I was Robbed

I know you’re all dying to hear a status report on my search for a lathe.

When I started looking around, a mammoth Sheldon lathe with a six-foot bed was available for $550. But some vulture got it before I could. Some miserable, evil, slimy person. Anyone who gets a good buy before I do fits that description.

Right now, I have two interesting options. One is an old South Bend Model A 9″ lathe with a bunch of tooling, for $650. It belonged to an old inventor who used it in his business. The obvious question is how hard he used it. Hopefully, his business was really bad and he rarely turned it on. The other option is a Logan Model 820 10″ lathe, which has a big pan and feet on it. It has some tooling, too.

The thing I noticed right away is that 10 is bigger than 9. This is the kind of thing my keen eye can sometimes be counted on to pick up.

I am tempted to get the Logan, because it’s twenty minutes away, and it’s bigger than the other lathe, and it has a stand. But I keep thinking about it, and I am worried that it will be too danged small.

This isn’t such a big problem with the South Bend. Unless it’s a complete bag of garbage, I can get my $650 back when I sell it. But the Logan guy wants $1100. And if that were a good price, he would have sold it by now. He has been advertising it since Christmas, at least. If I get a crappy price, I’ll feel like I have to hang onto the lathe, because the resale will be an exercise in something lathes are good at: reaming.

While either of these machines would probably make me happy, I live in horror of buying tools that are too small. And these things measure under 20″ between the centers. A lot of lathes go 36″. Maybe I would be smarter to wait for, say, an 11″ lathe with a longer bed. Otherwise, you know what will happen. The first thing I make with the lathe will be no problem, and the second one will have to be 20.1″ long, and I’ll have to kill myself, because it won’t fit on the lathe.

I can go to a dealer and get anything I want. For three times the Craigslist price. A dealer probably nailed that big Sheldon. I’ll probably see it for sale for $9000.

I guess the smart thing is to sit around until some more lathes pop up. The economy is tanking, and people are selling their business tools as well as their home-shop toys. Bargains will be easier to find in a month. President Obama and Speaker Pelosi are going to see to that.

No More Autopsy Photos of Che

Cafepress can be a nasty place. But it doesn’t have to be.

Check it out.

New stuff is going up over time.

Dance 3, Faith 10

I used to belong to an Assemblies of God church. That ended in 1989. The pastor said some things that gave me the impression that he hadn’t put his criminal past completely behind him. He had been a petty criminal in his youth, and he told a story about how he and two friends had picked up a hitchhiker and beaten him and taken his money. And the way he told the story suggested he thought it was funny.

That disturbed me, and there were other problems with the church. For example, we often had services that lasted three hours, for no clear reason. It seemed as if the paster were out of control and out of touch with our needs.

I tried to find a new church, but I didn’t try very hard, and procrastination eventually led to years on my own. And one reason I stayed away was that there were problems with the churches I knew. For example, the charismatic churches seemed obsessed with getting God to do stuff for people, and they didn’t teach all that much about our duties to God. And the non-charismatic churches seemed like a waste of time. I was convinced that the baptism of the Holy Spirit was real, and the churches charismatics referred to as “dead”–the places where the gifts of the Holy Spirit were criticized and “debunked”–were pretty awful. Those are the places that now have gay pastors and even bishops, and which call God “she,” and which tell us Jesus was kind of a benevolent mental case who hallucinated a lot but gave us a lot of useful teaching about being nice and thinking positive.

I found clergymen disappointing. Some were clearly grifters. Others were, at best, hypocrites. Many had gigantic egos incompatible with Christian teaching. I don’t have to tell you the ways in which ministers let us down. Open a newspaper; it’s all there.

This weekend, I watched a DVD of a charismatic preacher, and I was disappointed again. Something about this guy bothered me. I finally nailed it down. First, he kept talking about his amazing respect and devotion to various highly spiritual people he had known, and he talked about how he “sat at their feet” and asked them stuff. It was a little like listening to a Michael Jackson fan talking about how he once touched a chair in which the Gloved One had sat. It seemed like this guy was praising himself for loving these people so much, and for knowing them personally. It’s a very bad sign when a Christian tells you how amazing his faith and devotion are, as if he were telling you something of real value, while expecting you to applaud. It’s not the same thing as giving your testimony in order to help other people’s faith, even though it may seem similar.

Also, he kept talking about amazing miracles he had seen or heard of. Now, miracles happen. People get healed and so on. But bad things happen, too. Sometimes you pray for people and they drop dead anyway. I’m sorry, but it happens. And there was something about the way this guy talked that seemed to suggest that we should always expect to get exactly what we ask for. I felt like he was pumping people’s hopes up, just to make them happy and raise his own profile and get him more preaching gigs.

And he was pushing people to dance and yell and sing. I resented that. I find it extremely annoying and presumptuous when a preacher tells people they have to make fools of themselves in church. I have felt God’s presence, but I have never felt like hopping up and down in a church aisle, and I prefer not to scream or sing really loud. And I don’t think I have to do those things to make God happy. I’ve always hated dancing in clubs and so on, because I was only doing it in order to gain acceptance; there was never anything sincere about it, except when it was real dancing, like salsa and merengue. Jerking around like a monkey always made me feel stupid, and let’s be honest, virtually everyone you see in the floor when you go to a disco looks like an idiot. It’s not just me. I always resented being told I had to participate in this degrading ritual in order to be normal. And I don’t want to hear the same shtick when I go to church. I don’t recall reading about Moses or Elijah or Jesus break-dancing in the street, and I see no need to do it, myself. If I decide I feel like it, I’ll do it. Until then, leave me alone.

A lot of flamboyant closeted gays choose to deny their impulses and go into preaching, and they have certain extroverted tendencies with regard to performing and singing and dancing, and they think the rest of us should share them. I don’t want any part of that. The Bible does not require me to moonwalk, so leave me alone. The fact that I’m not jumping up and down like an attention-starved XTC-popping pinhead at a rave does not mean I’m “ashamed of God” or that I’m less spiritual than you are. And your ostentatious display of passion and devotion may have more to do with pride than faith. If you’re doing it for the wrong reason, save it for Soul Train.

I’m not knocking these guys for their nature; it could be worse. They could be working as female impersonators, singing at bathhouses. They’re apparently controlling their urges. They marry and so on. But still, they are different, and they should realize that not every compulsion they feel is shared by other people.

Maybe I’m completely wrong about this man. That’s not the point I’m getting at. Here’s where I’m headed: I have been very disappointed in many, many clergymen, and I’ll bet you have too. And we’re often right to be disappointed. You don’t have to be a genius to know when a preacher has severe failings.

There is a famous “Word of Faith” preacher out there who appears to have gone completely around the bend. I mean, Colonel Kurtz territory. He says no end of nutty things, and he’s obscenely rich, and he tells people, essentially, that their lives should be perfect. If they’re not, it means they’re not sending him enough money, or they’re not praying enough, or they’re not wearing the right color socks when they pray, or SOMETHING is wrong, and it’s their fault. Critics are now claiming that a lot of his stuff is plagiarized directly from the works of a man named E.W. Kenyon, and some of it is just gnosticism painted up to resemble Christianity. And this man and his crew don’t take criticism well. His daughter compared a Senator’s request for information to Kristallnacht. I am not kidding. And it’s funny, these guys never–NEVER, as far as I know–tell people they need to give more money to charity. If they’re mentioning charity, they’re not mentioning it very much, because I’ve been looking for it, and I haven’t seen it. No, you’re supposed to send your money to the ministry. Because yachts need diesel, and it’s not free.

Hmm…God helped Cornelius the centurion because of his prayers and ALMS. Not because he bought Jesus a ridiculous private jet. Something to think about. “By their fruits,” right? And God didn’t send Cornelius a big check, which is what the prosperity preachers would have told him to expect. No, he and his house were saved and filled with the Spirit. I guess they weren’t believing for the right kind of miracle.

This weekend, I realized something. Jesus said the first would be last and the last would be first, in the kingdom of God. I always thought that meant there were poor or unknown people out there who would amount to more in the kingdom than prominent Christians who were not as righteous. And I think that’s true, but I think it also means that the strongest Christians are usually found in front of the pulpit, not behind it. The guys with the big churches and the big names are making a splash now, but generally they will not be as special or prominent after the judgment. Life can be like high school. Sometimes the quarterback ends up pumping gas in his forties.

This is a useful thing to know. Back when I belonged to that Assemblies of God church, the pastor disappointed me. But the congregants never did! I mean, never. I’m sure there were people there who were hypocrites or who had bad intentions in one way or another, but I never saw any of that. I saw sincerity and real effort. In this life, congregants have less honor than preachers. But many ordinary churchgoers are people of very great virtue, and many perfectly adequate pastors are not.

Here’s something else that occurred to me. There is a big difference between preachers and congregants. Preachers get paid to be in church. They benefit in lots of ways. People give them cars. People tell them how wonderful they are. But what about congregants? They pay to be there! No one praises them. No one knows who they are. So it naturally follows that you should expect to find stronger, more trustworthy Christians in the pews. Not on the platforms. The fact that a man is leading a church doesn’t mean he’s the most virtuous person there.

History is full of insincere clergymen. But how many people will attend church, and pay for the privilege, out of insincerity? The percentage has to be much lower. Why would you waste your time and money, if you don’t believe? Tithing and alms are expensive. And it’s a pain, spending a fourth of your weekend on church, when you don’t believe. You’d have to be a masochist, if you didn’t think what you were doing was right.

Of course, there are people who get venal rewards from church. Some people want attention, and they see to it that they get to sing solos and lead choirs. Some people just like to feel like they’re better than the rest of us, so they buy really big Bibles and carry them around and tell the rest of us what we’re doing wrong. But in all likelihood, churchgoers are probably more sincere than ministers and other church leaders.

If you keep this in mind, maybe it will be easier to accept the problems you’ve discovered in your church. Every church has flaws; you have to find the best one you can and stick with it. If your experience is like mine, you’ll find that the people you meet make your church’s little imperfections worth putting up with. They will bless your life as much or more than the guy up front. If I had thought about that back in ’89, I would surely have found a new church.

This is Why I Was Put on Earth

Today I’m doing the unthinkable. Making strawberry cheesecake and Champagne chicken for the second time in a month. A friend of the family lost his wife a while back, and my dad and my sister and I wanted to get him out of his house for a while. Naturally, the cooking fell to me.

I made the cheesecake last night, except for the topping. That’s in the works right now, and I’m brining the chicken.

I wish I could find Lucerne brand cream cheese here. A reader says it’s better than Philly, and that the cheesecake doesn’t crack as much. but I guess I’ll be okay. I also wish I had a Tupperware container big enough to hold the remains of a 10″ cheesecake.

I keep Googling lathes. I’m learning all sorts of stuff.

First, you can rehabilitate a lathe by scraping the bed ways. This costs over a thousand dollars if you have someone else do it. All you have to do is buy some obscure hand tools–not power tools, believe it or not–and get a book and practice for a long time. Weird. I have no interest in doing this, but it’s an interesting topic. I would have thought there was some kind of giant milling machine jig for this purpose. And I can’t understand how you can do this accurately with a blade on the end of a stick.

Second, Atlas lathes aren’t all that great. People who own them complain a lot about flexing and cheap parts that break. Right now, I can get a Craftsman lathe built by Atlas, within two-hour drive, for $850. But it’s only worth maybe $350, and it will never be a good lathe. Atlas did not apply its usual standards when making stuff for Sears, so this thing is a step down from Atlas, which is a step down from South Bend and so on.

Third, Rockwell and Sheldon made really fantastic lathes, but parts can be hard to find and/or expensive. I can’t understand why Delta wouldn’t continue making parts for Rockwell lathes, but that’s the way it is. These machines are supposed to be stiffer than other lathes, and the ways on the Rockwell models are very hard and resist wear. But if you can’t keep them running, what’s the point?

Some retired toolmaker not far from here is selling a huge toolbox full of machining stuff. Maybe I should check it out. I assume it’s things like tooling and calipers. But I really don’t want a freezer-sized toolbox in my garage.

This dinner is going to be TOO good. I really don’t know how food can get any better than this. I just put the goop on the strawberry topping, and I wish I could climb into the refrigerator and swim in the cheesecake.

Lathe?

The more I look at machine tools, the more confused I get.

I think a mill is a necessity, if I ever expect to think of myself as a man. But I was hoping to avoid buying a metal lathe.

Well, look what I have learned.

You can use a metal lathe on wood. Also, really good used metal lathes sell for very low prices. Finally, you can get a 9 x 20 Chinese job that will do a lot of stuff and teach you a great deal…for $700. Now, I realize you can get a used South Bend for less than that if you watch the ads. BUT, unless what I’ve read is nonsense, it’s a very bad idea to buy a used lathe unless you have some experience using this kind of tool. So this may be an example of one of the rare occasions when buying small, cheap, and Chinese may be a great idea. What do you lose when you resell one of these things? No more than $700. Probably more like $300. For that, you get a course in using a lathe. My cheapness gene is alert and ready to pounce.

I believe it should be possible to make pulleys on a machine this size. The “9” refers to the diameter of the largest possible object you can turn. You can’t really go that high, but you can get close. So 6″ should be no problem. HF sells a metal cabinet, but I have a bunch of two-by-sixes I need to get rid of, and this thing only weighs 300 pounds or so, which means wood is way more than adequate.

Dang, I may do this. The local HF could get it for me, saving me money on shipping. I could learn a little bit about machining, and I could get smart enough to evaluate a real American used lathe, and then I could upgrade for a few hundred bucks. Maybe this is smarter than farting around with mills right off the bat. Right now, there are some really fine machines on Craigslist. It’s too bad I’m not competent to buy one.

More

Let’s say I have a spiffy HF 45861 lathe, as well as a pulley that is 6″ wide and 6″ across. Can I use the lathe to drill a hole for an axle, centered correctly in the pulley and going from one side to the other?

Warning: This Blog Does not Conform to the Fairness Doctrine

In the morning, I always look at Drudgebart.tv.com to see what’s happening in the world. Today a headline says one of the morning news shows is dedicating a whole day to the guy who landed the plane in the Hudson River. Let me get his name right. Okay, it’s Chesley Sullenberger.

Now, I don’t want to diminish this man’s achievement. He pulled off what is supposedly a very hard maneuver. He landed a big jet in water without breaking it up or harming the passengers. He kept a lot of people alive. That being said, can someone please tell me what all the fuss is about? Why are people calling him a hero?

Think about this. If he had crashed the plane, he would have been the first to die. The pilot sits right up front. If the plane had been totally empty but for the cockpit, he would still have worked very hard to land the plane safely, to save his own life.

Is every person who saves lives a hero? Shouldn’t the term be reserved for people who subject themselves to special risks, or who help others with no expectation of reward? I’ve seen film of the plane that went down in the Potomac a long time ago. It was winter. People driving by got out of their cars and walked into the freezing water to save crash survivors. Cold water can kill you in a very short time. Those people are heroes. They risked their own lives, saved other human beings, and got nothing in return.

What Chesley Sullenberger did was wonderful, and by all accounts, he demonstrated real courage and character as well as skill. But a purely selfish person in the same position would have been just as determined to land the plane safely.

For contrast, consider another man who lost a plane in the water. I refer to Bush I. He joined the Navy as a volunteer, fresh out of high school, instead of sitting around waiting to see if he would be drafted. He became a bomber pilot, which is a high-risk job. He was shot down while flying a mission for the benefit of his countrymen. He didn’t have to be there. He exposed himself to machine gun fire and flak and so on, when he could have been safe at home, minding his own business. By the time he was finished, he had served 58 missions.

That’s a hero. Maybe not the greatest hero in American history, but certainly, a hero. His actions beat anything I expect to do in this life.

What else is going on? I’m still rethinking my tool strategy. I am convinced that my life will be complete if I have a milling machine and a belt grinder (and an acetylene rig and a Bobcat*), but it’s hard to decide which way to turn first. I would very much like to have a mobile base for the milling machine, and if I get a mill before I build a base, it will be mighty hard to get it onto a base later. A mill will weigh 1000 to 2000 pounds. I can’t hoist it. I’ll have to come up with another answer.

A belt grinder would be very helpful while I build the mobile base. I’ve built one base already, and I used a 6″ bench grinder to clean up the parts, and it was pretty slow, and it wasn’t always possible to get to the surfaces I wanted to fix.

The conclusion so far? Belt grinder first.

But wait. A belt grinder has a lot of holes in it. And I would have to make metal parts for the thing that tensions the belt and makes it track correctly. At the very least, a drill press is called for. A mill would be perfect.

On top of that, if I want real freedom in the design of the grinder, machine tools are a must. For example, I’d like to have 4″ or 6″ rollers, so I could use the machine for a wide variety of belts. For metalworking, I would only have enough juice to make use of a 2″ belt, but for woodworking, you can easily run a 6″ belt with 1 1/2 horsepower. I know of no reason why you couldn’t use the same machine. You’d have to have a couple of different tool arms, that’s all.

It’s my understanding–correct me if I’m wrong–that a milling machine can also be used as a lathe, provided you stay within certain limitations. It must be true; people use drill presses for turning small bits of wood. If I can turn small metal objects on a mill, I can make my own pulleys. Think how much easier that is than trying to make them with a welder and a plasma cutter. I can make pulleys by cutting pieces of 6″ tubing to length and welding hubs into them, but imagine how hard it would be to get them centered correctly. I can buy other people’s pulleys, but then I have to live with whatever hubs they have in them, and they may be a pain to match up to the other stuff.

I suppose, then, that a milling machine would be a good first step. Maybe I’d end up with a less-pretty mobile base, because I wouldn’t have a grinder to make it beautiful, but having an ugly mobile base is better than suffering for two weeks trying to make pulleys with, as Spock put it, stone knives and bearskins.

I was thinking about getting a Bridgeport, but I don’t know if I want to utterly destroy a whole corner of the garage, and I’m a little nervous about pushing a one-ton machine around on wheels. Supposedly they like to tip forward. I was considering a Bridgeport because it seems like all mills cost roughly the same amount of money, and you might as well go big. But now I’m thinking Millrite again. I can get one locally, and it’s considerably more compact than a Bridgeport, and–here’s the best thing–I should be able to sell it without losing much, if I get tired of it.

The fun thing about all this is that I am still not making anything not related to tools. I’m starting to wonder if anyone ever does. Has anyone ever really made a bookshelf or a dresser? Okay, I know they have. My great aunt did. So did my great-grandfather. But from reading my comments and checking out forums, you would think every job mechanically inclined people do is something intended to help them use tools.

By the way, I appreciate the suggestions that I try McMaster-Carr and Grainger and MSC for parts. But if you can think of a place I should try, don’t be surprised if I’ve already been there.

* And a hydraulic press.

Nothing Matches

Man, it’s impossible mating motors to drive pulleys.

Here’s what I have. I can get a nice motor with a 7/8″ shaft. But the best drive pulley I’ve found is right here. As you can see, it has a bore larger than 7/8″.

I guess this would be a big ol’ joke to a person who owns a mill and a lathe. You pop your metal into the lathe, make yourself a cylinder that fits around the shaft, and then mill a keyway in it. For that matter, I guess you could make the pulley itself, with the right size hole.

Irritating.

I’ve had other ideas. One is to get a go-kart drive wheel with a 5″ diameter and weld it inside a piece of steel pipe with a 5″ ID. The pipe wouldn’t be crowned, but I have a theory about that. You put it on the motor, bolt the motor down, fire it up, and put a crown on it. You use the motor as a lathe to turn the pulley while you shape it. Would it work? I’ll never know, unless a source of 5″ ID pipe falls into my lap. I think go-kart wheels would be good for idlers, because the bearings are made to put up with high speeds and heavy loads over long periods of time.

The idler pulleys are not a problem, regardless. I can get 4″ belt sander pulleys and bearings cheap. If they’ll work on belt sanders, surely they’ll work on a grinder. The big challenge will be to get them mounted right.

Insane

I’m going to do it. I’m going to order me a 2 HP Baldor 3-phase motor and a VFD. Sometimes you have to jump into a job on the assumption that a miracle will happen and you’ll succeed. Surely I can build a belt grinder if I try hard enough. I need the motor before I can set up the grinder; the motor’s measurements will affect everything. I could just download the blueprints from the Baldor site, but it’s way easier to plop the motor on the grinder base (2 sheets of plywood glued together, I think) and go from there.

WHOO HOO.

Tell me I’m not crazy. I dare you.

Now I have to go back over the motors I’m watching on Ebay, to figure out which one is right. I’ve decided I need 3450 RPMs, 2 horsepower, 3 phase, TEFC, and 230 volts. Oh, and a 5/8″ shaft, if at all possible. For fifty cents.

Some guy at Practicalmachinist made his own belt grinder. It’s amazing. It’s mostly rust and clamps, but he says it works. He has a 2″ belt on it, but the idlers are at least 6″ wide, and he says he can use different belts on it. THAT got the wheels turning. What if I get a couple of pulleys from a 4″ portable belt sander and use them as my idlers? Presumably, I’d be able to use 2″ belts for metal and 4″ belts for wood. The pulleys and bearings aren’t very expensive.

It’s nearly impossible to find suitable idlers 4″ wide, unless you steal from existing products. I guess I’d also need a belt sander drive pulley.

I also found a guy who built his own drive wheel. He found a piece of 7″ steel pipe, cut it to length, welded a hub into it, and stuck it on the shaft of a Baldor motor. Seems to work. No fancy machining needed. Incredible.

My Bet: the Dance Will Continue

I have questions for my fellow conservatives.

If the government barges into a private business that doesn’t take government money, and it tries to set a limit on the CEO’s pay, that’s interference with the right to contract, and it’s (at least currently) unconstitutional. But if your company is a failure, and you greedily rush the trough when Uncle Sam offers to take other people’s money and give it to you, so you can escape the justice of the free market and avoid the consequences of your incompetence, and Uncle Sam tells you that you have to have a salary cap, how is THAT interference with the right to contract?

It’s not.

In fact, it IS a contract. Uncle Sam gives you money, and in return, you agree to a salary cap. And such other conditions as Uncle Sam chooses to impose. For example–and I think it’s a shame this hasn’t occurred to Obama–the government might make you go to work every day in a chicken costume.

Conservatives hate welfare, or at least we hate giving welfare handouts to people who don’t deserve help. We are constantly clamoring for oversight, and we love yelling that the government needs to put conditions on welfare money. I have to ask, then: if the government is giving welfare to companies which are unquestionably undeserving, why shouldn’t it put conditions on the handouts?

It should. That’s the very least it should do.

It’s an embarrassment, the way some conservatives are complaining about the caps. It shows they can’t tell the difference between independent private businesses and charity cases.

The executives affected by the Obama salary cap have a lot of gall, complaining that they’ll have to suffer with the paltry sum of $500,000 per year. In a capitalist country, they’d all be out of work. That’s where they should be. They’re just going to continue running their companies into the ground. If they were capable of succeeding, they would have done so already. Guess what the salary cap for successful CEOs is? THERE ISN’T ONE. If you want unlimited compensation, all you have to do is turn a profit. If you can’t do that, shut up.

The bailouts will prolong our economic problems, because they will keep inept people in control of major businesses, and they will also permit overpaid workers to continue charging too much for their work. They’ll also hurt good businesses by preventing them from taking the places of their failed competitors. In a healthy economy, bad companies fail, and good companies take their places, and everyone is better off. In the Bush-Obama socialist utopia, we keep bad companies alive and prevent good companies from replacing them. It’s like having the opposite of an immune system. We are generating antibodies to success and attacking it without mercy.

If Bush and Obama were running the NFL, Terry Bradshaw would still be starting quarterback for the Pittsburgh Steelers. In an iron lung, if necessary. Ben Roethlisberger would be working at a gas station, because his youth and superior ability would not suffice to overcome the NFL’s discriminatory and counterproductive retention policies.

It reminds me of the comic strip business. What do you see when you look at the comics page? Dead people. Or at least their work. You see Peanuts and Li’l Abner and BC and so on. The artists are dead; some have been dead for decades. It’s disgusting and pathetic, but it’s also tradition.

Some of the dead people are clearing out; I think they finally got rid of Beetle Baily, for example. But there are still a good number of strips by dead people on the comics pages. Why is this a problem? It’s not, unless you’re a cartoonist. It makes it harder for talented new people to make it. It’s as if movie distributors were cluttering up screens with old films like City Lights and The Jazz Singer, to the point where the studios had a hard time marketing new work.

The only cartoonist I know of who has had the guts to complain publicly about the dead people is Stephan Pastis, the guy who draws Pearls Before Swine. He openly makes fun of bad strips that have no business on the funny pages. I’ll bet there are a lot of dead-cartoonist heirs who hate his guts, because he is threatening their meal tickets.

I guess that’s irrelevant to discussion of the bailouts, except that it illustrates what happens when competition is impossible. We lose good products. We punish people who try to create them, and they quit.

The execs are complaining now, but my depressing knowledge of human nature tells me that won’t last. Why? Because the thing every bureaucrat and desk jockey hates more than anything is the free market. The thing they love more than anything is job security. And bailouts equal job security, for people who, by all rights, should be unemployed. We will see a contest between two primal drives: greed and the desire to be taken care of. I believe the desire to be taken care of will win. The general public hasn’t bought into it completely; we still favor capitalism by a slim margin, probably because many of us are not doing as well as we want, and we think capitalism gives us a chance to do better. But people who are already in cushy positions have a different view. They are desperate to keep what they have. It’s like musical chairs. If you’re sitting down, you don’t want to hear the music start up again.

We are living out Ayn Rand’s worst nightmare. A world in which competition, which is our strength, is considered destructive and dangerous. If Ellsworth Toohey were brought to life in the flesh, we would probably elect him President. In fact, we may have just done that.

Hard times push people in one direction or the other. The right direction, or the direction of socialism, which is a secular religion which assures that hard times never go away. Under FDR, we veered too far to the left, and it damaged our system and prolonged our misery. Maybe Obama will finish his work and drive us so deep into Marxist territory we will never find our way out.

Like I’ve said before, welcome to the Second World. Liberals think Western Europe is paradise. I hope they’re right, because our standard of living is probably going to be just like Europe’s. And I don’t mean Switzerland.

Anyway, the salary caps were to be expected. When the government began investing in failed businesses, every intelligent and insightful person on earth realized the government would come to control those businesses.

Of course, the CEOs who are taking the hit were not intelligent and insightful. If they had been, they would not have destroyed their companies.

Make it Stop

Okay, another VFD question.

I want to be able to run my belt grinder at 5000 fpm. I have two choices. I can get a 3450 RPM motor and a 6″ drive wheel and get roughly 5000 at 60 Hz, and I can slow it down for low speeds. OR I can get a 1725 RPM motor and speed it way up to get nearly 5000, and I can run it at lower speeds for normal use.

It looks like the KMG people use 1725 RPM motors, and they remove stock in a hurry. But they use pulleys that double the speed at the drive wheel. So I guess 3450 is the way to go.

This is Why Engineers Shoot up Their Offices

Once again, I am finding selecting tools harder than using them.

I want to make a belt grinder. I read up and found out that the biggest motor I could conceivably need would be 2 horsepower, so that’s what I’m trying to buy. I want 3-phase, so I can use a VFD. I thought a 1750-RPM motor would be good, because it would run cooler and last longer. And I figured I’d get something like 2500 fpm on it, which would be sufficient.

BUT WAIT!

Turns out speeds of up to 5000 fpm can be useful. That rules out a 1750-RPM motor. I’d need an 11″ drive wheel. I think. Hope I didn’t make any careless errors. Now I’m looking for 3450-RPM motors, and good ones aren’t that easy to find.

It gets worse. There is almost no hope that I will be able to find bearings that will work with a shaft bigger than 5/8″. And a lot of 2 HP motors come with bigger shafts. If you can’t have mounted bearings on your shaft, you might as well kill yourself.

So I have to put all these factors together. Now that I think about it, don’t I need a super-long shaft? Man, that didn’t even occur to me. It will have to go through two mounted bearings plus a thick drive wheel hub. Is there such a thing as a shaft extender for an electric motor?

Excuse me while I breathe into a paper bag.

More

I guess my brain was malfunctioning again. Apparently there is no reason why I can’t put a drive wheel directly on the motor shaft and stick the motor next to the frame. Other people don’t do this, because they have elaborate pulley systems to get around the lack of a VFD.

Whew.

They All Look Alike

Okay, tool people. I have lost my mind again. Even if I can’t make the wooden frame work, I am determined to build a belt grinder with a 2 HP motor and VFD. If for some reason I fail, I should be able to put the motor on my bandsaw, which would be highly amusing.

Tell me if this VFD will do the job: LINK. I want good torque at low speeds.

There are a whole bunch of TEFC Baldor 2 HP 3-phase 220V 1740-RPM motors on Ebay for a hundred bucks or so. They all look exactly alike, but I figure any one of them ought to work, as long as it doesn’t have a weird shaft or anything.

Grinder Frame

This is hilarious. You have to see this.

That’s the body of the frame for my belt grinder. It’s an old real estate sign sandwiched around two pieces of scrap exactly 1 1/2″ thick, which happens to be the thickness of a typical grinder toolbar.

Can you believe that? I used two tools. The bandsaw and the impact driver. Took me maybe 25 minutes, and I’m slow.

Everything but the screws is scrap. And I had way too many of those screws anyway.

I haven’t firmly attached the top member, because I’m not sure what shape it will have to be to take the stuff for the tracking mechanism, and I also want to be very sure of a good fit against the toolbar.

Come on, tell me that’s not funny, compared to welding and cutting and grinding all day. I seriously think this will work. Why wouldn’t it? It already has, for someone else. Even if it doesn’t, it’s great fun. I love that bandsaw. It’s slow, and the cuts are not quite as good as table saw cuts, but it produces one fourth as much dust, it’s extremely safe, it’s easy, and you don’t have to wear any protective gear. A mask might be a good idea, but very little dust flies up where you can breathe it. Okay, okay. I should wear goggles or something, because tools are crazy, and this thing will eventually find a way to get me. I’ll worry about it next time.

Wood is the Answer

I actually used my bandsaw yesterday. Unbelievable, isn’t it?

I didn’t really make anything with it. I drew lines on a piece of scrap and tried to follow them. I just wanted to see the silly thing work. It turns out a bandsaw requires a little skill, which is a bummer, because I don’t have any. But I’ll work it out.

I fixed one of my last major tool needs by ordering a pneumatic orbital sander that collects its own dust. That pretty much leaves a belt grinder and a milling machine to round out the workshop.

The belt grinder quest is frustrating. It looks like a nice new one costs maybe $900, and if you make one yourself, it costs $850. Another irritation: there are a number of free sets of plans out there, but as far as I know, they’re all “no weld” plans. What the hell? Who has a drill press, cutting tools, and the skill to assemble a grinder, but NO WELDER?

I would much rather weld than buy 400 pieces of thick metal, spend 300 hours drilling precision holes in them with a drill press which I don’t have yet, and then bolt them together.

One guy–he wrote a book on knifemaking–has a wonderful solution to the problem. It’s one of those solutions that are so simple and obvious, it’s amazing that no one else does it. He makes belt grinder frames out of wood.

Why not? Think about it. Metal grinder frames are horrendously overbuilt. Do you really need two half-inch-thick plates of steel to hold a grinder bearing? I very much doubt it. You could put a hook in a piece of steel like that and hang a pickup truck from it. A piece of a two-by-six should be more than sufficient. I have enough scrap in my garage right now to build a zero-cost frame and find out. The knife guy used maple, but I don’t see the need to spend that kind of money. Softwood is not weak. Two days ago I lifted a 367-pound saw on a hoist supported by a two-by-eight across three two-by-sixes, and I didn’t hear or see a single sign of stress.

A steel frame would be nice, but it would weigh twice as much, and I’d have to clean and paint it, and what’s the advantage, exactly? I can’t see one.

Yesterday I considered hitting Harbor Freight to buy one of their nearly-free cheap belt grinders, because to build a metal belt grinder, you need a belt grinder. Now I think I should just slap a frame together out of scrap and see what happens! Worst case scenario: I get rid of an annoying pile of wood.

Oh, man. This could be fun. I could make DADOES. I could make TENONS and MORTISES. Oh joy.

I almost broke down and bought a drill press yesterday. I still might. I think a bench model might be a good thing to have, even if I get a mill. It should be more convenient for most jobs. But the price! A decent one is $350. I have seen the Ridgid floor model for $224 at Home Depot. If it’s still available, maybe I should consider it. At the regular price, it would make my cheapness gene vibrate. I’ve been checking Craigslist, too.

I better go do an inventory of my scrap.

Prayer May Also be Helpful

Today I have fantastic news. Mish Weiss says her SOS or VOD or whatever you call it–the dangerous side effect she is suffering from the chemotherapy drug Mylotarg–is moderate, not severe. Whew.

Yesterday I got on the web and read up on this condition, and I found out a treatment had been discovered. A drug called defibrotide can be very helpful. So I mentioned it in Mish’s comments. Never be afraid to make a suggestion about someone’s medical treatment. By the time you reach middle age, you will have known a number of people who died because their doctors missed something that was obvious to lay people.

As you may know, Mish is a recovering vegan. Okay, I put “recovering” in there with no real basis in fact, but I have hopes for her. She finally agreed to drink Ensure, a dairy-based product that puts weight on people. Here’s what she says about defibrotide:

The irony of it being derived from cow lung or “other parts” was not lost on me. Still not eating a steak though. :p

I’m a good influence, even when I don’t realize it.

In her comments, I told her someone was clearly trying to tell her something. And I noted that Solomon’s Temple was basically a barbecue joint with priests. Think she’ll buy it? Maybe not.

Anyway, this is great news. The problem she is having can be very, very bad, so it’s a relief to hear that it’s not as severe as it might have been.

Mish has all sorts of people praying for her. When she beats this thing, it will be obvious that God did the work.

In other news, Heather’s mom begins radiation treatment for cervical cancer today; I figured you would want to know.

One more thing: Dennis the Peasant’s mother-in-law is going into a hospice, and the estimate is six months. Put that on your list.