ARrrgh, I give up… wait maybe not

Thanks, Sean, that is a very generous offer and up to par with the gentleman you are. But Walter’s right, every good machinist I talk to tells it the same way…. when I asked one how he learned to sharpen his drill bits freehand on the grinder, he said, “get a journeyman boss whos’s an asshole”

Yes, there’s a lot to be said for the time savings allowed by buying ready made tooling, but in the keeping of trying to make something with your own hands, I try to make as much of my own tooling as possible as this is just another step to mechanical independence. How many of you use indexable carbide inserts? Well, they DO get dull after awhile, right? Do you just turn them to the next sharp cutter? I don’t. I usually try to resharpen mine.

aloha,
walt

Hahahahaha, good one Blodnob. A simple answer and a timesaver. and obviously the correct choice. But…

When I was a young man I used to fish for a living. Didn’t make lots of money at it, but I was good at it and LOVED to be on the water fishing, it was a passion and I was in love with the sea, so it let me do what I enjoyed the most and I made just enough money to support myself. Later, as I got better jobs and made more money, I never lost my love of the water, but these days seldom have the time go be on it or in it and no longer own a boat. Funny thing happened somewhere along the line. I was so proud at being able to adapt to differing light conditions and water temperatures and being able to find fish when other boat captains couldn’t, that fish became for me personally, more and more difficult to buy at the market when I knew that I should be able to just go and catch my own. It’s the case of the shoe shine boy having filthy shoes on his own feet. I still have lots of friends with boats, and they trust me with their gear because they know I have the navigation skills and mechanical knowledge and will take care of their boats as if it were my own, so getting a boat to go get fish is not a problem; but running the numbers for time, for fuel…. it doesn’t pan out. Buying a fish at market, even the overpriced markets, is far, far cheaper than borrowing a friend’s boat and picking up my own fish. So there should be no justification for holding out when going to the market… yet, today, it is VERY difficult for me to pick up a fish and pay for it. It’s a pride thing, like I’m less of a man for having to buy a fish rather than go out and catch one. Yes, I KNOW its stupid, but there it is.

So what does a tuna have in common with a carbide or HS bit? Nothing. Except, once at a garage sale I came across a whole tool tray of allen wrenches… some big, some small, some HUGE, like an inch in diameter; very heavy tray. The guy wanted $30 for the whole tray; I offered him $20 and he took it. So now I have a tray of tool steel allen wrenches, some big, some medium… I’ve used most of the really small ones for other projects, but they make wonderful one-off and temporary tooling. The steel in them is very high quality usually, and can be made into all sorts of neat things like high strength pins, transfer punches, hinges, lockpicks, you name it. But, now that I have all this versatile steel, its hard to justify buying a ready made tool off of ebay… almost like admitting I’m a klutz and can’t make my own. Or I’m a bad fisherman and can’t catch my own. Anyway, whatever. If I buy those tools off of ebay, one thing’s for damn sure: I ain’t gonna admit it to you guys 🙂

aloha,
walt

Never once saw an episode of McGuyver, although I’ve heard of the show of course. Actually…. I did try to weld aluminum and steel once. Everyone said it was impossible but I never met anyone who tried, so, well, being young and stupid and in the possession of much better reflexes than I now possess, I gave it a go. Stick, A/C, mind you, with a 6011 or 6010 rod, I don’t recall which. The arc was impossible to control at first, but after a minute of playing with it, I found I could hold a very shaky arc and keep it going, but of course it spluttered all over hell and back. Never got a good bead out of it, and wasn’t trying to join anything at all, just an experiment to see what would happen. Well, the sun came up the next day just as it always does, and birds still chirped, not barked. I left it out in the rain just to catch some moisture so it would corrode the ferrous component and prove which part was iron and which part aluminum. It was ugly, but together. Kinda like that gorgeous blonde on the beach with that really hairy, nerdy guy. Can’t understand it but there it is.

Years later I’d read about high tech bonding methods, new super adhesives and one crazy guy out in the desert using explosives to push dissimilar metals into such close proxminity and under so much pressure and heat that they formed an atypical fusion bond of a new kind… but he was successfully bonding stuff like steel based alloys and aluminum and had a military contract and was well on his way to becoming a multimillionare. I thought briefly of calling him and asking him how long he was able to hold his a/c bead on his aluminum plate and sending him pictures of mine.

aloha,
walt