Okay, I’m totally P.O.’ed.  Sometimes it seems things just aren’t intended to work out.  I’ve been working on a little project for several weeks now and it feels like I’ll never get through.  It’s not because I’m slow, but because the world is against me.  You know the feeling?

    I started this thing in February.  I’m not going to tell you what it is because I learned a long time ago that people are generally critical of anything you build that they don’t need.  Also, it's a little technical so if building stuff is boring to you, stop reading now.  I bought some plans online from an engineer and he sent the drawings pronto.  Then, I decided that I would make some detail drawings and have a fabricator supply the steel, laser-cut the parts and drill some of the tubes.  It took me about a week to get all the drawings done and I sent them by email to one of the guys at the fabricator for pricing.  After I called them about twenty times, they finally gave me a price.  This took well over a month.  I went to their factory and wrote them a check the next day.

    It took another two months to get the parts from them.  There were a few parts missing because they didn’t make them and a few I forgot to include.  Then there were the ones that were made wrong.  Primarily the wrong size holes in the wrong place and cut from the wrong thickness material.  Now keep in mind, these are all steel so when the hole is wrong or the material too thin/thick, it’s not easy to fix.  I did an inventory of all the parts that were missing and gave it to the shop.  Shawn, the guy I deal with, is always nice and more than happy to help out.  He started trying to find the missing parts and make the ones I forgot to send them.  I’m hoping to get them before I forget what they were for.

    To make a long story medium length, I decided I’d just fix the pieces of 3” square tube that had the holes the wrong size and in the wrong place.  I drove all the way across town (about 40 miles) and bought a new 1 ½” bimetal hole saw because I had a 1 3/8” and a 2” but nothing in between.  When I got home, I realized the mandrel wouldn’t fit.  I was frustrated, so I didn’t go back for a day or so.  Actually I asked my wife to go get it for me during the week when she was on the other side of town.

    So I now had the mandrel and hole saw.  Bright and early this morning I went out all ready to drill some holes.  I got one of the pieces of tubing and marked where the hole should have been in the first place.  I knew this wasn’t going to be easy because the hole in it was 1 1/8” and I needed a 1 ½” that would be offset.  If I’d been smart, I would have tacked a piece of flat stock inside the tube under the hole.  That way I could have used the drill in the mandrel as a pilot to keep the hole saw straight.  I leveled up the piece of tubing in the cross vise of my drill press, loaded the chuck with the hole saw and went to town.  By the way, I’m using a Harbor Freight floor model drill press.  It’s a P.O.S. drill press, but by buying it I helped keep some Chinese guy gainfully employed for a couple of days.  The first thing I noticed was that the hole saw was wobbling like a wheel on a circus clown car.  It had about 3/32” run-out.

    I took the piece out of the vise and removed the hole saw from the chuck.  Then, I took the chuck and spindle out of the press.  It’s a Morse taper so that it will run “true” and as it turns out, the problem is the chuck.  Damned Chinese chuck.  The taper in the chuck is boogered up and it will never run true.  About this time I started having a premonition of an American made milling machine and its little sister, the lathe, coming to live in my garage.  I also envision most of the holes in China wobbled out.

    After I snap back to the here and now, I decide to do the best I can with what I’ve got.  I put everything back together, chucked up the hole saw, put the tube in the vise and started drilling.  Numerous expletives and a bruised thigh later, I had six holes cut in the tubes fairly close to where they should have been.  They were slightly oval and oversized, but nothing a welder, a grinder and some paint couldn’t fix.  Lot’s of paint.  I hope in the next week or so to get the rest of my parts. When I’m done, I’ll post a picture of the finished product.  On second thought maybe I won’t.  People already think this blog is a waste of time.  Wait until they get a load of the thing I’m building.