I Suddenly Have a Clue

I had a somewhat productive day. Costco mission, got some stuff removed from the warehouse (Val Prieto found uses for it), and moved my scrap out of the garage.

I am going to miss that scrap. I kept some bits back; I could not go cold turkey. Life without scrap at hand is unthinkable now that I’m hooked on it. I still have the main stockpile, but it’s a hundred feet from my tools.

I decided arbitrarily to narrow my lathe search options to three: 1) Grizzly G4003G, 2) South Bend 13, 3) Clausing 59xx. The Grizzly gets excellent reviews from gun nuts, and it was apparently a pet project of Shiraz Balolia, the competition-shooting president of the Grizzly company. He made sure it had good stuff in it other Grizzlies do not have. The Clausings elicit soft cooing sounds from other gunsmiths. And the South Bends are supposedly not hard to get parts for, and there are a lot of them out there.

The Grizzly is almost certainly the best choice. The gap in the bed is something the other two lathes can’t match. And since it has hardened ways, I’ll have a hard time wearing it out. And warranty new customer support blah blah.

I really wanted an old American machine, but it’s a throw of the dice, and I don’t feel like gambling.

As for mills, I think it boils down to two possibilities. A rescraped Bridgeport from a guy in Massachusetts, or the Millrite I found in Hialeah. The Millrite has two advantages. 1. Cheap. 2. Less bulky. That’s really it. Other than that, a Bridgeport laughs at it. The table is bigger. It has no end of support from the aftermarket. I don’t know if it has more features, but it probably does. It definitely seems to have more knobs.

I think the motors are the same size, or close to it, so I doubt there’s a big difference in the tooling you can run.

I took notes while watching a Bridgeport video last night. It’s fun learning what all the knobs do, but I took a certain pleasure in the mystery. In any case, now I can go into a machine shop and pretend, for up to thirty seconds, that I know how to run a milling machine.

I can’t wait to start machining. I want to make a list of things I need but can’t buy, and then I want to make them.

Figuring out the garage layout will be a challenge. I think I can make a big dent by discarding my workbench. I enjoy it, but I have a table saw like nine feet long. I should be able to get by with that and the mighty Workmate. I’d need a place to mount my vise, though. I’ll figure it out. Here’s a wild idea. Put one motorcycle outside under a cover. Maybe it’s not really necessary to have three vehicles in the garage at all times.

Man, this is going to be fun. I am finally going to be nearly as weird as I really want to be.

My Whole World View is Crumbling

Most of the time, being absent-minded is a minor inconvenience, but sometimes it’s embarrassing. Example: I received a prayer request and forgot to post it. It comes from JeffW.

In addition to your prayers for Mish, could you also lift up a boy by the name of Russell? He is a 13-year old student at my daughter’s homeschool co-op that has a cancerous brain tumor. The family was informed last night that the tumor had grown 3-4 times it’s previous size in the last six weeks and the prognosis is not good. The family are all committed Christians, so they value prayer.

I had no business going about my business and forgetting to put this up. Prayer is powerful, and sometimes it is needed desperately. I should have mentioned this earlier. And don’t forget Mish. Her fever is going up and down. I assume that’s a good sign, since it suggests the bacteria are not getting their way.

Overall, my own walk is going well. Lately I have let things disrupt my routine, so prayer and study have suffered somewhat. I am working to fix it, and I’m going to succeed.

For many Christians, faith is all about not going to hell. As I keep saying, I don’t focus on that. I can’t recall ever having concerns about going to hell; I have no idea when I became a Christian, but it was a long time ago, and since then, I haven’t thought a lot about my own salvation. What I do think about is leading a blessed and productive life. I can’t tell you what heaven is like. I’ve never been there. But I know the difference between life close to God and life far from God. It’s huge. So to me, Christianity is mainly about holding onto that difference.

My life was consistently miserable until I was about 30. Everything I touched turned to garbage. I was depressed. I worried. I never stopped fighting the problems; I kept trying to improve my life. I learned all sorts of wonderful self-help tricks. But I could not make things better on a long-term basis. It seemed that the things I wanted were dangled in front of me and then jerked away, over and over. I was healthy and free, but other than that, I was incredibly unlucky and there was nothing good about my life.

I became increasingly religious in my twenties, and for a while, it seemed to help, but I got in with a self-oriented prosperity-theology Assemblies of God church, and things stalled. That stuff does not work. You can’t just go to church twice a week and beg God to heal you and make you rich and so on. You have to focus on serving God and helping other people, too. The word-of-faith people didn’t teach that. Many still don’t. Listen to their sermons, and you hear the word “money” over and over. God wants you to be rich. God wants you to be perfectly healthy at all times. Give money to the church and do everything just right, and it will work out. If it doesn’t work, come back next week, give the church more money, and find out what you’re doing wrong. It’s like chasing a carrot on a string.

It’s a sink. You dump your time and money and effort into it, and you don’t get much out, and the farther in you get, the more you think you’re not doing enough. Sooner or later, you realize it’s not working, and you get discouraged. You may get the wrong idea. You may think your preacher is a dud and your church is no good, and you’ll be right, but the danger is that you’ll decide God is imaginary or that he doesn’t care about you.

I realized my church was a dry hole, and I quit. Stupidly, I didn’t find another church. I figured I could do it on my own. And of course, I fell away. Still believing, but lazy and not very obedient. I would go days without prayer. I rarely looked at a Bible. When I needed help, I prayed. And in the mid-Nineties, I had the disturbing experience of feeling as though I were praying in some sort of tank or cistern, and that my prayers simply bounced off the ceiling. Maybe that was because I was asking for help, but I wasn’t offering anything in return. I didn’t think I had to change.

I had problems in my thirties, but on the whole, the trend was positive. Things have been pretty good since about 1997. I would say that was when I became a happy person. Since then, things have gotten better and better. I don’t think I’ve had more than two or three consecutive days of sadness in all that time.

After 911, I started praying every morning. I developed a prayer list, which is something everyone should have. Since then, the improvement in my life has accelerated. And lately, the acceleration has accelerated. Incidentally, I believe engineers call an increase in acceleration “jerk.” Appropriate in so many ways. I feel like I’m being jerked out of the state of being a jerk.

Every morning and every night, I literally get on the floor and thank God for the way things are going. And I mean it. I don’t have all the pieces of my conception of a whole life, but the quality of life is not determined primarily by whether you’ve achieved your goals. What matters is the trend. If you know you’re on the right track, and things are consistently improving, chances are, you’ll be happy. And for that to be true, it is necessary that you be among the things that improve. Your behavior, your feelings toward others, and so on.

Goals are important, but here’s a funny truth: once you achieve them, you are likely to feel a tremendous and painful emptiness. Sometimes I wonder if this contributes to post-partum depression. Before you get something you want, you’re excited, because you’re anticipating and working toward something good. It gives your life meaning. It fills your time. Once it arrives, all you have is the thing itself. And it may be less rewarding than the process of getting it, even if it’s a child. Your hopes may be so unrealistic that nothing you receive can fulfill them.

I’ll bet brides have to cope with that a lot. They have the most unrealistic hopes of anyone in society. It’s a little disgusting. You spend thirty thousand dollars on one day of self-worship and concentrated attention, and then three hours after the wedding, everyone has stopped focusing on you, and all you have is the same old boyfriend and a bunch of junk from Williams Sonoma. And maybe a lot of debt. It’s never fun paying for something you have ceased enjoying.

Watching a big, self-indulgent wedding is not significantly different from watching a morbidly obese man get in bed and eat five pies with his fingers.

I think women have an unfortunate tendency to turn new husbands into messiah figures, expecting them to solve all their problems and provide things only God can give. It doesn’t work like that. You don’t enter your own personal messianic age when the ring goes on.

New things that bring me satisfaction keep coming to me. I don’t mean objects, although I have found objects essential to some parts of the process. I mean new outlets for creativity. New growth as a Christian. New knowledge. New interests. I think this all comes from God. I believe that making a sincere effort to believe and serve has brought me a certain measure of protection and reward.

I am not stupid enough to think I’ll never have a problem again, or that every good thing I have will be with me until I die. But I suspect that regardless of what happens, the sensation of being blessed and looked after will be with me the rest of my life. After all, what does Psalm 23 say? “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.” What does Psalm 1 say about God’s servants? “And he shall be like a tree, planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season. His leaf also shall not wither, and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.” What about Psalm 34? “Delight thyself also in the Lord, and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.” This stuff isn’t lip service from a fat rich Jewish king trying to impress people with his piety. It’s truth. These are promises from God. Either you believe in God, or you don’t. If you believe, you should believe these words are not empty.

God does not necessarily make your life problem-free, although it is very likely that he will shift it strongly in that direction, ending many of your troubles. He makes the problems unimportant and brings good things out of them. That’s actually better. It increases your faith and makes you stronger, because it teaches you that troubles are not to be greatly feared.

Christians who only worry about where they go when they die are blowing it. Life in the kingdom of God starts while you’re here. Literally.

So anyway, I am determined to get back on track. The course deviations I experience these days aren’t all that bad, but they are not acceptable, either.

Finally Found a Person Who is Scared of Me

To the incredibly pitiable individual who is trying to change the password on my Youtube account: it is an amazement to me that people whose time is as utterly worthless as yours are part of my species.

Honestly, why do genes for this kind of cowardice even exist? How can someone be so terrified of me that their only means of getting at me is to weasel around with my Youtube account? This person would probably have to wear a diaper to confront me in person without making a mess on the floor. Here’s what I have to say to them: BOO!

Even if they somehow manage to get into the account, I can have a new one up in half an hour. Don’t know if I’d bother, but I could.

Maybe it’s some kind of bot from Eastern Europe. This is the kind of thing that keeps former communists busy these days.

Confusion Mounts

I’ll tell you what I need. I need someone to show up in my driveway with a lathe on a truck, and I need him to put it in my garage and drive away.

I cannot come to a conclusion concerning which lathe I should get. It is impossible.

At first, I thought all lathes were about the same. Then I thought it was a good idea to buy a 40-year-old American lathe. Then I found out a lot of them are beat up to the point where they’re not accurate. And Og complicated things by asserting that the Chinese stuff (not just Taiwanese) is now up to American standards.

Today things got worse. I realized that a lathe will utterly ruin and consume my life by allowing me to make CUSTOM GUN PARTS.

That’s just too much. I know it’s stupid that I didn’t think about this more in the past. It’s so obvious. But that’s how my brain works (or fails to work). Now I realize that whatever I get should be usable for gunsmithing.

Right now I have a Saiga-12 shotgun. It’s fundamentally a great weapon, but it was made in Russia, so that means virtually everyone who touched it was full of cheap vodka at the time, and aside from that, AK-based guns are always loaded with cheap parts that can stand upgrading.

Example: it has a stupid plug up front that controls the gas. To remove the plug, you’re supposed to use two metal tools. I managed it with a screwdriver and my fingers, I think. Most people say “coin and a key.” But it’s unacceptable. An AK you can’t strip without tools? Unthinkable.

Look what one of the guys at Tromix just did. I’m stealing his photos from the Saiga-12 forum, but I doubt he’ll care, since it will only serve to convince people they should give him money to fix their guns.

He started with a Home Depot flashlight. I am not kidding.

He turned the bezel or whatever it’s called, to make it less monstrous.

He installed it in front of his gas tube, and that meant he had to modify the plug. So he made a new one.

I can’t stand it. I would almost sell my admittedly worthless and undersized soul to be able to do stuff like that.

He’s going to make something to replace that thumbscrew, but even as it is, it’s great.

Okay, I realize this has nothing to do with gunsmithing lathes. You could do this on a Taig. But work with me here. Once you’ve started puttering with guns on machine tools, you’re not going to stop. Sooner or later you’ll want to make a barrel, and then you’ll need 36″ and a big spindle bore. And if you don’t have them when that time comes, you’ll have to kill yourself.

Arrgh. GET THE TOOLS OUT OF MY HEAD.

I already want to make furniture for my Vz 58. I have a beautiful piece of untouched walnut sitting on the floor, waiting. And the stock furniture is definitely cheesy. Aside from that, it heats up. A better design and all-wood construction should solve that problem. I already have the tools to handle that. Man, they would hate me at the range. Me and my tricked-out Vz 58 furniture.

I wonder if there’s a business opportunity in this. I suppose there is. It takes years to become a real gunsmith, but a total doofus can confine himself to a limited number of simple jobs and do everything exactly right. You don’t have to be a genius to make a pistol grip or a flash suppressor. And nothing is easier than improving existing products. Manufacturers do all sorts of stupid things for ease of assembly or to save two cents or for NIH reasons. The opportunities are endless.

You probably have to be proctoscoped by Nancy Pelosi herself to get a gunsmithing license.

Doesn’t matter. I’d be perfectly happy even if I could only do this stuff for my own guns.

Why, oh why did I ever let myself get interested in tools?

Enterococcus

I just checked Mish Weiss’s blog. Her fever is fluctuating. Here is the bad news:

Enterococcus is the bacteria, and with counts as low as Mish’s sepsis can occur. Because this bacteria is sometimes antibiotic and multi drug resistant, it is especially difficult to treat.

This girl can’t seem to catch a break. Her parents are gone. She had problems with addiction. She got leukemia. She turned out to have a genetic makeup that made it harder to treat. Curative chemotherapy didn’t work. Now this. Yet she still fights. How many people would do that? I don’t know that I would. I know that the afterlife is better than this life; I don’t think I could hold on as hard as Mish has.

Please keep her in her prayers. Hopefully the variety of bacteria she has will respond to drugs. This is not the time for the people who care about her to give up. This is when faith matters most.

Help

Mish Weiss is unconscious. It’s not the leukemia. She has a bacterial infection in one lung, and her fever has hit 105.4, which is about as high as an adult fever gets.

Please pray for her. Her blood cell counts are up, which means she is getting some benefit from chemotherapy. It would be a terrible thing if she were to succumb to a bacterial infection while she was improving.

She’s Hot

I took the new Vz 58 to the gun range today. I also took a bunch of new .45 reloads, some Cor-Bon defensive .38 Super ammunition, and two 1911s.

The range people would not let me shoot the gun folded. This is because the range is public, and that means government stooges are actively working to make it less fun, because they resent having to maintain a facility where bad old guns are used. That’s my theory, anyway. This range bans lots of fun but safe things, like using silhouette targets, shooting at Xeroxes of Fidel Castro, firing more than once every five seconds, and using buckshot.

It’s my understanding that the county has to forfeit the land if they stop running a gun range on it. If that’s true, it would explain why they run it so badly.

I shot at 25 yards; anything longer than that is pointless. If I’m defending against garden-variety home invaders, they’ll be less than 50 feet away when I plug them. If we have a post-Obama meltdown and it becomes necessary to shoot people who want to steal my food and beer, I think a maximum range would be 50 yards. You don’t need to train to hit people at that distance.

The gun is very nice. Everything works smoothly, much unlike an AK. The safety is better. The bolt slides nicely. Very pleasant.

I started out standing, and I did okay. Here you see my first shots, at a 5-inch bullseye. Not good, but certainly deadly.

I then shot sitting down. I didn’t use a rest, because I think it’s stupid to train with a rest when you’re using a gun you plan to use for self-defense. “Wait, Mr. Burglar, while I go get my rifle rest.” No, I don’t think I’ll do that.

The results were a little better.

I was pretty lazy; this gun has a smooth but extremely long trigger pull, and I wasn’t working hard enough to cope with it. And I forgot to focus on the front sight.

Here’s how it ended up shooting. I thought this was more than adequate. I need to practice more and remember to deal with that crazy trigger. At the end, I was aiming at the bottom of the bullseye, and you can see it shot high. I had the rear sight all the way down. I may be the problem, or maybe the gun just isn’t designed so you can put it dead-on at 75 feet. I am too lazy to look at the manual.

Here is Ivanka resting on the podium.

I can’t wait to try it with a laser. I’ll have to go to a different range so I can shoot the gun folded. This is how I hope to use it if I ever need to defend the house.

It is my nature to irritate gun nuts, so I guess I’ll go ahead and get started. The other day I was reloading, and the plastic cylinder came off my powder measure, and Unique went all over the place. I was so mad, I couldn’t stand it. I decided there was no way I was going to throw out all that powder. I didn’t care if it had dust and bits of sawdust in it. I could not accept the thought of dumping maybe four ounces of this stuff. So I gathered it and put it back in the press!

I know I’ll get lecturing comments. I don’t care. What’s the worst thing that could happen? I could lose 2% of the power of a charge because of dilution.

Here is how it shot.

It’s funny how much better I shoot a pistol after shooting a rifle. I have been away from the range for maybe two months, and I should be all over the place. And I haven’t been exercising my hands. But I did pretty well!

And of course, the last 6 shots opened the target up by like 30%. I hate that.

I had a flyer that went high, but that actually pleased me, because I could tell it was crap shot right before I took it. Very often, when you have a flyer, you can’t figure out why it happened, and that’s bad, because it means you’re doing something wrong which you can’t identify.

Next target:

The stuff at top left is .38 Super. I shot at the little cross. I wanted to see if the Cor-Bon I bought would cycle. It doesn’t cycle well when I rack the gun by hand, but it was flawless at the range. I would have shot better, but because I was off the best part of the target, I couldn’t really tell where the shots were going.

I no longer worry that my expensive Cor-Bons won’t work in the Colt. I would feel safe carrying it on formal occasions when a Glock would be declasse. And the gun didn’t explode, so I guess the pressure is okay.

I had never shot 7.62x39mm before today. It’s a very nice round. The recoil is mild, but it puts a pistol to shame when it comes to dissolving internal organs. I can see why the Commies liked it. At Wolf prices, I can afford to shoot a fair amount of it.

I can report that the Vz does, indeed, get hot. Others have said it, and I can confirm it. The metal parts of the handguard warmed up nicely, so you have to watch where you hold it. Other than that, no issues I noticed.

I am trying to deal with the fact that I am still not a good rifle shot. It seemed so easy when I was a kid.

Conservative Humor Takes Another Beating

Drudgebart.tv.com asks, “who is behind Obama Teleprompter Blog?”

After looking at it, I think the better question is, which friend of Andrew Breitbart’s forced him to mention this on the Drudge Report? It has to be someone he owes a major favor. It’s like reading the ingredients on a soup can.

I should add that I say that because I think it’s supposed to be humor, but it’s impossible to tell.

I have to wonder if the Half Hour News crew is involved.

Beauty, Eh?

I finished machining the laser mount for the Saiga 12. It came out perfectly. It could not have been much better had I paid a machine shop. I’ll show you the crappy cell photos of the jig, plus the after photos.

Here are three photos of the jig I put together.

Here is the basic idea. The miter gauge makes it run parallel to the saw blade. I moved it to the other miter slot and measured the gap with calipers to make sure both ends of the mount were the same distance from the blade. The wooden strap on top screws into the scrap on the bottom. It doesn’t mar the mount, and it holds it firmly.

Here’s how it looks on the gun. I don’t have stuff to blacken the aluminum yet, so…I used a Sharpie.

I can’t believe how well this worked out. A true anal retentive would put a better finish on the mount. Maybe I’ll do that.

I lubed the blade with WD40 (it sprays real nice when the blade starts spinning), and I blew the lube off with Gumout.

I’m thrilled. I think it looks great.

Powermatic 66 = Gunsmithing Tool

Since the weather is questionable today, instead of going to the gun range, I am going to try to modify the laser mount I got for my Saiga 12.

I suppose the relative newness and rarity of the Saiga are the reasons I can’t find a good laser mount. If you have an ordinary AK, and you want to stick aiming aids on your gun, you probably want some kind of scope. That means you need a mount directly above the receiver. You may not care if it blocks the sights. A shotgun is different. Those open sights are the only sights you are likely to use. You’ll want the top of your gun unobstructed by mounts. At least, that’s how I see it. Tromix mounts Tritium night sights on Saigas. You can’t do that if you have a mount in the way.

I want my laser fairly far back on the gun. I could put a laser and a light on the barrel, but I don’t want a ton of crap hanging off of it. A light seems like more than enough weight. And I want the light as far forward as possible, so it won’t shine on the gun. Add it all up, and you get laser in the back, light in the front. So it seems to me that there is a need for a side rail mount that holds a laser to the left of the receiver. Line it up so it’s in the center of the buckshot pattern at 50 feet, and you should be all set. If it’s a little off at 100 feet, it won’t matter. Under 50 feet, you can’t be off more than the offset between the muzzle and laser. Who cares? It’s a shotgun.

These are my theories.

Because it’s impossible to get a side mount for a laser, I decided to get the next best thing. I got a mount with two bases. One goes to the left, and one goes over the barrel. I’m going to take the top mount off…with my table saw.

I know it sounds insane. But it will work. If I put the mount in a jig and use the miter slot, I’ll be able to get a very nice cut. I can find some way to blacken it later. I hear a product called Aluma-Hyde is good. If I’m desperate, I can use grill paint.

Here are a couple of photos of the mount. The little arrow shows where I plan to saw it up. If I fail, I’ll discard the parts and consider it an experiment.

I see no reason why it wont work.

In a few days, my strobe flashlight and mount will arrive, and I’ll stick them on the barrel. Then I’ll be the happiest man alive.

It’s incredible how cheap this stuff is. Stuff that costs $120 from snazzy big-name companies costs $45 from China, and the quality is excellent. It’s too bad it’s illegal to use an imported kit to convert a Saiga to the proper configuration; on that score, I’m stuck with American goods.

Say what you want about the Chinese. They are doing a marvelous job of supplying Americans with weapon accessories.

Range Calls

I’m headed for the range. It has been too long, and Ivanka needs the air. I’m assuming it’s not raining out there; the farther you go to the west, the more likely that seems. If, indeed, it’s raining to the west, I will come home and pout.

I can test the hot Cor-Bon .38 Super rounds I bought and burn off a few dozen .45 reloads, so even though I won’t be using a laser, it should be a worthwhile outing.

Geez. I better print out a Vz 58 manual. I am still fairly clueless about how to strip Ivanka and clean her.

More

I came home to pout. Dang it. Wouldn’t you know the dry spell would end the night before I need to go to the range.

Positive note: my second “Rambo” brand laser arrived from Hong Kong, and I also received a laser mount for the Saiga.

Step Backward for Youtube Phenom

I’m kind of bummed out today. I was hoping to take the little Ivanka to the range, but it seems kind of pointless until I can mount the laser.

This is a very small gun. I don’t think a rest would work with it, and using a bipod would be like attaching a rake handle to a fork. I would be limited to shooting with the iron sights, unsupported. I’m not knocking that. I mean, it’s what the gun is for. But I really want to find out whether I can hit anything from the hip, with the laser.

I’m hoping the rest of my shotgun parts arrive soon. I need to get that machine up and running. One sad note: once it’s converted to a real AK, it probably won’t fit in the nice Bulldog bag that came with it. I suppose I can retire one of my older bags. The quality of the Bulldog seems superior.

Here’s some other horrendous news. Zo from Macho Sauce Productions has decided to besmirch his reputation by doing Pajamas Media TV. This poor guy. He really has something, but he’s going to wreck it by associating it with the laughingstock of the conservative movement. People are going to call him “Zo the Plumber.”

This man was made for radio. He has a voice and style that will keep people from turning the dial. By doing PJTV, which has no hope at all of being anything but a stillbirth, he’s going to turn himself into media kryptonite. I’m a fan, but there is no way I’d pay to see him or anyone else on the Internet. And I’m right in line with the vast majority.

I never dreamed that the PJ curse would get him. I can understand why people who are really bad at what they do and have no other hope have signed up to do video. But if you have a marketable talent, what’s the point? Joe signed up because PJTV was his only option. He seems like a fine person, but no one at a real media outlet would ever give him a job. Zo is a highly marketable young black conservative with original ideas. Surely he didn’t have to settle for this.

Speaking of video, it looks like the Internet personal broadcasting revolution has stalled. Nowlive will not be able to give members video as a matter of course. In the past, anyone who signed up could have a video broadcast. Now only a few will be so privileged. I don’t understand why they don’t do what real broadcasters do. Interrupt for commercials. Choose advertisers suited to the content of the shows. It worked for Blogads.

This stuff will eventually work. That’s my prediction. Bandwidth’s natural tendency is to become cheaper. But for now, no joy.

I never realized they were in such straits. I don’t know what they pay for bandwidth. I just assumed they had a business plan, and that they weren’t emulating the PJs by running on venture capital with no strategy for generating revenue.

The Internet is like the New World. At first, everyone who showed up was like a king. Then it got crowded, and success began to require more effort and ability. If you start a web media enterprise, the odds against you are astronomical.

The other day I realized that there are still people who do very well for themselves, using the web. If you can offer something unique and valuable, the web is a great way to sell it. Example: Tromix. It’s a couple of guys who machine gun parts and modify weapons. The things they do are not rocket science. There are millions of Americans who have similar skills. But there’s a strong demand for their parts and services, they promote themselves on niche websites, and they are highly competent. So they have to turn away business. That’s fantastic. It gives you hope, doesn’t it? America is sliding down the socialist drain, but individuals can still do well.

It occurred to me last night that it would be wonderful to market an invention on the web. The problem with this plan is that I have no invention. Another problem: you can put your inventions in the public domain by revealing them on a blog. So if I invented anything, I’d have to keep it to myself while I worked on it, and I wouldn’t be able to benefit from showing it to readers and asking for advice.

Last night I watched more milling DVDs. Man, it was beautiful. They skimmed layers off a block of aluminum using a fly cutter. I could watch that all day. Don’t ask me why. They machined aluminum at the start; this is a clean operation, because the only lube you need is WD40. When they went to steel, the guy had to hold a squeeze bottle and shoot oil onto the cutter continuously. What a mess. I didn’t realize it was necessary to do that every time you cut steel. Still cool, however.

Maybe I’ll get off my butt and hit the range. It has been too long.

Every Girl Loves Presents

I think one of the most irritating things you can do to a gun-grabber is to tell him you named your gun. So I think I’m going to call the new Vz 58 “Ivanka.” It’s a nice Czech name, and it applies to a hot babe who takes no crap.

Also, “Vera” is already taken. First by A Man They Call Jayne, and then by Doc Russia.

It’s hard to think of a sexy Russian name for the Saiga. Russian girl names tend to sound like “Agripena” and “Ludmila.” I considered “Mariska,” but it’s more Hungarian than Russian.

Ivanka has some new accessories on the way. I got her a cute new laser/light mount, plus a nasty strobe to put on it. A reader told me about these things. Supposedly they make people nauseous, which is a good thing, when those people are in your house toting weapons. We shall see. I went Chinese again. My Chinese laser is gorgeous, so I figured they were also capable of making flashlights.

The Saiga will have a laser on the side rail, plus a light under the barrel. The Vz 58 has limited (i.e. no) mounting options, so it will have the light and laser on the barrel, riding the same mount. If a criminal enters my home, it will be very hard to choose. I know one thing. The pistols will remain asnooze in their bags. Pistols are great, but long guns mean more shots on target, plus much greater capacity and stopping power.

Okay, the shotgun does not have greater capacity. But it has a whole lot, and one shot on target ends the game.

I think the Vz 58 was an excellent move. It’s like an M1 carbine that has taken tae kwon do. I got one magazine all loaded up with Wolf ammo, and I am itching to get to the range.

With enough prayer and a lot of luck, I will be able to go to my grave without shooting either of these things anywhere except at the range. But you never know. I don’t plan to have wrecks, but I still have airbags.

All I need now is a little bag for the Vz. I’ll keep it folded, right where I can get to it. At last, real home protection. Now I can go back to buying utterly frivolous guns that serve no purpose.

I Project Creepiness

I don’t get Glenn Beck. I just don’t. If I want to see grown men cry like babies, I’ll go to the liquor store and start breaking bottles of Chivas. If I want hysteria, I’ll start reading Amanda Marcotte.

I am not alone.

And Rahm It

This is pure sex. Check it out.

That is a Czech-made Vz 58 rifle in 7.62x39mm. It has a milled receiver. It has two super-light alloy magazines that hold 30 rounds each. It’s a side folder, made so the stock doesn’t interfere with the gun when folded. It’s two pounds lighter than an AK-47. And it was made in a country whose president says Al Gore is an idiot.

Hard to ask for more.

What a contrast, between this and the Saiga 12 shotgun I ordered. The Saiga is completely feminized, with a bunch of bizarre components that make it unrecognizable as an AK; all that crap has to be taken off and flushed. This baby, on the other hand, is ready to rock right out of the box.

You should see how tiny it is. The photos don’t do it justice. I don’t have an M1 carbine on hand, but this thing looks even smaller, and it has much more potential as a home defense gun. That’s saying a lot. An M1 carbine is a great thing to confront burglars with.

I could have had plastic furniture on this thing, but I chose the crazy particle-board stuff. I figured it would increase the gun’s value if I sold it. I picked a folder because I wanted to be able to shoot from the hip, using a laser. Which I already have. The gun has no place to mount optics, but I think of it as a short-range weapon, so I’m not planning to get a scope. If I can put the laser on the barrel, that should be enough to get the job done. If I decide I want a light as well, I am pretty sure I can order a new foregrip.

I can feel sweat oozing out of my body as I think of shooting this piece at the range. I can’t wait until tomorrow.

It bothered me that I couldn’t find a good milled AK for an acceptable price, but now I’m glad I didn’t get one. The AK is an immortal design, but it has zero class, and the style is crude, and it’s made with very little precision. This, on the other hand, is a real gun. With actual TOLERANCES. And it’s…CUTE.

I finally have some decent weapons for defensive purposes. I can rest easy while Obama and his stooge Holder try to trample our civil rights. They don’t have the guts to go after guns people already possess; they always divide us using grandfather clauses. That means I’m safe. Until they decide the grandfather clauses need to expire. I don’t think they’ll be able to do what they want to do. Gun control, for Democrats, has become like abortion for Republicans. They can’t get serious about it without risking a lot of precious votes.

Thank God I live in a state where it is still possible to get some use out of the second amendment.

If you don’t have serious defensive long guns yet, you better jump. For $550-$680, Classic Arms will give you what you need. Not a Vz 58, but a good stamped AK.

In other news, I received four new machine-tool videos from Smartflix. Honest to God, porn could not be any better. Which is good, because I can’t watch porn. The videos are from ATI (Accelerated Training Institute), and the ones I’m looking at are about the Bridgeport vertical mill. The guy in the videos runs some kind of firearms-related company, and he uses his machine tools in connection with that. He showed me all the parts of the mill, and he showed me various types of cutters, and by the time he was ready to cut some aluminum, I was in a trance. Like a crowd of moonbats, awaiting Obama’s next sneeze.

I’m not even kidding. I love watching people use tools. And I love big iron things made in America. I can’t really explain that.

I still have two and a half videos to go. Thinking about it almost makes my hands shake.

I better go sit on the couch and fondle my new rifle some more. Maybe I’ll be able to limit myself to two new guns this year.

By the way, I ordered this thing from Czech-Point. It’s a whole lot easier than trying to locate a new CZ-USA job. They claim some of the parts are reconditioned, but the barrel is like a mirror, and the only parts that look like they could conceivably have been used are the butt, pistol grip, and foregrip. It took them a while to get it delivered, but for a flat price, they cover everything. You just show up and do a background check. They pay the dealer fee.