A common thread in many of the left’s attacks is just how dumb we are. How out of touch with reality we are.

Listening to some city rat tell me that I can’t survive without the cities because of stock markets just makes me cringe.

Years ago, I was in a room with my mentor, his girlfriend, a mutual friend as well. We were working on some difficult programming to solve a complex 3D problem in a reasonable time.

His girlfriend popped up and said, “Come on, guys, this isn’t rocket science.”

We grumbled, then looked up at each other and laughed. “Um, yeah, it is.” We were working on an issue with the Hubble Space Telescope for NASA.

My point in this, is that people can have skills that are not obvious. People on the right often have physical and mechanical skills that the left does not consider important.

I like this song because it is another example of people underestimating some old dude just because he’s old:

(2100 words)
This is the second most satisfying hobby I’ve had. The first being firearms.

My first experience was watching a retired machinist running a shaper at the Smithsonian. It was being run from a line shaft.

Watching that cutter push its way through a hunk of steel, leaving a little curl of metal behind and a smooth surface, fascinated me. I started looking into getting some sort of machine tools while be broke as …

To that end, I started looking into David Gingery’s Build Your Own Metal Working Shop from Scrap

This is a series of books that take you through building a “complete” metal working shop starting with almost nothing. He starts by having you create a foundry. After creating a foundry, learning to make patterns and cast aluminum, you make the castings for a metal lathe. Once you have a lathe, you then make a shaper, then a horizontal milling machine, a drill press, and then some accessories.

This sounded like about what I could afford. I had the wood working tools to make the patterns, it was only a matter of making castings and from those casting, real machines.

I made parts of the shaper, parts of the lathe, most of the dividing head, and never completed any of them. For reasons.

It turns out that pattern making is hard. Molding is difficult, casting is not easy, and machining all those parts is a little a pain.

In the process, I did learn a little bit.

At the same time, I was watching YouTube videos, attempting to learn something useful.

Then I got lucky. I had a new job. I had some cash in hand. I was talking to the gentleman who was selling cool patriotic stuff. He was selling expanding batons. I looked at those and thought, “I could make those”. With that, I explained that I was about to purchase a lathe and asked if he would be willing to buy batons if I made them.

“I have an old SouthBend Lathe, if you are interested.”

I went to look. He had the lathe, he had tooling for it, it was oily (a good sign), no real sign of rust. And he had a Bridgeport Mill. And a horizontal bandsaw.

It was too good of a deal to pass up. I purchased it all for $1750, delivered. It is important to understand what a deal this was. Three lathe chucks, $1000 each. A mill vise, $700. The machines themselves. This was a freaking win fall.

This is the absolute best way to start. Find somebody who is selling for way below cost and luck out. You have the three machines you will want in your shop.

Buying New

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