Confession of Machine Fear

Joined
Mar 22, 2002
Messages
15,742
When I got my first khuk, I held it in wonder. Even before I tested it I knew. I not only knew this was for me but knew instinctively I needed a larger blade for better leverage and strike force. I guess it's like knowing which size of baseball bat to use. I felt at home with the khukuri. For that matter deadly weapons don't bother me. I was old when I got into firearms, 10 years past full grown and voting age. I accepted and understood the intrinsic responsibility immediately. It was as if I knew how already. One must care for the weapons and honor the potential. Weapons are instructing. They teach responsibility and ethics. At least in myself, perhaps in a sociopath's hands there is nothing reciprocal inside him to respect the blade or gun, it is only an extension of his sick need, his will.

(Last night because his room had been painted my 8 year old slept next to my bed on a mattress. Lying some 12 inches from his head and hands and next to me were a sheathed Cherokee Rose and a Colt Delta Elite with a full mag but unchambered. As I told him, I never had a moment of doubt regarding this. I'd taught him young and he's a trusted soul. I would not allow the middle son this honor, though)

Well, that's some pretty heady stuff there munk, was that all you wanted to tell us this morning?

Well, actually, no. It's about these machines, you see....I'm afraid of them.
Car engines have always kept me nervous. I remember once we took off in the family's Volkswagon Van. One of our cats must have crawled into the engine compartment because we heard an awful caterwauling. Mom stopped the bus and looked but no cat. Soon as we started up again though, there she was, screaming like a banshee. Never did find that cat. Maybe she ran off at the stop sign, Mom said, but I knew chances were the engine had eaten her alive.

If a machine is big and makes noise and things move I'm cautious. I don't trust them. I remember too Mom's washing machine would walk across the laundry room sometimes with an awful racket. Machines were a mystery. It was only when I was 35 I finally understood how the internal combustion engine ran.

I waited for a week for my Delta 180 1" by 42" belt sander to arrive. It was awesome, let me tell you. I gasped aloud while removing each segment from the box, with the same wonder as an Idaho Ranch hand first time he saw 'one of dem dare Fridgediers" in a County without electricity.

Yesterday I assembled it. It was like a factory in miniature to me. Keith even pulled one of his plastic trucks alongside and asked to buy some ice cream. He knew. I only had one left over part when I was done. A red metal arrow pointer. Well, I'll figure that out later.

God, she was beautiful. What a work of art.

"You know what I'd do if I were rich," I told my wife. "I mean really rich, a trillionare?"

"What?"

"I'd buy every standing machine I could. I'd have them in a room, in lines, all kinds. Just to have them. Maybe every once in awhile I'd walk by, pick one out, drill a hole or press something down."

"You're nuts."

"No, machines are great."

When the Delta was all together I asked Trav if we should turn it on.
"Yes," he and his little brother cried.
There were a whole bunch of instructions after the initial assembling about how to adjust, get it balanced, all that kind of rigermaroll. I ignored that. I'll do it later, when I have time to sit down and comprehend what it says.
For now, it was time just to turn the thing on.

Whish. The belt sliced through air. Wow. After 20 seconds, I turned it off. Don't want to do too much right away. Have to work up to it. I turned it on a couple more times, the last for my oldest son when he came home from school.

Have I used it? Well, I'll get to that. I will. I promise, it's just that this machine is brand new, and has power. A guy could get hurt with that machine. It would chew up a finger mightily. I have to ease up to it, get to know her, and she me.

One day I'll write a review and tell you how it was. The machine's not even in the work station yet. I have to turn it on a couple more times. Then I'll work it. I will. Soon as I get over the Machine Fear.

All you people who grab these machines and make 'em run right off the bat; it's uncanny. I never did understand how men could do that. I guessed I wasn't a man the same way they were. I'm on the outside looking in, wondering how in hell real people could take machines as if they were harmless servants, waiting for abuse, waiting for their orders.

You can guess how long it took me to actually use my chainsaw to cut wood.
Now with a khuk, it only took me a couple minutes, long enough to step outside.

munk
 
This is purely personal, but I would never trust a loaded gun near a kid while I am not supervising the two - I know that it depends on the kid, but ....
I know too many adults who can not be trusted.

I would hesitate to put a loaded gun in my wife's hands.

I keep my loaded revolvers in an AMSEC push button handgun safe. I can open it in less time than it takes to get a gun out of a holster and draw the slide to chamber a round. There are other brands of handgun safes out there that should work as well and as reliably. They provide peace of mind and security - but quick access. Trigger locks are a joke, and I would hesitate to buy a S&W right now- even thought there are models I like.

The problem is that I do not trust any adolescent males - I was one once, and I remember what I was like. I would not trust very young children near a gun while I slept...I don't see a need.
I have known too many people who were shot by accident - while hunting or by kids who were too young to know better. You may have friends of your children in the house, and gun retention becomes an issue. ...
But you can have the best of both worlds - quick access and security.
 
Arty, I'll see about adolescence when it comes. You'd have to know this boy.
I trust him more than my wife.

oh, almost forgot; no one in the house but me can rack the slide.








munk
 
munk said:
Arty, I'll see about adolescence when it comes. You'd have to know this boy.
I trust him more than my wife.

oh, almost forgot; no one in the house but me can rack the slide.

munk

I did the exact same thing Munk, when my kids were little. I left a 1911 and a pump gun next to the bed, with the magazines fully loaded, but without a round in the chamber. When kids grow up around guns and are taught correctly, all the mystery surrounding them is taken away, and the urge to fiddle with them is gone.

When my son got to be about 8, we field stripped the 1911 together, and I showed him how everything worked, and then had him do it a couple of times. Rather than messing with the recoil spring plug and barrel bushing with a barrel wrench, as the bushing was very tight, I just taught him to pop out the slide stop and strip the whole slide off the pistol, then start taking the slide down from there. Like your boy, he lacked the strength to rack the slide, especially with the extra power Wolff springs I was using, so there was a safety factor there as well. Since it is a Series 70 without the drop safety, that was another reason to keep the chamber empty.

The people asking for trouble are the ones who raise their kids with the house gun being a mysterious little seen object, that Mom & Dad "hide" from them at all times. Once Mom & Dad are gone, the exploring and fiddling inevitably begins. I have a half-dozen guns around the house that are not with those in the safe, and there has never been one irreponsible incident with them with my kids. Of course, when neighbor kids come over for sleepovers or what not, the guns were locked up, as I had no idea what their parents had taught them (or not!)

Regards,

Norm
 
Norm, even besides books and khukuries, you and I have a great deal in common.



munk
 
Grew up under the watchful eye of my late maternal grandfather in the late 50s and early 60s; he was a B&O locomotive engineer, electrician, and the town "fix-it" guy. When he retired, during summers and after school I was an extra pair of hands, assisting him with rewiring appliance motors, replacing bad bearings, making wiring terminations on switches and receptacles, replacing the points and condenser in his Chevy's six cylinder engine's distributor (he had large fingers, and the screws were tiny). I wanted to be a locomotive engineer, but he insisted that I get into engineering instead of "living by the telephone." From age 8 on, I wanted to be a mechanical engineer, and got my degree in 1978 after first a two-year active hitch in the Marines. Machinery and electricity do not intimidate me because I understand them; it's almost second nature. But the familiarity with machinery and electricity that led to a comprehension and respect for it began quite early, "when I didn't know any better" and at the elbow of a self-taught man of great practical skills, a man whom I trusted implicitly, and a man I still very much miss 30 years after his passing at 76. I work with industrial machinery and controls every day, programming the computers that control the machines and designing the control elementary diagrams. When I get "stuck" on a problem, I always ask aloud, "Well, Gramps, how we gonna do this?" and the answer is never long in coming, and often more obvious than I care to admit.

Noah
 
Munk, that red arrow thing is probably for the miter gauge, if I remember from setting mine up. I grew up next door to my moms parents, I remember being 5 or 6 and watching my grandfather run his lathe, it was kind of magic, those long strings of metal peeling off as he ran the wheels with one hand and dabbed cutting oil on with the other making wisps of smoke. He made a lot of gears and that machine kind of scared me, he called it a gear chomper, probably some kind of shaper, I’d like to see it run now. I do know where his big lathe is and hope to bring it to live in my shop soon. I have some of Grandpas tools in my shop, sometimes like Noah Zark when I get stuck I’ll pick one up for inspiration or a little help.

Todd
 
Good Lord! Norms post and philosophy is so much like my own that it's almost a bit strange. As I type this there is a 1911 on my wifes side of the bed and a Remington 870 on my side. Both with loaded mags, empty chambers. Both guns that have held those positions for about nine years now.

My eight year old son has been taught since he could crawl what they were, what they do and not to touch them. He knows if he wants to see a gun, all he has to do is ask, and I'll get it for him. And yes, I believe that one of the worst mistakes a parent could make is to keep the household guns a mystery while a child learns about firearms from television.

We always went with the NRA Eddie Eagle style teaching with finding guns: Stop, dont touch, tell an adult. I think he was about four when he was playing at grandma and grandpas just after they had come in from a hunting or fishing trip, and plunked all thier gear in the doorway around his toybox. Grandma was in the kitchen and he wanted his toys. He refused to go near his toybox, and told them there was a gun there. 'lo and behold, Grandpa had left a fully loaded .44 Mag on top of the toybox underneath a polar fleece. He did exactly what he was taught to do. On another day he came straight home from a friends house when his friend started talking about playing with his fathers gun. Needless to say, the boy makes me proud, and I can completely relate to Munks sentiment about his own son.

As far as the stationary belt sander...I'm gonna have to get one of those, especially if I can't find my magic sanding discs.
 
Fear & respect are related... I had no fear of my high speed grinder until it caught a blade I was sharpening and slammed it, hard.

I still don't fear the grinder, but now treat it with a lot more respect.

There's an old Irish saying that goes something like "Those who have no fear of the sea drown frequently, but we who fear it only drown now & again."

Interesting, the relationship of the two. Ask yourself the question: What do I fear? What do I respect?

I fear ignorance: which I had in the case above. I respect knowledge & ability: two things I'm always working on.


Ad Astra
 
Thanks, Nabok. I figured it was for the miter gauge but the how and where eludes me right now.
What Norm said describes why it works; the parents are there, the gun is de-mythed, and like a hot barbecue or a steak knife on the table, not handled the cartoonish way as do the two Stars in Lethal Weapon.

The men who knew machines and worked them before computers understood a job well done and responsibility. You can almost feel it when you touch one of the older machines. I know a good guy in his 80's who has a basement full of equipment his son will unload right after his death. Too bad.
And that old equipment is very desirable today.
They were made right and last.


munk
 
Back
Top