Jelly-bean woodworking, prevenient grace, and blood sacrifice

By Bobby Neal Winters

With the end of the Fall semester, finals, Christmas, and my 40th Wedding Anniversary, I’d taken a longish break from woodturning.  I’d done some woodworking, but I hadn’t spent much time at the lathe.

When you work at the lathe, the question is what are you going to make.  You know to some degree what. You know that it’s going to be round.

Round is what lathes do. Lathes make round objects and sawdust.

Lots and lots of sawdust.

The various “jelly-bean” wood working stores market ideas.  Wooden pens for one thing.  They sell kits to make pens from.  There is a system set up.  Wooden pens are pretty cool, but if you don’t know better, you would think they were pretty expensive.  It turns out that, while they can be, they can also be relatively cheap.

The net effect of this is that if you want to put your pen-making on as something that will help to defray the costs of your hobby, then you have to develop a system to turn out pens in bulk.

That doesn’t sound like a hobby to me: It sounds like Work.

There I go, using those four-letter words again. 

But John Wesley taught us about “prevenient grace;” God’s grace as a means of preparing us for something else. Put a bookmark here, I will get back to it before long.

I’ve found a nice woodturning channel on Youtube called “Tomislav Tomasic Woodturning.”  Tomislav is a fellow from Croatia.  I like his channel for several reasons.  He has the right mixture of talk and video.  

Some of these woodturning guys are so non-verbal they just show videos of the work being done without any explanation at all.  The only sound is the gouge against the rotating wood.

On the other end of the spectrum (take that word any way you want to), there are folks who talk so much you think that maybe their woodturning has made them really, really lonely.

Tomislav has the mixture of talk to work right.  He also is a good teacher.  Add to that the fact that he doesn’t have a lot of money to spend on equipment, and you’ve got a guy I can learn from.

Anyway, one of the projects that he uses to teach from is that of making a whistle.

Making a whistle is not hard to do if you have the right equipment, and--here is where we hook back up to “prevenient grace”--if you’ve been making pens, you’ve got the equipment.  That is to say, if you’ve been making pens, you likely have a drill chuck to mount in place of your “free-center.” 

You drill out a cylindrical chamber in the middle of your blank, cut a hole near one end so you can whistle, and then make it as pretty as you like.

These are not difficult to make.  One of my neighbors has five kids, and I made them each a whistle.  This was back when the weather was warm and I had my shop door open.  I had a happy afternoon of listening to them whistle across the street. (They were quite loud.) I suspect they all “disappeared” that night after the kids went to bed, but it was a glorious afternoon of whistling.

The question arose in my mind--and it could be that a friend of mine asked it. Sometimes my friends ask such good questions, I think I’ve thought of it on my own.  Anyway, the question arose, could you make a flute?

What does one do to answer such a question?  Well you google it, of course. Well, this simple Okie had absolutely no idea there were so many ways you could blow air through a tube to get a sound. There are scores of types of flutes: recorders, Native American flutes, picolos, Japanese flutes, etc.  And in each of these types there are various subtypes.

One could quite understandably suffer from paralysis by analysis, but I have a super-power: I ask, which is the easiest?

To me, unless I find out otherwise, the recorder looks the easiest. I might find out otherwise, but at my current level of study, it looks like a long whistle with holes in.  No doubt those holes have to be placed correctly to get the right notes, but that is something to study.

That having been said, making a flute in the “Native American” style is attractive as well.  Native American flutes appear to be a little more complicated than a recorder, but they have features that appeal to me.  The first of these is that I am drawn to the Native American aspect of it. While I am not coming out of that tradition myself, this would be a way of paying tribute.  Another attraction is that there is no pressure to tune it to a standard scale.  

Indigenous peoples in the Americas were making music long before the Europeans arrived. Their flutes can just make cool sounds. As I understand it, you can tune them to a standard scale, but it isn’t necessary.

Anyway, I’ve started my journey.  I am working on techniques, and I’ve made a blood sacrifice.  God gives us his prevenient grace, but the tablesaw god extracts blood from his adherents from time to time. He particularly likes the flesh of my left thumb.

I’ll let you know if I make progress.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube.

The Space between the Stars

 The Space between the Stars

By Bobby Neal Winters

I’m a science fiction fan.  I’ve been one for as long as I can remember. When I was in junior high (not middle school, because there wasn’t such a thing in those days), I tried writing a science fiction short story. It was truly horrible, but at least I tried.

I’ve dabbled in trying a bit here and a bit there along the way, but not all that seriously and not for a long time now.

But it has always been there in the back of my mind, and I come back to visit it from time to time.

One thing that inspires me along these lines is a series of books called “The Expanse” written by James S.A. Corey (which is actually a pseudonym for a pair of authors). “The Expanse” differs from, say, Star Trek, by not writing the future as a utopia.  They also stick pretty close to physics as it currently exists.  That is to say, they do this for the most part until humanity comes into contact with certain alien artifacts, but I digress.

What I like about “The Expanse” is sticking as much as possible within the constraints of our physical universe and exploring humanity’s development within that reality.

People are going to be people regardless of whether it is in Baltimore or on the Moon or on Ceres or on Ganymede.

In sticking to current physics, the humans in “The Expanse” are bound by the speed of light until they come upon the aforementioned alien artifacts.  This means that, until then, they are stuck in the solar system.

I am interested in exploring this worldview further.  That is to say, what does interstellar exploration and colonization look like with a light speed limit and without the deus ex machina of alien artifacts.

One of the currents I follow on YouTube is science/science fiction speculation like I’ve just described.  Those of you who keep up with developments in astronomy and so forth may have read about interstellar asteroids and comets that have been tracked recently.

Our astronomers keep an eye on the various asteroids that are floating around the solar system. There are literally tens of thousands (and probably way more) asteroids that are circling the sun.  A lot of those are in the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, but there are a lot that are just salted and peppered everywhere.  Like I said, our astronomers keep an eye on them, because it was such an asteroid that took out the dinosaurs.

Recently, they’ve spotted a few that come from outside of our solar system. They know they are from the outside because they are going too fast to be in an orbit around the sun.

Having sighted a few of those, a picture comes to us: The space between the stars is not empty; it is only relatively empty.  There are asteroids like these we’ve seen.  In addition to this, there are so-called “rogue planets”--planets that do not circle a star--going around through interstellar space. We know this because, every once in a while, one of them comes between a star and the lens of a telescope, causing the star to dim.

Then there are objects known as brown dwarves.  These are objects that are too small to generate the fusion that is required to become a star, but too big to just be a planet.

My vision is of the human race using these interstellar objects like the polynesians used the islands of the Pacific: They just hopped from one island to another.  Some folks think they made it all the way down to the Pacific Coast of South America. 

So at this point, I’ve got an idea.  I need to do a couple of more things before I proceed.  One of these is called “World-Building.” That is to say, what does life look like to a bunch of humans who are out in interstellar space.  On one hand, I plan to stick to the premise that, on an individual basis, human beings are still the sick/weak/fallen creatures that we all know from our everyday lives.  On the other hand, there is the question of how this manifests itself in the darkness of interstellar space.  What does your day look like if you get up in the morning in a space-station halfway between the Sol System and Alpha Centauri?

The other thing I need is a story.  “The Expanse” does this with the ancient alien artifact.  “The Expanse” had enough “story” for nine long (and I do mean loooooong) books. Story is very important.  I think that it’s been shown that if you’ve got a good story to tell, then the audience doesn’t worry too much about world-building.

The world-building is for me.  Telling a story is my excuse to inflict my world on whoever might want to read the story.

James S. A. Corey has recently started a new series called “The Captive’s War.” It is not clear at this point whether it is set in the same universe as “The Expanse,” but after reading the first novel, I will say that option has been left open.  I mention it because in terms of a story, this series has stolen the story of the Book of Daniel from the Bible in a loose sense.  That is to say, they have our heroes living as exiles being used by their captors.  That is to say, they have--following a tradition as old as literature itself--taken their story from someone else.

I might wind up doing that myself.  The more I think about it, the better I like it.  The question is, what story do I steal?

Something for me to think about.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube.

 Costa Rica and The Last Resort

By Bobby Neal Winters

There are some days, some weeks, some periods of time when I have a soundtrack.  Not always, but definitely sometimes, and definitely last week when I was on vacation in Costa Rica with my beloved wife of 40 years.

The song was “The Last Resort” by the Eagles and mainly Don Henley.

This is one of those songs I’ve known for years, I am not sure how many, but more than 40. Like any good song, you don’t necessarily understand it or even like it at first. It’s as if it were written in Spanish and you are in a Spanish course.  At first you only learn a word or two, and you understand certain parts.  Then you learn more words and understand it differently. Then you learn something about the culture, and it takes on a new, different meaning.

It’s like that only the language is English and understanding requires not only words and culture, it also requires understanding life. Understanding yourself. Understanding human nature.

Let’s start out with a little context to begin with.  During the few days Jean and I were there celebrating our 40th anniversary, Costa Rica was paradise.  The weather in San Jose was sunny for the most part and the temperature hugged 70 degrees.  It would get up to about 75 in the day and down to about 65 at night. There was a nice breeze when it was needed. The sun was high in the sky, and I got a little color on my face.

We took tours to the mountains, saw green vistas, saw the clouds below us, saw the butterflies, the humming birds, and the animals.  We saw insects other than butterflies, but they didn’t have any interest in us.

I don’t know if you’ve ever had the feeling of an idea setting up housekeeping in your brain, but that began to happen with me. That idea was, you could come to live here. This could be your retirement home. You could move down and set up shop. You could move down your daughters and their families to be with you.

You’ve found paradise.

But the soundtrack was keeping house in my brain too:

Some rich men came and raped the land

Nobody caught 'em

Put up a bunch of ugly boxes

And Jesus people bought 'em

So you see there was a conflict. I’ve fallen in love with a place, but anyone else can see the same qualities in it that I have. We can flee someplace in an attempt to escape the bad, but then we take the bad with us.  Ultimately wherever we go becomes just like wherever we’ve been.

That is not a new problem.  The various authors of the Bible knew about this, but you know where to find one, so I will continue differently.

In writing this song, even as far back as 1977, Henley had some idea of the shape of an answer:

Who will provide the grand design?

What is yours and what is mine?

'Cause there is no more new frontier

We have got to make it here

I tried to be careful when I said he had the shape of the answer rather than saying he had the whole answer. 

He seems to be saying this: Rather than go to a paradise and ruin it with our human nastiness, let’s stay where we are and transform it into a paradise.

Like I said, that’s kind of the shape of the thing, but the problem with that is that it misses a crucial step. For me to create a paradise, I would have to be perfect.  And the Good Lord knows that I am not perfect.

The first step to creating a paradise is to recreate myself. Not only do I have to stop looking to another place to improve my environment, I have to stop looking even outside of myself.  I have to look inward and improve what is in there.

This is not a new idea coming from me. It’s been around a while. I like to think of it as being the best kind of religion, rightly understood: Fix myself first; others who are seeking a way might see something they like and follow along.

There is more to it than this. Not everybody would agree, not even Don Henley:

And you can see them there

On Sunday morning

Stand up and sing about

What it's like up there

They call it paradise

I don't know why

You call someplace paradise

Kiss it goodbye

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube.

 Base 12 is better!

By Bobby Neal Winters

Let’s talk about feet.  Not the ones on your legs, but the feet that you measure with.  We could dive into a discussion that the foot was defined to be the length of some king’s foot, but I don’t know the king and I don’t even know if that is true.  What I do know is that we use a foot to measure with and that we divide a foot into twelve inches.  So when I said let’s talk about feet, I really meant to say, let’s talk about inches and feet.

Twelve is a lovely number.  We can think of twelve as 2 times six like we do in the standard egg carton that holds a dozen eggs in two rows of six.  We can also think of it as 3 times 4.

Mathematically speaking, when we measure length in inches and feet, we are operating in base 12.  When you take out your tape measure and measure off a length of 100 inches, you don’t say that, at least not for long. What you do is say 8 times 12 is 96, so the measurement is 8 feet and 4 inches.  You’d write that out as 8’4’’, using the single apostrophe as an indicator of feet and the double as an indicator of inches. 

Using feet is a convenient way of keeping track of a large number of inches.  It helps our human minds by keeping the numbers small.

Working in base 12 gives us an advantage if we want to divide our woodwork into equal pieces.  Say you have a board that is 7’ long and you want 3 equal pieces. One-third of one foot is 4 inches.  Four times seven is 28.  So you only need to cut the board into three pieces, each of which is 28 inches (2’4’’) long. There is no need to convert the 7’ to inches first. The system is set up to do the math for you.  

You can do the same thing if you want to cut the board into 6 pieces.  One-sixth of twelve is two.  Two times seven is 14. You can cut the board into six 14-inch (1’2’’) long pieces. 

This is the advantage of using a base that works according to your needs.

The question arises, however, of what happens when you need to do work where a whole inch is just too coarse a measure.

At this point, we abandon base twelve and have to shift to a variety of bases.  When I said a variety of bases, I made it sound scary, but now I am going to make it scarier still by telling you the bases: Two, Four, Eight, and Sixteen.  That does sound scary, but it’s just a fancy-pants mathematical way of saying what everyone who works with wood knows: You work with half-inches, quarter-inches, eighth-inches, and sixteenth-inches.  There are some who will refer to 32nd inches, but I always roll my eyes, and ask who the heck are they trying to impress?

The fact that we use these bases for lengths less than an inch gives testimony to the fact that when you get to lengths this small it is really easy to divide in half by eye.  You can take whatever length you have in front of you and whatever marking tool you might have, and find the middle.  It is easy to check that the length on one side of your pencil is the same as the length on the other.  If you doubt your own eyeball, you can check it with a pair of dividers or use a multisquare. 

Using base two is all about cutting things in half.  If something is 17 inches long and you want to cut it in half, you say half of one inch is a half-inch, so half of 17 inches is 17 half-inches.  Now 8 times 2 is 16, so half of 17 inches is 8 and one half-inch.

You can do the same thing by using base 4 to cut into fourth, base 8 into eights, and so on.  

I will be the first to admit that this gets a bit awkward and a bit more like algebra than arithmetic. What is more, you can’t use this to divide into thirds, which you can with a foot.

This will be a spot where those who are constantly trying to push the metric system will come in and make their pitch.

“Switch to metric,” a voice like Gollum’s hisses. “Use base ten, my preciousssss.”

It does have a point, but at the same time, I will say it outloud for all: 10 is a lousy number to use as a base.  It is only divisible by 2 and 5. 

Do I have anything better?

Yes, and if you’ve read this far you’ve seen it: 12.

When the French Revolution adopted the metric system, they didn’t go quite far enough. As long as they were lopping off heads, they should’ve just gone ahead (see what I did there) and gone to base 12. As you’ve seen up to this point, 12 is evenly divisible by 2, 3, and 4.

We can’t change now.  There is too much literature done with the other system. 

The changeover would be a nightmare too.  I can just see all of the crying as grade school students start learning duodecimal arithmetic, and that’s just the parents and teachers.

We are stuck with base ten.  I will continue to use feet and inches in my woodshop, as much as ever measure anything.  The Scientific-Fascists who are the heirs of the French Revolution will continue to force metric in wherever they can.

And we will ignore the elephant in the room: Base 12 is best!