Re: Placating the Mrs. "or Tales of Domestic Bliss & Machining"

> Man, this whole thing about our addictions vs. convincing the
> wife. There have got to be enough good stories to start another
> list about this. They MUST fall under the general heading of
> CAD/CAM/EDM/DRO, right? Who's gonna start the thread?....
>
> Carlos

My wife asked the other day, "So what are you making with your
mill", to which I responded, "Parts and accessories for my lathe.",
to which she added, "So what do you make with the lathe then?",
to which I responded, "Parts and accessories for my mill ya
daft lass, hev ya no brain in yer heed!!!!!". All but the second
part of the last sentence is true ... our couch is really lumpy
in the family room and when I sleep there I wake up with a sore
back so .....

I made my most important part on the lathe the other day. The
wife was rattling away at her sewing machine (she is as fanatical
about quilting as I am about making small pieces of metal out of
larger ones). Suddenly she exclaimed "- explicative deleted -
this thread keeps breaking!". I looked at what she was doing and
noticed she had a large cone shaped spool of thread just loosely
tossed over a rod which normally goes through the center of
a normal spool (short, squat, wood, ridges on both ends). Anyway
the larger cone-shaped ones are cheaper in bulk but of course
lacking the proper unwind spindle the tension was going to
hell-in-a-handbasket (why do people who use handbaskets as
a shipping container never send anything anywhere except "to hell"
... in fact, when was the last time you heard anyone refer to
a handbasket at all! .... I digress). So obviously what the
wife needed was an adapter which would fit the regular rod
spool holder on her machine but had the proper taper to fit the
inside of the cone shaped spools she was using! So I made one
(of course you and I know this was no big deal ... offset tail-
stock ... turn taper ... drill to fit rod ... Bob's Your Uncle.

So why "the most important part" I've made .... ah ha!!!! direct
correlation between what I'm doing and what she's doing. She loved
it, thread tension wonderful, no more snapping, wife appreciative
(lathe work apparently CAN be classified as foreplay under the
right set of circumstances ... your mileage may vary, check local
listings ... void where prohibited by law).

Moral of the story .... make the connection when opportunity knocks!