I was hoping to work on my Offroad Swag finger brake, but I needed to finish the Kubota front end loader brace to get it out of the way, so I worked on that instead.
The brace is a steel channel with two end plates on it. It goes on a hydraulic rod to prevent the front end loader from coming down.
Yesterday I went through the shop like a hurricane, moving stuff into more-logical positions, throwing things out, and generally turning a crowded shop into a spacious one. I moved nearly all the metalworking stuff to one end, and I distributed it around an open area, facing in. I took my beverage fridge to the dump. That hurt, but it was a very cheap fridge with no defrost cycle, and it was so badly engineered, it was not possible to use it. It froze over every few days.
For some reason, the guy who sold us this house had a big set of shelves on the wall by the workbench. First of all, a workbench should never be against a wall. Things will fall down behind it, cleaning it will be impossible, and if you put something heavy on it, you will have to turn it over and over while you work on it because you can’t walk behind the bench. The seller’s bench was against the wall, and when I moved here, I told the movers to put mine there TEMPORARILY, and I let it sit there for two years. Now I can get to it from all sides.
I’m digressing. The shelves were in a place where they got in the way. All the other shelves were across the shop. I took everything off the shelves, dragged the whole thing outside, pressure-washed it with Dawn, and put it with the other shelves. I put stuff on it relatively neatly, with some effort at organization.
Now my bench, tool chests, and metalworking tools are all in one area. That’s where I worked on the brace. I loved it. I was able to get to things without climbing over junk or walking around the tractors.
I did something I should have done sooner: I did final measurements for the brace. I raised the loader to see how long the brace needed to be. When I did that, I realized one end plate on the brace needed to be installed at an angle. It was going to rest against the framework that supports the loader. The loader cylinders move, and the framework doesn’t, so when the loader is raised, the cylinders are at a sharp angle with regard to the framework. The flat plate at the end of the brace has to be angled so it will rest flat against the framework.
I took a T-bevel and measured the angle on the tractor. I drew the angle on the brace. Then I cleaned off my dry cut saw, put it on my Harbor Freight scissor lift cart, and cut the brace perfectly.
That made me happy.
I considered quitting, because I didn’t have enough steel. When I changed the end of the brace from perpendicular to angled, I lengthened it. I had a 3″ square of steel ready to weld over it, but now I needed 3″ by 4″. I decided to weld the plate on the other end to get me a head start on the next day.
Problem: I could not find my welding magnets. I needed them to position the plate on the brace for tacking. Again, I considered quitting.
I don’t know if the movers stole my welding magnets, or I left them stuck to a machine tool in Miami, or what. I knew I was not going to have them to help me with the plate. I decided to try a woodworking clamp.
I got myself a long bar clamp and used it to hold the plate in place. It was not a great setup. One end of the clamp rested on the newly cut angled end of the brace, so it didn’t have much to hold it in place. Also, the clamp had rubber pads on it, and I was using it for welding.
I fired up the Harbor Freight welder, took a deep breath, and started tacking. No problems! Once I had the first tack done, I knew I was home-free, because I could use that tack to hold things together while I moved the clamp to produce better alignment for the other tacks.
I placed my tacks, removed the clamp, and welded the plate on. Things went very well by my standards. I saw the weld pretty well, and I didn’t blow through the metal. I put the weld more or less where it should have been. It wasn’t gorgeous, but it wasn’t terrible, either.
The welds were shiny, I didn’t get porosity, and I didn’t have any disasters.
When I was done, I played around with my Dumore hand grinder and a carbide burr, prettying up the welds a little, but I didn’t do much. It will look okay as it is.
Now that I’ve got things fixed so I can see what I’m welding (and now that I have a decent metal supplier), I should be able to get much, much better at welding in the coming weeks.
I’m going to get some more welding magnets. I have a feeling mine are in Miami. I’m not going to wait around.
I’m glad I had the dry cut saw. It does beautiful, precise cuts, and it’s fast. I need to make a mobile stand and base for it.
I guess I’ll go see the metal dealer tomorrow and get more steel for the brace. I should be able to finish the metal work tomorrow, no problem. Then I can throw a coat of paint on it. When the paint is dry, I’ll form some leather over the ends, glue it on, and be done with it.
I still think I’ll start parking the tractor outside from now on, but the brace is an important thing to have because it will allow me to work on the tractor without removing the loader. Today I had to install a support for the battery, and I had to climb over the loader bucket over and over. I won’t have to do that any more.
If I can get the brace welded up tomorrow, I can start welding (or practicing to weld) the finger brake. Once the finger brake is done, my world will change. I’ll be able to make some incredible stuff, very quickly.
I love the Harbor Freight welder. It’s extremely handy. Very easy to use. I’ll be doing more welding now simply because I have a tool that takes a lot of effort out of it.
I’ve been watching Forged in Fire lately, and it’s hard to believe how little the contestants know about tools. They don’t know how to use the drill press, which is a simple tool. Almost none of them can weld. They can’t use a mill. A lot of them call themselves master smiths. All I can say is that the master smith exam must be pretty easy. Seems like all they know is how to heat and beat steel, and many of them can barely do that.
I don’t know how to forge a knife, but I can use tools every knife smith should be very comfortable with. Teach me to forge, and I’ll be the master of all master smiths, not because I’m great, but because most of these other guys are hopeless with standard metalworking tools. They make mistakes no machinist would make.
I’m mediocre at many metalworking tasks, but I know the basics. That would set me apart on that show. Not that I plan to become a knife smith. Just something that occurred to me. Made me feel better about my skills.
I don’t know much at all about fixing houses and cars. Something for the future, I guess.
I think I have the answer to my latest welding puzzle.
To complete my Offroad Swag finger brake kit, I have to weld a big angle iron into a channel. The angle iron will open upward, and the outer edges will be welded to the upper edges of the channel. Other people who have done this have gotten warped projects.
I now have a copy of Design of Weldments, which is a useful book a Youtuber recommended. You don’t have to be a welder to find it useful. I don’t think the Youtuber welds. It’s useful for anyone who builds stuff. This morning I checked the book to see if it could help me, and I found the answer in chapter 6.
The correct procedure for my welds is to preset. This means I need to clamp the work down so it can’t bend during or after welding. I can clamp it down as it is, or I can put a slight bend in it, away from the anticipated warp. Presetting is what the pros do.
I thought about peening the welds. This means beating them with a hammer to flatten and lengthen them while they’re still hot. The book says this is a waste of time.
It says I should do the welds in small segments, and I should wait for each set of segments to cool before welding the next set. I say “set” because I plan to do one segment on each side of the project at a time, so they will balance each other. The project can warp back-to-front as well as vertically, so you can’t just weld the front and then turn it around and weld the back. Funny how no one on Youtube has checked to see if he has warpage in the horizontal plane! It’s surprising that I figured that out and they didn’t.
I can clamp the project to my table saw, with sheet metal on the saw table to keep spatter off, or I can put it in the press and weld it. The press would be better, but it may be hard to do, because I’ll need something longer than arbor plates to support the project.
I can use the table saw easily because I now have a 25-foot extension cord for my welders and plasma cutter. I won’t have to shove the 700-pound saw across the shop.
Incidentally, Harbor Freight provides good arbor plates with its presses. They used to use cast iron, which is brittle and snaps suddenly. Now they’re steel. Good thing to know. If you have cast iron, you should get new plates. It’s dangerous when a plate snaps.
Right now, I have two jobs on my mind. One is to practice MIG until I feel good about doing the welding, and the other is to rearrange the workshop so I can make a final decision about where to put my machine tools. Right now, I’m leaning toward putting them out there instead of in the garage. I would need some serious electrical work.
If you think your shop is too small, spend a whole day rearranging it. It will expand by at least a third. Trust me.
I should be able to finish my tractor front end loader brace today, except for the paint, which takes a while to cure. Then I have to decide what to do with the tractor. I intended to park it inside with the loader up, but maybe it’s okay to park it outside with a sturdy cover over the seat. It is, after all, a tractor, and I will probably have another solution in a year or so, so it would not be out there long.
I’ll bet someone sells tractor seat covers. I’ll check.
I can’t find temporary covers, like grill covers, for tractor seats. There are a lot of permanent covers which would probably be a hassle to take off when I mow. You can’t sit in a wet seat cover.
A small tarp will work fine. That’s what I should get.
I’m still making the brace. I want to be able to walk under the loader and work on the tractor.
God told me three great things the other day.
1. All strength comes from inheritance.
2. There is no strength without inheritance.
3. Satan hates inheritance.
When you inherit, you don’t earn. You just receive. Other people do the work for you. This works with knowledge as well as wealth. When you inherit knowledge, other people make the mistakes and suffer the resulting problems. You come along later and get the knowledge that works, so you don’t suffer or waste time.
When you get knowledge from other people by any method, it’s like inheriting. They do the work, and you get the benefit.
I could sit around and theorize about how to weld things, and that would be my natural inclination, but it’s a lot better to open a book and get the truth–BAM–like that.
Think how rich and informed you would be if your all of your ancestors had understood and applied the principles of inheritance. Every generation would have made the next one stronger. You would have been born into a life of privilege and power. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work this way. People forget and waste, and their kids have to start with little or nothing.
Fred Trump was rich. Donald Trump is rich. Eric Trump is rich. His kids are too young to have jobs, but they’re rich, too. This is how life is supposed to be. The Trump patriarchs pass on wealth and knowledge so their kids hit the ground running. Making your children grovel and toil like mules in order to get where you are is stupid and often based in a sick desire to see them fail.
I could never figure out all the things in the book on my own. I like coming up with my own solutions to problems, but it’s smarter to find out what other people have done.
You can see why physicists are so useless compared to engineers. When a physicist has a problem involving building something, his skills will only help him to write equations and work from scratch. An engineer will pick up a book, look at a table, and copy the answer. Or he’ll stand up and ask the guy in the next cubicle. Some engineers complain that they never get to do math or design anything at work. Everything is laid out for them. That’s a good problem to have.
Engineers inherit things physicists have to build.
I won’t say I had a good day. I would call today “spectacular.”
The first exciting event of the day, after prayer, was a trip to Svinga Brothers. They’re junk dealers. They have a big building with rows of weird salvaged junk, along with new metal. They didn’t have anything that called out to me, but it was nice to see the place. If I ever want an old brass fire extinguisher or a 45-RPM 3-phase motor, I’ll go back.
After that, I did some welding on my Offroad Swag finger brake kit.
As I believe I’ve already written, the kit requires you to push two inch-thick rods halfway into tight holes in 3/8″-thick channel and then weld them in place. I was hesitant to do this, because I’ve had a number of crummy welding experiences over the last several years. I have had problems seeing what I was doing, and it made me feel like I would have to give up welding.
I’ve been cleaning my mask often lately, to remove the yellow crud that accumulates from smoke, and I have a great new light. I also keep the shade turned down low. Today I was able to see very well, which took a big load off my mind.
I used my Harbor Freight Titanium Unlimited 200 welder. I chose to MIG. I could probably have used 7018 and done okay with stick, but I’m not good at it at all, and I didn’t want to gouge up my expensive kit.
Just interrupted my writing to walk out and close the valve on the C25 tank.
I wanted to do a good job with the welds, so I wanted to practice. Yesterday, I picked up some steel at my metal dealer’s house, and I mentioned the fact that I was going to use some of it for welding practice. Both of the employees there were ladies. One said, “Oh, you’re going to become one of THEM.”
They’re both welders. The business does fabrication and welding as well as selling metal. They gave me all sorts of tips on stick welding, and then they did something amazing: they gave me maybe 15 pounds of scrap steel to practice on!
Man, Ocala is better than Miami. In Miami, if you’re not Cuban, you’re an outsider, period. You don’t get the good prices when you buy things. You don’t get favors. Salespeople treat you like a stranger, even if you’re a regular. Metal cost me a lot more there. I didn’t know what metal was supposed to cost. All I knew was that it was a lot cheaper than Home Depot. Here, metal seems extremely cheap, so I can tell I was getting bad deals in Miami. I paid high prices, and the idea of getting something for nothing in Miami…impossible.
This is all on top of the general rudeness, which is not something you can blame on Cubans. Everyone is rude in Miami. It was like that before Cubans showed up. Then there’s the traffic.
If I sound bigoted, you should hear what Cubans say about Miami. A lot of them agree with me 100%.
I know a Cuban lady who insisted on transferring to another city because her non-Cuban husband was treated so badly. People used to say snotty things about him to each other in Spanish, in his presence, because they didn’t know his wife was Cuban. In restaurants, other people were moved ahead of them in line because he and his wife didn’t look Cuban and it was assumed that they wouldn’t understand what was being said. Horror stories.
Miami is just a bad place to live. The Cubans dislike blacks and often exclude whites. The blacks don’t like the Cubans. White people are generally just trying to get along with everyone without taking sides. White people keep leaving. Now the South and Central Americans are filling the place up, and Cubans are very disturbed. Many Cubans see themselves as whiter than South and Central Americans, so they look down on them. Also, South and Central American cultures have a lot of problems. There is a reason why their home countries are, nearly without exception, messed up.
I know you’re not supposed to talk about bigotry and bad behavior among non-white people. Tough. The truth matters.
One piece of metal the ladies gave me is so nice I don’t know if I can bear to practice on it. It’s a piece of 3/8″ plate around 7″ square. That’s a good piece of steel!
I would have expected to pay $20 for the extra metal in Miami. And you have to remember that metal dealers get paid for their scrap. If I hadn’t taken it, they would have included it in their recycling metal, and a dealer would have bought it.
Anyway, I ran a few beautiful beads on a piece of 1/4″ diamond plate scrap. That was encouraging. I was able to see what I was doing perfectly. That told me I would be able to hit the seams between the rods and the holes without bubbafying the whole project.
I deliberately set the welder a little hot, because the metal was very thick, and I didn’t want to have to cut out ineffective welds. Things went almost perfectly. I laid 4 solid globs of weld in each hole. I had to turn the welder down a little, and I melted a little metal off the rims of the holes, but when I was done, the guide rods were still straight to within a few thousandths.
The Titanium welder is excellent. I’ll just say it. I can’t tell you it will still be working next year, but it probably will, because Chinese stuff gets better all the time. The gun is nimble and easy to use. They give you plenty of cord. It welds smoothly with no surprises. I may never use my Lincoln again. I don’t have any reason to.
I guess I’ll put different wires in the machines, and I’ll use whichever one has the wire I want for a given job.
There is still a lot of welding to be done before the finger brake is functional, but now I feel better about the likelihood of not destroying it. Maybe tomorrow I’ll have time to practice MIG so I can do a better job.
Yesterday, I had to press two steel rods into tight holes, and then I had to adjust them. I used my wooden workbench and Wilton mechanic’s vise. The vise was stretched nearly to its full opening capacity, so I didn’t use it. It’s not a top-quality vise, and I don’t want to put more stress on it than it can take. My workbench is very heavy, but it bounced a lot when I hit the parts with a 3-pound rawhide hammer.
This tells me I could stand to make three improvements. A better vise would be helpful. A sturdier workbench is needed. Finally, an anvil would be nice to have.
People love overpriced Wilton bullet vises, but they’re not really that exceptional. There are other vises which are just as good. The really old bullets–I am told–may not have been made from the same strong iron as the new ones, so it may be a waste of time to buy a bullet made before they changed the metal.
I’m thinking I might get a Chinese Yost vise made from super-strong ductile iron. For a small fraction of the outrageous, Snap-On-like price of a 6″ Wilton, I can get a 7″ Yost which is much, much stronger. It will open to 9.5″, which is very impressive; right now I get 5.25″. It would also weigh much less than a bullet.
You don’t really need a heavy vise. You need a strong vise which is very securely fastened to something which is also very strong. Added mass is sometimes an engineer’s way of compensating for bad materials and/or bad design. The iron Wilton uses can’t compare to Yost’s, at least in terms of breaking strength. I don’t know about rigidity, but since the Yost can clamp with 11000 pounds of force, it must be at least somewhat rigid.
The lighter weight of the Yost would make it easier to deal with.
I don’t know what to do about the workbench. I could make one by laminating 4″ (nominal) lumber side by side. That would be twice as thick as what I have now.
If I had a big anvil, I could use it instead of a bench when I needed to beat on something. I’m not sure you’re supposed to beat cold mild steel objects on an anvil’s face, though. I need to look into that. Even if it’s a bad idea, the problem could be solved with a small piece of steel plate that goes over the anvil.
I’m also going to invest in a patient lift. This is basically the same thing as an engine hoist, except it’s made for invalids and overweight people. It has wheels and an arm powered by hydraulics. You attach it to a patient who needs to be moved, and you pump it up. A basic lift will raise anything up to 400 pounds.
I want to use the lift to move things around the shop. Many people use gantry cranes and forklifts. I don’t have room for a forklift, and a gantry crane is not as maneuverable. I can remove the doodads that attach to human beings and replace them with nylon straps or something.
Patient lifts are expensive…unless you live in northern or central Florida. This area is full of invalids, and, I’m sorry to say, a lot of them pass away every week. This leaves their caregivers with expensive lifts they are sick of looking at. Today I replied to an ad. Someone is selling one for $50. Can’t beat that. If I don’t get this one, another one will pop up. Some people try to charge $400 or more, to get their investment back, but it’s a lost cause. There are too many of them on the market.
I could have used a patient lift when I was trying to get the upper pan off my John Deere garden tractor. I’m going to have to do that again, and I don’t plan to lift the pan this time. Not when $50 can buy me a patient lift.
The weather here is beastly hot right now, but the humidity is way down, and it warms up later and cools off earlier than it did in August. This all adds up to a much more suitable working climate. I’m taking advantage of it. Back when my dad was dying, I wanted to get things done during the pleasant months, but I didn’t. I spent way too much time huddling indoors, waiting for the difficult time to pass. Now there is nothing holding me back.
As long as I’m writing about new tools, I should talk about the improvements in my Christian walk. God has been giving me a new revelation of the power he has given me.
The Bible promises us a lot of things, but there are many we don’t receive. Sometimes it’s because of lack of knowledge, but it can also be because of lack of faith. Your mind knows you’re supposed to have something, but you’re not convinced in your heart, so you don’t receive.
It’s pretty obvious from the New Testament that we are supposed to have everything Jesus had. We’re not supposed to wait for it. It’s supposed to be ours right now. But you can’t fully believe that unless you have faith.
The Bible says our faith comes from God. It’s not something you can generate by trying to believe. When God gives you faith, which is a kind of revelation, things start moving.
When we speak, other beings, including God, are supposed to receive it as though Jesus were talking. When God looks at you, he doesn’t see the old man who died during baptism. He sees a replica of Jesus, and that person has the authority of Jesus.
When demons flee us, it’s because they feel as though Jesus were talking to them.
Where does faith come from? Praying in tongues is crucial. It builds up your faith. The Bible says faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God, but it doesn’t mean you get adequate supernatural faith just by listening to someone quote the Bible or by reading the Bible. People believe that, but it isn’t true. It means the supernatural word of God comes to you from inside, and you listen and believe. This happens when you pray in tongues.
If something shouldn’t have happened to Jesus, it shouldn’t happen to you. If Jesus, while in the form of a man, should have been able to do something, you should be able to do it now. This is what God was working to bring about through the crucifixion. It was an act of reproduction, and to reproduce means to make copies.
God’s new covenant way is much better than the old way, which involved a great deal of work and defeat. Daniel, for example, got God’s help with spirits that opposed him. We fight and defeat them directly, as though we were Jesus. We don’t have to wait for God to send angels to defeat the Princes of Persia and Greece and so on.
The Bible says we “clothe ourselves” with Jesus and “put on” the new man. That makes sense. It’s like putting on a military uniform. When others see the uniform, they give it the obedience it is due, regardless of who is inside it.
You know what they say in the military: “Salute the rank, not the man.” Satan says, “You’re the guy who fornicated, lied, and stole. Why should I listen to you?” He says that because he knows he can’t fight the uniform. He wants you to forget you’re wearing it.
I think I know why Satan continues to fight God. It’s because he has no hope. If you want to see someone do great evil without hesitation, take his hope away. Satan is going to be burned for eternity, in what will probably be the greatest humiliation of all time. He knows that. He fights in order to delay it. He doesn’t care about offending God, because he knows his end will be horrible no matter what he does.
He continues lying to us after we become new people, in order to prevent our power and righteousness from manifesting. I suppose I would do the same thing, even if it only delayed the onset of the burning for 10 seconds.
Certain things have to happen before Jesus can return, and they depend greatly on us. Satan is doing his best to slow us down. He has done a fine job for 2000 years, and he is not done having temporary victories, but he doesn’t have to have any victory at all in your life. He may keep knocking mankind to the canvas, but you don’t have to fall with everyone else. The word says, “A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand, but it shall not come nigh thee.” This is because you’re God’s favorite, if you’re his Christian child. Expect favoritism and accept it, no matter what happens to the people you know.
The bad things that happen to other people are justified, and they are not your responsibility. You’re not supposed to sink with them.
I hope I get that patient lift. Right now I have to go buy more steel for the tractor brace.
My finger brake kit from Swag Offroad arrived in the mail yesterday. I didn’t know, because I didn’t check the mail until today. Obviously, once I saw it, I had to start putting it together.
To reiterate, this is a hydraulic press accessory that will let you make bent metal parts from very thick steel.
The box was really heavy. I would say 40 pounds. Who cares? I’m the guy with the $39 Harbor Freight tool cart. I drove the box from my mailbox to the garage, and then I put it in the cart and wheeled it to the workshop. I love that cart.
I didn’t get to work on the kit right away because I had to get in some stick welding practice. I have had three sessions so far, I believe. The first one was disastrous. The second was much better. The third was better still. I expect to be fully capable of nice-looking simple welds in a week.
The kit requires welding. In order to get it in a long flat rate box, Swag cuts a couple of parts off of it, and there are other parts that probably would not fit in the box if they were welded on. You can buy the kit fully assembled for $125 more, which is not unreasonable, but I wanted to start using tools instead of just buying them, so I didn’t go that route.
I didn’t do a whole lot today. The first task is to push two solid steel guide bars into a couple of holes on one of the kit’s major parts. When the upper “jaw” of the press moves up and down, it has to have something to locate it, and that’s what the bars do. It rides on the bars.
The bars fit in two tubes on the ends of the jaw. Obviously, everything has to be parallel, or the tool won’t work well.
The instructions say to use a hammer or press to cram the rods halfway into the part, and then they say to use a small square to make sure the rods are square to the part.
That’s really all they say. If you’re no good with tools, that’s the end of the line for you.
Obviously, I used the hydraulic press. Why would you use a hammer when you’re making an accessory for your press?
I surprised myself with my ability to deal with the challenge. I put two pieces of tape around the ends of the rods to indicate half the thickness of the part they would be pressed into. That allowed me to see how far the rods were going in without removing the whole mess from the press over and over to check. I got their depths within 10 thousandths of each other, which I was able to measure because I have dial calipers.
Using a square to align the rods seemed impossible, but I thought it over and came up with an answer. I have a set of machinist’s squares. I selected one. I had no problem squaring the rods along one axis. I just rested the square’s base in the big part to the the big part’s axis, and then I whopped the rods with a rawhide hammer until they were perpendicular to the part, within a few thousandths. Then I got out a thick machinists’ parallel and rested it on top of the part. This gave me a surface wide enough to rest the square on to check alignment along the other axis. Before long, I was done. Not only did I do okay; I may end up with the most perfectly aligned finger press brake lower jaw in the world.
The accuracy of the alignment is limited by the uniformity of the parts, but I got it about as close as a human being could.
I saw some guy complaining about how the tool doesn’t work because the rods aren’t aligned. That tells me there are people out there who are worse at this than I am. A good machinist, or even a bad one, should be able to get these parts aligned, and I have enough experience to know how to do it.
I’m doing pretty well for a white-collar guy.
Next time, I have to start welding. That means MIG. I’m not going to gouge up a nice new tool trying to weld it with stick. I’ll have to spend a little time practicing with the MIG, to make sure I don’t blow it when I weld the parts.
This is the nice thing about working with tools. You struggle for a long time, but eventually you reach a point where you just know how to do things, and you already have the tools you need. You will probably develop a collection of scrap material, so much of the time, you’ll even have the stuff you need to make parts.
I’ve probably known about the Swag Offroad kit since it was introduced, but the welding scared me off. Not any more.
I think this will work out great, and when I’m done, I should actually be able to improve the finger brake. When I get my mill running, I can make some modifications.
I want my first project to be a mobile base for the band saw. I already have it sitting on one, and it’s very nice, but I think I can do much better.
There are a few things that really liberate a person who uses tools. I can list them: welder, drill press, mill, lathe, serious belt grinder, plasma cutter, large air compressor, lift table, hydraulic press, finger brake, and angle grinder COLLECTION. One angle grinder won’t do it. You need a bunch.
I’m just talking about metal right now. For wood, you really, really want a large vertical band saw. I would not settle for less than 17″. You also need a DeWalt 13″ planer.
If you have a belt grinder, you will never really need a bench grinder. There are things a bench grinder is handy for, but a belt grinder will do almost everything–perhaps everything–better and much faster.
Over the last week, I worked on a brace for my tractor’s frond end loader, and it involved cutting steel tubing. This experience taught me that it was time to order angle grinder number…4, I think.
Cutting metal is one of the hardest jobs in the shop. The sad truth is that, while small grinding and cutting tools (including files) can do nearly anything big tools can do, you have to be crazy to rely on them. I’ll give you an example of what I’m talking about. Using a 4-1/2″ angle grinder, I can make a 12″ cut through 1/4″ steel in maybe 45 minutes. The plasma cutter takes maybe 60 seconds.
What if you’re trying to make a 12″ square from a scrap piece of 1/4″ plate? Forget the angle grinder. Bring your lunch and put your phone on mute. Buy several new cutoff disks, too, because you will go through more than one.
I have other tools for cutting metal. I can use my 14″ dry cut saw. It’s very nice, but it won’t do long cuts. I have a really bad 4×6 Chinese horizontal bandsaw. The capacity is small, and it’s impossible to make it reliable. Plasma is a different ball game. Not only is it fast; you can go up to 5/8″ steel with mine. I think. Maybe it’s 3/4″.
I’m getting another angle grinder, primarily for cutting metal.
You can’t get by with one angle grinder unless constantly changing disks and wheels is acceptable procedure for you. To get good use from the tool, you need grinding wheels, cutoff disks, wire knot wheels, flap wheels, and an adaptor that allows you to use die grinder tools. I listed 5 different things there, and I’m probably forgetting some.
Another interesting thing: grinders for the same diameter wheel come in different sizes and amperage ratings. It doesn’t take much grunt to run a knot wheel, so a low-amperage grinder will work fine, and it will probably be a lot smaller and lighter than a powerful grinder. I have a little Bosch which works great. It’s much quieter than a strong grinder, and it’s so quiet you don’t really need ear plugs.
The other day, I saw a video of a guy using a 6″ grinder to cut large metal tubes for welding. The speed was amazing. It was better than a band saw. You need to see it to understand. I ordered myself one, along with a package of cutoff wheels from Walter.
Why do I want a grinder when I have plasma? The plasma cutter is a pain to set up, and I can only use it when I’m pretty close to a 250V socket. I can grab a grinder and be done with a job faster than I can set up the plasma cutter.
I might blow $20 on a couple of small Harbor Freight grinders, too. There will be times when I will want more than 4 tools ready to go, and I don’t know if I want to keep buying $80 grinders for very limited use. It’s hard to argue with $10 for a grinder.
I can already see how the new things I’m getting will open up possibilities. Example: I decided to look at propane forges. A good one costs $700. Then I thought about it. I will have a finger brake in a few days. Here’s how you make a forge with a finger brake: cut metal sheets with plasma. Deburr with grinder or belt grinder. Drill holes with drill press. Bend into needed shapes with finger brake. Weld and screw together.
I can get a sheet of stainless and slap a forge together in a hurry. Even for me, it should be a two-day job, once the parts are on hand. It’s just a box with a door and feet. I’ve already done something like it. I made a fire box for my smoker. Same basic thing. Total cost: zero, except maybe for a few bolts.
I would have to get fire brick and one or more burners, but they would cost a lot less than $700. And I would have a stainless forge, so it wouldn’t be rusty, flaky, and nasty.
I’ve been thinking it would be nice to have a big compressor on wheels. Now I can do it. Cut two long pieces of thick steel bar. Bend upward at ends to form areas where casters can attach. Drill holes for casters. Attach casters. Attach bars to compressor through existing holes. Done.
The bars would only have to resist 150 pounds of flexing force at each end. I’m pretty sure 1/2″ bar would be fine.
I can actually check and find out what will work, because I have a new book: Design of Weldments. You can have a copy shipped to you for $27.50. The name is deceptive. It’s about machine design.
I heard about the book from a guy named Jeremy Fielding. He has a Youtube channel. Apparently, he was some kind of nondescript entrepreneur, and he wanted to get into tinkering. A mechanical engineer gave him the book and told him to read it. Now he designs machinery for a living.
He’s not even a math guy. I have something like 8 semesters of calculus, not including physics courses. If he can understand it, so can I.
The book will tell you how to design metal machinery for different purposes. It’s an engineering text, even though the title makes it sound like a welding handbook.
I think it would be hard for a person with no tech background to get through the book. My physics background is extremely helpful, but because engineers are wrong about everything…I mean because engineers use terms I’m familiar with in very unfamiliar ways…I still have to look things up.
A finger brake is an astonishing tool. There are a lot of problems a piece of bent metal can solve, but almost no end user has the ability to do the bending. A finger brake gives you that power.
The brake I’m building is especially good, because it will bend very thick metal for extremely strong projects. If you spend a thousand dollars on a brake right now, you’ll find that it only works on thin sheet metal, which is relatively useless. Try making a base for a 2000-pound machine with one. Forget it.
The grinder I ordered is a Metabo 6″ job with a brake and a rat tail handle. The brake makes it stop faster so you’re less nervous about putting it down. The rat tail handle gives you more control. The large size and high amperage make it rip through steel way faster than my grinders ever could.
I’ll probably put five or six grand into new stuff before I rest. I don’t care. It’s reasonable for what I’m getting. I don’t go on vacations. I don’t play golf or own a boat. I don’t buy new cars. I don’t have a girlfriend extracting money from me. It’s okay to spend a little money on something I really love.
Life is short. What are you going to do? Dream of getting a useful tool until you’re 75, buy it, and die two weeks later with it still in the crate?
Speaking of love, I would love to have a hydraulic lift table. It would make working on heavy things way easier. Imagine I want to work on my 1500-pound lawnmower. I would just drive it onto the table, jack it up to waist height, and get to it. That really beats rolling around on the floor in the filth.
A lift table would also pick up cars and motorcycles. It wouldn’t lift a car over my head, but it would make brake jobs and so on very quick.
It wouldn’t lift my Dodge Cummins, but it’s so high off the ground already, I don’t need a lift. It would actually be nice to have a table that lowered it.
Harbor Freight sells a hydraulic lift table for around $1700. It works, but they beat the snot out of it in shipping. Bendpak charges a lot more, but presumably, they would stand behind their shippers and get you something that wasn’t dented up.
You can put a motorcycle on one of these tables if you modify it, but you end up with a long reach to one side of the bike, because the table is wide.
Youtube has some cheaper options. You can buy a high-lift pallet truck. This is a combination pallet jack and scissor lift. You can lift things 4 feet in the air. It comes with forks, but if you put a board on it, you have a table. Very nice.
Only weighs maybe 450 pounds, so not portable unless you’re determined.
It would not hold my lawn tractor, which is exactly 7 feet long.
The new stuff will raise my horizons considerably, and I look forward to seeing the results.
Today was a good day for tools and getting closer to God.
I want to be able to park my tractor with the front end loader up, so I have to have a steel brace to put on one of the hydraulic cylinders to prevent it from retracting. This means I have to do metalwork.
I got a piece of 2.5″ square tubing, and I cut one side out of it to make a channel. That was yesterday. Today I fired up the Rockwell drill press, the Origin Blade Maker belt grinder, and the Ridgid oscillating sander, and I made an end shield for the brace.
You’re not supposed to damage hydraulic rods even slightly, because the damaged places will scrape against the seals and cause leaks. The brace I’m making will rest on the rod. I have to make sure the hard steel of the brace won’t beat the rod up. I also want to have a flat end on the brace to rest on the cylinder cap without banging it up. The shield I’m making should accomplish what I want to do.
Today I used the drill press and a hole saw to put an opening in the shield, and then I used an angle grinder to cut a piece out of one side of it so the grinder belt could get in there. I used the grinder to open the cut up and create two straight forks. You’ll understand when you see the photo.
When I was done with that, I had a shield with a somewhat rough inner surface, and because the opening was deep, the belt grinder couldn’t get in there to smooth it out. It only does flat things and very big curves.
I remembered I had a Ridgid oscillating spindle sander. This is a machine that has a table and a spindle that projects up through it. You put sanding drums on the spindle, and it goes up and down while it spins. It’s really a woodworking tool, but it’s also good for certain metalworking jobs. It’s a fantastic tool. Very, very useful if you have any imagination.
I used the sander to smooth out and deburr the shield, and I was all done. Time to rest.
The picture makes the inside of the channel look very rough, but it’s not. It has some light grinding marks on it.
Now I have to figure out what else I want to do. I have to weld the shield onto one end of the brace, and then I have to shape the other end so it will rest on the front end loader’s hinge without damaging it. I’m not sure how to go about that.
I want to put some kind of padding on the shield to prevent it from contacting the cylinder cap directly. I think a piece of a tire is the best possible choice, but I don’t have an old tire. I guess I should go find one. I could put wood on the end, but it will be under a great deal of pressure, and I don’t trust it.
I could take two pieces of round tubing and weld them to the end of the brace to sit on the loader hinge, which is made from tubing. I could glue rubber inside them, and that would prevent them from marring the hinge.
I guess now I have a plan.
I was not happy that I couldn’t finish the shield with the belt grinder, so I have ordered a small wheel attachment. This is a gadget that will allow you to sand with a very small wheel on the end of your grinder. The belt will go over the wheel and allow you to sand inside very tight round cavities.
This is a phenomenally useful tool. In addition to getting into tight places, you can use it to grind tubing so it will mate up with other tubing for welding. This is called “fish mouthing.”
I was studying up on the grinder today, and I learned something interesting about my motor. I put a 3-HP motor on it because they were easier to find than 2-HP motors. The motor is a Reliance (now part of Baldor) that originally sold for over $600. I got it for something like $70, with free shipping. May have been $80. Anyway, many people suffer with 1/2-HP motors. A 1-1/2-HP motor is standard for this type of grinder. My motor is twice that powerful. It’s much, much better.
I bought an 1800-RPM motor because people told me they were built better than fast motors. Then I thought about speed. I needed to run it at 4000 or more RPM to get good performance from the grinder, but I didn’t know whether it would be safe for me or the motor. I did a lot of research back in 2016, and I tentatively concluded it should not be a problem.
Today I found relevant information from a highly respected machinist. He said he had run many motors at 400 Hz for long periods with no problems. This is 6-2/3 times the rated speed. He said speeding up motors was very safe. They don’t fall apart mechanically and blow up. The big problems are overheating and reduced performance.
I don’t care about overheating or reduced performance. This motor is way oversized to begin with, so if the power drops by half, it will still be right up there with the vast majority of grinders in operation today. I was concerned about being killed by shrapnel, but evidently, that is not an issue. If he can run a motor at 400 Hz, I’m fine at 120, and I should be able to go 180 when I really want to. Not that I do. Not usually. Once you get over a certain speed, the grinder cuts so fast you can damage work before you know it.
I also confirmed that my motor was inverter-rated. That means it was made to work with a VFD. Generally, 3-phase motors will work fine with VFD’s even if they were made before the VFD was invented, but it’s good to know that the engineers who designed my motor took VFD’s into account.
What it all adds up to is brutal grinding performance. That’s the main thing.
Before I read what the machinist wrote, I contacted Baldor via a form and asked them how fast I could run the motor. I haven’t heard back from them yet, but I think I know what they’re going to tell me. They’ll probably say the motor shouldn’t be run faster than 2700. A number of similar motors they make have that specification. The thing is, they may have set their top numbers with performance, not safety or reliability, in mind. If you’re running a 20-HP motor in a business, you don’t want to jack up the speed and find out you now have 5 HP and can’t do your job. In a home shop, things like this don’t matter.
It’s nice to know I can turn on the afterburners if I feel like it. For fast stock removal, speed is the top priority.
I really like metalworking. I love machining, but I like the caveman stuff even more. When you cut, weld, and grind, you really get intimate with the metal. You take all the harshness out of it and turn it into tame shapes that feel and look friendly. Now that I have welders, angle grinders, belt grinders, a plasma cutter, and a hydraulic press, I can actually do a few things. When my finger brake kit is assembled, I’ll be a major threat. Maybe I’ll get crazy and by a tubing bender. Once you have one of those, you’re out of the kiddie pool.
Metalworking is not like woodworking, because woodworking doesn’t give you nearly unlimited power to improve your tools. Woodworkers have to buy things metalworkers can make. A creative woodworker can do a lot, but it’s not the same.
Maybe some day I’ll get things like bead rollers, slip rolls, and shears.
I have been considering using my action camera for some projects, so today I had to find it and clean it out.
While my dad was dying, I shot a few videos of him for the future. We would sit outside at the assisted living facility, and he talked about whatever he wanted.
I didn’t really want to see these videos, but I had to look at them to see what I was dealing with, so I am watching all of them before moving them to the PC.
I thought it would be worse than it is. It’s sad to see him in that condition again, but there are good things about the videos. He said all sorts of nice things about me, and he affirmed his new faith in God repeatedly.
It’s good to see that I was pleasant to him and that I asked him a lot of things about his care and so on. I’m glad I didn’t just sit there and stare at the clock. I wish I could have done more for him, but eventually you have to accept the past as it is and live in the future.
The videos end 11 days before his death. I recall that he had several days when he was not up to visiting, and I probably forgot the camera once or twice.
The videos are short because the camera works off of an app on my cell phone. Various things can cause the phone to interrupt the video. I had to keep turning the camera back on. I have an old phone I plan to use as a remote in the future. No one will call me on that one to interrupt.
I think I did okay. I had no help, and I have enough video to give a good picture of his condition and our relationship.
Once I get the files moved from the camera and deleted from the card, I’ll think about what I want to film. I don’t know whether I’ll go through with it or not, but at least I preserved the videos of my dad.
I’m very glad I shot these videos. I won’t get to see him again until the marriage of the lamb in heaven. It’s good to have video of the good times you’ve shared with older people. They will give you peace later on. They will help you to think less about the bad times.
Metal, Angle Grinders, Plasma, and the Belt Grinder
Today has been great so far.
I sound like a broken record, thank God.
I want to be able to park my Kubota with the front end loader raised, and that means I have to be able to brace one of the hydraulic tubes with a specially made steel device. I need a piece of U-shaped tubing that will fit over a hydraulic rod. One end will press against the end of they cylinder, and the other will fit against the hinge the cylinder is attached to. The cylinder won’t be able to retract, and people in the workshop will be less likely to be crushed.
I now have three welders ready to rock, so all I needed was metal. I went to the local supply place. I love that place. It’s a house with a giant Doall band saw and a monstrous jib crane in the backyard. It shows how you can make a good living out of your house doing something completely unexpected, as long as the zoning people are with you.
For $18, they gave me a length of 2.5″ square tubing, a piece of plate to cap the end, and 12″ of angle iron for my anvil project, which I will write about later.
They didn’t have steel channel deep enough to go around a hydraulic rod in a way that gave me confidence, so I had to buy the square tubing instead. That meant I had to cut one side out of it. Time to fire up the plasma cutter.
I was delayed because the presence of God filled the car on the drive home, and I ended up spending some time praying before I got to work.
I made the mistake of searching online to figure out how much air pressure to use to cut 5/8″ steel. I figured all plasma cutters were about the same, so I settled for an Eastwood manual. It said to use 40 psi. I didn’t question it.
I clamped a wooden yardstick to the tubing to use as a guide. I figured there would be one quick swipe of the torch, and the stick wouldn’t burn. I was wrong about that. The torch kept clogging up. I had to replace the little copper orifice inside the tip. I couldn’t cut the tubing to save my life.
I got on the web and looked around, and a source said the kinds of problems I was having were caused by low air pressure. Okay.
The yardstick was largely carbonized by this time, so I grabbed a piece of steel strip and used that instead. Should have done that to begin with.
I turned the compressor up to 90 and let it rip. No problems this time. Unfortunately, I already had one boogered-up cut. Time for the angle grinders.
I decided to put my new Hercules (Harbor Freight) grinder up against my new Bosch, to see if there was a difference. All I could tell for sure was that the Bosch made more noise. I don’t think it worked better, but it was more pleasant to use. The paddle switch wasn’t as hard to get used to.
I used two free cutoff disks I got from the Walter company. They make top-notch flap disks, and they give away samples. I couldn’t tell whether the disks cut any better than the other ones I had, but they were free, and I love the flap disks.
It took a very long time to liberate the unneeded side from the tubing. Then I had to use the grinders to clean up the terrifying burrs. I guess that took 45 minutes.
Using angle grinders on metal is fun. It’s surprising how accurate you can be with such a violent tool. It’s very absorbing. Angle grinders are great because you can turn bubba’d-up messes into great-looking projects with them.
I want to get a 6″ Metabo for cutting metal. They’re incredibly fast. Today’s experience gives me motivation to go ahead and order one.
After the tubing was modified and cleaned up with a knot wheel, I put it on the belt grinder and did some deburring. Very nice. There is nothing like a 2×72.
Now I have a channel ready to be turned into a brace.
The cuts are not identical, but it doesn’t matter. Besides, it would be good practice to make a second brace, now that I know how much air the plasma cutter needs.
Tomorrow or the next day I need to cut an opening in the end cap and weld it onto the tubing. With a mill, it would take 15 minutes, and it would be gorgeous. I’ll probably have to use a hole saw and the plasma cutter. I also have to modify one end of the tubing so it will rest securely on the loader joint. Maybe I can do that with the belt grinder.
I can’t decide how to weld it. The welds don’t have to be strong. The tractor will push the cap toward the tubing, and the welds are only there to hold the cap on the tubing, so the tractor and the welds will be doing the same work. But I want to do a good job. I’m not ready to TIG it, but it would be neat if I could do the job with stick and 7018.
I guess I can practice on the metal I removed from the tubing. That will be helpful.
When I’m done, I’ll get out my can of Kubota orange implement paint. People will think I bought a Kubota brace.
I should take some chances with the project. If I ruin it, it will still be good practice, and it will only cost me maybe $14 to try again.
The weather was surprisingly good today. It got up to 99 in Ocala, but there was a high wind, and it was very dry. Another present from Hurricane Dorian. I’ll take it. Hot weather with very little sweat is better than hot weather with soaked clothing.
As is often the case, it was considerably cooler where I am than in town. My workshop thermometer read 88 today. I can’t explain it.
I don’t have an anvil. I am thinking I might like to try forging, though, and I would need something to beat metal on. I have a piece of 4″ square 1018 steel maybe 15″ long. I’m considering welding angle-iron tabs to it, drilling holes in them, and using them to screw the block to a stump. It would’t be as hard as an anvil, but it would work well enough to give me a chance to see whether I like forging, and it would give me some welding practice.
I don’t know how I’d move the stump and block into the workshop. I guess I need to move the stump indoors first.
The improved workshop is a joy to use, and God willing, it will be much better in a month or two. I really look forward to that.
Yesterday I got a lot of stuff done in the workshop.
Ergonomics is a weak point with me. I tend to put things I use in the worst possible locations. I stack things on the floor in front of shelves. I cover new horizontal surfaces with junk so I feel like I need to buy more tables. I put tools where I have to walk past junk to use them.
I hate clutter and disorganization, yet I tend to generate them.
Yesterday I moved a bunch of stuff in the shop and made it possible to do more work.
First off, I put a set of Amazon casters on my Harbor Freight 20-ton press.
If you don’t have one of these presses (or a better press), you must be a fool. For around $150, you get a press that functions perfectly well, and you can easily upgrade it to air/manual power. If there are things about the press you don’t like, you can modify it. It’s a very simple piece of machinery. The fundamental structure is fine, so any problems the press might have are unimportant and repairable. They used to make orange presses that tended to fail, but the grey ones they make now are great.
These presses sit on steel angle irons, and the angle irons are pre-drilled for casters. I spent around $20 on Amazon and got a set of 4 swivel casters, two of which have brakes. It took 5 minutes to install them. Now I can move the press wherever I want. It will no longer be blocking my access to other things, and I can move it to the metalworking area of the shop.
I plan to put a sheet of plywood between the press and casters. It will give me a storage surface that moves with the press. I may also put some kind of box or shelves on it. I can fix it so they can be moved off when they obstruct the press.
I ordered a Swag Offroad finger brake kit for the press. This will let me put decent-quality bends in very heavy steel. I plan to use it to make improved mobile bases for my heavy tools. Storebought bases have to be adjustable, and this introduces lots of problems. I look forward to having bases that work better, and I also look forward to being able to make boxes and brackets.
I’ll have to do some welding to put the kit together, but I have–let’s see–THREE welders ready to go. I should be able to get it done.
I advertised my John Deere utility cart for sale, and I moved it to the goat shed. When I bought my tractors and golf cart, the seller threw this thing in. I can see why. It’s useless. If I want to move things, I have a pickup and a golf cart with a dump bed. The JD cart sat in the way collecting leaves and dead bugs.
John Deere is a sad cult, like Snap-On and Apple, so people will pay stupid prices for anything green. I think this cart is worthless except for parts for projects, but I have already had two contacts from the ads. I priced it at $500, figuring John Deere lovers had no common sense whatsoever. I’ll bet anything I get $250.
If I can’t get a high price, I may cut the sheet metal off and turn it into a base for a mobile barbecue.
I moved my drill press and grinding cart to the metalworking area of the workshop. Now they’re near my toolboxes, as they should be. I also added my Chinese welders, since I am more likely to use them than the Lincoln, and I put my Harbor Freight welding table nearby.
My wood stuff is all on the other side of the shop now.
With the cart gone, I was able to move a lot of junk to shelves, so now I can walk quickly across the garage instead of stopping and turning to avoid things.
I ordered a 25-foot cord for the 50-amp socket. That will let me move the welders and plasma cutter around instead of jamming them against the wall by the socket. Manufacturers save money by selling these machines with tiny cords.
One of my air hose reels was on a shelf, and the hose was on the floor in sprawling coils. I mounted the reel on the wall and put the hose on it. Now I have air up to 70 feet from the shop. It’s not much air, because the compressor is small, but it’s air. And I can walk where the hose used to be.
There is no outlet on the side of the shop where the compressor sits. That’s unforgivable. There is an outlet maybe 18 feet away, embedded in the wall, and the wires that feed it drop down through the cinderblocks from above. I believe I can pull the box out, drop new wires down from above, attach them to the existing outlet to draw power from it, run them down the wall to the compressor area, drop them into the cinderblocks, and install a second outlet. This is my plan. I don’t really want to splice into the existing romex, but that could actually be a better plan. Anyway, I WILL have another outlet.
I am considering hanging 4 power cords with multiple sockets from the roof trusses so they’ll end about 6 feet in the air. That would let me connect tools to them without running cords on the floor. I already have one outlet up there for the useless ceiling fan. I plan to replace it with a four-socket outlet, and then I can run the cords over the trusses.
I may also run a couple of 250V cords up there for 20-amp tools.
I had a brainstorm regarding the big tractor. I was thinking I should build a shed for it and get it out of the workshop, but then I realized I could park it with the front end loader in the air. The loader and forks take up an area which is maybe 6′ by 8′, so this would make the workshop much easier to use.
I learned that hydraulics can’t be trusted to hold pressure. That means the loader will slowly sink if I leave it up, crushing whatever is under it. Also, if someone (like a kid) touches the hydraulic lever, the loader can plummet very quickly. To prevent this, I need a brace to fit over one hydraulic ram. Kubota doesn’t make a brace for this loader, but I can make out from steel C channel. That’s one of my projects for today. I want to buy the channel, make an end plate for it, cut recesses to fit the loader hinge, weld the plate on, and paint it Kubota orange. Whenever I park the Kubota, I’ll stick the brace on one rod, and the loader will stay in the air.
I looked into sheds for the John Deere, but you have to spend a lot of money to get a shed with a doorway a 6′-wide tractor can negotiate. I might make a wooden shed myself, with one open side. It would be very cheap, and it’s not complicated. Four four-by-four posts with concrete slugs. A bunch of pressure-treated boards nailed to the posts. Galvanized metal for the roof. Done.
I’m going to put casters on my shop fan. It’s very heavy and hard to move.
I now have a big clear area by my workbench, and my metal tools are right there. Very nice.
I’m going to throw out my Rockstar beverage fridge and put my retired mini-fridge in the shop for drinks. I have to make a stand for the fridge first. It’s very short, and I don’t want to waste floor space. A rolling stand will allow me to have some shelf space under it.
I vacuumed the shop. I have given up my delusions about blowing debris out. Women are right about this. Men like to blow debris away. Women like to suck it in. When you suck it in, you can get rid of it. When you blow it away, it just lands somewhere else, where it has to be blown again. From now on, the leaf blowers and compressor blow guns are only for things the vacuums can’t handle.
It makes a big difference to have a somewhat clean floor.
I’ve been thinking a lot about my basic strategy. I was considering building a new shop, because there was so much clutter in the existing building. If I can put up a shed and keep the Kubota’s forks up, I can do a lot with what I have.
I want more 50-amp lines out there. That project is looking less intimidating. The electrician I called to give me an estimate turned out to be completely incompetent, and I had been relying on his expertise. He was wrong about a lot of things. I’ve been investigating, and I don’t think running more wires will be hard. He couldn’t find the place where the existing wires entered. I did. I found out how to bury bigger wires. This is something I can handle.
I tried to open one of the boxes the big wires go through, but the screws are carbon steel, not stainless. On an outdoor box. Unbelievable. The philips slots are nearly gone. I decided this was a good excuse to order special pliers for removing damaged screws. They’re called Vampliers. They look like they have little teeth.
Vampliers are sold on TV, but they’re actually excellent Japanese pliers. The company makes other good tools. If you order them under the Japanese company’s name, you pay much less for the same product. That’s what I did.
I had to find stainless screws made to screw into plastic. They exist. Amazon sells them. They’re called “thread rolling screws.” I ordered a pack of 25 for $3.47. I made sure they had Philips heads on them so I don’t have to go dig out a ridiculous Torx bit or use a flat blade which is guaranteed to slip out 15 times per screw.
I want to put my lathe and mill in the garage by the house. This is not an optimal setup, but I think it’s better than cramming them in an un-air-conditioned workshop. For under $600, I can put a unit in the garage window.
It’s not that terrible, having to walk between buildings to get tools. The distance is around a hundred feet. In fact, now that I’ve got a hose reel mounted, I don’t think I need two big compressors. I can do most of my air-intensive work in one building, and if I need to something in the other one, I can just extend the hose to it.
All I need now is good weather. Hurricane Dorian was wonderful. Yesterday, I enjoyed the hurricane in cool weather with pleasant breezes that really mitigated the sweating. Now we’re getting abnormally hot weather, and it’s supposed to be here for days. The shop fan is okay, but it’s no substitute for October.
I may get tarps for the tractors and start parking them outdoors right now. That extra space is very tempting. The John Deere looks like it has spent at least 15 years outdoors already, so a tarp is probably more than adequate. It’s never going to look like a new tractor.
I still want the brace for the front end loader. With a brace, you can work on the tractor with the loader raised. Very helpful. And it’s a simple and fun project.
I will post a photo to show where things stand now.
The junk in the foreground needs to be stored and/or rearranged.
My table saw, an old Powermatic 66 made in McMinnville, Tennessee, is on a mobile base. When I moved here, I hired people who were incompetent, and when they moved the saw, they dragged it sideways on the pavement, putting a very big flat spot on one of the wheels. The spot acted like a Denver boot. The saw was very hard to move, because the wheel didn’t turn at all.
Apart from the bad wheel, they broke a little doodad that holds the saw in place when you get it where you want it to be. Also, until last week, I had no 250V sockets to power the saw.
I bought some new wheels and a new doodad, and I got an outlet wired up. Today I finally crawled under the saw to install the new parts.
It was not a great deal of fun. The saw weighs something like 700 pounds, so I couldn’t just lay it on its side and go to work. I had to lift it with a pry bar and work on one side of the base at a time.
Anyway, after somewhere between two and three hours, I had two new wheels and one new doodad on my saw’s base.
With the saw freed from its prison, it was time to make sure the long cord I have on it would reach my outlet. No problem! I can probably move the saw 10 feet, plugged in. That will put me in the doorway of the shop, so I can blow the dust outside.
Final problem: rust. Like I keep saying, while I was caring for my dad, I crawled into a hole and let a lot of things go. I did not protect this saw’s beautiful cast iron table from rust. At first, it wasn’t completely my fault. I didn’t know how badly cold weather would make it rust. In Miami, which sits next to a big salty ocean and always has humid air, things do not rust much. I know that sounds crazy. I figured Ocala’s climate would be less rust-friendly than Miami’s. I was mistaken. When it gets cold, water condenses on steel, and you get rust. We have a lot of cool nights here every winter.
I knew the table was rusty, but I didn’t know how rusty because I kept averting my eyes. I didn’t want to look at it until I finally decided to confront the issue. Today was the day.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that the rust was very superficial. It was a great relief. I was able to use my surefire saw-table rust remedy: grease and a paint scraper.
By “grease,” I really mean, “lubricant.” I invented this method a few years ago. You apply a light lubricant like WD-40 to your table, and you scrape it with a steel paint scraper. The rust comes off like magic. The scraper can’t hurt the cast iron, either. It took me about 20 minutes to get the table nice and clean.
Steel wool and sandpaper are pathetic compared to a paint scraper. You will waste hours, and sandpaper will damage the table.
I didn’t use WD-40. I used mineral spirits and lanolin. This is an old machinist’s recipe for rust prevention. Lanolin is an incredible rust preventative. It’s basically organic cosmoline. The difficulty with it is getting it onto your metal. Lanolin is like thick butter. If you dissolve it in mineral spirits, you can spray it onto things, and the solution will cover your metal completely. The mineral spirits evaporates quickly, and in a few days, all you have is a protective lanolin film.
A year or so ago, I bought myself a chunk of lanolin and a gallon of mineral spirits, and I put the lanolin in the can. I labeled it appropriately. I use it to refill a spray bottle.
The mineral spirits evaporates fast, so you really shouldn’t do what I did. I put about a quart of this stuff in a sprayer, and the sprayer started to collapse as the spirits vanished. Better to keep most of your solution in a metal can and take a little bit out when you need to use it.
I have two bottles of Corrosion-X, which is supposed to be the best rust preventative out there, but I don’t know how well it works, because I can’t use it. The first spray bottle I ordered didn’t work, so I got a refund. I ordered a second bottle. It didn’t work, either. Both bottles are sitting in the shop taking up space.
Once I had the table saw cleaned off fairly well, I did some work on my verticle band saw. Now they both shine. The table saw is not perfectly clean, but it won’t stain wood, and things slide on it easily. That’s good enough. You can also apply Johnson’s paste wax to cast iron tables, but I don’t plan to do that while the mineral spirits is wet.
I fired up the table saw just to hear it run. Glorious. I felt like I was putting down a big weight I had been carrying for two years.
But for the mill and lathe, I don’t lack any important tools now. I can get a lot done with what I have.
I plan to cut down a piece of plywood that came from a shelf in Miami. This will be my first table saw cut in Ocala. I’m going to put the wood on the Harbor Freight base my DeWalt planer sits on. It will provide a place for the dust bag to sit. Having that bag on the ground has been more aggravating than you would imagine.
It’s crazy how much I enjoy this stuff. And I wonder why I’m not lonely. I’m alone nearly all the time, but I don’t feel bad about it at all.
Something to wonder about, but definitely not something to complain about.
If You Squint You Can See Hillary Clinton Dodging Sniper Fire
I keep complaining about TV people who discuss hurricanes lying and exaggerating. The other day I cited the NHC as a better source. Well last night, I saw something discouraging on the NHC website.
When hurricanes approach you, there are two types of alerts the NHC will issue: watches and warnings. I will give you the OFFICIAL definitions of these alerts. A watch means winds of a certain speed are POSSIBLE at your location. A warning means they are EXPECTED at your location.
Those definitions come from the NHC, not my imagination.
If the NHC says your house is in a hurricane warning area, that necessarily means they believe it is MORE LIKELY THAN NOT that you will get hurricane-force winds. If the likelihood is less than 50%, you shouldn’t be under a warning. Obvious. In fact, “expected” should imply a probability near 100%.
Last night, the NHC had much of Florida’s east coast under a hurricane warning. That means they were saying the probability of hurricane-force winds was better than 50%. Okay, then. If this was true, then their wind speed probability map should agree.
I looked at the map. These maps are color-coded. The map showed the warning areas following the border between yellow and light green. Yellow means 30-40%. Light green means 20-30%. These are the very most-imperiled areas in the state.
How can hurricane winds be “expected” if the chance of hurricane winds is at, or far below, 40%?
I don’t see how this could happen accidentally. You would think the people who make the probability maps would be in agreement with the people who make the maps labeling the watch and warning areas.
Either the definitions are wrong, or someone posted watch and warning information which is not even close to right.
Most people aren’t going to examine this stuff the way I do. Most will listen to the TV hysteria, believe everything they hear, and leave it at that. Those that look at the NHC site aren’t likely to compare maps.
I’m not happy with the NHC. It’s unfortunate that I have to root around on the web to find out what’s really happening. When one of the best sources posts dubious information, it makes it worse.
The storm is way out at sea. The maximum wind is about 110 mph, or category 2. The winds are dropping. The storm’s eye is forecast to miss the United States completely. The little “M’s” on the forecast track, indicating “major hurricane,” are now gone. They have been replaced with “H’s.”
This is very consistent with the REAL news I’ve been accessing for the last few days. It’s sad that it conflicts with the histrionics of the TV performers and the beliefs of the people who rely on them.
In other wind-related news, I’ve been looking into air compressors. I have a 5-HP Curtis, which is a very nice compressor for a home shop, but its output is right on the borderline between fail and pass. It puts out 17.3 cubic feet per minute, which is wonderful for most purposes, but there are a lot of tools that require just a little bit more. If your output is too low, your tool will slow down until it’s not working adequately, and then you have to sit and wait for the compressor to catch up.
My compressor is in Coral Gables. I was planning to have it moved to me here, but now I’m wondering if it’s worth it. I can get a 7.5-HP job and sell the Curtis. I would get 23 cfm. This should make for a better experience when using things like buffers, die grinders, and sanders.
I could sell the Curtis and order a 7.5-HP Curtis or Quincy. I would be set for life, pretty much. But then I have to ask myself: what will I do for a compressor in my other shop? I’m going to want the bigger one for metalwork, mainly. I would have to use it for sanding wood, too, so sometimes I would have to move the wood to an area outside the metal shop temporarily. I would need the other compressor for things like inflating tires and air hammering. I could get a small compressor for maybe $500, tax included. I have a small Eaton Chinese compressor already, but it has started leaking oil, and I’m tired of fixing it.
I could also put the big new compressor in the wood shop and run a 1″ PVC line underground to the metal shop.
I guess that was troll bait. People will see “PVC” and get hysterical. PVC air lines explode sometimes, and they throw shrapnel. But it’s okay to run them underground, where they can’t hurt anyone except moles and gophers.
I’m researching it. If you bury air line, water condenses in it. You can blow the water out occasionally, which is annoying, or you can use an air dryer every single time you use the compressor, which is also, but less, annoying. I have a great electric air dryer, but I don’t want to run it every time I use air.
I could just put the big compressor in one shop and the old Curtis in the other shop. It’s going to cost me a certain amount of money to move my machine tools, and adding the old compressor won’t change the figure, so maybe selling it is a bad idea.
I guess I should keep it and consider getting a second machine later.
My most pressing shop-related job is getting the table saw running and mobile. If I can do that, I can reduce the gigantic shelf complex that sucks up one corner of the building, and I can turn the wood into smaller shelves that are actually useful. Then I can store more stuff and get it out of the way.
Here’s hoping the Atlantic doesn’t try to send me any more presents this year.
Dorian Brings Much-Needed Fresh Air to Marion County
The forecast for Hurricane Dorian is looking so good, there is not much point in talking about it. The odds of problems here are dropping off to the point where I should start writing about other things.
Again, never watch the news when hurricanes approach. They will always lie and exaggerate, in order to benefit themselves. Always go to the Internet and look at sources as close to the actual data as possible.
This morning, it occurred to me that Bryan Norcross may be a major reason why TV heads shriek and whimper during hurricane season. Back in ’92, Andrew hit Miami, and afterward, Norcross was the main source of information for many people in the area. He worked as a meteorologist at Miami’s WTVJ. I don’t recall exactly what happened, but I seem to have a dim memory of other channels being knocked off the air.
Before Norcross, WTVJ’s main weather personality was Bob Weaver, a chatty, overweight New Yorker who was more than 20 years older. Norcross was young and thin, and the ladies liked him, so my guess is that Norcross was hired to be a glamour boy. Norcross supposedly didn’t like the ladies back, if you know what I mean. That piece of information popped up long after Andrew.
A lot of weathermen are gay. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because it’s the most flamboyant position in many newsrooms. Weathermen are generally entertainers.
When Andrew hit and people were desperate for news, Norcross took the throne and became South Florida’s premier hurricane guru. He was adored. He was in the kind of situation in which women you have never met mail you their underwear. Media outlets interviewed him. One publication featured a photo of him on the beach in a Speedo.
The stories about his orientation broke a lot of hearts.
After Andrew, his career cooled off a lot, and it never again attained its post-Andrew heights, but for a while, he was big news all over America.
The rise of Bryan Norcross made it clear that hurricanes could make people considerably more famous and, potentially, wealthy. I’m sure other TV personalities noticed. Maybe that partially explains their undignified antics.
To get back to the storm, the projected path is firming up, and it is expected to turn north very soon and head for the general area of South Carolina. The storm is weakening. The top winds have dropped 30 mph, into the Category 4 region. Hurricane-speed winds only extend out 25 miles from the center, so there is a good chance that Florida won’t get them.
The Bahamas really got whacked. It’s astounding. The storm hit Grand Bahama as a 5, and then it just sat there. It’s bad to get hit by a storm at all, but at least they usually move on quickly. I can’t imagine spending an entire day in hurricane winds, especially with the flooding the Bahamas are getting.
The up side is that the Bahamas are sparsely inhabited. The population of Grand Bahama is under 30,000 people.
I have been praying for God to turn the storm north and away from land, and I feel very strong faith for it. I would like to see it move off the Bahamas so the people can get some relief.
I think people forget that hurricanes weaken as they go north. Also, my guess is that the winds generally slow down as storms get wider, due to the conservation of angular momentum. I don’t really know. Maybe Google can tell me.
Wow. Those search results look really boring. Never mind.
Maybe I shouldn’t say this, but the forecast for my area is considerably nicer than it would have been without a hurricane. July and August were very, very unpleasant for outdoor activities, but now we are expected to have strong breezes and considerable cloud cover for a while. I was able to work in my workshop during the last two days without coming back in completely soaked in sweat, and Dorian will extend that benefit and make it easier to wait for the pleasant days of October.
It should be breezy enough to make outdoor work somewhat difficult, but it will probably be very nice inside the workshop with the doors partially opened.
If I were going to stay here, I would get a propane generator and build a new shop. As it is, I’m thrilled to have several days of relatively pleasant weather, with 7 months of cool weather to follow not long after.
I spent over $40 on hurricane supplies. Don’t I feel silly.
Man, it’s tough dealing with people when you have faith in God.
Someone I know keeps texting me, telling me Hurricane Dorian is headed for me. This morning, she told me the TV heads said the storm didn’t turn away from Florida the way it was supposed to. This message arrived after I had already checked and confirmed that the storm was, in fact, still expected to turn.
I have no reason to doubt that she was telling the truth, given the historically disgraceful behavior of TV journalists and meteorologists. They do their best to mischaracterize hurricane news every year.
I have had to tell her more than once that I have been through many storms and watches and that I know what I’m doing. It’s strange that she doesn’t have faith in me. When you’re used to sitting in front of a screen searching out the best and most current hurricane information, you don’t need correction from people who listen to the ranting of TV know-nothings who have a long, long history of lying.
She is trying to help me, but it’s not helpful at all. My duty as a Christian is to fight worry, not to absorb and incubate it.
I’m concerned about the way she focuses on external problems and then magnifies them. She lives a very stress-filled life, and she always has. She needs to be set free.
Dorian is still projected to miss Florida and Georgia entirely. That’s what the ECMWF and GFS models say, and the NAM model agrees, as far as it goes. It doesn’t go past Tuesday, so it doesn’t say what will happen when Dorian passes Florida.
My area is now given about a 45% chance of tropical-storm-force winds. You know what that means? It means there’s a 45% chance that at some point, someone near me will measure a breeze of 39 mph or more lasting at least 60 seconds. So if we have 25-mph winds for a hour, and then we have 39-mph winds for a minute, and then we go back to 25-mph winds, the weather people will say we got tropical-storm-force winds.
It’s not a scary forecast.
Aside from the fact that our best science tells us the storm is very unlikely to hit me, there is also the more important fact that I keep hearing the same thing in prayer. Who tells storms where they can and can’t go? Not the NHC.
I got a little testy yesterday and criticized the hurricane-panic media somewhat more harshly than I should have. I didn’t get the facts wrong, but my tone wasn’t that nice. I was angry from years of being goaded and gaslighted during times of considerable stress, and I let that rule me. I should not have done that. I’ll try to avoid it from here on out.
I’m surprised at how hard people here are still working to prepare. I saw numerous generators at Home Depot yesterday, blocking aisles. Buying things like bread is still a hit-or-miss proposition. I saw some people with a rented truck full of new generators, sitting in the parking lot at Lowe’s. They must be here to price-gouge, which is a crime. You can’t make money paying retail for generators and then selling them for the same price.
Cubans are famous for price-gouging in Miami. The whole county turns into a black market after a storm.
Here’s what I wonder: are the people who are still preparing trying to be extra cautious, or are they just duped because they watch broadcast TV? They may think we’re about to get a direct hit for all I know.
You don’t buy a generator the week before a storm. You buy it when they go on sale or you wait for a Craigslist deal.
My own generator runs like a dream now, which is more evidence that we won’t get hit by major winds. The more you prepare, the less happens.
I got my drill press’s VFD wired up and installed yesterday, and I’m going to drill a hole in my generator’s cord cover so I can start it with a drill without removing any parts. I don’t know why everyone doesn’t do this. Starter cords can be exhausting to pull over and over, and they’re hard on joints and spines. You have to be very sure to pull the drill off the nut when the generator starts. You don’t want the generator spinning you around by the wrist.
When this storm passes, I’m going to look into a big Predator generator that puts out more juice. I want to be able to use big tools out of my truck, and I also want to be able to run one water heater if the power goes out. I haven’t checked my water heater, but the web says they put out 4500 watts. My generator tops out at 5500, which doesn’t leave much room for ceiling fans and the fridge. A big Predator will give me another 1750 watts.
I could actually create a separate 250V outlet for the water heater and use two generators. As long as the circuits are separate, it ought to work. A clever person would create a switch that moves the juice from the water heater to my smaller central air unit. I could turn on the water heater before showers, and at night, I could use the generator to keep my bedroom cool.
Predator is Harbor Freight’s brand. Should I be afraid to use a Harbor Freight generator? I don’t think so. All the Chinese “Chonda” generator brands appear to sell the same products. My generator is a Champion, and it is not particularly impressive. Definitely Chinese. It seems like there are really only two brands of portable generator: Honda, and everyone else. You will pay 4 times as much for a Honda, and the electricity will taste exactly the same.
A Predator will take a battery, too, so there would be no need to cut a hole to crank it with a drill.
You can tell Predator products are good, because Harbor Freight’s standard coupons exclude them. They always exclude the good stuff.
I wish more Christians understood that deliberate worry is a sin, not a virtue. It’s bad when other Christians worry on purpose, thinking it makes them better people, but when they try to put that mess on me, they’re compounding the sin. Trying to worry another Christian is a form of temptation. It’s not acceptable.
Really, if you want to help me, and you think worrying me is a good thing, you and I have different religious beliefs, and you will just offend me.
I’m not worried, although I am out of Pop Tarts. I’ll work on that, and then life should be perfect.
It’s a beautiful new Saturday, with a beautiful new hurricane forecast, depending on where you live. Dorian’s projected path has moved even farther away from Florida.
Right now, the GFS and ECMWF computer models are predicting maximum winds of 14 knots at my location. By that I mean the model which predicts the highest winds predicts 14 knots. The GFS model tops out at 11.
The new track is so far off the coast, you have to zoom out on the computer to see it.
As I keep saying, I don’t pay any attention to TV heads when it comes to hurricanes. They have a conflict of interest. They need to attract viewers more than they need to disseminate correct information, and they usually do what’s best for themselves. They’re still hysterical over Dorian. To watch TV and read stories, you would think Florida was doomed, when, in reality, there probably won’t be any severe weather anywhere in the state.
I took a look at the Weather Channel’s site today. If I ran the Weather Channel, I would hope my forecasters were saying things like, “Great news for Florida today. It appears very unlikely that Dorian will cause any major problems there. Keep taking reasonable precautions and watch the projected path, but be glad the outlook has improved so much.” That’s not what I’m seeing, however. They’re still fanning the flames of panic.
I saw something really disgraceful at Windy.com today. A meteorologist named Marshall Shepherd (from the Weather Channel) posted a full-blown berserker rant yesterday morning, and it’s still up on the website.
Some quotes:
Dorian is about to hit Florida really hard. The most urgently worded hurricane update.
Note the certainty. Dorian “is” going to hit, and it’s going to hit “really hard.” How can you justify that kind of propaganda, with a projected path as wide as it was when he wrote that? And aren’t these the same people who keep telling us forecasts are uncertain? How can forecasts be uncertain when a storm is definitely going to hit?
Totally unjustified.
Urgent, urgent hurricane update (Friday 7:00 am)
This probably going to be my most urgently worded update in some time.
So…wait while I try to understand this. I feel that you’re trying to be urgent here. Is that right, or am I taking something out of context?
Why would a weather professional tasked with informing the public talk like this? Is generating panic part of his job description?
Not “urgent”; “urgent, urgent.” Who writes like that?
You know what? I just remembered where else I’ve heard that.
The east coast of Florida, much of the state, and coastal GA/Carolinas face a major and life-threatening and sustained threat.
Again, from a person who has been through a bunch of storms, a hurricane is not a “life-threatening threat” unless you’re disabled or utterly irresponsible. Get into a strong building and wait a few hours. When you come out, don’t grab any downed power lines. You’ll be safe. I promise. If I’m wrong and you die, I’ll give you fifty dollars. But you have to ask for it in person.
A lot of people died in New Orleans during the Katrina mess. They died because they stayed where they were, at or below sea level, in structures that couldn’t protect them. Their mayor, who later went to prison, didn’t let President Bush help them. The feds sent buses, and they sat unused. You can still find a photo of the buses sitting in deep water. What happened in New Orleans had nothing to do with the dangers of hurricanes. It was all about unbelievably poor decisions made by politicians and private citizens who were fully informed. Hurricanes are not very dangerous to people who have even a sliver of common sense.
It’s not just possible to get complete protection from a hurricane; it’s extremely easy. Get in car. Drive to shelter. Wait. If no car, take bus or walk. Done.
You can go online and see photos and videos of cars in New Orleans, under water in front of houses. People had cars and still stayed where they were.
New Orleans has hosted generations of people who were trained by the left to depend on the government for everything. Many of them stayed home because they were afraid they wouldn’t be there to receive their welfare checks. You can look that up. Leftism trains people to be helpless, and this surely contributed to the death toll. People sat and waited for Uncle Sam to swoop in wearing a cape.
The same mentality was on display later at the Superdome and (after the Superdome’s flaws proved it unsuitable) the Astrodome, two stadiums where “survivors” were sheltered.
It’s amazing that the word “survivors” was used at the time. This is a great example of snowflakespeak. If you live through a hurricane, you’re not a “survivor.” That word should be reserved for things like shipwrecks and nuclear attacks. If you live through a hurricane, you’re really…nothing. You’re just a person who experienced a storm.
People at the stadiums fought and littered. They stole from each other. They raped and stabbed. They kept their surroundings filthy. One shot a National Guard soldier. They had to put barbed wire between the “survivors” and the National Guard, for the National Guard’s protection! The “survivors” stayed much longer than they should have. They kept complaining and demanding things long after they should have gone to work and gotten back to the affairs of normal life.
This is what social programs teach people to do. On the other side of the coin, the Japanese cleaned up after Fukushima in a few weeks, and we didn’t see angry Japanese citizens brawling in stadiums and demanding more help.
When Andrew came, I put my car in a concrete warehouse. I also protected my vehicles when other severe storms hit Miami. When Irma passed by the coast at my latitude, I put the vehicles in the garage and workshop. Do I deserve a patent or a Nobel Prize? Of course not. Even a goat is smart enough to head for shelter when it rains.
We have thunderstorms where I live. They are life-threatening…to people who stand outside waiting to be hit by lightning. I stay in the house. So far, I have survived. Life is full of risk. They key to survival is taking obvious steps to mitigate it.
I don’t know what more I can say about this. Either it’s already obvious, or you will never understand it.
I have two other significant concerns. First, the storm is projected to slow significantly once it makes landfall (overnight argh) around Monday evening or early Tuesday morning. The models then show it slowly meandering up the Peninsula, which means every Part of peninsula Florida would eventually be affected.
Every part of the peninsula would be…”affected.” Is that really a responsible way to put it? Yes, if the storm lands in Boca and then moves up to Georgia, it will at least rain everywhere on the peninsula. Some areas will get a real disaster, and others will get puddles. Isn’t a little nuance in order?
This slow meandering storm will pose a significant wind and storm threat but we could also see 2 to 3 feet of rain and life-threatening flooding.
Two to three FEET of rain? FEET? That has to be a typo. One foot would be a great deal. Hurricane Barry rained like crazy and didn’t hit two feet anywhere.
Are floods life-threatening? Yes. If you don’t evacuate or you try to travel in them. Otherwise, no.
I truly hoping people are making those inaccurate, cliche jokes next week (actually forecasts have a high degree of accuracy people just tend to remember the occasional miss like they do a rare field goal miss in a big game by a really good kicker), but there is nothing at this point that suggests that anything is going to change.
Actually, the forecast changed greatly ten hours after he published this conniption.
This mess is dated 7:00 a.m. on Friday, and by 5:00 p.m., the path was looking much better.
Was the information leading to the change unavailable to this connected Weather Channel employee, or was he just making things up?
It’s hard for me to understand how a grown male could get this emotional and lose his composure to the point where he ended up inciting panic instead of spreading information.
Here are two shots of computer models forecasters rely on. In these pictures, the storm is moving north. Try and reconcile them with, “Dorian is about to hit Florida really hard.”
This storm may actually end up farther offshore than the current forecast suggests, so “about to hit” was not a very responsible thing to say.
I just checked the 11:00 report, and Dorian’s path has, in fact, moved farther out to sea.
Here’s a great question: why is Marshall’s cry of distress still up, a day after the forecast changed? Where is the correction?
I hate to be the bearer of good tidings, but come on. Can we please take a minute and admit that the press is deliberately spreading terror?
I know things can change. I’m not stupid. They already have changed, and I’m writing about it. Right now, Dorian could start moving right toward my house at 50 mph, it could be a category 5 when it arrives, and it could sit here motionless for a week, erasing all traces of human occupation. Sure, that could happen. But shouldn’t a forecaster talk about what’s likely to happen and not obsess on the absolute worst and least likely case?
The NHC is a little less flaky, and here is what they now say:
Although the latest guidance has shifted a little bit eastward again this morning, there are still ECMWF and GFS ensemble members that do not forecast the northward turn so soon. On this basis, NHC prefers to shift the track forecast just a little bit to the right of the previous one, and the new official forecast lies along the western edge of the guidance envelope. This will allow for further adjustments in the track during future forecast cycles.
Translation: “This thing is really unlikely to hit Florida, but it could, so we are not moving the cone as far east as most models predict.”
Here is what Marshall Shepherd meant to say, I’m sure: “Dorian MIGHT hit Florida really hard, or it could blow off into the ocean and upset a bunch of shrimp.”
I guess I write like this every time a spot pops up on the weather maps, but it’s upsetting to see these people agitate the public. They’re like fire-and-brimstone preachers, screeching at the drunks in the back of the church in order to save them from hell. Their message is totally inappropriate for most of us. They treat all of us as though we were idiots. They exaggerate and threaten as if the truth wouldn’t motivate us at all.
People are reacting, Weather Channel. You can get off the soapbox now, believe me. Try buying a loaf of bread in Florida right now. Try buying bottled water. Stores are picked clean. You can relax and start telling the truth. The people who won’t prepare are never going to listen, and you’re just scaring the others.
You’re also blowing your credibility, such as it is. You blew it with me years ago. I wouldn’t trust Jim Cantore if he told me it was Saturday.
Because my dad had dementia, he was easily upset by things he saw on TV, and he really flipped out when he saw hurricane stories. I was trying to care for him, and he would badger me over and over about preparation and so on. I would reassure him, and he would forget, and I would have to do it all over again many times. The news heads know there are people who will get unnecessarily worried by their prancing and shrieking, and they do it anyway. That’s not right. They make life hard for caregivers and the people they look after, just to sell more ads. I suffered because of their thoughtlessness, and so did my dad.
It’s time for a great video classic. Remember the guy who pretended the winds were blowing him over while people walked around unconcerned behind him?
That’s Mike Seidel. Remember that name, if you insist on watching weather news. It might save you a stroke.
The Weather Channel published a ridiculous, completely dishonest defense. They said he had a hard time standing because he was tired and situated on wet grass. Okay. It’s really hard to stand on grass, isn’t it? And he had a great, yet hidden, reason for standing on something he supposedly found slick, when pavement was a few feet away.
Here’s another gem. Anderson Cooper stood in waist-high water to show how bad hurricane flooding was, while his crew filmed him from much shallower water a few feet away. The really wild thing about this is that he got indignant and tried to defend himself, making the whole situation even worse.
Why would an honest person do that? Imagine getting dressed and going to work, and having to deal with waist-deep water. Would you jump in and mess up your clothes and shoes, or would you stand on dry ground and say something like, “That water over there is waist-deep?”
Do I have to ask that?
Put down your drink before you watch this beauty. A reporter named Michelle Kosinski got in a canoe to show how deep flood waters were, and while she was talking to Matt Lauer (I will not go down that rabbit trail), a couple of guys walked by. The water was only up to their ankles. The woman put a canoe in ankle-deep water to fool the public.
It’s sad that people keep defending the panic apparatus.
If the storm comes here and gives Ocala a pounding, will it prove I’m wrong? Of course not. The nervous Nancys on TV would still be at fault for exaggerating, lying, and mischaracterizing. If their baseless predictions came true, it would just be a random thing, and we already knew that could happen.
Look at the models. Read the NHC site. Avoid TV at all costs. You can handle this just fine, because you’re not stupid. Mike Seidel and Anderson Cooper are not the kind of people you want talking to you during an emergency.
Here I am, loaded down with survival food, and the storm is becoming less of a threat by the hour.
Maybe I threw myself on that box of Pop Tarts for nothing.
UPDATE
The models now show Dorian missing Florida and Georgia entirely. One model shows it hitting South Carolina and continuing up the coast. The other shows it missing every state except for a brief blow to North Carolina.
The models predict winds in the area of 40-50 knots when the storm lands. Hurricanes start at 64 knots. Just saying.
The last measurement I saw for Dorian’s eye was 10 nautical miles. Small, small, small.
