Mommy Obama Wants Our Bad Old Guns

Surprise, surprise. Obama wants to disarm us. Wow, no one saw THAT coming.

His new AG appears to be a monumental buffoon, in addition to being wrong on any issue you can name. The other day he called us a nation of cowards because he thought we were afraid to talk about race. Actually, there is some truth to that; if we were willing to criticize black politicians the way we go after white ones, Barack Obama would still be a state legislator. But that’s probably not the kind of race talk Holder had in mind. He probably meant that whites, Asians and other people who are not members of what liberals define as minorities don’t spend enough time flagellating themselves over nonexistent offenses against the recognized and approved minority groups.

By the way, there are only liberal-recognized three minority groups in America, as far as I can tell. 1. Blacks. 2. American Indians. 3. Non-Cuban Hispanics. And absolutely nobody cares about Indians, because there aren’t enough of them to affect an election, so that leaves two minority groups that matter. The other minorities don’t seem interested in government help, and they appear to be prosperous, so they don’t count. Jews are a minority, and they have been systematically persecuted in the United States. Oddly, they have never received affirmative action, they are not poor, and there has been no talk of reparations. Go figure. The Chinese were brought here as slaves, to work on our railroads. They were kept in camps and underpaid, and they had rotten lives. Where is their minority money? Must gave gotten lost in the mail. It’s in a basement at the post office, in the same big pile as the Japanese, Vietnamese, Arab, and India-Indian minority money.

Maybe Holder meant it was time for big media journalists to start referring to Al Sharpton not as an activist, but as what he is: a Jew-hating idiot who incited a riot and got a man killed. Maybe Holder meant it was time for us all to openly state that Jesse Jackson is a narcissistic shakedown artist who worries more about a photo op in America than all the horrible suffering currently taking place in Africa. Maybe he meant we should honor George Bush as one of the best friends black people have ever had, because of the marvelous things he did to end African misery.

Is that what he meant? Maybe he’s not such a bad guy.

I had hoped that Obama would be too gutless to go after guns, because this is an issue where Democrats consistently lose. It’s a big enough issue to lose elections for them. But I guess his gigantic, edematous ego got the best of him, because he and Holder want to bring back the ridiculous assault weapons ban. Never mind that many of these guns are not really assault weapons. Never mind the shocking rarity of assault-weapon crime. Obama and Holder want them gone. Do criminals care? Of course not. They don’t use these guns. They use crappy .25 automatics and stolen Glocks. And if they want assault weapons, they’ll have them even if they’re illegal, because…they’re CRIMINALS.

People do not buy military-style weapons to commit OFFENSES. They buy them for self-DEFENSE. You don’t need an Uzi to stick up a dentist and run off with his wallet. A rusty .38 will do just fine.

I guess I am going to have to put life on hold while I shop around for self-defense guns. The long guns I have right now are toys. They are not the kinds of guns you defend a house with.

I think the Czech-made Vz58 is the best choice out there. It’s a better gun than a top-grade AK-47, and you can buy a new one without selling a kidney. Another good option: the Saiga 12 semi-automatic shotgun.

One nice thing about gun bans is that they always have grandfather clauses. This keeps fat lazy conservatives who already have guns from rioting in the streets and helping stop the bans. So if I get a couple of nice guns now, the ban won’t apply to me. Eventually we may reach a state where pompous morons like Obama can pass laws requiring us to hand in guns we already possess. But until then, I’ll be able to burgerize anyone who comes onto my property with the intention of harming me.

I should try to get a handle on my anger, but the second amendment does not grant a privilege; it grants a right. The Constitution makes freedom to own and carry guns (“keep” and “bear”) just as sacred as freedom of speech.

America is washed up; in my bones, I am sure of it. I think we’re headed for a permanently depressed lifestyle and greatly reduced global influence. Oddly, many liberals are openly hoping this happens. They say our wonderful lifestyle was “artificial” and “unsustainable,” and that it harmed Mother Gaia by making her nipples sore or something. They literally want America to be poor and weak. Google and see. But a little voice has been telling me we will be able to keep our guns. I hope that turns out to be true, but it’s time to do some shopping, just in case.

Logged Out

I am worn out from cutting up trash pile mahogany.

I’ve been writing about the pile of rotten mahogany logs I found in a neighbor’s trash. I stole a bunch and took them home. Since then I have been sawing viable wood out of them.

It’s shocking how much wood you can get out of a short rotten log. You can take a log maybe 11″ wide with a 4″ hole running down the middle of it and get a clean 9″ slab that is surprisingly thick out of each side. Then you resaw the slabs into thinner slabs. You wind up with a lot of perfectly useful wood.

At first, I was disappointed when I cut out the rot and ended up with pieces that were short or oddly shaped. Then I thought of the horrible screw jobs I had taken on red oak at Home Depot.

First of all, red oak is remarkably ugly. It looks like a desk from a high school, circa 1970. Maybe that’s the kind of wood they used for desks. It’s plain, it’s coarse-grained, and the color is about like a Band-Aid. Sure, it’s strong. In Appalachia, they used to make solid wagon wheels out of it, cutting slices out of round logs, because it wouldn’t split. But it’s very drab.

Second, Home Depot oak is very expensive. Sometimes you really need a piece of hardwood for something, like maybe a backing slab for a latch on a shed door, and you can’t just pull the wood out of your ear. You have to get it somewhere. So you find yourself making a ridiculous trip to the store for maybe a foot and a half of three-inch-wide oak. And then you find out it’s ten bucks, or some such insane price. That is beyond belief. It makes you wonder where all the forests went. Don’t we still have a few trees?

It may seem silly for me to carve out a piece of mahogany two feet long, three inches on one side, and two and a half inches on the other. But that’s equivalent to more than two of the pieces of Home Depot oak I just talked about. It’s probably twenty bucks’ worth of wood. And it will also look good. Damn, why not take it when you have the chance?

For that matter, why not take live oak? It’s better-looking than red oak, and it’s probably just as tough. It’s free, all over the place. A couple of months ago, a live oak fell on a neighbor’s house, and when the clearing crew got done, there was a pile of logs as big as two cars. FREE. Sitting by the street.

I suppose live oak is desirable wood, to people who like oak. What the hell. Take it and make furniture. Hmm…Wikipedia says it warps and twists when you dry it. Okay, fine. Make two-by-fours out of it. They surely won’t be any worse than the corkscrews Home Depot sells.

I am looking up other trees that grow around here.

Tamarind is hard and dense, and it has all sorts of weird figuring in it. And spalted tamarind is highly desirable.

Poinciana wood is crap. Whoops, wait. You can turn it and make beautiful things.

Lignum vitae is probably too hard to do anything with.

Citrus wood is hard, dense, and really pretty.

I’m starting to think about wood lathes.

I will stop now.

Speak Up

I am investigating a ministry that provides assistance to needy Jews. I was wondering if anyone who reads this site was aware of it. It’s called Jewish Voice Ministries.

I’ve written a lot about the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. This is a wonderful organization that moves Jews to Israel, helps poor Jews, and fights anti-Semitism in the media. But that organization has one weak point. They are completely opposed to evangelism. They work with Christian minister John Hagee, who has come to the controversial conclusion that Jews are under a different salvation scheme, and that there is no reason to mention Jesus to them.

Jewish Voice is somewhat different. It’s run by messianic Jews. They evangelize, and they do it from a Jewish standpoint, which is a little unusual. And they move Jews to Israel, much as the IFCJ does, so you can donate money for pretty much the same purposes.

I talk to my sister about charities and ministries. She pointed this one out to me. She likes it better than the IFCJ, for the reasons mentioned above.

I checked it out with Charity Navigator, and their rating is slightly higher than the IFCJ’s, so it’s a reputable organization. And the leader takes a reasonable salary.

If you’ve heard of Jewish Voice, let me know.

More

I may have spoken too soon. I’m looking at their site, trying to find information about moving Jews to Israel, and it doesn’t seem to be there.

Nuance in Action

It’s another Obama rally on Wall Street! Of course, in Obamese, “rally” is the word we use when we want to say “freefall.” Right now we’re down 150 points, and there is little HOPE that the trend will CHANGE.

Thank God, the left has rewritten the rules of logic. That will save us; when you’re a socialist, wishing will make it so.

These days, a person who borrows money he can’t repay is “a victim.” A person who is ejected from a home he can’t pay for and ends up renting again is “homeless.” Failure is something you reward. Success is something you punish. And amazingly, when you punish success and reward failure, people get more and more productive, and life just improves without measure! After that, we all grow wings and sell our cars because we can fly everywhere we want to go. Be careful up there! Don’t collide with a pig!

Back in the old days, before logic was repealed, overhauled, and replaced, a company that was mismanaged would go out of business, smarter people would buy the assets and hire the employees, and the new company would do better than the old one. A person who got a house loan he could not afford would sell at a loss and go bankrupt and start over, or the bank would foreclose, and a solvent person would buy the house. Then the buyer who lost the house would rent an apartment. We called this “capitalism,” and it led to the greatest combination of stability and wealth any nation has ever known.

These days, when you accept a bad loan with everything disclosed in advance and your eyes wide open, the government takes money away from your responsible neighbor and gives it to you so you can keep your home. Then the government has the gall to tell your neighbor this was done to help HIM.

Your neighbor has less money to take care of himself and his family. He has less incentive to work and save and invest and help create jobs, because the Mommy Dearest State will let him blow his money on beer and lotto tickets and then catch him when he falls. He will adjust his behavior accordingly, unless the Messiah restructures human nature. Of course, that’s the socialist’s worst fantasy. The one that makes their system so pathetic.

The lenders that gave these loans need to go out of business. They knew exactly what was going on, unless they were on psychedelic drugs. I knew what was going on, and I’m just a lawyer.

Earlier in the decade, I represented a couple of car salesmen. They had worked at a number of dealerships in the Miami area. Guess what they told me? They told me how car loans work. Let’s say you’re a crackhead, but you want an Escalade. You go to a car dealer, and you point at the car you want, and they give you a loan form. And you say, “but I am a crackhead and I have no income.” They say, “We did not ask you to declare your income. Just sign the form.” And you sign it, and they fill it out, and if needed, they dig up a forged 1040 and attach it. This is literally true. Then they send it to GMAC or whoever the lender is, and the loan gets approved. This happens every day, all over this city. Well, it DID. Back when people were able to sell cars.

Maybe “crackhead” is an exaggeration, but the rest of it is absolutely true. Car dealers routinely forge documents in order to get lenders to cough up. Surely the lenders know it; how could they not? And if car dealers do it, surely the same thing happens in the housing industry. Get a lender to pay, take your piece of the action, and move on. Then the lender sells the loan and moves on. Somewhere down the line, someone in China eats it, but you got your little piece of cheese, so it’s okay. I can’t believe the lenders don’t know what’s happening. They would have to live in lead-lined booths. Surely they must be making these bad loans with the intention of passing them on before they tank.

You have to wonder how this affects lending standards. If the qualifications of buyers are exaggerated on a broad scale–and they are–you have to wonder how much inflation is built into the standards.

I’ll explain. Imagine the lenders think the average home buyer has a $60,000 income and $5000 in debt. But because the people who put mortgage applications together have lied so much, the true figures are more like $40,000 and $10,000. And the average buyer makes his payments. What happens? The lender ends up with unrealistically high standards. The lender thinks you need $60,000 and $5000 to be a good risk, but the reality is, people with the other figures are pretty safe. Wouldn’t that make it harder for honest applicants to get credit?

I also wonder what the Chinese think, when they see the documents. They must go, “Wow! Americans are even richer than we think! This guy’s application says ‘crackhead,’ and his address is ‘dumpster,’ but he earns more yuan in a day than I make in a month!”

I don’t actually know if the Chinese see the original documents when they buy American mortgages. I have no idea how that works. But they do buy our mortgages. Your stuff is Chinese. Your house is Chinese. You might as well go ahead and buy a wok. Which will probably be made in Mexico.

The free market and logic are like gravity. Eventually they are going to win, because they never take a break. They never stop. Redistribution of wealth only works when the free market redistributes it from unproductive people to productive people. Obama is building a house of cards, and we’re in a windstorm. I still can’t believe Bush helped him do this. Remind me again why people thought Bush was conservative.

A rising tide lifts all boats. In the past, anyone could do well, because America was prosperous. It was easy to succeed. That probably won’t be true from now on. My answer is to get my house in order, change my behavior, and try to find my way into God’s good graces.

Oh, boy. Down 180. Think of all the people out there who saved all their lives and just lost their retirement money. This is absolutely terrible.

ATTACK!

Mish Weiss is on the prayer list again. She has a cold. This is not something you want, when you have leukemia. Please don’t forget her.

House Acts Swiftly to Protect Imbeciles From Themselves

I just read that the House has passed a bill that makes it illegal to keep a chimp as a pet. There goes my plan to kidnap the president of Iran.

It is definitely a bad idea to have a chimp for a pet. No doubt about that. Soy-sucking gun-haters who faint at the sight of a .22 cartridge seem to make up the majority of people who own really inappropriate pets or who try to snuggle up to wild animals and then get eaten, but the obvious fact is, a big strong wild animal is much more dangerous than a whole basement full of assault rifles. Here’s the reason: assault rifles won’t escape and rip off the mailman’s testicles. Guns don’t kill people. Angry chimpanzees DO.

That being said, do we really need this bill? Only idiots have dangerous pets, and this particular type of idiot (I want to be careful here) is in the minority. And there is a legal theory called “strict liability” which, if enforced by slimy tort lawyers (thought to be primitive ancestors of chimpanzees), would probably be a pretty good deterrent.

It has been a long time since I studied for the bar exam, but I think it works like this. If you have something really dangerous in your house, and someone gets hurt because of it, you have to pay. Period. The court doesn’t want to know whether you were negligent. Maybe you kept your box of dynamite on top of the fridge where you were sure the kids would never find it. Nobody cares. You’re liable. And the example they always use when they teach about strict liability is a tiger.

Having seen what chimps can do to people–in particular, their peculiar and well-documented fascination with testicles–I can tell you that I would much rather face a tiger, which kills prey pretty quickly. The other day I saw a photo of the last famous chimp victim. He has two fingers left, his genitals are completely gone, he’s in a wheelchair, and while he has skin on the front of his head, I would not call it a face. If a tiger is grounds for strict liability, surely a chimp qualifies.

Ordinarily this kind of law wouldn’t interest me much, but it’s a little unnerving when the feds start deciding what kind of pet you can have. Here in Coral Gables, there is a law that makes it illegal to own any type of reptile. Try to imagine an American childhood that doesn’t feature at least one dead turtle. It’s unthinkable. Under Obama, liberty is going to shrivel like a slug on the Bonneville Salt Flats. Little things like the monkey law help the snowball gain mass.

I guess you could say that if strict liability were a good deterrent, people would not have chimps. Maybe that’s true. I just dread the day when the Obama Jugend comes to my house to make sure my dog is a neutered vegetarian and that I don’t have any dangerous contraband on the premises, such as hamsters.

Let me conclude by proclaiming that only free men own chimps, although not always testicles.

Cue John Gibson.

Get me a Cat so I Can Beat a Rug With It

I got my Smartflix account started. I tried to rent a series of videos on big machine tools, but the Smartflix site is confusing; it lacks the typical, logical, flow chart structure. I ended up with the wrong videos in my queue, and I assume it was because I got mixed up and clicked on the wrong thing. The people at Smartflix were very nice about it and changed my queue. I still got three DVDs from Swarfrat because I didn’t get the queue changed in time to prevent Smartflix from sending them to me.

Swarfrat.com is a site for mini-machine-tool enthusiasts.

I don’t plan to get small machine tools, but the videos were here, and I knew they would be great entertainment, so I watched a couple anyway. It’s wonderful stuff. They start out with shop safety, which is something that needs to be beaten into all of us over and over. And then they present the machines, including crucial but non-glamorous topics like layout.

The guy who emcees the videos popped up during the FBI warning on one of the DVDs and said Swarfrat wasn’t too thrilled about rental outfits distributing their material. That was pretty funny. He said you can go to their site and rent the DVDs, and that if you buy, Swarfrat will apply the rental fees to the DVD cost. Whatever. I don’t want to get caught up in federal tort litigation. I just want to lie back and watch other tool nerds make chips.

Oddly, the Swarfrat DVDs have the same problem the Smartflix site has. The menus don’t work well. I’m still not sure I managed to see everything. They need a “scene selection” feature.

I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed this stuff. I love my woodworking DVDs, but this stuff is even better. There is something more mysterious and seemingly forbidden about machining. So few men can do it. How many machinists do you know? Okay, bad question. My readers will say things like “500.” But normal human beings don’t know many. Yet everyone knows several woodworkers, provided you use the term “woodworker” loosely.

The Swarfrat dude is a motorcycle lover, and he demonstrated toolmaking skills by making tools to take old bikes apart. This is exactly the kind of thing that gets me excited about tools. Every man runs into problems he can’t fix because he doesn’t own the secret, bizarre tools he needs. He may be completely unaware that such tools exist. And what could be better than using tools…to make tools? It’s like having a breeder reactor.

He made some T-handled items for pulling and pushing things out of motorcycle parts. They had brass things on them. It’s hard to describe. Let’s say you want to push something. You make a threaded brass deal which goes around your threaded tool. One set of threads on the brass thing attaches to a motorcycle part. The other set of threads is what the shaft of your tool runs through. You attach the brass thing to a part, and you turn the handle, rotating the shaft of the tool, which pushes it into whatever you want to push.

It was beautiful. Watching the crappy brass stock turn on the lathe was like watching ballet. Except that I hate ballet. It started out as a drab brownish cylinder, and as it turned, bright, glossy brass emerged. And when he knurled the brass part, I felt like standing up and applauding, as a representative of all men who know nothing about tools and can’t make anything.

One thing upset me. He used a TIG welder, and he kept talking about how much control it gives you and so on. ENOUGH. I am not getting a TIG welder. They cost like forty million dollars. Although…hmm…oxy-acetylene is much cheaper, and supposedly it does lots of stuff…

I wish the King of Swamp Castle would come in here right now and yell “NO MORE TALKING ABOUT BUYING TOOLS!”

LANCELOT: You see, I thought your son…was a lady.

KING: I can understand that.

I wish there was a tiny welder out there that gave me amazing control for welding small stuff. NO I DON’T. FORGET I SAID THAT. It probably exists and costs ten thousand dollars.

What does it matter? When the Obama Depression kicks into full gear, we’ll all be lucky if we have a hoe and a crescent wrench.

I am stalling on getting a lathe and a mill because I’m convinced that within a month or so, a wave of companies will fail, and used tools that now sell for X will sell for X/2. People will sell them for scrap because the shipping costs will be more than the tools are worth. Or we’ll just set them up in vacant lots and worship them as idols, while we grovel for filth like Denis the Anarcho-Syndicalist Peasant. Not to be confused with Dennis the Blogging Peasant, who is having a ton of fun dissecting Roger Simon’s strange new book. He notes that one or two of Simon’s claims seem to be maybe not totally consistent with the truth. To put it kindly. Which Dennis doesn’t.

I think the Dark Ages are coming back, and we’re all going to live like the people in Mad Max. Everyone, not just the folks in San Francisco.

I’ll need a mohawk and a crossbow.

Get yourself some of these fine machining DVDs. While we still have electricity.

Okay, but We Also Ordered “Hope”

Can you believe the Dow is dropping AGAIN?

We might as well start using the “D” word. “Depression.” It looks very likely, and unlike the first Depression, it will probably end with an overall level of prosperity that is permanently reduced.

Congratulations, Obama voters. Thanks to you, we have spent everyone’s grandchildren’s college tuition, and we are getting nothing in return except exacerbated economic injury. This is what happens when you elect a wet-behind-the-ears Chicago-machine bagman instead of a leader. And just to make you happy, I’ll admit that McCain would not have been appreciably better. We needed a conservative, but there were no conservatives on the menu. I hate to say this, but because the economic mess is so important, we might have been better off electing the lunatic Ron Paul. Sure, he would have caused horrible problems. But he would not have put our overgrown government on steroids, nationalized banks, and put the Big Three on methadone.

I still blame the left, because were it not for their growing numbers and the pressure they apply to the political parties, the GOP might have had enough of a spine to run a conservative.

The things that are happening in the market right now do not reflect the wrongness of trickle-down economics implemented under George Bush. They reflect the investing public’s knowledge that Obama’s socialist approach to ending the recession will make it worse. This is why people are selling stock, and selling is what makes the Dow drop. No one with any common sense believes we can fix this mess by rewarding the institutions and individuals that caused it, yet that is exactly what Obama is doing, and even Bush got into the act at the end of his term. If you want to criticize Bush, don’t yammer about his supply-side ideas, which were very sound. Complain that he gave in last fall and decided to give leftist economics a try. And complain that he wasn’t man enough to rein in and regulate the GSEs that espoused leftist policies which caused the housing bubble.

I don’t know if people understand the magnitude of this catastrophe. The Dow peaked at above 14,000. That wasn’t all that long ago. Now we’re headed for 7,000, after months of frantic, pants-wetting government first aid (consisting mainly of tourniquets applied to the neck). This didn’t happen after the 1987 crash or the tech meltdown. This is much more like the post-1929 era. At a similar point after the 1987 crash, the market was much healthier than it is today, on a percentage basis. In fact, the same is true of the 1929 crash.

We’re printing money to ward off deflation, and we have to pay interest on that money, because we issue bonds to justify the printing. Will that stop deflation, when people no longer have jobs and can’t afford to spend? Won’t sellers drop their prices in order to get money to stay in business? I don’t know. Here’s another question: will that money end up in circulation? Sooner or later, won’t foreign governments get wise and stop buying bonds? I don’t know enough about the Fed to say, but it sounds like printed money only ends up in circulation if we can find someone stupid enough to lend to us. If that’s true, maybe deflation is unpreventable.

China is hard to understand. On the one hand, they want us to do well enough to buy their products, so they need to buy our bonds. On the other, they want to keep increasing their output, which means crushing American industry and wrecking our economy. Maybe they’ll eventually realize we’re not going to recover, and they’ll decide making products and marketing them to the rest of the world is smarter than keeping us on life support. What they’re doing is a little like giving your son an allowance so he can support your family by buying products you make in the garage. It seems inherently inefficient and lossy.

Who would have thought that a community organizer with virtually no experience wouldn’t be able to solve all the world’s problems? Gee, electing him seemed like such a great idea. Socialism worked so well in North Vietnam and Cuba.

I guess I should quit poking the left. They’re the symptom, not the disease. The disease is turning away from God and slicing up the Promised Land in exchange for promises from murderers and liars. I suppose that if conservatives were in charge, the curse we have brought on ourselves would still bring us down. Leftism is inherently evil and ungodly, because it presumes that man can usher in the Messianic Age without God’s help. It’s just as idolatrous as the Tower of Babel. But godless conservatism is equally vain.

I’ll bet that nine months from now, I’m a hundred miles north of here, planting things on a big lot and driving a truck instead of a Thunderbird. In times like these, things with intrinsic value become precious, and small homes in big cities don’t fit that description.

“Keep Walking, Sweetheart, and Don’t Make Eye Contact”

I got up very late today because I got to bed late. I had to go steal more of my neighbor’s trash, because the trucks roll on Monday morning. I had to seal the ends of the wood I’ve already cut. And I had to spend time with Marv and Maynard before hitting the sack.

The wood has turned out to be mahogany. For some reason, the bark on Miami mahogany varies a lot, and sometimes it looks a little like live oak. But live oak never looks like mahogany. What I mean is, live oak has very coarse grey bark, pretty much all the time, while mahogany may be grey and coarse, black and coarse, or grey and smooth except for woodpecker holes. The wood I found has bark that is mostly grey, but I found areas where it’s covered with hard black flakes which you only get with mahogany. So that’s what it appears to be. In addition, the wood is extremely fine-grained, and it’s much softer than oak. Oak has its virtues, but it’s not the prettiest wood on earth. It has little cavities in it after it’s sanded. Like ash. Think of the surface of a baseball bat. I guess this is why they use maple on bowling alleys and gym floors, which have to be pretty and smooth, while you are likely to find oak in stair treads. My aunt Gladys has a dining table she made from oak stairs taken from a school where she taught.

As the wood dries, strange things are happening. The middle is turning purplish pink, and the outer bits are getting more yellow. It may sound nice, but it’s a little gaudy. I don’t know what it will look like when it finishes drying.

I’m not sure what to do with it. I have read all sorts of depressing things about drying wood. People make it sound impossible. I always thought you cut up a tree, let the boards sit for a few weeks, and started working it. Not so. If you don’t seal the ends, it starts to split from the ends in. Then it’s ruined. If you don’t dry it long enough–one year per inch, I’ve read–it will warp and generally go crazy after you turn it into furniture. And drying it yourself is not as good as having it dried in a giant kiln, which is what wood companies do.

I have read that you can dry small pieces of wood effectively by leaving it in a freezer. I think I read that on a museum site, so it’s probably true. Last night, I stuck a little piece of wood in the freezer, and sure enough, by morning ice had been squeezed out of it. You would think the expansion of the ice would split the wood, but I guess wood is springy enough to resist. If that were not the case, I guess we would have entire forests of split trees.

I’ve also read that some people toss wood in their ovens to dry it. I might risk a piece just out of curiosity; I don’t have a lot of confidence in this method.

The bits of wood I’m drying are so small, I could put them in a closet and worry about them in a year.

People are recommending that I get a metal detector. Very good idea. Sooner or later, I also need to invest in a real chainsaw. If I’m going to run around stealing trash and cutting it up on the bandsaw, I’ll need a tool to cut it down to bandsaw size, and a chainsaw seems inevitable. Last night I considered getting a maul, but a chainsaw is easier and better, and it’s useful for things other than preparing wood for woodworking. Also, a maul can chip and send pieces flying into you like bullets. I saw it happen to my cousin. It was amazing; it shot through his jeans, went into his skin, hit his shin bone, and slid down his leg. He had to have it cut out.

By the way, in Kentucky, a maul is called a “go-devil.”

I’m not going to run into nails in the mahogany I find in the trash here. Nobody puts metal in these trees. But I know how life works. As soon as I decide to depend on this generalization, it will fail me. I’ll find the only piece of mahogany in South Florida that has a nail in it.

My neighbors’ trash piles are no longer safe. I wish they would throw out some nice machine tools.

Today’s Haul

Here’s how low I have sunk, fooling with tools. Today I stole my neighbor’s garbage.

I was driving down the road, and I saw a pile of wood. In a neighborhood full of mahogany trees. I had been waiting for this.

I went back later and took a look. It was a bunch of thick, short, crotchy logs. The bigger ones were all hollow, but it was obvious that a bandsaw could still extract short boards two inches thick, about a foot wide, and between one and three feet in length. Well worth the effort. The only question was whether they were desirable mahogany or somewhat less desirable live oak. That’s about all we have here, when it comes to typical hardwoods.

I kept driving by the pile. I even took a photo. Then later temptation overcame me, and I grabbed a log. I took it back to my lair and tried to stuff it through the 19″ bandsaw, which I had been sure was a too-big tool buy, and DAMN if the thing wasn’t too thick to go under the bearings.

I live in a place where no one cuts firewood, so of course, I have no maul, real (non-electric) chainsaw, or wedges. I managed to trim it down using a blacksmith’s hammer, cold chisels, and a circular saw. Using a 3/4″ bandsaw blade, I popped the log into two pieces, sawed a flat side onto it so I could resaw it, and cut some boards.

I got some advice from the Sawmill Creek crowd. Evidently, when you cut fresh wood, you cut it as soon as possible, and you waterproof the ends to keep it from splitting. All I had was Kilz, so I put that on the ends.

I have to check the bandsaw tomorrow. I’m afraid I may have messed up a new blade. The wood is very wet and easy to saw, but I saw a few sparks. Maybe the hard, crunch bark is not nice to saws. This is not the kind of neighborhood where people drive nails in trees, and I didn’t see any metal anyway, so I don’t think I hit a foreign object.

If this wood turns out to be okay, it will pay for a new blade. Mahogany is expensive, even in a town where people pay yard guys to cut it up and throw it out. And this mahogany has some figuring in it, unlike the stuff at the lumber yard.

I THINK it’s mahogany. It looks and smells like the mahogany my friends and I used to help the trash guys run into a chipper when I was a kid. Can you imagine that? It would never happen today. There are always a lot of trucks in Miami, disposing of tree limbs, and when I was a kid, they let us help, because we thought the chipper was cool.

I’m hoping it’s not live oak. It’s light, even though it’s very wet, and it’s not coarse at all.

Photos:

The wood is pink, mostly. Some is kind or orange-yellow. Some of it is spalted, because it came from a rotten log. The boards in the photo are about 2 1/2″ thick, which means I can get maybe five 3/8″ sheets from each one. And I have maybe another 150 pounds of this stuff yet to cut.

The bandsaw is a wonder tool. You just put a log on the table and push, and look what you get. I love it.

Uncle Obama Will Buy Them for You With Rich People’s Money

This is truly annoying. I didn’t make it to church. The car crapped out.

My sister and I go to church together, and we take turns driving. And she has not totally mastered the concept of punctuality. We usually get there about half an hour into the service. This week, it was her turn to drive, and the service started at 12:30, and I finally gave up and left the house at 12:53. I didn’t want to drive, because the car had been acting up, but I was stuck.

On I-95, the car acted funny, and the scary motor-shaped light came on, so I exited in the ghetto and limped to a car parts store, where I got water remover, octane booster, and fuel injector cleaner. I put the water remover in the tank and headed home. I’ll clear the car’s codes later, scan it, and see what happens.

I felt very sorry for myself, and on that basis, I decided to get some ice cream. I went to CVS. If you’re not familiar with CVS, you eventually will be. Remember Judge Dredd? In the future, every restaurant is Taco Bell? In the present, every drugstore is CVS, or soon will be. I know a CVS where I can stand in the front doorway and see another CVS.

The ice cream at the CVS had melted. Unbelievable. So I looked at the cookies. They had something called “CVS Absolutely Divine” cookies. Seriously. What an appetizing name.

They had several varieties. I did what I always do when confronted with possibly faux-premium stuff (like Edy’s and Ben and Jerry’s, which are full of fake crap). I looked at the label. It said “butter”! Hmm…

Bought a package and did the mature thing, i.e., started eating them in the car. They’re really good! I was amazed. Better than Pepperidge Farm, and probably half the price.

I’m thinking of patenting a bucket-like device attached to a strap. You put the strap around your neck, and the bucket rests on your chest and catches things when you eat in the car. I think this would be very elegant. Let me know if you would consider buying one.

Maybe to make the experience seem more familiar, I could make the bucket look sort of like a kitchen sink.

Sorry to Say

RE this week’s column: gold IS heavier than lead.

Nothing Ventured…

I achieved virtually nothing today, but I had fun anyway. I was trying to make a guard for my table saw, and I also finished up my first MDF zero-clearance insert.

Everyone at Sawmill Creek says MDF is great for inserts. What they failed to tell me, or what I failed to read when they told me, was that this stuff is no fun to drill. You get a crater going in and a blowout going out. It looks like the only way to avoid this is to put your MDF between slices of scrap. Then you have a hard time figuring out exactly where the drill hole will be, which matters when you’re putting a set screw 1/4″ from the edge of an insert.

I managed to do an adequate job. The piece of scrap I glued to the back of the insert to stiffen it is holding on, the set screws work, the slots are in the right places, and nothing has exploded.

Working on the guard was a nightmare. The splitter mount on the Powermatic 66 has no room around it, so you can’t really get a wrench on the jam nut. Maybe you could if you took the blade off. EVERY TIME YOU ADJUST THE SPLITTER. You can imagine what a pain this is, when you have to adjust it ten times. I worked around it with channel-locks, which probably saved no time at all. This probably took a solid hour out of my day. Here’s a great lesson: if you have a nut under your table saw top, holding your splitter on, replace it with a wingnut. I plan to do that. It will be more than tight enough, and I won’t have to keep a 9/16″ on the bench all the time.

I learned that a table saw is a wonderful tool for shaping thin aluminum, provided you don’t care how many fingers you have at the end of the day. It’s ironic; I had to do a lot of things that made me very nervous, while trying to build a SAFETY DEVICE.

I had some aluminum angle…I can’t call it “angle iron,” but I don’t know the right name. Anyway, you get the idea. I was able to turn it into useful flat pieces of aluminum by sawing it lengthwise. Then I had to turn the aluminum into a splitter and guard support, and wouldn’t you know it, the first pieces I cut were too short. I should have measured, but this was one of those times when you don’t measure, because you’re sure the pieces you’re cutting are way too long, and you plan to measure when you cut them down to size. I couldn’t believe the splitter was too short. I had to start all over.

I know aluminum can mess up a wood blade, but I had no problems, and I have two dozen blades, so I was willing to take the chance. The blade I used was a Corian blade with about fifty thousand teeth. This is not what you use to cut thick aluminum, but for an eighth of an inch, it was jim dandy.

I had to interrupt my day to check my car’s codes, twice. It’s going “BLOOP…BLOOP.” I figured it was another COP problem, but the scanner says no codes. Maybe there’s water in my gas. Guess it’s time for a trip to Discount Auto Parts. That sucks, but it beats another warranty repair, which would entail handing my car over to thieves so they could sabotage it in order to get me to pay for more work. The COPs are on a special warranty; the rest of the car is my problem.

Reminds me how much I want a pickup. Maybe next month I’ll buy a new Ford for forty dollars and some table scraps.

I have a Wixey angle gauge. I decided to give up and get one, because some gadgets are such labor-savers, you have to be a complete fool not to buy them. Put it on my saw today, zeroed it, stuck it on the blade. Readout: 90.0 degrees. Thank God for that. That’s one tedious adjustment I won’t have to make. I also got a Wixey digital planer readout. In retrospect, that was probably stupid. I would guess a planer is accurate to 1/64″ without the digital thing. That’s probably good enough.

The chicken I fixed for lunch was fantastic. I guess baked chicken is always fantastic, unless you’re the worst cook in the galaxy. It’s not exactly challenging. I’ll tell you what I did anyway.

Winn-Dixie was selling fryers for about three cents each, so I got one. I salted it, hit it with black pepper and cheapo garlic powder, injected it with Korbel Brut mixed with salt, and draped a few leaves of fresh rosemary on it. Stuck it in a Corningware dish, covered, and baked it at 300 for about four hours. When I remembered it was in the oven, it had flattened out as though depressed. That’s because it had gotten too tender to be perky. I left all the fat in the chicken when I baked it, and it melted and formed a gorgeous fragrant pool. And the chicken was nicely browned.

So far, the saw guard design is feeble, but I know what’s wrong with it, and it’s easy to fix. I’ll crank it out soon. After it’s operative, maybe I’ll order a Shark Guard. The shopmade guard will keep me alive until it arrives. The advantage of the Shark Guard is that it has a dust port, which is a real pain to make.

I found a trash pile with what I think may be mahogany logs in it. Not sure. It’s not the best wood on earth; the logs are hollow. But you could still resaw them and get some wood which would be more than adequate to make beautiful boxes. If you take a two-foot log that’s eighteen inches thick, and it’s hollow, you should be able to get boards maybe two inches thick and a foot wide out of it. That’s definitely worthwhile. If it’s live oak, however, it’s not all that desirable. I may go swipe a log and cut it open. Aren’t bandsaws great?

I’m reading up on cutting and drying wood. Might be doable.

Sleep awaits.

One Board

I bought wood today. It’s depressing. I think about all the wood my family has owned, and all the wood I still own in another state, and then I think about what I just paid for a little piece of walnut.

Maybe I’m actually a billionaire.

I got a five-foot-long piece of walnut, 1 3/4″ thick and 7″ wide. And it was about 55 bucks. It has no options. It doesn’t play MP3s or anything. It’s just wood. Hard to believe.

I felt even worse about it until I reminded myself that I actually had 15 feet of walnut. Because I’m not going to use wood 1 3/4″ thick in anything I make. I’m going to resaw it on the bandsaw. I figure 3/8″ is a good thickness for wood you use in boxes. Half an inch is clunky, and a quarter inch is hard to work with. Try putting a spline in a box that thin.

I designed a table saw guard today, so I bought stuff to make that. I went out and stared at the saw until an idea came to me, and I had one that will work. I’m going to make it out of aluminum strips and quarter-inch plexiglass. I hope I can cut plexiglass without making a fool of myself. I have a flush router bit, if all else fails. All those Corian blades that came with the table saw…you would think one of them might work.

The guard I’m making is very simple, and I should be able to yank it off the table instantly when I have to. It will be hinged so you can flop it back over the side. I don’t know how to put a dust port on it, but I’ll figure it out. For twenty bucks, it should be a pretty good guard. It will require me to leave two of my spiffy Irwin clamps on the rear rail of the saw, but I have eight of them, so it’s not a big sacrifice. I can put something else in there when the fixture becomes permanent.

The wood choices at the lumber place don’t seem to be as great as they once were. Let’s see. Oak, poplar, maple, cherry, jatoba, purpleheart, zebrawood, ipe, mahogany, bubinga, lacewood, ash…that’s most of it. I’m not all that excited about funny looking items like bubinga; I think they can look tacky. But the lacewood is an exception. It might make a nice box. I can’t really describe it. You can probably Google a picture.

I picked up some Johnson’s paste wax for the saw top. Everyone says it rocks, so I’ll try it. I also got Allen screws for my new zero clearance insert.

Picked up a chicken on the way home, and I’m roasting it with homegrown rosemary. I didn’t realize how much rosemary resembles pine needles. The smell is really strong. I hope they didn’t sell me some kind of evergreen shrub as a joke. Hemlock, I’ll bet. They got Socrates, and now they’re after me. I’ll bet it’s the Illuminati again. They aggravate the crap out of me. If it’s not the Illuminati sending me unwanted pizzas, it’s the Masons or the Trilateral Commission, toilet-papering the yard. Jerks.

Socrates was a pedophile, so he got what he deserved. I wonder why we don’t hear more about that in college. If Socrates were alive today, his picture would be on every government pervert site in the country.

The chicken is roasting. I shot it full of Korbel Brut. I am no longer ashamed to say that I like Korbel Brut. If you haven’t tried it in twenty years, give it another chance. They did something to it.

Off to the garage.

Variety Sucks

The machine-tool quest continues to frustrate. I think I know what I’m doing now (to a minimal degree), but I still have to shop. That means waiting. And waiting. And after that, waiting.

I can buy a mill right now. I know of at least one pretty good deal. Mills aren’t that complicated. I want a Millrite or a Bridgeport, in decent shape. But the economy is dissolving, and I’m sure mills are going to get cheaper and cheaper, and I want a lathe first, so I’m not in a rush.

Lathes are a pain. There are five million models, and they come in many sizes. It took me a long time just to figure out that I wanted a 12″ swing and 36″ between the centers. After that, I found out there are lots of options, and you have to get the right ones. For example, you need a quick change gearbox. And you want a big spindle hole, and you may want to avoid a variable speed model, because they tear up.

When a full-size mill becomes available for sale, it’s usually a Bridgeport. All you have to worry about are options and condition and price. When a lathe comes on the market, you have to wade through details. It may be for wood or metal. It may be the wrong size. It will probably be made by a third-rate manufacturer. So every time a new ad pops up, you should expect disappointment.

This is why I have no lathe.

Right now, the best choices I have are two Clausing 5914s. One is local. The other is far away, but it would cost the same amount of money, and the seller is a very reputable dealer. That dealer is in the hospital, so I won’t even see photos of the lathe until he’s out.

Do I want a Clausing? I’m not sure. I’ve read that the drives on these things can have problems. I’ve never seen anyone say something like, “WOW, you snagged a CLAUSING!” They say things like, “It’s pretty good. It should be okay. You can probably find parts.”

Sooner or later, I’ll find one. Then Coral Gables will find out I have a lathe, and they will realize lathes are fun and useful, so they’ll pass an ordinance banning them.

Today I’m thinking of running to the lumber store and picking up some hardwood and maybe enough plywood to make a crosscut sled. I accidentally saw some hideous Internet photos of a table saw injury, and I’m horrified, and a sled is a good safety measure.

I don’t know what to think about table saw safety. On the one hand, I know an awful lot of people get hurt. On the other, I haven’t come across anyone yet who got hurt without doing something stupid. Apparently many users refuse to use guards. And a lot of people don’t use push sticks or even splitters. Forget safety; I can’t figure out how they manage to cut wood, period.

It looks like there are hordes of men out there who buy saws, trash the guards and splitters immediately, and go to work. I think the guy who sold me my saw is in this category. I had to make a splitter for my saw, and it has no guard.

I would like to have a nice guard. I want a Shark Guard, but the guy who makes them runs three months behind, and they are not cheap. I took a look at the photos, and it looks like I could make the same basic thing in half a day, using a plasma cutter, a file, a drill, and a table saw. I think I should do that. It will make it impossible to use my Gripper half the time, but those things are overrated anyway, because you can’t use them on any cut where the Gripper has to go past the splitter. I need to make a decent push stick for cuts like that.

One clever inventor has come up with a riving knife that bolts onto old-fashioned table saws. I saw that, and I ran out to my garage to see if I could do something similar. Sure doesn’t look like it. The device would have to ride on the deal that holds the saw blade, and in my saw, everything is so close together there is no place where you could mount the knife.

Sooner or later, a lathe will appear in my garage. The life will be bliss.