I went down there because they are having a big sale and there was an item I wanted. One that I should have bought instead of cheaping out a couple visits ago that has caused me to spend more in the long run than if I hadn’t talked myself out of it the first time.
The story of my life…
Anyways.
A while back I went and bought this cheap 6 inch bench grinder.
I shoulda known better.
I can’t even tell you how many damn bench grinders I have bought in the last six or seven years but it’s at least 5.
I wind up giving the damn things away.
I’ve had a couple three 6 inchers and a couple of 8 inchers.
Like this 6 incher above, they always wind up being disappointing in the horse power department.
That one pictured also has the ridiculous battery powered LED lights over the wheels.
Seriously?
Batteries?
What the fuck was I thinking?
Junk accessory.
Big, bulky, I keep forgetting to turn the sonofabitch off when I turn off the grinder and notice it’s still on 45 minutes later so they are a pain in the ass on top of everything else.
But the horse power is my biggest gripe.
Not enough Oomph.
So I run over there originally to snag a couple of cheap tarps.
That’s what I told myself anyway, knowing damn good and well that ain’t why I’m going there at the same time.
A flimsy excuse but workable.
I snag a couple and some Bungy Cords because I don’t seem to have any of those either.
Then it’s the obligatory cruise through the aisles and back and forth through the power tools.
Because I’m a fucking guy, that’s why.
I will get back to this in a minute.
Pretty soon, there I am, staring at the grinders. Again.
They have a new one out I seriously considered but the shelf was empty, all they had was a display.
An 8 incher with a belt sanding attachment for $169.
Christmas is coming.
That looks handy as hell.
But since they didn’t have one of those, I got one of these.
A more traditional 8 inch bench grinder, with a freaking light that isn’t attached to the damn safety glass attachments.
It’s still out in the garage in the box.
I’ll get to it when I get done here.
Hopefully this one has quite a bit more stank than the littler one. We shall see,
So while I am waiting in this huge line to cash out, some clean cut looking guy in his early 40’s starts chatting at people. Nice enough guy.
Then he sees my hat and it’s on.
My “I Identify As A Pissed Off American” hat.
Oh yeah, this guy was one of us.
He says. I love your hat!
So I asked him, “Are You There Yet?”.
Then it was really on. The rotten government, gas prices, taxes, gun laws, the whole ball of wax within about three or four minutes while we waited.
Nice guy. Eventually he got to a cashier and we both said “Nice talking to you” then he was off.
Then I got up there, took care of business and rolled the cart out to the truck to load my prizes up.
As I’m getting ready to take the cart back, BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT DECENT PEOPLE DO, I hear this kind of ringing sound getting closer and closer.
Six months ago I wouldn’t have had a clue what it was but Old Chuck’s daughter bought some fucking hybrid Mini Van/ SUV a while back and that fucker makes the same ringing sound.
Sure as shit, I look up and here is some guy in some kind of TESLA SUV thing.
I didn’t even know they made one.
I get back from taking the cart back just in time to see this guy get out and start walking towards the Harbor Freight store.
The first thing that came to mind was there ain’t no Starbucks this away there Skippy.
Mid 30’s, what the wimmin’s would probably consider a decent looking guy, about 6 foot and 200 pounds.
Wearing greenish brown khaki shorts, one of those POLO type shirts and sporting those “I’m Cool and Trendy” expensive sunglasses.
Getting out of a TESLA.
‘Nuff said, right?
What that guy needed from Harbor Freight could be quite the conversation starter.
So I shake my head at Mr. Trendy, get in my Bomber of an Old Red Truck and head out of the huge parking lot.
I get out onto a “Kind Of” a road, that snakes around between a bunch of these giant parking lots and drive by one of those Electric Car charging stations.
Here sits some other Dink in the back of his open hatched electric SUV type thing, reading a book while he is waiting for the damn thing to charge up.
Mid 30’s, bald, the shorts again, whatever. The first thing I think to myself driving by this guy is that book he’s reading sure as shit isn’t The Art Of Being A Man.
So I am really starting to get the bigger picture of the parts of my local society and not only has a large portion of them drank The Kool Aid, they went back for seconds.
All these damn electric vehicles running around, right?
Has anyone bothered to look down the road and wonder what they are going to do with all of these giant freaking batteries when these vehicles come to the end of their life span?
No junk yard owner in his right mind is going to have anything to do with these ecological nightmares.
And what about the suckers who bought these things when it’s time to take them off the road permanently?
Did they think long enough to wonder how that was going to work?
Ain’t NOBODY going to be taking and storing those things for free.
I can see a whole bunch of shocked faces in the not too distant future when they find out that they are going to have to pay big money just to get rid of the battery.
First they are going to have to pay to have it removed, transported and THEN, properly disposed of.
But hey, they sure are cool, trendy and (cough cough) environmentally woke in the mean time.
Right?
These are the kind of people I am going to have a hard time feeling any sympathy for when it all turns to shit and that time is marching forward inexorably.
Damn, I’d sure like to have a nice belt grinder. I’ve made do, in the past, by clamping the belt sander upside-down in my Workmate. But then, I have no place to put a grinder, of any sort, here in the small apartment.
The electric future is all rosey, until you look at reality. I just don’t get it. Well, I sorta do, in that it’s the latest front in the long-running war on the evil oil companies. But most of what I read on the subject simply turns a blind eye to the issues of grid capacity, generation, and the huge increase in mining that’ll have to happen to support all this crap. And the people who’ll suffer the most will be those on the lower end of the income scale, who can ill afford to transition to higher cost energy for things such as heating their homes. Oh yeah, and our taxes are going to pay for subsidies on all this crap too. Latest one of those, where I live, is for fucking e-bikes. Bikes!
My city did the e-bike experiment 5-6 years ago. After they discovered a half dozen or so in the water below the dam in the center of town, the city council got the message.
Whoa. You cheaped out on HF? Is that like a worm hole to a cheaper cheap parallel universe?
Without yet reading your current scribbling, I say you deserve the worst. Woe is you.
Bless your heart,
Jey, you write some good stuff. Your talents and interests keep me coming back. But for the love of God, establish your minimums somewhere above cheap chinese cheap.
Okay, so now I’ve read it. Here’s the deal.
Ya know those graphic depuctions of evolution. How a chicken came from a triceratops, how a human came from a monkey which came from an amphibian.
Well, 30 something Tesla driver and scrawny HF man came from the same effing limb. Capiche?
Our, meaning real men, job has become more difficult. Which ones to shoot and which to save for 443rd Reg Penal Div. Damn!
Can ya just stop trying to normalize HF as if its drag queens soliciting children?
I usually hit Wallymart early in the morning on the weekend, and their those assholes are, waiting in line four deep to charge their electric car
Electric Car? Tango.
Lead-acid batteries. Short range. COMMUTER CAR, okay?
We have a trailer hitch in the back so you can clamp a turbo diesel genset on the back of it and get unlimited miles and screw the charging station stops. Try doing THAT with a Tesla or any other electric.
It’s for commuting, okay?
Would be a shame that an e-car towing a diesel generator lost the towed vehicle.
Funny, but sorry about your loss.
Sometimes replacing the bearings in some of these machines with sealed bearings, so that junk do not get into them will make the Harbour Fright items work better.
My good deed for today.
There was a channel by some old crusty tool dude who would buy HF tools and… open them up, clean out the junk, put in grease (most didn’t have any lube at all in them) and replace any junk bearings with less-junk bearings.
Seems a lot of the Horrible Fright stuff just needs cleaning and lubing to work.
And a grinder, as long as the motor is halfway decent, is a grinder.
As long as the motor is high enough horsepower and doesn’t suffer from immediately slowing down under load (which is in the control stuff, not the actual motor) it should be okey-dokey.
Phil wrote about doing that, quite a while back, with HF angle grinders.
Yeah, just trying to talk realistically with these electro-car idiots makes me just want to start doing pell work (beating a vertical post with a dull sword or wooden rod) on their stupid dumb asses.
But, no, none of them understands.
Knew a lady, who I thought was smart, who was happy to buy a hybrid. Bragged about the gas mileage, about how ecologically sound it was, how it saved her money (even though I pointed out, with a spread sheet, how the higher price didn’t offset the cheaper cost of gas) and then freaked when her battery pack croaked. I tried to tell her, tried to warn her, but, nooooooo… She couldn’t/wouldn’t understand one bit.
I tell them “Did you know it takes 30,000 (thirty thousand) gallons of diesel fuel to make ONE electric car?”
Shuts them up right away.
My dad had several bench grinders he made out of old washing machine motors. Not shortage of power there.
I have an 8″ coarse wheel on a 1.3 hp washing machine motor, a 6″ fine wheel on a 1 hp dryer motor, a 8″ wire brush wheel on an unknown hp motor and a 10″ buffing wheel on a 1 hp washing machine motor. I have them mounted on a 2×6 sawhorse with the buffing wheel on one end and the wire wheel on the other end.
Brother-in-law bought a Ford Mach E ( electric mustang ). Put a charging station in his garage at a cost of around $3500…Finally figured out, after a year or so, that electric is not all it’s cracked up to be; range anxiety, charging time, etc. He actually drives a little further to a big box store that has a charging station vs going to the one closer to his home… 3 guesses who’s buying a Bronco now and the first 2 don’t count
Now for me, if I was still going to the office on a regular basis, electric would make sense. 10 miles there, 10 miles back with perhaps a stop or two on way home. Of course, the wife has an Explorer for anything else. So on the one day a week where I have to go to the office I just take her vehicle. We are now a one car couple, since when Covid hit ,couldn’t see making a car payment for it to sit in the driveway as I became a work from home
The ONLY place electric makes sense is for fixed routes. Mail trucks, school buses, delivery trucks, etc. Anything else, forget it.
“The ONLY place electric makes sense is for fixed routes” with no hills.
And very short distances, like half the posted ‘milage.’
Best place for EVs is on the factory floor shuffling tool carts around.
Short distances and not hills: buy a bicycle or tricycle (like a Terra Trike).
Evil Franklin
Don’t forget the Spontaneous Combustion Syndrome!
Got marshmallows??
my big brain retired engineer neighbor regaled me for half an hour about how great his tesla is and how evil big oil is, getting more agitated by the minute. he said 8k miles cost him 25 dollars, yadda yadda. i said no, it cost you 100,025 dollars. after another 30 minutes of evil oil, i asked him if his tesla would be possible without evil oil? that finally shut him up, long enough for me to shut the gate and head to the house. i’m saving the battery dilema for the next time i want to wind him up.
Spring for a US made grinder. I have a Delta (from the old days) and it’s held up since I bought it 30+ years ago.
Been wrenching on cars since 1968 or thereabouts and have seen us go from single barrel carburettors to the monstrosities that are now on the road engine management wise. Yep, the whole gamut, single, dual, quad, throttle body, mechanical injected, electronic injected, high pressure dual pump rails and so on. Missed the gasoline drip cars, that was what my grandfather worked on when he started out at a car factory, France in 1908). Fortunately, have never had to poke into a modern (snicker) electric car, expect to be long gone before the tsunami of dead EV’s hit the scrap heap.
But fear not, my crystal ball says that this whole EV thing is going to crash and burn (no pun intended) within the next 4 years or so, maybe sooner if God is willing. No modern economy on the planet can survive on EV only transport, not a one, and this is becoming more apparent every day to more and more people. England and Germany will probably cave first, US will also cave to reality maybe after or if we are lucky, sooner.
Well, maybe. However, you’ll still have all those ugly ass wind farm towers ruining what used to be nice vista’s and w3hich can’t compete with fossil fuel electric plants in grid capacity. Ya know, when the wind don’t blow there is no go.
There’s enough concrete in one of those wind turbine foundations to build foundations for approximately 120 small houses.
They are cost prohibitive and none of them will ever produce more energy than what was put into producing it.
Zero cost:benefit.
If you canceled the government graft/funding they would stop producing them tomorrow.
I think the EV shit will asshole-out. I hate to think of what society will be when it does. I want an F250 w/6-300 when it does.
What happens when the lithium battery (not lead-acid) catches fire. I’ve read the recommendation is to park the car 50 feet away from any flammable structure. I’d like to see that in a city.
I am looking forward to that and the ensuing circus
While it may seem like a deal each time, spending upwards of $150 multiple times for the same tool doesn’t make sense. How many have you gone through?
If it’s a tool you only use once in a great while it’s OK to go chineseum. If you’re using it all the time, spend a little more, you’ll save a lot of $$ in the long run.
And buy US made if you can find it.
https://www.acmetools.com/bench-grinders/?prefn1=country-of-origin&prefv1=Yes
There’s a few around the $700 mark there, and you would probably never have to replace them. (How many $150 bench grinders have you bought in your lifetime?)
Scotty Kilmer bought a Harbor Freight tire changing machine for $49. It was junk. The bead breaker was bent and ruined on the first tire, and the pole used to remove the tire from the wheel was poorly made as well. He ended up with a metal sliver in his hand for his trouble.
There is a reason why tools are so cheap at Harbor Freight.
Tesla repurchases it’s battery packs as home backup power. Even though the battery will no longer serve a car, it still has enough oomph to push a very large inverter.
Repurposes. Damned splel chek.
Tesla is a government funded boondoggle.
Harbor Freight ? “Let the buyer Beware” is the best advice I can give. Some H.F. stuff is alright , and some is junk right out of the box . you have to look at it and use your best judgment. Most often when purchasing tools I go with the “Buy once Cry once .” line of thinking and spend the extra on something quality. I got lucky and got a maintenance job for a Major tool manufacturer so I get to use the new stuff and try out the tools on the job that helps to decide what I really like and I can buy tools for less than half what they sell for at Deep Homo or Blows . So guess where most of my overtime goes ? but its nice to be able to afford tools that I normally wouldn’t get and using them on the job is cool that helps weed out the gimmicky stuff so I can focus on what works best.