One year ago today: August 2, 2017, it sort-of works.
Five years ago today: August 2, 2013, essay on retirement.
Nine years ago today: August 2, 2009, pretending to play.
Random years ago today: August 2, 2004, at the pig races.
Here’s my newest toy. It is the Harbor Freight dovetail jig. Do not go out and buy one, it won’t work for you. I’ll tell you how to make it work and step one is to throw out the instruction sheet. It is wrong. You will need three parts that are not included. This jig works with only one router bit, a 1/4” shank 14° dovetail, and that will cost you an extra $15 or $20 bucks. Harbor Freight sells them, but they are always out of stock and the shank is too short for some wood sizes. You will also need a collar, that’s the bushing that guides the dovetail bit precisely between the jig combs. To be nice, I set the jig up and put some wood pieces in position. See, ladies, how nice I am to you? How many guys would do that?
Oh, before I forget, that collar ring must fit the bottom plate of your router. Get one with a centering pin, since router bases are adjustable. These collars are often sold as “inlay bushings” and go by a number of other names. They are brass, as shown in this second photo. Harbor Freight sells these, this is the one you will probably need, next to the banana and the 1 lb propane bottle refill adapter. Sometimes these are a hair too large to fit your router, the recommended fix is to mount the ring on your drill press and hold a small file against the rim for five or six revolutions. The brass is soft so you can make it fit, but don’t go nuts.
Lastly, if you look at the hub of the brass wheel, you see a tiny ring. This is removable. The way it works is first go on-line and watch somebody else do the deed, you’ll thank me for that. You work with templates. You route your base pattern out with the ring in place. Then, you remove the ring and use the smaller spindle to route out your inlay piece. The two ring sizes are matched so the pieces fit exactly. I may do that once I get the jig to work. That’s the last hurdle, I said throw out the instruction book.
Instead, go to Woodstock International and print out their manual for a D2796. This is the identical jig that the Chinese copied to make the Harbor Freight model. The manual, from Bellingham, Washington, gives proper setup instructions and advice, plus has that all important chart of how to set the depth fence. Having said that, once you know what you are doing, you can cut the pieces two at a time, instead of the single corner I show in the photo. The booklets don’t stress it well enough to remember you are cutting the INSIDE corners. It may take a while to wrap your head around that so expect mistakes in the meanwhile. The instructions also say to stagger the wood cuts by “half a comb width”, but when you trimmed the wood to make the sides, save a small end piece and use it as an offset in the jig and you’ll find that works perfect once you get it.
There, that was painless.
Fancy numbers.
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Everybody is waiting for news on the chalk table. Hang loose, the trick is always to let the coats dry 24 hours. The can says 1 hour, but your paint will rub off on your chalk if you do that. Here is the chalk paint I use, from the Rustoleum people. They know their business. In the background, I slipped in a photo of the chalk table surface after one coating. In a few minutes, it will be coating number two, then tomorrow, an unnecessary third coat. But this is also a small work table. Hint, keep the paint can in your storage bin for touchups.
A) Underfunding. This covers the gamut of the bad stretch, the act of God, and the simple running out of supplies or that inability to take even one serious hit. I know the statistics of failure, but I went a mile further trying to find the reasons. Although I have not spent all the money, so far the venture has tied up five times the cost of the cart.
B) Poor logistics. Thanks to my upbringing, I know a lot about lack of infrastructure. And your first glance at failed hot dog operations shows they had no support. Even the guy who Agt. R thinks is making nothing but money often has to wait for his day job paycheck to afford the meat supply for his next barbeque. That is not an effective way to run things.
Early on I determined that a small cash reserve would be enough to make my operation significantly more immune to vagaries than average around here. Hell, I wasn’t in this town a week before I noticed nobody could put $500 together if the deal of the decade came along. My reserve is $1,500, more than twice the cost of the cart. I won’t go into any detail, but I also notice nobody keeps a good set of books. They don’t know if they are actually making anything. And most of them have never seen a proper set of books or based any management decisions on them.
This was also true of Agt. R, he never had occasion to go over any numbers. But that changed last August, when I began to show him the spreadsheets on which I decided his course of action. He began to appreciate the effort that went into those 16 documents, but the real eye-opener was when things started going his way in late December. By then, he’d witnessed me make correct decisions time after time based solely on what the spreadsheets said. Every letter from the housing society was answered with 24 hours, and it was often just a matter of printing up a relevant page that was already prepared. April, when he knew the grant money was approved, he was convinced. And last month when he signed zee papers in Clearwater, he was sold. He needs no more convincing that things like the balance sheet and income statement are the real deal.
His situation is unique around here because he’s surrounded by people who consider management to be paper shuffling. He knows better and doesn’t bother trying to convince them. All they know is the cart is still sitting in his yard six weeks later and he isn’t panicking. I’d say it’s evident if they had shelled out for the cart and were not making money back instantly, they’d be desperate, see item A above. There is no borrowed money involved here, so I’ll commence sales when I’m good and ready. I know that statistically and historically there should be 18 hotdog carts in Lakeland. There are only 2, and I do not know why.
ADDENDUM
Here is the 3.5” floppy disk reader I got for a pittance. I remember when these disks were state of the art. They had a capacity of 1.44mB, which was four times the density of the disks when they first came out. Yes, I’ve even used the big 7-1/4” disks, but they always were cumbersome. I’ve gone through some of the thousands of 3.5s I have, picking out what is worth saving. Just for comparison, the disk in the feed slot shown here is a double-sided version, needed to get 1.44mB to store. So, nowadays, that entire disk would only hold a half a piece of music in
Which got me thinking, if you had to save only half a piece of music, make it something by Kid Rock. The guy is, in my opinion, over-rated. He’s good, but let’s be objective here. I’ve heard him and he is not that good. If he was not you-know-who’s illegitimate son, he’d be just another hack guitarist in a weekend band. And that is that.
I’m easy to please. Around noon, I dropped in the thrift for a leather purse, er, I mean another tool pouch. My weight has remained constant as in +/- four pounds daily variance since May 27. I look thinner and feel better, it’s the sporadic moment I’ll dash up a flight of stairs or walk because it’s only a mile, but it happens. Well, today, I saw a pair of jeans on the rack that had a 34” waist. I was up in the 42” – 44” range not that long back. So imagine my surprise when I slipped right into them. No, not holding my breath or straining to work the snap. They went right on and that has not happened in 25 years. To be sure it wasn’t a design flaw, I bent over to touch my toes and squatted and swiveled from the hip. They fit, and they feel like they fit. These were immediately promoted to my new stage jeans.
Maybe I’ll do some Karaoke to see if they work right.
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