Oh Rapture

I have a knurling tool!

Actually, I have a whole quick change toolpost set. It arrived today. But to me, the knurling tool is the coolest part. You mash it into a part as it turns, and you get checkering all the way around!

But I still have no lathe.

Come on, freight truck.

Me, I Buy

I don’t know what to make of the way the new pillow has affected me. I must have slept really well last night, because I’ve felt like Buddy Love all day. So energetic I’m almost obnoxious.

I ran over to Bed, Bath & Beyond and got a second synthetic pillow and a mite-proof cover. This pillow is pleasantly mushy, and it some kind of down substitute other than the dreaded polyester fill. I think the most disgusting thing I saw over there was a tag that read “recycled polyester.” Great. A pillow made from old couch cushions sick kids have peed all over. No thanks.

Hey, you know that expensive lathe I ordered, and the toolpost set I had to get? And you remember how I wanted to get a Bridgeport? Look what this guy did with a couple of crappy benchtop machine tools. CLICK. He made his own toolpost set, and it’s magnificent. He refers to a Japanese site where he got the plans. The Japanese site is also a major humiliation. Some guy over there has a mill and a lathe in a 25-square-foot closet, and he makes amazing things.

Maybe the Millrite is not such a bad idea. Maybe you don’t need a big mill to be a metalworking superhero.

Of course, the toolpost set has already arrived.

The obvious question is, why would any hobbyist buy a toolpost set if you can make better ones in your garage?

I think I’ll go feel insignificant for a while.

Short

Today someone whose English is not completely up to speed informed me that there was a turkey in my yard.

Here’s what I saw when I looked:

I wondered if it would poop on the beautiful sheet of painted 3/4″ plywood I recovered from my dad’s abandoned warehouse. I had left it lying out there after moving it to get to a different sheet.

See if you can guess the answer.

When my dad and I went to breakfast today, this was parked next to us. I accidentally cropped the corner of the car off.

This phone takes pretty bad photos.

That’s one of my all-time favorite cars. You have to love a car that has a 500-plus cubic-inch engine and only two doors. It’s the perfect thing for offending liberals.

Synthetic Pillow Works

It looks like the foam pillow experiment was a howling success. I used it last night. I not only feel rested; I feel somewhat wired. I suspect that my sleep was seriously inadequate before I got rid of the down. I hoped I would feel better after beating the congestion that made me snore and woke me up, but I didn’t expect to feel this good.

For years I’ve had congestion at night, and I got up most days and coughed up fairly interesting things throughout the morning. I thought the second problem was normal for me. But last night, I was able to breathe, and today all the tubes seem clear.

I’m not sure who makes this thing, but I’ll review it. It’s the only ordinary-looking memory foam pillow they sell at the local Costco.

The pillow is heavy, almost as though it were damp inside. When I took it out of the box, it had what appeared to be small oil spots on the cover. I ran the cover through the washer, and they disappeared. The box said the pillow would smell at first, and that the smell would go away after one or two days. I put the pillow under a ceiling fan without the cover. When I went to bed, it still smelled sort of like house paint.

By my standards, this pillow is pretty firm. You can’t scrunch it up much or fold it. It keeps your head fairly high off the mattress, but not quite high enough to strain your neck. It’s not as comfortable as a feather or down pillow when you first put your head on it, but I found that it didn’t get less comfortable with time. When I use traditional pillows, I have to change position once in a while because the filling compresses and the pillows become less comfortable. With the memory foam job, that doesn’t happen. You can lie in one position for a very long time. You just don’t feel like moving.

The box said the pillow would not warm up like a down pillow, and that is true. It stayed at a comfortable temperature. It didn’t heat up and make me sweat, which is a pleasant change. Nothing bums me out more than waking up and finding that one side of my pillow is wet. And I’m sure that contributes to allergies by encouraging things to grow on and in the pillow.

Because the pillow is hard, I’m going to run over to the mall and see what else is available. There is probably some sort of non-feather pillow that is easier to mash. I figure I can combine the foam pillow with something else–maybe buckwheat hulls–and get a system that works.

I wonder if this is going to improve my life. Poor sleep makes you fat, raises your blood pressure, and wrecks your memory and concentration. I had to quit playing the piano because I couldn’t remember pieces from one month to the next, and it was a very unpleasant disappointment. Maybe I can give it another whack now.

This morning I felt sharp as a tack. I had my usual Tuesday breakfast with my father, and in conversation, I felt like I was right on top of things. I didn’t hunt for words, and in my mind, I stayed ahead of the discussion. Maybe my brain isn’t turning into Jell-O after all.

We’ll see what happens. I’ll miss my down pillows, but I missed my brain more.

I do Not Love Thee, Dr. Fell

I think I know what I want to make with my machine tools. Remember how I wrote about my sad efforts to create a crab-claw cracking tool that would wow the masses and replace things like hammers and pliers? I think I should go back and finish the job. Get a little closure. Perhaps literally.

I’m thinking stainless. Maybe tool steel; I don’t think it rusts much. And my requirements for the machine are that it has to crack anything a person can eat, except maybe coconuts, and it has to be fun to use, and people have to go “WOW” when they see it on your coffee table.

I already have an idea for a cam-action sort of thing, with the camming motion provided by a round cam with an off-center axis of rotation. And I want to put ball bearings in it so it will last forever.

It’s hard to describe because I haven’t actually designed it yet. But I’m positive it will work.

Why aren’t more people making cracking machines? This is a real problem. Nutcrackers, without exception, suck. They’re too small for walnuts. Half the time the nuts squirt out the side and shoot under the couch. They’re too small for crab claws. They’re worthless for Brazil nuts. Think how great it would be to have snazzy looking universal cracking machine, ready to go at a moment’s notice.

I’m not totally sure how you go about designing things like this with no knowledge of drafting and zero CAD skills. I guess I can get a pencil and wing it.

By the way, and this is not really related to tools, did you read about how the French are giving someone a face and hands transplant? Drudge linked it today. They’re doing amazing things over there. What you may not realize is that they worked their way up from a simpler procedure. A lady in Marseilles had an armpit transplant. Apparently she could not face the world after a rare viral infection left her own armpits bald.

“Mon dieu,” she exclaimed, “my automobile has been eaten by rats!”

Wait, I’m confusing two different stories. Or obscure Seventies cartoons, as the case may be.

Here’s something interesting.

New Calipers!

I’m beside myself. My new dial caliper has arrived.

I guess it’s stupid. I already have two vernier calipers (is “vernier” supposed to be capitalized?) plus a Chicom dial caliper, but vernier calipers are a pain to read, and everyone says not to trust Chinese instruments for really precise work, so here I am with caliper #4.

I found a guy selling Mitutoyos for half price on Ebay, all fresh and new in the box. I already snatched it from the package and measured the only precisely made object within ten feet, which (because I was in the dining room) was a Cor-Bon .38 Super round. I got 0.356″, right on the button. As it should be. I guess I should compare the Chicom job and the vernier calipers.

Stuff I had to get in order to run a lathe is beginning to come in, and I am experiencing a form of glee I have not felt since I was finishing up my physics degree and I finally reached the point where I did not have to put any basket-weaving (liberal arts) courses on my schedule. I loaded up with quantum mechanics, optics, partial differential equations…I think that’s right. I can’t remember everything. I couldn’t believe I was free to do what I wanted, instead of babbling about whether we exist in philosophy class. I took five courses, and some were graduate courses, and others were top-level undergraduate courses. I found myself sitting in class beside the teaching assistant who taught my first year lab section.

I’ll never understand why physics didn’t work out. I just burned out, I think. You can’t do all that in three years, starting from scratch, without spraining your brains.

Now I’m about to start machining things! How on earth did I get here? How did this happen? I’ll bet I’m the only person in my law school class who is learning to use machine tools. If not, I’m the only one who is doing it by choice.

I love it. I feel like pouring assorted tools out on my bed and rolling around on them.

I’ll leave out the scribers and the scratch awl.

Yes, I have a scratch awl now. Sometimes I’ll be at a hardware store for something important, and I’ll look around, and I’ll say, “Oh, that looks useful.” And I’ll buy something. That’s how the scratch awl ended up in the car with me.

I need it! You don’t understand! My first machinist scribe is only steel–I’m pretty sure–and the other one, that goes in a shirt pocket, doesn’t have a cool wooden handle! I have to have all my bases covered. And it was only like six bucks.

Last night I watched the last ATI milling machine video. When Darrell Holland showed how the rotary table worked, I thought I had died and gone to heaven. I have to have one of those things. Even if I never get a milling machine. I’ll put Marvin on it and rotate him to very precise angles, for no good reason at all. Chucking him may be a challenge, but there’s always duct tape.

I better go write up some notes on that video.

“Medical” = Markup

Man, did I get burned yesterday. I went to Vitamin Shoppe to get curcumin and green tea pills. I don’t take tea in pill form, but I like to mix it with soap and water and moosh it onto suspicious areas on my skin; it does a real number on actinic keratoses, and it sure beats paying a dermatologist to freeze them or slice them out, leaving big divots in my face.

I got to the register, and the girl told me my total was a little over forty bucks. FORTY. For a hundred tea bags’ worth of tea plus a third of a pound of turmeric. Does that sound right to you? The only reason I take curcumin capsules is that turmeric is too disgusting to swallow in powder form. But at thirty-two bucks a bottle, it may motivate me to start using a spoon.

I usually use Vitacost.com, but I figured I could stand to pay brick-and-mortar prices for two measly items. Forget THAT. Today I’m going to Costco, and I’m going to make very sure I get a big jug of fish oil. That’s the only thing I’m missing right now.

I’ve also decided to get a memory-foam pillow. I can’t put up with congestion any more; I’m wondering if being around Marvin and Maynard has sensitized me to feathers. For thirty bucks, I can find out.

The other day I wrote about someone I know from Nowlive. He started having strokes. I don’t have all the details. I was told he was going in for an operation involving his heart and brain, and I was asked to put up a prayer request, so I did. I’m happy to report that he seems okay. Thanks, everyone who helped.

It seems like my blog is becoming a prayer clearinghouse these days. That’s fine with me. I can always use something positive on my record, to offset the bad things I do. I think it’s important to look for opportunities to do good deeds, because they won’t always come knocking on your door.

I got another request last week, but I didn’t post it, because a blog entry that goes up on a Friday is worthless. No one will read it. Here’s the draft I typed to keep me from forgetting:

Someone who frequents this blog sent me a prayer request. Had it arrived yesterday, I would have figured it for an April Fool’s joke, but since it arrived today, it must be serious. It sounds bad. I won’t say who sent it; if he wants, he can ID himself in the comments.

This individual has been suffering from Dupuytren’s contractures in his hands. This is a disease that causes the hands to contract and the palms to become tough. That has been treated surgically, and he is not happy with the results. Now he says he has been diagnosed with Peyronie’s disease. Look it up if you want. It’s a urological issue which can cause considerable suffering.

His wife has had cardiac problems and migraines. She has been treated successfully for a brain aneurysm. Now she’s having dizzy spells and falling for no reason.

On top of all this, they’ve both had cataract surgery.

These folks are having a bad time. I hope you’ll take a minute and put a word in for them.

I have to get on the road to Costco. I hope they have kosher Coke!

Can we Think of Anything MORE Tangential?

“Cop Killer Feared Obama Gun Ban.”

Have you ever seen a dumber headline?

I just read up on Richard Poplawski, the guy who gunned down three cops after his mother threatened to throw him out of her house. To look at the stupid, misleading headlines, you would think this poor fool shot three innocent people because he was upset about Obama’s gun-grabbing ways. The stories show that isn’t true. He was just a jerk. His mom was angry because his dog was urinating in her house, and there was an argument, and when she called the police, he decided to suit up in body armor and shoot them. Explain what that has to do with gun control. This nut was just trying to show his mommy she couldn’t push him around.

The stories say he didn’t like Obama’s gun-control policies. Show me a gun-owning civilian who does. You know the Vietnamese guy who shot up the immigration center? He didn’t like those policies, either. How do I know? I don’t, to be honest. But it’s a safe bet. Did objections to gun control have anything to do with either set of shootings? Clearly not. These men didn’t shoot up the Brady Center. They didn’t shoot up the offices of Democrat politicians or the BATF. One shot cops, and the other shot former coworkers at a business where he was systematically humiliated. These killers had problems completely unrelated to gun control, and there is no reason to believe that gun control was on their minds when they decided to commit murder.

I’m angry about Obama’s indisputable disregard for the Bill of Rights. No doubt about it. But I’m not going to shoot anyone over it. I’m not crazy, for one thing. For another, how is committing a massacre supposed to advance your civil rights as a gun owner? I can’t see the logical connection, and I think most rational, law-abiding gun owners, and even most homicidal loonies–including Richard Poplawski–would agree with me.

It’s disgusting that the press is making an obvious push to use this pathetic worm of a man as justification for banning guns. He is utterly atypical. And the harm done by banning guns far outweighs the good. Admittedly, privately owned guns could not have prevented or mitigated this slaughter. But that’s unusual. They could have put a stop to Jiverly Wong in a New York minute. He went into a place where he knew he would be the only armed person, and the results were exactly what you would expect. Contrast him with the idiot Jean Assam shot at New Life Church. Matthew Murray killed four people and shot three others, but the first armed citizen he encountered put him on the ground and rendered him helpless, and his only recourse was to shoot himself. And what about Charles Whitman, the famous University of Texas shooter who was pinned down by civilian fire until the police blew his brains out? What about the millions of gun crimes that are prevented every year by civilians? Finally, what about the fact that the cops are JUST TOO SLOW? In the time it takes to get a 911 operator on the line, a civilian with a gun can kill several criminals.

Do you know how long a Jiverly Wong would last in my presence? Exactly as long as I permitted him to last, and not one minute more. That’s the difference between me and an unarmed person, and it is a precious difference.

Get yourself a copy of the NRA’s monthly magazine, America’s First Freedom, and read the Armed Citizen feature. Our lying press buries these stories, but every month, several make it to print. Criminals try to take on armed civilians, and they end up wounded or dead. It happens over and over and over in America, and in order to hear about it, you have to look at an obscure magazine published by a nonprofit organization. Meanwhile, a man who shot three cops for reasons utterly unrelated to gun control is portrayed in headlines as a second amendment crusader.

If Richard Poplawski were a Buddhist, would we see “New York Buddhist Kills Three”? If he were a vegetarian, would we see “Cops Slaughtered by Angry Vegan”? Of course not. Those things are irrelevant to his crime. And so is his support for the right to bear arms. It was not part of his motivation for committing this crime. He’s just an immature, underdeveloped, gutless half-man who blames the world for his glaring inadequacy and can’t stand to be told what to do. Just like Timothy McVeigh and Ted Kaczynski and Lee Harvey Oswald.

The issue of whether the laws preventing nuts like this from getting guns are adequate is a separate matter. The press tells us he was dishonorably discharged from the military. That’s one of the things they ask you about during a background check. So why did he have guns? A dishonorable discharge makes you ineligible to buy guns; presumably, it makes you ineligible to possess them. Sounds like the laws needed to protect his victims were already in place. If we don’t apply the laws we already have, what is the point of passing new ones? Wouldn’t enforcement of existing laws make more sense? How many laws do we need to NOT enforce before we’ll be safe?

Here’s a headline for you. “COPS MASSACRED DUE TO FAILURE TO ENFORCE EXISTING GUN LAWS.” You won’t see that one any time soon.

I don’t think Obama has the muscle to take our guns, but it’s still important to support the NRA and speak out against dishonest reporting. We are going to be buried in new taxes soon. The seeds of socialism are in the ground, and they are so big, there is probably no way to keep them from growing to maturity. Our lifestyle is never going to be what it used to be, except perhaps for temporary respites paid for by selling out generations yet to be born. If the US is going to shrivel and pucker until it resembles Europe, we should at least try to retain the ability to defend ourselves.

Decent Milling Machine in Miami?

I had assumed that my only machine tool buy for the first half of this year would be a lathe. Now I think I may have been wrong. Sometimes you see a deal that is so good you have no choice but to take it.

Last night I noticed a Bridgeport mill for sale locally. Nine hundred bucks. It doesn’t look great; it’s painted in one of the shades known to Internet forum users as “Ebay blue.” But it has a DRO, what may be a Kurt vise, a power feed, and a bunch of collets.

A used DRO is worth maybe 500 bucks. The vise is worth 250. The collets would run maybe a hundred. I could take the good stuff off of this, sell the rest for scrap, and break even. Or I could use it until something better showed up, take the good stuff off, put the good stuff on the better machine, and then sell this one for scrap.

Whoops! The same machine is on Ebay for $4500! What’s up with that? The bigger Ebay photos don’t look so hot. And it’s not local! It’s in Tampa!

Never mind. When you add $700 to get it here, it’s not so exciting.

Church was good today. They’ve been putting on an Easter show. It’s impressive. The acting is not Oscar-quality, and it would not be the end of the world if someone polished up the script, but most of the music was incredible. I don’t know where they find these people.

The best part came at the end. People who were at the scene of the crucifixion took the mike, and they gave their testimonies. One credited God with finding her a job. Another said God restored his business and his family after his wife died from cancer. And another said her daughter was healed of terminal cancer and has since gone on to have a recording career in Christian music.

I suspect that we focus too much on what God does for us, and not enough on what we’re supposed to do for him. But it’s extremely important for people to talk about the miracles in their lives. People who don’t believe point to “miracles” that have turned out to be false, and they make the bizarre claim that no one has ever been proven to have experienced a miracle. But answered prayers are all around us. People really do get healed of cancer from time to time. Folks have visions. Families are put back together. And you can find the witnesses. They’re real people, with names. Lots and lots of people pray for things they don’t receive, but they’re not the whole story.

I had a strange experience on Friday. Twice in my life I have literally felt the presence of God in the room with me, so powerfully that I could tell you its exact location. On other occasions, I’ve felt it in a more diffuse and general way, but that almost always happens in church, not when I’m alone. On Friday, I was sitting here in this chair, and I felt it descend on me. For no clear reason. Not in one location, but throughout the atmosphere of the room. If you know the sensation I’m talking about, you know it’s very, very pleasant. It’s something that doesn’t happen every day or on command, so when it happens, you stop what you’re doing and try to enjoy it and make it last. I sat here and concentrated on it and made the most of it.

I can’t figure out why it happened or what the point of it was. I wish it would happen more often.

Sometimes I’m suspicious of people who claim to have supernatural experiences and who say they know exactly what they meant or why they happened. In my experience, God is not obvious. He does things that seem to have no purpose, and he does them when you least expect them, and you are left grateful but also somewhat confused.

The thing that impressed me about it was that it appeared to have no connection whatsoever to anything I had done. I wasn’t fasting or writing a big check to help orphans or doing anything else that could be considered particularly righteous. In fact, I was feeling guilty about some bad things I had done. I always think slipping up will wreck my relationship with God and set me back, but it doesn’t always work that way. Maybe it never works that way and I just don’t realize it. In any case, I felt like I had received something of tremendous value. I’ll bet this doesn’t happen very often to people we all think of as lucky, like Bill Gates or Barack Obama. I think it’s better than the things they’ve received, and that I’m luckier than people like that. When those people die, the good things they’ve received disappear. Things that advance you spiritually can’t be taken away. I think this is why the Bible uses words like “vanity” and “leasing” to describe earthly blessings. They’re not permanent, and you don’t own them. I own the good things that have been given to me. Forever.

Here’s something I’ve thought about a lot. If civilization somehow disappeared, and a group of people survived on an island somewhere, and some of those people had been rich and powerful beforehand, those people would no longer be anything special. They’d have no advantage over anyone else. Donald Trump would be no better off than a guy who collected garbage for a living. They’d be equals. But people who knew God would still know him, and they would still have all the advantages they had before the disaster.

I think about that, and it makes me wonder what’s real and what isn’t.

I guess I’m rambling. Marv is squawking for attention, so I’ll stop here.

You Can be an Expert Marksman for $40

If you’re serious about protecting your house from Obama Depression Zombies, as I am, get yourself a laser immediately.

No, not the big kind that vaporizes zombies with a satisfying “pop.” The kind you use to aim your gun.

Today George Moneo of Babalublog went with me, and I took the Vz 58 and its re-fastened bright green laser with us, along with other pleasing implements of destruction. It was amazing. I had low expectations because a lot of “experts” criticize lasers as gimmicks, but the shooting speaks for itself. You simply cannot miss unless you are a complete idiot. And if you are a complete idiot, you can’t hit anything without a laser, either, so it won’t hurt.

I’m not kidding. We shot at 50 feet because the laser is hard to see on the paper at 75 (bright sunshine, scattered clouds). George is not what you would call an experienced rifle shooter. For all I know this was his first time. He popped round after round into the same small area, over and over. Most of the shots went into a region the size of a golf ball. I realize big-time rifle shooters will not be impressed, and you might feel like pointing out that it’s not news when someone shoots that well at this distance. But before you make a fool of yourself, let me point something out. At fifty feet, in bright sunshine, it’s hard to see the dot well enough to keep it in an area smaller than a golf ball. It wasn’t possible to do much better. If we had been shooting at dusk, he would have put a lot of these shots literally in the same hole. In a dark house a burglar would be dead meat. No chance of survival.

I should have photographed the target. It was wonderful.

You can claim iron sights are more reliable in a gunfight, but you would be crazy. I watched George shoot, and at fifty feet, the bullet goes exactly where the dot was when the trigger was pulled. It’s a hell of a lot easier and faster to put a dot on someone’s chest than it is to squint through a peep sight. You can actually raise your head and come up completely off the sights, which gives you the ability to look around without interference. And you don’t have to sweat about trigger pull and sight picture or any of that other challenging BS. Jerk the trigger all you want. You’re still going to hit the burglar. My guess is that your biggest problems will be muzzle flash and target reacquisition, and the Vz 58 doesn’t jump much.

Man, it was a thing of beauty. I can’t recommend it highly enough. The lasered Vz 58 appears to be a phenomenal home defense gun. It has so little recoil you can fire it folded, which makes it fast and convenient. It’s small and light. It’s super reliable. It holds 30 rounds of ammunition, and you can get deadly, accurate Wolf hollowpoints for five bucks a box. All it needs is a strobe flashlight, and I have one on the way.

I guess there’s a reason why the Czechs chose this gun for combat.

I don’t know why people knock Wolf ammunition. I have always found it accurate and completely reliable. I can’t say that about PMC or some other American brands I’ve used.

One thing I love about using a rifle is that I don’t have to make the study of ammunition my life’s work in order to get the desired result. Pistols–even the much-worshiped .45 ACP–are inherently flawed; the bullets are slow, and some are also small. You have to put in a lot of effort finding a brand of ammunition that gives you half a chance of putting a criminal down with a center-mass shot. Rifles and shotguns are another story. Every brand of 12 gauge buckshot is a killer, and so is any 7.62x39mm hollowpoint. On top of that, the ease of aiming a long gun makes you much more likely to place shots correctly.

The shotgun has the advantage of better stopping power, and I’m pretty sure it’s less likely to pass through exterior walls. But the recoil and flash are a lot worse, and you can’t get a 30-round magazine. If such a thing exists, it’s a toy you can’t trust with your life. The Saiga nuts all recommend 8-round jobs. A Vz magazine gives you 30 projectiles, and a Saiga magazine gives you 72, but shotgun pellets stay very close together at self-defense distances, so the larger number of pellets doesn’t buy you a better chance of placing a shot well.

I’d still like to try an M1 carbine with the same laser on it. I think it would be very good for home defense. But the M1 round isn’t as nasty as the 7.62×39, which goes 25% faster. The M1 is about like a .357 Magnum. Very effective, but not AK-effective. The M1 might be a little easier to shoot, and that would be a slight advantage.

On the whole, I think the Vz would probably come out way ahead, since one hit to the torso can turn a criminal into a bag of warm meat sauce.

Unfortunately, the laser came loose AGAIN. The screws that attach the mount to the gun are okay, but the screws that tighten the mount around the laser refuse to hold, even with blue Loc-tite. I guess red Loc-tite is in order.

I give the laser a big thumbs-up. If I hear something go bump in the night, and the Vz or the laserized Saiga is ready to go, I won’t even think about picking up a pistol.

Try a lasered rifle before you knock lasers. I was surprised, and you may be, too.

Can’t Buy What You Can’t Find

I think the last thing I need to make a lathe work is a set of turning tools. Og recommended starting with indexable carbide tools.

I went to Enco, and they have like 3 million varieties. Right-handed, left-handed, AL, BR, BL, AR, E…I don’t even know what these terms MEAN.

Jim Dunmyer suggests I grind my own tools. Great! Let’s see how many types of blanks Enco sells.

Ah, this is less confusing. I can’t FIND them. So…ZERO. For the time being.

Maybe I can just wedge a paring knife into the toolpost. I could at least use the lathe for making ornamental fruit-rind spirals.

Nosebleeds

Mish Weiss is having nosebleeds. This can kill a leukemia patient. Please pray.

Why Waste Time?

Way oil.

That is the latest thing I have become aware that I am required to own, in order to sit in my garage ruining lathe projects. Thank goodness. I was almost afraid I had spent enough money.

A metal lathe has a thing at one end that turns the thing you work on, and then it has rails that point away from the turning thing, and then it has a thing that sits on the rails and holds the tool that cuts the turning thing. The rails are called “ways.” Which requires no explanation.

I think it’s great how I’m mastering all these mechanical terms.

The ways of a lathe have to be really smooth and straight, or else, well, I’m not sure what. I have been told two conflicting things. 1. If the ways are worn out (from the motion of the sliding thing that holds the tool), it will be impossible to make anything good on the lathe. 2. If the ways are worn out, it will not matter, because a real machinist would just excrete a giant burst of testosterone and “work around” the wear and still make parts fit for use in critical areas of the Hubbell telescope.

This appears to be a common issue with all types of machine tools. I keep hearing that they have to be in new condition to work OR that a good machinist can manufacture a Swiss watch using a pair of dull scissors and a Globe meat slicer.

I’m not sure whether any of this is relevant to me, since, in the effort to make crude and defective parts, I will probably be able to overcome the high quality and inherent precision of any machine tool made by man.

To keep your ways happy (not that it matters if you’re a real machinist with swarf in his colon, one glass eye, and nine fingers), you have to oil them, and of course, you can’t just use any old oil that doesn’t cost ninety dollars a gallon and have to be ordered from Singapore. You have to use way oil.

It gets better. There are three grades of way oil, and I have no idea which one is right. The book I’m reading says to get “medium,” with no justification whatsoever. It’s obvious to me that the author has no idea, either, and that he decided to go down the middle and see what happened.

Here’s the thing that makes me suspicious. The book also says I have to degrease the machine, weekly. Isn’t oil greasy? Won’t I be removing all that precious way oil?

I think this guy owns a way oil distributorship, and he needs to come clean. Or at least be degreased.

Wait, I’m wrong. Imagine that. It says to avoid removing the oil when you degrease.

The lathe I’m buying came from a prison. Of all the things that may have been spilled on it, grease worries me the least. I’m considering hosing it down with veterinary penicillin. Or I could take the easy route and just smear it with ground beef. My sister tells me not to eat beef because it’s full of antibiotics and steroids. Explain the logic. If I eat this stuff, I’ll be a) healthy and b) ripped. What’s not to like?

I’ll bet I know who sells way oil. Enco. How do I know this? I know it because I just received an email saying my first Enco order had shipped. That means I can’t include way oil in the same package. So this would be the perfect time for fate to humiliate me by revealing that Enco is currently having a massive way oil blowout.

Maybe Obama just banned way oil because it’s made by competent people who don’t need bailouts, and, like certain types of ammunition, it will now be impossible to find.

I love that Obama. And his wife, too. Did you see where she fist-bumped Queen Elizabeth? Something like that. It was pretty rad. They used to put your head on a pole for things like that.

MICHELLE OBAMA: HIGH FIVE!

QUEEN: ?

MICHELLE OBAMA: Don’t leave me hangin’, girl.

I shudder to think what may be on that Ipod they gave her. But it can’t be any worse than John McCain’s favorite band. Abba. On the other hand, her majesty is probably already a fan of “Dancin’ Queen.”

Giving Britain’s elderly Queen an Ipod is like giving an older relative an entertainment center that requires two remotes. It’s almost cruel. Wars start over things like this.

I think there should be a law against giving another person’s older relative any type of electronic gadget without prior notarized consent from the other person.

In addition to way oil, I’m fairly sure I have to order telescoping gauges, center drills, and a second fire extinguisher. The lathe is going to be right next to the garage door, though. Wouldn’t it make more sense to run outside and rely on homeowner’s insurance?

I put a fire extinguisher on the wall when I got my welder, but nothing I couldn’t afford to replace has caught fire yet. Seems like a waste of money to me.

I wonder if that extinguisher still works. Might be a good idea to check once every five years or so.

In conclusion, here is something irrelevant:

Resourcefulness is Fodder for Ridicule

Today Drudgebart links to a story about a guy in Detroit who sells raccoon meat. In a photo, he holds a sign reading “Fresh Coons,” and it has his phone number on it, with a “4” turned backwards. Drudge and the Detroit News didn’t even bother blurring the phone number. I would hate to be this man today.

Detroit is a hellhole, by all recent accounts. For the last 20 years or so, it has been described as a doughnut. A middle containing nothing, surrounded by suburbs. Life in urban Detroit got so bad, everyone who could manage to go, left.

I remember reading a story about it in The New York Times Magazine. Detroit contains a lot of Arabs, and one group is referred to as “the Chaldeans.” They come from Iraq. It may not be correct to call them Arabs, because they generally belong to the Roman Catholic church, and they speak Aramaic. According to the story, the Chaldeans were hated in Detroit because they opened businesses in the inner city and made money, while the people around them went to seed.

The story told of a family of Chaldeans who owned a store. When they needed to make bank deposits, they would take assault rifles and, essentially, undertake a short armed mission to reach the car right behind their business. They had no choice.

The story about the raccoon hunter says Detroit is down to 900,000 people, from 2,000,000, and that with the people gone, animals have moved in. So “Coon Man” Glemie Beasley is able to supplement his income hunting animals within the city limits. He also hunts rabbits and other animals.

I don’t know what to make of this story. This guy is doing something smart and productive. He’s killing pests and turning them into food and profit, and the story is sure to subject him to ridicule. I have to wonder what his black neighbors are saying to him today, after the newspaper ran his photo and identified him as “Coon Man.”

The story isn’t too bad, but the accompanying video seems patronizing. Charlie Duff, the young columnist who wrote the story, watches and acts up while Beasley butchers a dead coon. It seems pretty clear that he thinks it’s incredibly funny that anyone would eat a raccoon.

My dad used to hunt coons. He didn’t eat them, though. He said he put a bite in his mouth once, and by the time he finished chewing it, it was as big as a lampshade. My mom’s parents ate possums and coons and groundhogs, when they felt like it. They didn’t have to, but there was no reason not to, either.

As I understand it, you’re not supposed to shoot a possum. You catch it alive. It will roll up and play dead, and then you–I guess–put it in a sack. Then you pen it up and feed it corn meal until you think the carrion has passed out of its system. And when you cook it, about half of it is grease.

I haven’t eaten any possums. I couldn’t tell you how much of this is true.

I think what Beasley is doing is fine and dandy, and it’s a little weird that we’re expected to laugh at it. I’m not sure why shooting a coon is funnier than popping a cow in the forehead with an electric bolt. I’ve often thought that if Obama succeeds in screwing up the country to the point where the food supply is messed up, I’d want to get good at killing the unsuspecting squirrels that plague this suburb. Squirrels are very tasty, and they serve no purpose except to destroy fruit and electrical transformers.

I guess if we had had Youtube during the Depression, people in the country–who lived well on farm animals and game–might have put up hilarious videos of sophisticated New Yorkers lining up to eat watery soup and bread made from sawdust.

Relic From the Archives

Can I tell you how great it is to dream of something for decades and then do it?

I am going to get up off my lazy rear end and take a photo of something for you.

That is my copy of The Metalworker’s Benchtop Reference Manual. I got it about 20 years ago. I’ll tell you why I bought it.

My mother had some stone crab claws. Stone crabs have very thick shells. They are not easy to bust. These days, most sellers crack them before they sell them. That was not the case in the 80s. At least, not at the place where my mother got these claws. She needed help with them.

The standard thing to do is to get a hammer and put the claws on a cutting board, one at a time, and go at it. But that makes shells and bits of crab fly around, and it’s easy to overdo it. My solution? Vise Grips.

It turns out that if you tighten Vise Grips on a crab claw using the screw in the handle, you can break a very tough crab claw by squeezing the handles without much force at all. It’s beautiful.

That inspired me. I thought I needed to make my own crab claw breakers. The Vise Grips worked okay, but it was time-consuming to adjust the screw before every squeeze. I had a couple of ideas for a set of pliers that used leverage.

I went to a local machine shop and paid a guy $35 to make some pliers I designed. They would have worked, but he used 1/8″ mild steel, so they weren’t strong enough.

I knew absolutely nothing about machining. I got a drill press, and then I went to a metal supply place and ordered a small amount of tool steel. You can probably imagine how well that went. The instant a spinning tool hits tool steel (at the wrong speed, with no lube or coolant), the tool steel hardens up until it’s about like a diamond. I managed to get part of the way through the project, and then I quit. It was at some point during this time that I got the manual. It was pretty much the only book I had seen anywhere that I thought might contain a clue about how to make the crab pliers. I saw it in a bookstore one day, and I bought it on a whim.

I never got any benefit from the book, nor did I succeed in creating the pliers. But it shows how long I have been interested in machining.

I am in the process of getting a metal lathe. Readers and people I’ve contacted via forums are giving me all sorts of advice. Everyone said the tooling was what would kill me, and I tried not to think about it until the lathe order was in the works. Now reality is in my face, and I am buying things like fishtail gauges, dial calipers (better than the Chicom jobs I already have), indexed carbide tools, and a tool post. Thank God for China and the used-tool market. Without these resources, there is no way the cost of this effort would be something I could make myself swallow.

Machining experts seem to agree that you should learn turning before you learn milling, so the lathe is probably a good move. But I would still like to make those crab pliers! I could do it on a lathe, if I could get a milling attachment. I’m pretty sure Clausing made about 3 of those attachments, and they have since been sold for scrap and turned into doorknobs. I suppose there’s a work-around. There always is.

I can’t wait to do this. I can’t wait to see the first chip squirting off the surface of a workpiece. FINALLY. This will be even better than the table saw, which, without a doubt, is a life-changing tool.

Maybe I’ll even get to use that book.

I’m convinced that good things like this come from turning back to God.