{"id":2637,"date":"2009-01-28T08:53:20","date_gmt":"2009-01-28T13:53:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/toolsofrenewal.com\/?p=2637"},"modified":"2009-01-28T08:53:20","modified_gmt":"2009-01-28T13:53:20","slug":"i-need-a-200-pound-no-trespassing-sign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/toolsofrenewal.com\/?p=2637","title":{"rendered":"I Need a 200-Pound “No Trespassing” Sign"},"content":{"rendered":"

Miami Manners Strike Again<\/em><\/p>\n

Today I’m going weld again. I hope. My efforts to create a rolling base for my bandsaw produced poor results, to put it mildly, so I got another piece of angle iron, and I am psyching myself up to give it another shot.<\/p>\n

I wish I knew of a good way to remove rust and scale without a lot of effort. I don’t have a sandblaster yet. Last time, I used a drill with a paint-removing wheel, and it does a great job, but it takes an eternity. Maybe I should use sandpaper this time.<\/p>\n

The milling machine question keeps rolling around in my head. First I wanted a drill press. Then I wanted a Millrite, because it would take up roughly the same amount of room and do more things. Then I wanted a Bridgeport, because it was only a little bigger than the Millrite, and I knew there was no possibility that I would ever need anything bigger.<\/p>\n

I am now tempted to go look at the Millrite the local dealer is selling. The compelling reasons for buying a big used mill were economic. Little mills cost as much or more and do less, and it’s hard to find good used ones, and the new ones cost more than big used mills. And if you resell a little mill you bought new, you can forget about getting your money back. Although a lot of Craigslist and Ebay dreamers don’t seem to realize that. “TAIWANESE MILL\/DRILL! USED IN PRODUCTION SHOP FOR 5 YEARS! PAID $3000 NEW! WILL TAKE $2900!”<\/p>\n

Yeah, okay. I’ll be in touch.<\/p>\n

It amazes me that people who sell used tools think they can recover almost all of their money. Warranties and years of added use are very valuable; a buyer who isn’t getting these things is entitled to a huge discount. If you’re not saving a buyer a minimum of a third of the cost of a new machine, you’re overcharging. Really, half is the minimum.<\/p>\n

Anyway, yesterday I realized that the Millrite will fit better in the space I have, it will almost certainly do everything I want for at least a couple of years, and when I get tired of it, I can sell it without taking a big hit. If I can get the price down a little. So it doesn’t really make sense to try to cram a bigger machine in there. I can get one later, at little or no added expense. I assume most of the junk that goes with it will work with a bigger mill.<\/p>\n

The biggest job I can foresee at the moment is milling the heads from my Harley. They’re pretty small. I don’t mean shaving them down to increase the compression. I mean fixing the bad factory geometry that impedes gas flow. It’s a Harley; surely I don’t have to explain that the engineering is bad.<\/p>\n

By the way, can anyone tell me what the lever settings on an aftermarket petcock mean? I had to replace the pathetic Harley unit, and the new one (Golan) points in three directions: back, sideways, and forward. The directions don’t say which means what.<\/p>\n

The big mill question is, how do I evaluate the machine? I have received a lot of useful tips, ranging from, “If it runs, buy it, because nothing serious ever goes wrong with milling machines,” to, “If you can’t have it tested by MIT and NASA, you are almost certain to bring home a machine that is only valuable for scrap.”<\/p>\n

I exaggerate, but not as badly as you think. People on forums literally say you can buy a machine that is so worthless it has to be scrapped.<\/p>\n

A lot of old machines come from teaching environments. My best guess is that they would be better buys than industrial machines. Although I do have visions of Beavis and Butt-head in shop class, playing Rock ’em Sock ’em Robots with the equipment.<\/p>\n

I got some pointers on checking machines out, but ultimately, a leap of faith will be required.<\/p>\n

I also need to buy some rocks. There is a house going up across the street, and the folks working on it need gentle reminders not to park here. A cracked differential would fill the bill nicely, and a couple of big rocks are the way to achieve that goal. Miami is incredible; people will stand in your face and tell you they’re entitled to park in your yard (on your popup sprinklers) because the strip by the road belongs to the government. That isn’t true, and even if it were, that’s how trash acts. It’s not acceptable. In other words, it’s perfectly acceptable in Miami, but in a civilized area, it would get you shot, and there would be no possibility of an indictment. This is why rocks and concrete yard ornaments are such huge sellers here. They’re all over the place. In other parts of the country, they are unnecessary, because people know how to behave.<\/p>\n

I spent some time yesterday Googling gorgeous homes in the middle of the state. Cheap. Huge. Not surrounded by contentious barbarians who are constantly at each other’s throats. Oh, yes. It WILL happen.<\/p>\n

By the way, I did not delete my blogroll. It’s hosted at Blogrolling, and evidently, they are having problems. I can’t even log in to check on it. Hopefully it will come back to life soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Miami Manners Strike Again Today I’m going weld again. I hope. My efforts to create a rolling base for my bandsaw produced poor results, to put it mildly, so I got another piece of angle iron, and I am psyching myself up to give it another shot. I wish I knew of a good way […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tools"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/toolsofrenewal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/toolsofrenewal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/toolsofrenewal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toolsofrenewal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toolsofrenewal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2637"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/toolsofrenewal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2637\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/toolsofrenewal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toolsofrenewal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toolsofrenewal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}