After last week's Hannibal-Crossing-the-Alps shop project, this week I have been content mainly to work in it. Having gotten my compound set perfectly to cut the taper for a military mount, I made a bunch of military mount stem blanks. I don't know that it's any faster to set the compound angle by indicating the reamer flutes than by trial and error but it made me feel all machinist-y when it worked.
The pic of the Logan is after a full day's work. I've kept to my new habit of putting all my tools away, vacuuming, cleaning and oiling machines before I leave the shop, and there is satisfaction in the sheen of clean, oiled cast iron, both when I turn off the lights at night and when I turn them on in the morning. In my flight from breaking news on the TV I've turned to YouTube videos, and one of my subscriptions is to Jay Leno's Garage. As the father to three daughters and husband to a force of nature ("She's no palfrey" is how Neill Roan once described my wife), I sometimes cringe just a little when Jay calls one of his cars a "good old girl." But looking at my Logan, which was made in 1943 and will still run all day just as well as it did 77 years ago, I know exactly how he feels.
