Goodbye to an old friend

Hubris
Believing that what was shall always remain.
Sometimes it's just not true.

Comes' The Revolution

In the Huffington Post Robert Reich asks "Why is there no outcry?"
He is wondering why there isn't an uprising of the people. A new Progressive Movement or New Deal.
If you want his reasons you can find them here.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/why-theres-no-outcry_b_4666330.html

In the 60's on college campus's through out the US there was a battle cry. Comes The Revolution.
Chicago had a Democratic Convention and the SDS went wild. Bill Ayres bombed government buildings. Detroit burned. Watt's rioted. The kids of the middle class had a revolution. Mom and Dad were trying to make the payments and send the kids to college. In 1968 parents lived in fear that their kids would leave college and drop in/out to the counter culture.
I was one of those kids. Fortunately I lived through the experience. I was lucky. I didn't like being drunk or high because it wasn't something you could stop doing in the middle. Riding a motorcycle was cool. If you got tired or wanted to stop you hit the brakes and pulled over. Watching your friend light up something called a nose bomb that sent flames up his nose so you could see the glow in his sinuses wasn't cool. He couldn't stop and think "Bad Idea." I never got started down that road.
We ran the world. Everyone was sure that we would burn the whole place down and they ran scared. I graduated high school in 1969. There was a break in tradition. The school decided that the practice of having the senior class walk through town in mass would be to dangerous. For the town. So Senior Swingout ended.
As a group the children of the 60's became the adults of the 70's. Now we are the old farts of the 2010 decade. Our children and their children have gone through the same crap we did. The rules had changed though. Outrageous behavior was no longer isolated incidents. There was a thread of insanity that crept through society that said be nicer to the kids and they won't be bad. Don't tell them "No" you will stifle their free expression of their personality. When you don't correct bad behavior it is no longer bad, just different.
Why revolt when everything is handed to you?

As a superuser of the Huffington Post, Dennis Umphrey sums up the party line.

"Dennis Umphrey (den1953)  Super User·8,713 Fans

The only thing you can blame on the inequality of the middle class can be accounted for the decline of labor board and unions, from the time Republican Ronald Reagan attacked the air traffic controllers to the lack of restricting those middle class jobs from going overseas to the lowest bidders. Between the pollution deregulations to relaxed labor rules and regulations that started the decent of the American worker, and those plutocrats in Washington can take all the credit! This nation cannot produce it's own steel or clothing like it used to those jobs are told outsourced and will never come back, but the real question should be why did they ever have to leave the country in the first place?

26 Jan 9:40 AM "

Dennis what makes you think that pollution deregulation caused the decline of US industry?
I started working in the 60's. The EPA was just starting to gain momentum in the workplace. With the growth of their power in the 70's it became increasingly clear that they were at best inept. In 1981 I became the Environmental Coordinator for the United Technologies plant on Industrial Avenue in Coldwater, MI. I held the position for 9 years. During that time industry was fleeing offshore. Arbitrary rule changes and a distinctly antagonistic relationship between the EPA and business in the US made it far easier to build new plants in foreign countries than in the US.
Now the EPA's labors have borne fruit. The US is living the life of HG Well's Lotus Eaters and we are waiting for the Morlocks to drag us away.

Installing A Quick Adjust Bench Vise Part 4 of 4 - a video tutorial from...

The vise is installed and working quite well.
I've sanded off the top, filled in the screw heads, and painted the bench.

On to the next project. Repairing the Silver Mfg Co. hand cranked drill press will require some silver soldering to repair the broken flywheel.
Two and a half years ago, during the move, the drill press fell off the back of the truck in rush hour traffic. Quite exciting.
I'm going to try and use the blow torches to heat up the flywheel for silver soldering. It's been better than 40 years since I've used blow torches but they are the best for heating a large area. Lots of heat and a big flame. I'm going to set up the fire bricks in the blacksmith shop and see I can make an oven top to contain the heat.

Ruining your own life for fun an profit. Or why I don't wish to be in business.

As I approached my planned retirement age I cast about for things to do that might provide a little pocket money. More to be able to lay claim to earning my keep in my own mind rather than need.
Saw sharpening hit the mark on a number of levels.
1. It is a useful skill and it fit in with my core training.
2. There is little investment in equipment.
3. The end result has a personal use component as well as a marketable component.
4. The rate of pay per hour of time spent will never bring me into a higher tax bracket.
5. The very first handsaw that I had tried to sharpen, 20 years ago, was such a failure, forget cows and calves, it was elephants and chipmunks, that there was nowhere to go but better.

I began by reading and studying multiple sources and watching an amazing amount of video with an equal number of methods, some better than others. 

My next step and the most satisfying, was gathering XX practice saws. (You really didn’t expect a number!)

With the raw materials available I set about the practice of sharpening. Being a geek/engineer I videotaped my first efforts and studied them like I would any time study. Holding the file at the proper angle with guides and fixtures seemed like a pain in the butt. It was. Having reference lines on the vice did more for holding the angle than having to adjust a jig each time. Muscle memory and proper stance brought that problem to heel.

I found that boredom was the chief culprit. I would get distracted and lose my place in all the teeth. Having found the problem I went back to the beginning and remarked the teeth after every pass with a black marker. No more lost place.

My second attempt at sharpening a hand saw, after the dreaded elephant/chipmunk fiasco, cut appreciably faster and smoother than it had before I sharpened it. The third attempt also improved but less markedly. After the first 10 saws the mechanics have become less of a problem. I have found that most people have little interest in a sharpened handsaw. I have tried to interest family in the idea of having a saw, the only taker so far has been my son. I cheated and gave it to him for Christmas this year.

I have sharpened enough saws for personal use that I don't think I’ll need to touch a saw file for at least a decade.

Saw sharpening will fall into the same category as my frantic efforts to improve at pool, welding,  tennis, golf, machine tools, softball, etc. As long as it was my business, with money on the line, or my friends were willing to be interested and play along, I wanted to be the best. When it became a solitary quest for excellence my interest faded.

How much should it cost to sharpen a saw?

For me the first measurably sharp saw took 22 years of practice, 10 practice saws, at $2.00 each, a half dozen files, with handles, one nifty $10.00 antique saw jointing file holder that I didn't need but couldn’t resist 25 years ago. Divide that by 10 sharp saws and $35.00 for 2 hours actual work on sharpening a nice 8 point crosscut with the proper fleam angle, sloped gullets, even teeth, and sticky sharp points doesn’t seem so bad.

I’m still not ready to sharpen saws as a business. I’m happy with my work but I don't want to have the hassle of a person with an unrealistic expectation and a magnifying glass strapping themselves to my back for a $35.00 ride through hell.

Old Sneelock's Workbench Recycling at it's best - a video tutorial from...

The huge snowfall isn't really affecting Old Sneelock's workshop time. Since I'm trapped inside I'm using the time to improve the basement shop.

Recipe For A Crazy Man.

It's New Years Eve and I'm sitting in my living room looking out the picture windows at the snow coming down. A perfect day.

I'm reading the Goliath Stone by Larry Niven and Matthew Joseph Harrington.
One of the characters, Alice Johnson, makes a statement: “I freely acknowledge that I am the sort of person who looks at those charming Currier and Ives prints and wonders how many inhabitants of the snowbound houses are, at that moment, being forced to resort to cannibalism.” As I read that line it got me to thinking.

As a child I remember mostly snippets of what happened around me. I seldom allowed for the feelings of others in my surroundings being more interested in how circumstances affected me. I was the baby of the family for four years. That may have focused my thoughts inward since if I cried or smiled everyone noticed and reacted to my behavior. Anyway....

My earliest memories are of living at Messenger Lake outside of Coldwater, Michigan. Messenger Lake was a marl pit dug out by the cement plant on the south end of the lake. The plant had used the Coldwater river to transport the marl in barges and as the pit was dug and the deposit was mined out the barges went on to dig out and form South, North, Cemetery, Randall, Morrison and Craig lakes before going out of business or running out of raw material at the Waffle Farm Campground north of Coldwater and just east of Hodunk. Since it was a dug pit, the ground on the shore of the lake was a steep bank.

We'll discuss most of that later but one thing sticks out. There was a heavy snowfall and the snow drifted behind the hills surrounding the lake. At the time the snow seemed really deep. But then I was 3 feet tall and a foot of snow was a huge amount. Mom bundled I and my two older brothers up in winter clothes. I'm not sure if it was snowsuits or coats and two pairs of pants. I seem to remember both being worn at alternate times. But I digress. We went out to a small ledge in the bank just to the west of the cottage. Far enough away for adventure but still within running home distance. The snow had drifted to completely fill in the area behind the ledge. In retrospect it must have been a fairly warm snowfall because the top layer had frozen into a thin crust and the snow had become packed to the consistency of Styrofoam. One of my brothers suggested building an igloo. We all agreed that that was a great idea and set about cutting blocks of snow and arranging it in a circle. I don't remember finishing the structure. I think probably lunch or supper interrupted the project. The main thing that sticks with me is that instead of panicking at the thought of deep snow we embraced it and set about turning it to our own purpose.

We moved sometime in the next year to a house on Crippen Street in Coldwater. There was a great deal to do and wonderous things to explore in the new environment. I was older and allowed to travel on my own but usually found myself in the company of one or more neighborhood children. We would fish or swim in the river and, being boys, would hunt whatever moved into our range of attention. The rule was you could never kill anything just for sport. If you killed it you had to eat it. Or at least attempt to. Frog legs roasted on a stick, fried pigeon, squirrels and half a hundred other experiments later we new pretty much what was catchable and out of that group what was edible after catching. We weren't ravenous brutes set upon a path of mayhem. We were an amalgam of backgrounds and creeds that had a common thread in adventure.

In 1978 there was a snowstorm in March. As snow storms go it was a respectable amount of precipitation. The thing that enhanced the experience the most was the wind storm that preceded it and followed it. After watching the house across the street disappear behind a drift of snow I and Lydia went to bed thinking that it was a good thing we went to the store that night before the storm hit.

I woke up to find that the houses across the street were behind a huge wall of snow but the front porch and most of the street right in front of our house was open. The back yard was another huge drift that reached the height of the roof but was separated from the house by a ten foot open spot where the house had channeled the wind and snow away. After digging out the back door I looked over at the hedge row and had an idea. I went out and cut down a couple of box elder trees that had clumped around the base of the trees. With the sticks and some clothesline rope I fashioned a set of snowshoes and had a great time walking along the tops of the drifts and looking down on the houses.

People who would have lived in the Currier and Ives houses would have grown up like I did. Rather than reverting to cannibalism they would be sitting warm and snug around the table eating chicken or rabbit stew. The world is a host of possibilities for the person with the inclination to look for them.

Installing A Quick Adjust Bench Vise Part 2 - a video tutorial by Old Sn...

The basement workshop in the new house had a bench along one wall. For the last two years I got along with using it while I finished up the honey do list. Most of the list is completed. We all know it will never be completely finished. Now that it's getting colder outside I'm working on some inside tasks. The old bench has been rebuilt and this new bench is next. Before I finished off the top I wanted to install the Quick Adjust Bench Vise. I finished it up this week.