture seem silly when you read them, and it’s easy to dismiss them as bogus. For example, it’s hard to take the story of Bel and the Dragon seriously. The style doesn’t match the book of Daniel, and the story is a little cartoonish. But so far, the book of Jasher seems convincing.

I better go put my shoes on.

More

A book called Tree of Souls says the name mentioned in the story of the “images” was the name of a foul spirit, not God. In another place it says “spirits,” plural, and that incantations were also written on the object put in the head’s mouth.

Saturday Night, Redeemed

I’m not going to church today. I went last night. It’s much more convenient, and the services are smaller. The traffic is worse, probably because everyone in Miami rushes to South Beach to get drunk and stoned on the weekends. But it’s tolerable.

Back when I started keeping the sabbath, I truly looked forward to and enjoyed the day. When I started attending church regularly, that began to change. Not something I expected. The church has three services on Sunday, at 8:30, 10:30, and 12:30. My preference is to go at 8:30, but my sister insisted on 12:30, and we usually found ourselves leaving for that service between 12:45 and 1:00, which put us there at 1:00 or later. Then we usually ended up doing something after church, and I would often arrive home after 3 p.m. I always prepared to leave by 12:15, so if you add it all up, I was cutting at least four hours out of the middle of the day in order to go to church.

I found it hard to accomplish anything before going, and afterward, I was tired. So the sabbath was not what it had been.

On top of that, my early morning prayer sessions shrunk considerably. It wasn’t by choice. For one reason or another, I had trouble sleeping, and I’m worried about the effects of sleep deprivation, so I would add an hour or two to the alarm. And I was spending way too much time fooling with tools, so I was getting to bed an hour and a half later. Instead of getting up at 5:30, I’ve been getting up between 7:30 and 9:00.

I’m sorry to say that my sister and I have had considerable discord over family business, so she and I have not been to church together for two or three weeks. That’s bad. But when you’re a Christian, good always comes from bad. The good is that I can now get to church on time, and I can go to a service that doesn’t cut the sabbath in half.

“On time” is not completely right. I try to miss the first ten minutes, because that’s when the church concentrates its youth-oriented boombox worship music. I think it’s great that they’re reaching out with that stuff, but it makes my head hurt, and I would like to be able to hear when I’m 60.

I’m going to take Sunday back, starting today. You can’t expect a tree to grow if you don’t take care of the roots, and I have not been doing that. I want to continue to see our lives improve, and that will only happen if I get my routine back and start each day with God. It’s surprising how far off the path you can get in a few days or a week. Fortunately, I miss the sensation of being on track, so I am highly motivated to correct my course.

I haven’t written much lately about this part of my life–less than I wanted–because some mysterious person tried to come between me and my sister by sending her passages from my blog. Things that were intended to upset her. You have to wonder what motivates a person to do things like that. It didn’t benefit them at all, and it was intended to hurt two people who were trying to rebuild a family that was in ruins. And it caused me to deprive readers of material they found encouraging and uplifting. There was nothing positive about this person’s intentions. Whoever did it knew that harm would come of it, and they did it anyway, because that was the point. It was pure malice.

One of the bad things about blogging is that you develop enemies whose existence is completely concealed from you, and they never have the courage or integrity to identify themselves, explain why they tried to harm you, or offer you a chance to work things out with them. The Internet is a playground for the malicious people who are too weak to face their victims, and the rest of us pretty much have to depend on God to defend us. The alternative is to stoop to the level of those who abuse us. Who wants that? Who wants to be the kind of person who hides while distributing viruses, hacking into servers, committing identity theft, spreading inflammatory gossip, or trying to motivate people to harm others? A tick dangling from a dog has more dignity and justification. And a greater hope of success. What God puts in motion, you can’t successfully oppose. You can, however, bring condemnation and shame and misfortune on yourself.

This family has had so much unnecessary pain, and here we are, accepting God’s help and working our way into the light, and someone wants to put a stop to our recovery. Someone out there would draw pleasure from that. What kind of life can that person have? I can understand trying to fill an empty life by doing good for other people. But evil? Especially an ugly and cowardly type of evil? How can that make you happy? Obviously it can’t. Whoever did this has planted seeds of misery and self-loathing in their own field, and their abundant harvest is on the way. They need to repudiate what they did and learn to bless other people instead of attacking them without reason.

The one sure way to make good come of this is to forgive and pray for this person, so that’s what I’ll do. God didn’t bring us this far to be stopped by malevolent gossip.

I don’t care who it was. I don’t want an apology. Whoever you are, I hope you will take a moment and realize that when you make innocent people suffer just so you can draw pleasure from their pain, you do yourself more harm than you can ever hope to do them. As an enemy, you are weak, but the enemy you are making is not, and no one can protect you from him. You have already failed. You never had a chance. You might as well try to salvage something from the experience and protect yourself.

In the end, my sister and I will find blessings in this. You will not. Unless you change while there is time. If you want to make amends, don’t contact me. I don’t need to know your name. Find someone who needs a blessing and give it to them. Give something to the poor or the hungry or the sick. Pray for someone who needs help. Try to find pleasure in doing good, so you will stop bringing misery on yourself.

Never Pay by Check

My lathe troubles have abated to some extent.

I ordered a Clausing 5914 lathe from an out of state dealer. Every piece of email correspondence from the order onward had “Clausing 5914″ in it, as did the invoice. A Clausing 5936 is what I ended up with. It’s basically the same lathe, but it’s my understanding that it has a 1 HP motor instead of 2 HP, and it has step pulleys instead of a vari-speed drive. I spent $125 more than I had to on the VFD, because I didn’t know I was receiving a smaller motor.

The seller claims I knew I was getting a 5936 because he sent me a photo of the lathe. The photo doesn’t show the model number, and I wasn’t able to tell the difference between these two models by looking at a photo. It’s hard to see how he could be telling the truth, unless he has some kind of problem with his mind or his memory. He has health issues; maybe they interfere with his ability to keep up with orders.

He says this is a better lathe. Maybe that’s true, but it sure looks like he knew I wanted a 5914. He cut $400 off the price without telling me; the 5936 was more expensive, and I sent a check for the price of the 5914, and he never said anything about it.

I can go to small claims court and win. He’s subject to Florida jurisdiction because of his website. But suing people unnecessarily is not compatible with my beliefs. I believe God is real, and he makes things right better than any court could. I wouldn’t buy anything from this guy again, but I’m not planning to go on a crusade to get even. I would like to part with him on friendly terms and get on with my life.

Maybe he seriously believed what he did was ethical, and maybe I ended up getting something better than what I ordered, but this is not acceptable business practice. If this had happened with Grizzly, they would have sent a truck, picked up the machine, apologized profusely, and either refunded all my money or supplied a new machine. No expense to me.

He’s offering a replacement motor and a replacement for the broken casting. I should take him up on those.

I also bought a set of micrometers from him. They’re NSK carbide mikes. I got a set of 3, 0″-3”, new old stock. But they’re very old. The grease inside them has hardened into varnish, and only one of them is usable. I tried Kroil on the two frozen mikes, but so far, no luck. He says he’ll take them back. That’s good, but I wish they had worked. They would have been a great deal. I paid $45.

I’m trying to find other micrometers. It looks like I found something interesting. There is a company called Scherr that makes good measuring tools, and they don’t get the same prices big names get. I found some nice new Scherr micrometers on Ebay. I may get them to replace the NSKs. The biggest one is a left-hand mike. I’m not sure what difference that makes. I assume it means it’s a mirror opposite of a right-hand mike. Surely I can use a mike just as well with my left hand. I’ll end up paying twice as much, but these are better tools, and they may actually work.

I’ve been trying to get the grease off the lathe. I know a machine tool will always have a certain amount of grime on it, but I want it clean enough so I can touch it without blackening my hands and clothes. It has something resembling congealed cosmoline on it. Denatured alcohol seems to take it off.

The chuck is not great. It has one-piece jaws, and it’s not adjustable. I was going to see if the seller had any nice used chucks for the lathe, but I think you can guess what happened to that plan. God only knows what he would send me.

I’m somewhat discouraged, because I trusted this man’s reputation, and things went poorly. I’ve been talking to another dealer with a good reputation, about a couple of old milling machines, but now I wonder if a good reputation is worth anything. Everybody I checked said the lathe seller was a saint.

Caveat emptor. Every deal can’t be a good experience.

Life Can’t be Simple

Here’s weird news. The lathe I just received isn’t the one I ordered. The seller had two for sale; one was a Clausing 5914 with variable speed drive, and the other was a 5936 with step pulleys. For some reason, the step pulley model was more expensive. I paid the lower price, and I received the wrong lathe.

Now I can’t figure out what to do. This thing may be better than the other one for all I know. I emailed the seller.

More

Here’s what someone says about this lathe on Practical Machinist:

The 5936 doesn’t have the Vari-speed, but more importantly doesn’t have the traveling clutch/brake. The metric change gear sets sell for $750 – $1,000, but remember that you can’t cut imperial threads with the metric gearset installed, and the metric banjo doesn’t have the high/low compound gear selector, so you have half the number of change gears available.

More

More fun information: it has a 1 HP motor, and I just received an expensive 3 HP VFD which I can’t return without paying a restocking fee.