Merry Christmas, Yuletide, Return of the Sun, whatever…

The holiday is upon us this Christmas Eve Day.  I want to wish all my readers the best of season’s greetings, and to all kids, from 1 to 101.

Looks like there is not much possibility of a White Christmas here. In the 40′s today, and supposed to be 50F tomorrow. In fact, we have only had one snow to amount to anything this winter so far, about one inch overnight, and that melted the next day.

I got a full refund on the view camera, but of course I do not now have a view camera.

I am in a PayPal dispute about the lathe. I asked for a refund to cover the parts I needed to repair the lathe, less a new chuck. I feel that is more than fair. But, one does not know how PayPal will decide on this. If they decide against me, it will be the first time that has happened. I do try to be very honest about these things.

I am having a problem getting cutters that work properly on the lathe. The ones in the kit were too long, a set of 3/8″ indexable cutters were too fat (I bought them from Amazon so it was not problem returning them), I now have  a set of 1/4″ indexables on order.

Intexable tools are ones that have a tool holder and replaceable carbide cutters  that can be replaced without removing the tool holders, so they do not change position. The particular ones I ordered use a 60-60-60 degree triangular cutter that give you 6 cutting edges before you have to replace the blade. The 5 holders hold them at 30-60-90-120-150 degrees, and all use the same cutters.  Those give you two forward facing cutters, a straight on cutter, and two rear facing cutters.

Of course sometimes you need something different, and for those times I will use high speed steel cutter that I can grind to the shape I need. Some folks swear that those are the only way to go for a hobby lathe, but it seems to me, that for general use, I do not want to spend a half-hour grinding a cutter sharp every time I want to ust it.

Let’s see, I bought a 1/2″ keyless chuck that turned out to be too long, but I was able to swap it with the regular chuck on the drill press.

I also got a milling slide for a Taig lathe. It will allow me to do some minor milling on the lathe, but only has a couple of inches of travel. So, once I figure out how to mount it I will be able to mill stuff as long as it is not bigger than 2 x 2.5 inches.

I bought a headboard for my bed, finally. I have been watching for a solid wood one finished on both sides for a long time; since I moved into this apartment, actually. This one showed up at Good Will for only $15. It is solid wood, 4×4 uprights, with a 27 inch tall, one inch thick, center. It weighs about 50 pounds. Turned out to be for a queen sized bed, but my bed is a regular double sized one. I bolted a board across the legs and bolted the bed frame to the board.  Now when I sit up in bed to read, the bed does not roll away from the wall.

I guess all that stuff can be considered my Xmas presents; in which case, I have receive a lot more this year than I have in the past several years.

In my Shamanic capacity, I have carefully determined that the Sun is on its way back. So, let the feasting begin.