Burn the Optimism Boy! Pitchforks! Torches! PURELL!!!!

Because I live a hermit-like existence, I am out of touch with many common trends, and usually, that’s a blessing. Lately, I have been out of the hysteria loop with regard to the coronavirus epidemic. I have read a few stories about it, but I have only discussed it with one person.

I think the panic is worse than I realized. Last week, I noticed that my local Home Depot had packed its aisles with displays of bleach and santizing wipes. It wasn’t until the second time I saw this that I put two and two together.

Yesterday, I had a blast cutting up a huge oak that had fallen over, and at the end of the day, I went to buy a rib eye to celebrate. I saw a lady at the store walking around with a surgical mask.

Okay, that’s too much. They say a lie travels around the world while the truth is still getting out of bed, and now I’ve seen proof.

Health officals say a mask won’t protect you from a virus floating in the air. They’re made to keep tiny, germ-laden water droplets from falling into surgical patients. They don’t trap individual microbes. Look it up. It should be obvious that the holes in masks are enormous compared to airborne viruses.

I suppose a mask could prevent you from touching your mouth and nose while you’re out and about. That should be worth something.

Surgical equipment isn’t magical. Operating rooms aren’t really sterile, as in “100% free of microbes.” I have not looked this up, but I have common sense (a little). You can’t destroy every loose microbe in a room full of people. Even if you manage to sterilize the room and equipment, as soon as one person walks in, the room is no longer sterile. I used to brew my own beer, and brewers used better terminology. They say beer equipment is sanitized but not sterile. Sanitizing isn’t the destruction of every microbe; it’s a gross reduction in their numbers so they can’t breed fast enough to be a problem.

I’ll bet doctors have a standard for the application of the term “sterile,” defined in microbes per unit of volume or area or something. I’m sure they don’t seriously believe operating rooms are truly sterile, in the lay sense of the word.

Youtubers say Amazon is out of surgical masks. Is that true? I can understand wearing one if you’re sick, to reduce (but not eliminate) the microbes you give off in public, but if doctors are right, there is no point in wearing one to ward off COVID-19 or any similar illness.

I have seen complaints that medical people are having trouble getting masks, which they actually need.

Maybe I’m wrong about the lady at the grocery. Maybe she has an immune disorder, or maybe drugs are suppressing her immune system, or maybe she has the flu and wants to protect everyone else. Or she could be painfully shy. In the current social climate, however, my money is on hysteria.

She looked pretty sturdy.

I have written about the strange phenomenon of attacking helpful people like me, who refute rumors and choose optimism. Since then, I have experienced it. I really annoyed one person when I predicted that COVID-19 wasn’t going to amount to much. No point in going into it here, but I received an emotional response painted up to look like the result of rational analysis. It was full of errors. If I interacted with more people, I would be getting more of this.

How is my prediction panning out? Better than I expected. The epidemic was cranking out 5,000 cases per day until yesterday. Now it’s more like 3,000. As I noted the other day, China, all by itself, would have to generate 1.5 million cases per day in order to come up with an epidemic resembling a typical American flu season. The ratio of 1.5 million to 3,000 is pretty big. If I owed you 1.5 million dollars, and I gave you 3,000, you would be very upset.

Of course, the ~3,000 cases we accumulated over the last day include all new cases, worldwide. If you limit it to China, the number is smaller, making COVID-19 look even less threatening.

The graphs depicting the number of cases over time are still flattening out, and that’s not compatible with a major pandemic. The growth should be exponential, not arithmetic, and right now, we barely have arithmetic growth. The transmission rate is so low, the number of cases could be said to be nearly stable.

What about the disease itself? What if you get it? They are now telling us it’s usually a cough plus a mild fever and shortness of breath. Only 13% of victims even get a sore throat. That’s a lot better than the flu! Man, I hate the flu. Sore throat, high fever, dizziness, weakness, bone pain, stuffy nose, mucus…one year, it made pus come out of my eyes.

Why are people dying, if the disease is so mild? First, they’re not dying. Much. Second, Chinese health care. Third, there are a lot of people who are so weak they can be killed by a strong breeze or being Rick-rolled, and they’re the ones who die from COVID-19. If you die from COVID-19, you were probably not long for this world anyway. You’re the type of person who dies from the flu or getting overly excited while watching Antiques Roadshow.

There are many, many people who have had COVID-19 without even realizing it, and many get no symptoms at all. Is that how it worked with actual pestilences like the black plague or the Spanish flu? No.

I guess the best reason to fight transmission is the lack of a vaccine. Old people and AIDS patients can’t protect themselves with vaccinations, so it’s up to everyone else to try to keep the disease away from them. Truthfully, however, given the mathematics of the situation, it makes more sense to put barriers around the weak than around the rest of us. It would be easier and cheaper. It’s easier to finance a bubble boy than a bubble world.

In view of the disease’s failure to spread and kill the way it was expected to, I am quadrupling down on my irritating predictions of pandemic fail. Quadrupling! People who love misery are now in danger of COVID-19 symptoms plus, if they read my blog, having steam come out of their ears.

I may be wrong. I’m just a guy who blogs for fun, and I have zero training in epidemiology. But I feel pretty confident. In order for the pandemic to materialize, the transmission graphs would have to shoot up abruptly for no good reason.

If COVID-19 has a path to blowing up the graphs, it must surely lie in Africa, the poorest and most primitive continent. There are 1.3 billion people there, and their medical system is atrocious. However, as AIDS has shown us, a disease that causes a plague in Africa isn’t necessarily catastrophic in other countries.

The AIDS story is very interesting. People tried to tell us it was a big threat to heterosexuals, thinking this would motivate politicians to spend more money on it. Then it turned out it was impossible for heterosexual men to get it from sex, and then the medical authorities hushed this up. Then it turned out to be a plague in Africa, and that exposed the enormous homosexuality rate there. Men who claimed to be straight were not, and many who held themselves out as heterosexual got the disease from voodoo initiations in which they were sodomized by witch doctors.

I guess I shouldn’t make light of vile, humiliating rituals that give men a lethal illness which spreads to women, but it makes me feel a lot better about the things Christians have to put up with from pastors. Although there is the pedo-plague the Christian clergy can’t seem to shake.

Anyway, AIDS activists tried to tell us straights were going to get AIDS here, and they used Africa to prove their point, claiming straight male Africans were getting it. Not so.

You should really try not to be mad at helpful people who debunk the coronavirus hype. Instead, ask yourself why part of you is hoping for a catastrophe. That’s what’s going on inside you. It’s not healthy to feel that way.

As for me, my beautiful new welding mask has arrived, as have some gun things I needed. I am planning to fabricate, work on my plan to turn my dining room into a gun room, and install a new extractor spring on my Desert Eagle. If I feel like going to the store, I’ll go to the store. I won’t even wear a space suit.

New Colt Headed for the Barn

The news here is pretty bright.

First, I found myself a good deal on a beautiful Colt Woodsman.

Leftists like to say people who like guns like them because they’re racist or because they have problems with their genitals. These are amazing claims, given that guns have no race and that a gun makes a pretty poor substitute for sexual organs. Gun control, on the other hand, has racist roots. In America, gun control got much of its impetus in the post-Civil-War south, where authorities tried to prevent blacks from owning guns. We also saw race-based gun laws in the 20th century; the famous “Saturday Night Special” laws were aimed at blacks, who were less likely to be able to afford good firearms. In Nazi Germany, Hitler used gun control to subdue the citizenry and prevent them from defending themselves against tyranny. One of his gun laws has been used as a pattern for American gun control laws.

Anyway, I like guns mainly because they remind me of the best parts of my miserable childhood. My family was dysfunctional. My dad drank. He was verbally and physically abusive. He used to hit my mother. My sister and I were always unhappy. My mother’s parents lived in Kentucky, and I spent a lot of time with them. They had a beautiful house with 4 bedrooms. My grandfather had lots of guns, and we used to shoot together. I had access to his guns, and I could use them when I wanted.

I was his favorite grandchild. Some of my relatives would explode if they read that, but it’s true. I was the third oldest. My older sister was popular when she was very young, but after that, her star waned due to her unpleasant personality and her cruelty. I had a male cousin who was born on the same day as my sister, and he was a perfectly nice kid, but somehow, he and Gramps didn’t connect. I had a male cousin who was a year younger, and he was a terror. He was the only grandchild my grandfather ever spanked.

There were four younger grandchildren, and my grandfather loved them, but I was different. I was the one he threw in the truck when he wanted to go putter around on his farms. He bought two ponies for his grandkids, and he told my mother it was worth it as long as he got to see me ride once. I wish I had known how he felt, because I didn’t particularly like horses.

For the most part, I shot two guns with him. One was a cheesy 9-shot .22 revolver with an aluminum frame, and the other was a 3rd generation Colt Woodsman. I shot very well, which is strange, considering my age at the time. Maybe this is one of the reasons he favored me.

When you shoot a lot, you want someone to shoot with. Helping kids (or adults) shoot can be fun, but it can also be a pain in the butt. If their attitudes are bad, if they’re frivolous, if they’re whiny, if they refuse to listen, if they seem to be incurably helpless, it’s a real drag. I was not helpless. You could put a gun in my hand and watch me hit stuff with it.

When he died, I made a list of his guns and handed it over to the family. He had a Marlin lever action, a Remington 12 gauge, a Sweet Sixteen, two Smith & Wesson .357 Magnums, a commemorative Colt 1911, a .22 rifle, two small Smith & Wesson pocket revolvers, an M1 carbine pistol, and some other things, including the Woodsman. The guns stayed in his house until my grandmother died years later. When it came time to ask the lawyers for the guns we wanted, the Woodsman was gone, along with a lot of other things. No one ever offered an explanation. Someone stole the guns.

Was it a relative? Was it the lawyers? Was it the lady who cleaned my grandparents’ house? No idea. In the end, I got the aluminum .22, my grandfather’s father’s flintlock shotgun, and I Sweet Sixteen, which already belonged to my dad. My grandmother gave it to him before she died, so it was never part of either estate. Nobody else wanted the aluminum revolver or the shotgun.

In practical terms, I got just about nothing. The revolver and the flintlock were junk, and my dad owned the Sweet Sixteen. I didn’t get it until he died, 16 years after my grandmother.

Whoever took the Woodsman forgot the owner’s manual, which I now have. It would be a nice thing for that person to have, but they will never get it, because in order to get it, they have to confess.

It’s kind of sad that I didn’t get some guns. I’m the best shot in the family, and while I have one cousin who hunts, I know a lot more about firearms. My grandfather would have wanted me to have at least one decent pistol or rifle.

Some person got a whole bunch of guns. Two big revolvers, two small ones, the carbine, the 12 gauge, the .22 rifle…lots of things. I know what happened to the 1911. It went to my cousin, because his dad bought it for my grandfather. That was the right outcome, although I didn’t get the big Frederick Remington sculpture my mother went out and got for my grandfather.

Two people have told me that my grandmother’s father had a gold watch, and that my grandmother said it was to go to me. They say my aunt gave it to my cousin. I don’t know if that’s true. Some day I’ll ask. I don’t expect to get the watch, but it would be informative to see what she says.

For a long time, I wanted another Woodsman. It would not be the same as having the one I used to shoot in Kentucky, but it would still be a nice reminder. Yesterday, I found a very good deal online. I found a gun in better shape than my grandfather’s, and I jumped on it. It should be here in a few days.

Online gun sites get a lot of criticism, because a lot of the sellers are profiteers. Nonetheless, if you search and wait, sometimes you’ll get surprising deals. It has happened to me. People were trying to get a thousand dollars or more for a good Woodsman, and I paid a lot less.

They say living well is the best revenge, and that is particularly true for God’s children. People rob us all the time, and we’re not able to scrap with them the way other people are, so we lose things. God compensates us, and when he does, he gives us more than we lost. I may never see my grandfather’s pistol again, but God has been very generous and merciful with me, so if I feel like it, I can buy a bunch of pistols and rifles. Maybe I’ll start collecting Woodsmans. I could buy some that are much nicer than the one that was stolen.

You know what they say: God bless the child who’s got his own. I don’t have my grandfather’s gun, but when I look at the one I got, I will still think of him, and I’ll know I didn’t have to extend myself to get it. No one else will ever have a claim on it or any of the other guns I got myself.

In celebration, I decided to get some steel gongs. These are handy for people who like to shoot quickly and are not interested in precision. I’m going to hang them in the pasture by the berm. I got two round gongs, a hog-shaped gong, and another gong shaped like a squirrel.

I don’t know how my grandfather would feel about gongs. He was an exceptional shot. My father saw him shoot a grouse out of a tree with a rifled slug at 50 yards, without shouldering the gun. He also said my grandfather was the best wing shot he ever saw.

I don’t know what you’re supposed to do with a grouse that has been rearranged by a 12 gauge slug.

I like gongs, though. Sometimes you just want to relax. Besides, they’re good for rapid-fire practice, which is important for self-defense.

Second thing…new welding helmet.

I started welding with a helmet from Harbor Freight, which a reader recommended. I have no major problems with these helmets. I paid $40, and I didn’t even have to buy a battery. The helmet was powered by the light from the welding arc. It worked fine.

As time passed, I found I wanted a helmet with a bigger viewing area, so I bought a Hobart Hood when they were on sale at Northern Tool. This helmet has batteries. It’s not a cheap helmet, and it works pretty well.

As I got older, I found I wanted to weld better, and I got frustrated with the difficulty of seeing the weld puddle using the Hobart helmet. I Googled around, and I learned that I was using second-tier equipment. Expensive helmets give a better view. In particular, I learned that Lincoln Electric’s 3350 series helmets with 4C technology were much, much better than what I was using. My Hobart turns everything green, and it’s hard to see what I’m doing. Lincoln helmets don’t distort color as much, they’re much clearer, and you can turn the shade down as low as 5.

Last week, I ordered a Lincoln. I look forward to it. I have some welding jobs I’m keeping on hold until it arrives.

It should be a big blessing. I’ve improved my ability to see my work using bright lights and vitamin A, but based on what I’ve seen on the web, the Lincoln should take me to another level. It also has an external button to shut off the shade so I can wear the helmet while grinding metal. With the Hobart, I have to remove the helmet and use a face shield.

Now I’ll have three helmets. I can lend the Hobart to guests. Maybe I can do the same thing with the Harbor Freight helmet, if I can get it to work. The batteries eventually give out, and you can’t replace them without cutting the helmet up.

I have to hit Lowe’s and get some stuff to hang gongs. I’m planning to use garden crooks. I have a scheme for hanging the gongs so they tilt forward and direct bullet fragments toward the ground. It should work. I may use 1″ by 1/8″ steel bar to make straps for hanging the gongs. It won’t move around like chain or rope.

Flat bar is phenomenally useful.

I’m considering getting a couple of small semiauto pistols, just for fun. I found a pretty good deal on a Colt Model 1903 in .32 ACP with a nickel finish. I’m thinking I should put pimptastic pearl grips on it. Neat little gun. The one I’m looking at was made in 1911. I’m also thinking about buying a stainless Colt Mustang Plus II in .380 and using my buffer to give it a mirror finish.

I’m not in love with the calibers, but they would be fun projects and shooters.

A long time ago, I wrote about my desire to fix up a stainless gun I had, and someone who knew absolutely nothing informed me that polishing guns was highly skilled labor performed by people with years of training. It didn’t occur to me to check out this patently ridiculous claim. Since then, I’ve learned that putting a mirror finish on a brushed or satin stainless gun is so easy, you can do it with paper towels while sitting on your couch. I have a magnificent Baldor buffer, so for me, it will be even easier.

I don’t know why people say crazy, seemingly authoritative things about subjects they know nothing about.

One of the big problems with seeking advice on the Internet is that you will generally hear from ignoramuses who will assure you that you can’t do what you plan to do. It has happened to me over and over. The fact that someone else lacks ability doesn’t mean you or I do. The fact that someone else fails at simple tasks doesn’t mean you will.

I had a professional restaurant manager tell me I couldn’t make French fries in beef fat. What if I had listened? He could not have been more wrong. McDonald’s used to use pure beef fat, back when their fries were actually good. I was told I couldn’t use a TV as a computer monitor. I did it anyway, starting in about 2007, and it has been fantastic. People said putting a pistol in a pocket holster was stupid. Wrong. It’s way better than a belt holster or one of those ridiculous things people jam in their pants. Someone told me it was impossible to shoot a 12 gauge shotgun well from the hip. Wrong. Never let someone discourage you without looking into the facts.

I remember deciding I wanted to put a green laser on an assault rifle with a folding stock. My plan was to shoot from the hip. This provides huge advantages at indoor distances. People said I was nuts. I did it anyway. It works great, and I didn’t have to get an SBR stamp.

Point-shooting gives you an enormous advantage over people who use sights. Former SEAL Team 6 leader Richard Marcinko agrees with me. He obtained tremendous amounts of ammunition for his men, and he had them train without sights. When you shoot with sights, you’re lucky if you can get three shots off in two seconds. Without sights, you can shoot 10 rounds during that time. Believe me; unless you’re hopeless, you’re going to hit something.

I remember going on a church shooting outing. I showed a young man how to shoot a Glock. I talked to him about the sight picture. He didn’t listen. He held the gun out in front of him like a TV cop and blasted away from 7 yards. His shots went into an area about 6″ in diameter. Break into that kid’s house, and you are going to DIE. No two ways about it. He was right, and I was wrong.

We tend to train by squeezing shots off slowly, while trying our best to maintain 1″ groups. Try that with a burglar in your house. Seriously. Good luck.

An untrained burglar will empty 18 rounds from his stolen sideways gun while you’re playing around with your sight picture. Even an idiot can hit you 1/18 of the time without aiming.

Maybe we need to give up ideas we came up with when pistols only held 5 rounds.

Why do people say “revolvers and pistols”? A revolver IS a pistol. Dictionaries don’t lie. Much.

I’m on a tangent.

I have to go buy a gunsmith’s bench block so I can fix my Desert Eagle. Maybe while I’m at the store, I’ll check out a Glock 20.

I will definitely put up photos when I shoot the Woodsman.

The Floor is not for Storage

Today is a big day. I’ve been organizing my gun stuff.

When you have one gun, organization is pretty simple. You put the gun in your pocket or your nightstand, and you put the ammunition in a drawer along with a simple cleaning kit. When you have a fair number of guns, it’s different. I suppose I have 6 different types of .22 ammunition. I have at least two types of .17 HMR ammunition. I have multiple versions of ammunition for a bunch of calibers. I have brass, bullets, primers, and powder for a bunch of calibers. My cleaning kit is pretty big, and I have a separate box of chemicals and Boresnakes. Then there are my targets, gadgets, parts, and papers.

It’s a mess.

Speaking of targets, I made a practice of buying Caldwell Orange Peel second-quality targets whenever they turned up for sale, so I have a pretty decent supply on hand. In retrospect, this wasn’t the best move I could have made.

I bought 8″ circular targets with white circular grids on them. I don’t need an 8″ target most of the time. For me, a 4″ target will usually do the job. For a pistol at 60 feet, a 6″ target would be fine. By buying 8″ targets, I risked wasting a lot of paper.

I learned I could economize by shooting at several different places on each target. By doing this, you can turn each target into at least 5 targets.

My system works, but I have started buying targets with 4 4-inch bullseyes on them. It’s somewhat more elegant, and it still saves money.

Today I located all the boxes I could find which had gun-related things in them. I still have a bunch of boxes I haven’t unpacked since leaving Miami. There are things I just don’t need to have unpacked, so for the most part, leaving the boxes as they are makes sense. Today I dug into the boxes that actually needed to be emptied and organized. I found Russian sniper ammo, loose pistol shells, owner’s manuals, bits of a chronograph, a green laser, and plenty of other things.

I rooted around online, trying to come up with a way to store these things. I can use little cardboard boxes, but cardboard falls apart eventually, and certain bugs like to live in it. I finalled decided to try transparent plastic boxes from Home Depot. They cost a little over a dollar each, and each box will hold a good deal of ammunition.

This left me with papers to deal with. My solution is a see-through file box from Office Depot. It will give me a place to put all my manuals. The ones I still have, I mean.

Gun cleaning items…I still have no solution. I have a wheeled toolbox I used to use for range trips when I was a land-deprived surburbanite who could not shoot in his own yard. Maybe I can throw everything in that.

A lot of people use steel ammo boxes for ammo storage. They cost a lot, they’re heavy, and they’re too big for most of my calibers. I would rather spend $20 than $200.

I got my Desert Eagle out and shot it this weekend. It was a Chinese fire drill. About half of the shells refused to extract, and the rest hit me in the face, leaving cuts and bruises.

I think this demonstrates a fundamental difference between men and women. With the possible exception of ballet, there is no hobby women will take up which causes them to be injured repeatedly. Only a man will continue firing a gun that flings hot shells into his forehead. Women can’t enjoy that kind of thing.

I did what I usually do when I have a problem. My first response should be prayer, but I tend to go to Google first. I learned some things about the Desert Eagle.

First, it has a terrible extractor spring. It’s not even a real spring. It’s a tiny red piece of “polymer” (plastic to you and me) that sits under the extractor. It looks like a miniature Jujube. Magnum Research sold thousands of these guns and didn’t tell buyers the Jujubes fell apart upon being exposed to oil and solvents.

Good thing no one ever puts oils or solvents on firearms!

My extractor Jujube is apparently dead. I have not opened the bolt up completely, but there is no tension at all on the extractor, which is the reason I still have some skin on my forehead. I ordered two new extractor springs, and I also ordered an AR15 spring. I read that AR15 springs, which are steel, fit the Desert Eagle just fine.

Second thing I learned: the Desert Eagle has an adjustable trigger.

Did this thing come with a manual? If so, I should punch myself for not reading it.

Or I could just hold the Desert Eagle in front of me and fire a shot.

I have always criticized the Desert Eagle’s trigger. It felt like I was trying to close rusty scissors on a piece of sandpaper. When I found out there was a simple screw for trigger adjustment, I adjusted the trigger, and now it seems almost pleasant. Wish I had known about this sooner.

I can’t shoot the gun until my springs get here. I hope it functions.

Magnum Research always blamed the end user for being battered with shells. They said it was caused by “limp-wristing,” which means holding the gun like Barack Obama. Not so. I held it very firmly yesterday and still got pummeled. I’m wondering if the extractor problem could have had anything to do with it.

I plan to keep researching the problem. There may be some way to fix the gun so I don’t have to wear a face shield.

I’m not impressed with the gun’s engineering. I have some pretty old guns, and they work just fine. I don’t have to open them up and insert new plastic Jujubes every hundred rounds. Running properly for many years without repairs is normal. You can make excuses for Magnum Research, but the truth is, they blew it.

Why haven’t I been shooting the gun over the years? Simple. The rounds cost me a dollar each. The other day, I started to feel bad about owning a beautiful firearm I did not use, so I looked around online for ammo. While the mainstream stuff has increased to maybe $1.35 per round, a reputable company called Precision One makes it considerably cheaper, so that’s what I ordered. It’s probably great ammunition when you shoot it in a firearm that works.

I have dies for .50 AE, so I am looking into reloading. It appears that there are two types of bullets: the 80¢ kind and the 32¢ kind. There is no point in reloading using 80¢ bullets. It would cost as much as factory ammo. A company called Berry’s makes the cheaper bullets. I may pick some up when the box I ordered runs dry.

If I can get my shooting stuff organized, maybe there is hope for the rest of my possessions. I am still working on the workshop. I’m about to put my dry saw on wheels. That will help. Things are already much better than they were a month ago.

Right now, there are a bunch of piles of ammunition, parts, and so on littering my floor. I’m happy about it, though, because it’s the beginning of the end of a tiresome problem.

I’m going to try to shoot more. I’m thinking of buying a couple of steel gongs.

When I finish fabricating the saw stand, I’ll post photos. I think it will be amazing, especially to people familiar with the dubious quality of most of my metal work.

Mr. Technology Explains it all to You

This may sound incredible, but I usually have a subject in mind when I sit down to blog. No, seriously; I do. Today is different. I’m blogging to kill time because I’m not feeling all that well.

It’s nothing serious, so don’t worry. I should be fine by tonight. Feel free to pray if you want, however. I would love that. All I’m willing to say right now is a) my condition proves it’s very important to pay close attention to eye protection when you weld, and b) my condition does not involve my eyes.

I’m trying to think of something interesting to write about.

I got some more neat tools, and I’ll tell you why I bought some of them.

I carry the 9mm Glock I bought for my dad years ago. When I bought it, I sprang for night sights, which your carry piece really ought to have unless it has the other accessory I got for him later: a Crimson Trace laser sight.

I am not an laser sight expert, but I know a little bit, so I will provide some information which will be extremely helpful to anyone who carries and doesn’t already have a way to aim quickly in low light.

When I bought this sight, there were two well-known companies making laser accessories for pistols: Crimson Trace and Lasermax. I have a Lasermax on my 10mm. A Lasermax is really a replacement guide rod with a laser on the front. I thought it would be a great sight because it’s always parallel to the barrel. Pistol guide rods are mounted that way.

The original Crimson Trace is different. It’s a somewhat bulky gadget that wraps around the upper part of a gun’s grip. The laser is situated to the right of the slide. You can’t pick up a gun that has this type of Crimson Trace on it without turning the laser on. The obvious benefit is that when you need to draw your gun, you won’t have to ask your murderer, rapist, or overly enthused Antifa kid for a time out while you turn your laser on. Not that Antifa kids are using guns yet. Guns are so cisgender. I think they’re still throwing bottles of THC-enhanced urine.

The Lasermax on my gun has a little button sort of thing you push to turn it on. For many people, this can be a problem. If you don’t practice, you won’t remember to turn the laser on when the fun starts. Also, the bar the button belongs to can move around and become dislodged.

Somewhere I got the idea that the Crimson Trace was not adjustable for windage and elevation. I was totally wrong, but that’s what I thought. This is why I got the Lasermax for myself. I thought it would work for me because I’m sufficiently familiar with my gun to be able to operate it in a hurry. I wanted an accurate sight, because I shoot well, and I want to hit what I aim at.

Some time last year, I started feeling something sharp poking me when I handled the gun with the Crimson Trace. I found a little pin sort of thing protruding from the right side of the sight. I made a very weak effort to figure out what it was, and I did not succeed. I put off fixing it.

Eventually, the pin (actually a screw) made a hole in the pocket of a pair of Carhartt jeans, and I knew I had to act. By Googling for more than three minutes (because this was an urgent matter), I learned that the protruding screw was there to adjust the windage. I also learned that I needed a 0.028″ Allen wrench to adjust it. Of course, I had lost or misplaced the original tool Crimson Trace thoughtfully provided with the sight.

Let me digress. I would not buy another Lasermax, and I wholeheartedly recommend the Crimson Trace. I have had an important part of my Lasermax wear out, and the part is too soft, so it will wear out again. Changing the batteries is harder with a Lasermax, too, and the batteries don’t last long at all (“Excuse me, Mr. Mateen…could you put your rifle down while I change my batteries?”). Finally, it’s not automatic.

The best thing about the Lasermax is that it replaces the Glock guide rod. The original rods tend to fail. It has happened to me twice. Maybe I can keep the Lasermax and use it as a guide rod while relying on a Crimson Trace for targeting.

My Crimson Trace works perfectly, and I’m still on the batteries it had in it when it was new. The windage screw can walk out over time, so you need to watch it, and a pin that holds the sight in place can also drift, so you may have to push it back in at some point. These are the only problems I’ve had, and they’re trivial.

To get back to my repair saga, I took the Glock out, activated the laser, and sure enough, the dot was off by maybe three inches at 10 feet.

No problem! I have a ton of tools. Several tons, actually. I have multiple sets of Allen keys. I have multiple sets of tamper-proof driver bits. There was absolutely no doubt that I had a 0.028″ Allen wrench somewhere.

Except I didn’t.

I could not believe it. What a void in my tool arsenal. How could it have happened?

As expected, I found there was no hope of buying the wrench locally, so I went to Amazon. I found a set of Bondhus metric and SAE Allen wrenches in tiny sizes. I also found something even neater: a set of Wiha SAE Allen wrenches in precision screwdriver format. Instead of L-shaped bars, the set contained little screwdrivers with Allen hexes machined into the ends.

You know I had to have that.

Precision screwdrivers come with caps that rotate, so you can put the tip of a driver in a fastener and turn the screwdriver while holding onto the cap. This is a great thing, and it’s why I leapt at the chance to get Wiha precision Allen drivers.

Some people say there are better precision drivers than the ones Wiha makes. As far as I know, the ones that get all the praise are all German.

Here is some useful information. Many Allen wrenches on the market today *cough cough China* are made from soft “steel.” This is bad. Allen screws *cough cough more China cough* also tend to be pretty soft, and, well, the whole business stinks to high heaven.

Whenever you buy a Chinese tool with Allen screws, you should check the screws for hardness. If they’re not hard, replace them before they get stripped out and make your life miserable.

Do I do this? Yes. Of course!

I did it once, I mean.

I think.

When you buy Allen wrenches, you really need to avoid the cheap ones unless you have solid evidence that the set you’re buying isn’t garbage. An easy way to avoid getting burned is to stick with top brands. Bondhus is a top brand, and Wiha makes great…everything. It’s a German company. Need I say more? Yes, BMW’s and Porches break down a lot, and our faith in Germany received a powerful blow when we found out about Milli Vanilli, but German tools are very nice.

I’ll be even more helpful. Buy German screwdrivers. They’re not that expensive, and they’re fantastic. I have Wera screwdrivers which are so tough the manufacturer put steel caps on them to receive hammer blows and named them “Chiseldrivers.” That’s just nuts.

If you want American screwdrivers, check out Grace. They look sort of crude, but they’re excellent. They have square wooden handles. Yes, they will stain, but they won’t roll away, and there is no solvent in your garage that will dissolve unfinished wood or make it slippery.

Grace makes screwdrivers that are especially good for gunsmithing.

I have Klein screwdrivers, and they’re American. I should not have bought them. I’m sure they’re wonderful for electrical work (Klein specializes in electrician tools), but when you get gasoline on them, the rubber on the handles starts to dissolve. Eventually, you are likely to find yourself working on something that runs on gas, improbable as it sounds.

My love affair with Klein is not what it once was. I have two pairs of expensive Klein pliers with handles that started falling off in big chunks. They have a lifetime warranty, but you have to pay for shipping, so it’s worthless. The shipping cost is about the same as the cost of new handle covers, and if Klein gives you the same covers you had to begin with, they’ll just fall off again.

Here’s something weird: Klein makes a different type of cover. The product is called “Klein-Koat.” You can buy them and install them yourself. They look a lot better than the originals.

I also bought myself a decimal chart. This is a poster-sized chart that tells you how big drill bits and other cutting tools are, in decimal inches.

As you surely know, SAE drill bits come in three types of sizes: fractional inch, letter, and wire gauge. They don’t come in decimal inch size as far as I know, and that’s bizarre. Very often, when you work with drill bits, you’ll need a bit in a certain size range, like 0.310″-0.320″. If you have a chart on your wall, you can just look up and get the information you need. If not, you may have to open a book or get out a dial caliper.

The Starrett company mails out free decimal charts as well as free pocket charts. This is pretty sweet, but the wall charts are paper, and you can guess what will happen to yours if you don’t enclose it somehow. In the old days, many companies put their names on charts, and they made them from metal. They’re very collectible now, unfortunately. MSC Industrial sells a 24″-wide chart which is either plastic or laminated, and I believe it also has holes so you can hang it without damaging it. It only costs a few dollars, and mine is arriving today.

You would be surprised how useful these charts are. There are also metric charts. I don’t know what kind of information is on them. I don’t do a lot of metric. I wish I did. The metric system is far superior to SAE or Imperial or whatever you want to call it.

Also among my recent scores: two Noga magnetic bases. These babies are magnificent. They stick like glue, they’re very tough, they have little adjustment knobs that make indicating a pleasure, and they’re made by Jews in Israel. What more could you want? They cost a lot, but how often do you buy magnetic bases? I’ve been machining for 12 years, and I only have 4.

Jews are the best at science and technology. I’ll just say it. Has anyone else discovered relativity and developed the first atom and thermonuclear bombs? Didn’t think so. And I love knowing my money occasionally makes it to Israel without passing through the United States Department of the Treasury first.

Let’s see. I bought a small copy of The Engineers Black Book. This is a small, handy reference which serves the same purpose as Machinery’s Handbook except that it probably contains only the most useful 5% of that book’s staggering content. Unlike Machinery’s Handbook, which has flimsy paper pages, the Black Book has some sort of plastic pages you can wipe clean. That’s a huge thing in a metal shop.

The price of Machinery’s Handbook has gone through the roof lately. Because the information changes very slowly over the years, smart people buy used copies.

I bought a new copy.

Hey, it was years ago, before the jacked the price to Martin Shkreli levels.

Why is it so expensive now? Is it being printed by Snap-On?

A while back, I needed to chase the 1″-8 UNC threads on a tractor attachment, and I realized I did not have a suitable single-point indexed tool. A guy on a forum recommended one from Ebay, so I picked that up. It looks like it’s made very well. It came with a box of carbide inserts, and I got the whole shooting match for $18, shipped from…wait for it…China. I had already fixed the tractor part when the threading bar arrived, but it’s still an important tool to have.

Speaking of carbide, as in “indexed carbide tooling,” I heard a wild claim on Youtube today, and I’m really hoping it’s true. Two of the best-known Youtube tool guys are John Saunders (NYC CNC) and Stefan Gotteswinter, who, in spite of his Chinese-looking name, lives in Germany. Saunders visited…the other guy’s shop…(I am not typing that name again), and they agreed: HSS is obsolete! I should add that they didn’t mean it was obsolete for everything, but they believe it’s no good for end mills.

HSS, which means “High Speed Steel,” is a century-old invention used mainly for cutting tools that cut metal. It’s a wonderful material. In the distant past, carbon steel (or “plain old steel”…humorous initials not intended) was the best thing available. Carbon steel has a problem. When it gets hot, it gets soft fast, and it can permanently lose its hardness in an instant.

There are two reasons why steel that has these properties is inferior. First, when you sharpen steel, you are likely to get it hot enough to undo the hardening and tempering processes. Second, when you cut at high speeds, with a lot of pressure, or without generous lubricant, you can melt your cutting edges very quickly. This adds up to slower sharpening, more frequent sharpening, more discarded tools, and slower work. When you’re paying workers by the hour, you want a drill bit that can drill 20 holes a minute, not three holes, and you don’t want them wasting time on the sharpening machine.

HSS is a huge improvement over carbon steel, and it will always have lots of uses, but when it comes to end mills, it can’t compare to tungsten carbide, which is extremely hard and even more tolerant of heat.

A lot of noob machinists love carbide because it lasts a long time. They love it in lathe tools because you don’t have to shape carbide cutting edges yourself; you just buy new ones. Old codg…I mean “experienced machinists”…tend to look down on people who love carbide, because it takes much less skill to use it, and there are some things HSS does better. I have been taken to task for my love of carbide. I almost never grind my own HSS lathe tools.

There is also a widespread belief (which I held until an hour ago) that carbide can’t get as sharp as HSS. This matters when you want really nice finishes. Saunders and…the German guy…say this is not true. They say they sharpen carbide until you can shave with it, and they even say HSS does not have the sharpness potential of carbide.

That would be nice, if it were true. And because both of these guys are professional CNC machinists, my guess is that it is true.

Stefan–we are on a first-name basis because I don’t want to type “Gotteswinter”–had something else to say in the video. He says he sharpens carbide inserts. If true, this is a huge thing for home machinists. Carbide inserts often cost $10 or more per piece, and it’s not hard to screw them up. If you could touch them up (or just plain customize them) yourself, you could save a lot of cash, and you would be willing to try new things that had suddenly become easy and economical.

He also says you generally don’t need a chipbreaker on an insert in a home shop. A chipbreaker is a little groove that runs around the border of an insert. It would be nearly impossible to reproduce in a home shop. The purpose of a chipbreaker is to prevent chips (metal shavings) from getting so long they turn into dangerous, razor-sharp “birds’ nests.” Obviously, the smaller a job is, the smaller the nests will be, so they become inconsequential. I never thought about it until today.

I admit, it’s generally possible to find excellent inserts on Ebay for very little money. I don’t know why. Surplus, I guess. But finding sharp ones is not that easy. Most carbide inserts have rounded edges. Sometimes a sharp tool is better. It would be great to redeem worn inserts at home by adding sharp edges.

Even if you manage to find good inserts for a dollar apiece, the ability to renew and alter them would be a big plus.

Yesterday I blogged about the possibility of getting a Chinese tool grinder for my shop. Now that I have this new information about carbide, the grinder looks even more useful.

I’m feeling considerably better now, and it looks like I killed an hour or so. I’m having a great day in spite of the way I felt earlier. Hope you are, too.

One Step Closer to Front End Loader Domination

I chalked up another wonderful day today.

I was hoping to work on my Offroad Swag finger brake, but I needed to finish the Kubota front end loader brace to get it out of the way, so I worked on that instead.

The brace is a steel channel with two end plates on it. It goes on a hydraulic rod to prevent the front end loader from coming down.

Yesterday I went through the shop like a hurricane, moving stuff into more-logical positions, throwing things out, and generally turning a crowded shop into a spacious one. I moved nearly all the metalworking stuff to one end, and I distributed it around an open area, facing in. I took my beverage fridge to the dump. That hurt, but it was a very cheap fridge with no defrost cycle, and it was so badly engineered, it was not possible to use it. It froze over every few days.

For some reason, the guy who sold us this house had a big set of shelves on the wall by the workbench. First of all, a workbench should never be against a wall. Things will fall down behind it, cleaning it will be impossible, and if you put something heavy on it, you will have to turn it over and over while you work on it because you can’t walk behind the bench. The seller’s bench was against the wall, and when I moved here, I told the movers to put mine there TEMPORARILY, and I let it sit there for two years. Now I can get to it from all sides.

I’m digressing. The shelves were in a place where they got in the way. All the other shelves were across the shop. I took everything off the shelves, dragged the whole thing outside, pressure-washed it with Dawn, and put it with the other shelves. I put stuff on it relatively neatly, with some effort at organization.

Now my bench, tool chests, and metalworking tools are all in one area. That’s where I worked on the brace. I loved it. I was able to get to things without climbing over junk or walking around the tractors.

I did something I should have done sooner: I did final measurements for the brace. I raised the loader to see how long the brace needed to be. When I did that, I realized one end plate on the brace needed to be installed at an angle. It was going to rest against the framework that supports the loader. The loader cylinders move, and the framework doesn’t, so when the loader is raised, the cylinders are at a sharp angle with regard to the framework. The flat plate at the end of the brace has to be angled so it will rest flat against the framework.

I took a T-bevel and measured the angle on the tractor. I drew the angle on the brace. Then I cleaned off my dry cut saw, put it on my Harbor Freight scissor lift cart, and cut the brace perfectly.

That made me happy.

I considered quitting, because I didn’t have enough steel. When I changed the end of the brace from perpendicular to angled, I lengthened it. I had a 3″ square of steel ready to weld over it, but now I needed 3″ by 4″. I decided to weld the plate on the other end to get me a head start on the next day.

Problem: I could not find my welding magnets. I needed them to position the plate on the brace for tacking. Again, I considered quitting.

I don’t know if the movers stole my welding magnets, or I left them stuck to a machine tool in Miami, or what. I knew I was not going to have them to help me with the plate. I decided to try a woodworking clamp.

I got myself a long bar clamp and used it to hold the plate in place. It was not a great setup. One end of the clamp rested on the newly cut angled end of the brace, so it didn’t have much to hold it in place. Also, the clamp had rubber pads on it, and I was using it for welding.

I fired up the Harbor Freight welder, took a deep breath, and started tacking. No problems! Once I had the first tack done, I knew I was home-free, because I could use that tack to hold things together while I moved the clamp to produce better alignment for the other tacks.

I placed my tacks, removed the clamp, and welded the plate on. Things went very well by my standards. I saw the weld pretty well, and I didn’t blow through the metal. I put the weld more or less where it should have been. It wasn’t gorgeous, but it wasn’t terrible, either.

The welds were shiny, I didn’t get porosity, and I didn’t have any disasters.

When I was done, I played around with my Dumore hand grinder and a carbide burr, prettying up the welds a little, but I didn’t do much. It will look okay as it is.

Now that I’ve got things fixed so I can see what I’m welding (and now that I have a decent metal supplier), I should be able to get much, much better at welding in the coming weeks.

I’m going to get some more welding magnets. I have a feeling mine are in Miami. I’m not going to wait around.

I’m glad I had the dry cut saw. It does beautiful, precise cuts, and it’s fast. I need to make a mobile stand and base for it.

I guess I’ll go see the metal dealer tomorrow and get more steel for the brace. I should be able to finish the metal work tomorrow, no problem. Then I can throw a coat of paint on it. When the paint is dry, I’ll form some leather over the ends, glue it on, and be done with it.

I still think I’ll start parking the tractor outside from now on, but the brace is an important thing to have because it will allow me to work on the tractor without removing the loader. Today I had to install a support for the battery, and I had to climb over the loader bucket over and over. I won’t have to do that any more.

If I can get the brace welded up tomorrow, I can start welding (or practicing to weld) the finger brake. Once the finger brake is done, my world will change. I’ll be able to make some incredible stuff, very quickly.

I love the Harbor Freight welder. It’s extremely handy. Very easy to use. I’ll be doing more welding now simply because I have a tool that takes a lot of effort out of it.

I’ve been watching Forged in Fire lately, and it’s hard to believe how little the contestants know about tools. They don’t know how to use the drill press, which is a simple tool. Almost none of them can weld. They can’t use a mill. A lot of them call themselves master smiths. All I can say is that the master smith exam must be pretty easy. Seems like all they know is how to heat and beat steel, and many of them can barely do that.

I don’t know how to forge a knife, but I can use tools every knife smith should be very comfortable with. Teach me to forge, and I’ll be the master of all master smiths, not because I’m great, but because most of these other guys are hopeless with standard metalworking tools. They make mistakes no machinist would make.

I’m mediocre at many metalworking tasks, but I know the basics. That would set me apart on that show. Not that I plan to become a knife smith. Just something that occurred to me. Made me feel better about my skills.

I don’t know much at all about fixing houses and cars. Something for the future, I guess.

The Air is Full of the Tantalizing Scent of Future Competence

My John Deere garden tractor put me in a position where I needed to weld. I should have summoned my testosterone and used TIG, but I ended up doing something that brought me more short-term joy. I bought a new MIG welder from Harbor Freight. I have already mentioned it here.

I have a Lincoln PowerMIG 180C, which is a small 240V MIG welder. It’s a fine welder, but you can’t run it from a typical wall outlet. You have to use a 240 outlet or a generator. I have no 240 outlets, and ethanol gas killed my generator, so I can’t use it until my new Chinese carb arrives.

Never fix a carburetor when you can buy a new one for a few dollars on Ebay. The quality is exactly the same, and you can be back in action for as little as $11, depending on the machine.

You have to be an idiot to fix an $11 carburetor. Really.

Of course, I have tried.

I got myself a new Harbor Freight Titanium Unlimited 200 welder.

For reasons known only to Harbor Freight itself, the company decided to launch two new lines of welders at about the same time, to complement their really cheap Chicago Electric machines. The new Titanium brand is much better than Chicago Electric (“Chicago” is how Chinese manufacturers spell “Shenzhen”), but it has the same sad 90-day warranty. The new Vulcan brand is a bit better than the Titanium brand, and the warranty is one year.

People are confused by the new welder lines. It seems like Harbor Freight is trying to compete with itself. Anyway, the new welders are about as good as other serious Chinese manufacturers, and the prices are great.

Harbor Freight is now making a number of tools that compete head-on with major manufacturers. In the past, you accepted the fact that your new Harbor Freight tool was not very good and wouldn’t last long, but now you can choose various levels of quality, and some things they sell are very, very good. They’re not as cheap as the lower-level stuff, but they’re considerably cheaper than DeWalt and Bosch.

The Unlimited 200 does MIG, flux core, DC TIG, and DC stick, all for $640 (with the obligatory coupon). It comes with a TIG torch, a MIG gun, and a stick stinger, so you don’t need much stuff to get it running. The one thing it lacks is a TIG pedal, but you can live without that.

I went back and got a cart for it. Welding carts are a problem. They’re generally cheap junk or severely overpriced industrial items. The cart that came with my Lincoln (a prestige brand) was not very good, and I guarantee you, it came from China. I got rid of it and got a better cart from Eastwood. I ended up with two Eastwood carts because they sent me an extra one. That gave me sufficient cart space for the Lincoln, my AlphaTIG, and a plasma cutter, but the Titanium was on the workshop floor. I had to do something.

Harbor Freight has come out with a spectacular Vulcan cart for $90. It beats the pants off my old Lincoln cart. It holds 350 pounds. That means you can put a heavy welder and a 125 cubic foot bottle on it. It comes with a bunch of sturdy hooks for cords. It even has a little plastic toolbox for welding consumables. It doesn’t take up a lot of room, and it’s very easy to move around. I love it. I stuck the Titanium on it, along with the 80 cubic foot C25 bottle from the Lincoln.

The Eastwood carts hold more stuff than the Vulcan cart, but they’re crude and a bit clumsy. You can put two big bottles on an Eastwood cart, which is something you can’t do with the Vulcan.

I used the Titanium to weld my tractor exhaust, and then I decided to get some rods and learn to stick weld with it. My only previous stick experience was not good. I had to fix my bush hog, and the welds I got looked like someone had blown his nose, and instead of mucus, hot steel had come out.

They say that if you want to be any kind of welder, you start with stick, period. MIG is easier, and for many people, it will do everything they want. It will produce very pretty welds. But because MIG is so easy, it discourages people from learning stick and TIG. Because it’s so easy to learn, MIG can turn out to be a roadblock to your progress.

There are some very good things about stick. When you TIG, you have to have metal which is completely bare. It has to shine. You have to grind it or sand it. It’s a real pain. When you MIG, you have to have the metal fairly clean, although not nearly as clean as TIG. When you stick weld, you can–I am not kidding–weld through paint. Stick is the honey badger of welding. You got rust, grease, and three coats of latex house paint? Stick don’t care. Stick welds right through it.

Another good thing about stick is that it requires no gas bottles. Also, the welders are really cheap, because they’re just power sources. You can get a Lincoln (not Chinese) 155-amp stick welder for under $350. My feeling is that if you’re only going to learn one type of welding, it should be stick.

MIG is great, but it won’t weld through rust and paint.

People seem to look down on stick. I think they think it makes crude, ugly welds. That’s not really true. You can make nice welds with stick, and they’re structurally strong, too.

They say that if you want to be a TIG welder, stick will help prepare you. I am a terrible TIG welder. I want to be better at it. TIG can do things no other common welding process can do. You can make beautiful welds on relatively tiny objects. Try using MIG to put a trigger guard on a rifle. No way! People do it with TIG all the time.

If you’re really good, you can weld two soda cans together with TIG, and they will look great. Welders do this to show prospective employers how good they are.

Yesterday I set the Titanium up for stick, and I got out two kinds of 3/32″ rods: Vulcan (Harbor Freight) 6011 and Lincoln 7018AC. I had heard that 6011 was good for thin metal, so I figured it would be good to learn how to use it. It’s harder to weld thin metal than thick.

Man, what a mess I made. I fired up the welder with the 6011, and I couldn’t strike an arc to save my life. Youtube professors say to act like you’re striking a match, but when I did that, the rod almost always welded itself to the steel. When I finally got it going, it stopped and started no matter what I did. I got wide, hideous, low welds that looked about like the mess I made on the bush hog. The metal got red hot, even half an inch from the welds.

I never did get the 6011 to work. I tried the 7018 rods, and while they were also hard to start, they made fairly normal-looking welds. That was encouraging. There was some hope I could stick weld, if only with the limitation that I could only use 7018 rods.

I went back to 6011. More sticking. I even managed to strike an arc on my welding lamp at one point, because I yanked the rod off the metal and waved it over the table without thinking.

I got very frustrated. I had to fiddle with everything over and over, because the rods kept getting stuck. Sometimes I flipped my mask up. Eventually, I did the unthinkable. In my annoyance, I forgot to flip the mask down. I struck an arc and realized I was only protected by reading classes from Dollar Tree.

This is called “flashing yourself.” Your eyes get a big dose of UV rays, and then, if the exposure is severe enough, you spend a day or two feeling like there is sand in your eyes. It’s very unpleasant. Tears flow all the time. One of the worst things about it is that you don’t know exactly what’s going to happen until several hours after you weld.

I turned everything off, went inside, located some painkillers, and waited. Fortunately, nothing happened.

Of course, I used my supernatural tools. I prayed for healing. I commanded injury to leave me. I commanded my eyes to be healed.

I felt things moving around in me. It was very obvious. Some kind of serious battle was going on.

You can tell when demons are upset, believe me. I wish I could say there are no demons associated with me, but they still show up. With God’s help, I fought them for quite a while.

It’s too bad most Christians–the same people who worship a man who believed in demons–don’t believe in demons. They’re very real, and they are messing up your life right now. You don’t have to be an epileptic or a schizophrenic to have demons. Unfortunately, they’re for everyone.

Today I went out and tried to stick weld again, and things went a lot better. I got some advice, and I was told to increase the amperage. The 7018 rods worked so well, I can now say I can weld with them. The beads are almost as nice as MIG beads. I still can’t deal with 6011. The first rod worked fine, and after that, more flat, hot welds and stuck rods.

I’m wondering if Harbor Freight sold me a box of funny rods. One rod should be just like the next.

I found a good cheap metal supplier here, and being from Ocala, the people there could not be nicer. I should invent a project and go get some metal from them. I need to start doing fillet and lap welds with 7018.

I plan to get some new gas bottles. My argon bottle is 125 cubic feet, which is as big a bottle as I am willing to try to move. I have an 80-foot bottle of C25 on the Titanium. I want to get a 125 for the Lincoln, plus a 20-foot bottle of argon for the TIG. If I have a 20-foot bottle, I won’t be caught flatfooted when the big bottle runs out. I’ll just connect the small bottle and take the big one to be swapped. When the little one conks out, I’ll have it swapped. I’ll have to make two drives instead of one, but that’s not a big deal, and it beats shutting a project down for a day.

I might get a 20-foot C25 bottle for the Titanium. One of the great things about this welder is its weight (under 25 pounds). I can put my generator, the Titanium, and a bottle in my truck if I have to. Maybe that’s a stupid idea, though, because I can always use rods instead of MIG.

I may also keep stainless wire on the Titanium and carbon steel on the Lincoln. That would be convenient. Switching wire spools is not fun at all.

I need to get my 240 outlets installed. Guess I should call about that tomorrow.

It’s nice to be welding again. Next, I need to get the belt grinder working. After that, it’s time to get my machine tools moved up here.

Sooner or later, I’ll be up and running at full speed again. That will feel great.

Slouching Towards Bugtussle

Today I surprised myself. I contacted a realtor about a property in Blount County, Tennessee.

One of the problems I’ve had since my dad died is a reluctance to take ownership of things. For example, sometimes I say “we” when I’m talking about things we used to own together. “We have two wells.” “We have a pool.” Things like that. Sometimes I feel like I’m just managing things for my dad. I have even been reluctant to change the bad landscaping at my house, just because I feel like the previous owners knew something I didn’t and would disapprove.

I can tell you something that has helped me. Sometimes I say, “My dad moved to a far-away country and gave me everything he owns here.” This is true. He owns nothing in this world.

The idea of selling properties and moving to another state by myself is slightly intimidating. I wouldn’t be asking anyone’s permission. I would just go. I didn’t think I’d start looking for a new place so soon.

I was waiting for God to give me ideas about where to go. The older I get, the more I realize we screw up our lives by putting ourselves in traps God had nothing to do with. We choose horrible husbands, wives, careers, and homes. Then things go badly, and we’re stuck. You can’t just drop a spouse like a bruised peach at the supermarket. You can’t make a better career appear instantaneously. If you’re in the wrong home and the wrong area, you probably have a mortgage, and that means you’re stuck like a coyote with its paw in a trap. I don’t want to “follow my heart” or “go with my gut.” I don’t want to trust my ridiculous judgment. The world tells us to do those things, but worldly people live in defeat and regret. I want to get guidance from God.

I felt he was telling me to move to Tennessee, but I couldn’t figure out where to go. I knew I didn’t want to be in a flat area or a city. I wanted to know I was in Appalachia. I didn’t want to be in a county where they still had Klan meetings. I didn’t want to be close to Gatlinburg or the other tourist traps.

This morning I started to think he wanted me to move to Blount County.

I read up on it after I got this impression. It seems like a nice place. Good climate, nice hills, and real stores within a reasonable drive. Land prices are cheaper than they are here. I could set myself up on hundreds of acres of woods.

This week the nightly lows will be in the sixties in Blount County. That would be nice. I love Ocala, but it’s up around 95 degrees every day right now, and it’s only going down into the upper seventies at night. Working outdoors during the day is nearly impossible. You can put a couple of hours in, pausing frequently, and then you have to quit.

The human body is funny. When you overheat, you get tired, even if you’re not working hard. Your body will refuse to give you full performance, and it will make you breathe hard as if you were exerting yourself. It’s not helpful when I’m trying to cut downed trees or dig up a boulder.

I contacted a couple of real estate brokerages online about a property, and in my messages, I said, “No calls, please.” Both called within seconds. They apparently refuse to deal with me over the web like normal people. I sent the calls to voicemail.

Real estate agents are really annoying. When you call about a property, they don’t see you as a person who wants to buy that property. They see you as a lead. They want to turn you into “their” customer. Then they get 3% of the sale price of any property they tell you about.

I wanted to see what the property was shaped like. A lot of big properties are long and skinny, and I’m not having that. It doesn’t do you much good to have 300 acres if your neighbors are 100 yards away in both directions. I found the property on a government website, and it’s shaped like a lizard. No good. Oh, well.

I see where the term “gerrymander” comes from.

I got tempted to stray from Tennessee, and I looked at a place in North Carolina. It’s remarkable. It has two well-kept, very livable buildings. One is the main house, and the other is a sort of shop with its own kitchen. Really nice. It only has 40 acres, though. The number 300 keeps rolling around in my head. I really like big pieces of land. I always have. My favorite of all my grandfather’s farms was around 300 acres.

I am sorely tempted to spend a few days in Tennessee, just looking around.

In other news, I made real progress with my grilling. I went to Home Depot and got me a Bernzomatic TS8000 torch. I already have a Turbotorch, but it’s for the workshop. The Turbotorch was recommended to me as the best torch of the type, but it has been balky ever since I bought it, and it doesn’t seem to burn any hotter than the one I just got.

Today I made two 6.5-ounce burgers (because I had exactly 13 ounces of meat) and put them on the grill at its highest post-modification setting. As I grilled, I applied the torch to scorch the outsides of the burgers. It worked very well. I got some deep browning as well as a little crunch, and the insides of the burgers were hot and juicy. One had very little pink in it, and I always shoot for medium, but burgers are not steak, and medium-well is still very good. Medium can actually be a little mushy.

I have a Searzall tool on the way. I think I wrote about it. It’s a torch attachment for searing food evenly. Once it arrives, I should be all set. Regardless of the appalling shortcomings of propane grills, I’ll be able to put a good sear on the outside of every piece of beef I cook.

It’s amazing that the grill industry makes such feeble products.

I sound like I’m knocking my new grill. I think it’s an excellent product, as propane grills go. I believe it cooks as well as a $2000 grill. I should know; I had one. I just think the entire industry should be doing better. A $2000 grill should make amazing steaks, and when you buy a $100 grill that cooks as well as a $2000 grill, it should produce the same result. I have a $100 grill that, as delivered, cooked steaks just as well as an industry-leading, yet disappointing, $2000 grill.

It would be nice to have an electric salamander some day. That would put an end to the striving.

I still plan to get a square cast iron griddle for the butane stove. Frying puts a magnificent crust on a steak. I guess I could fry and then touch up with the Searzall! That would be interesting.

The feeling I get is that grilled burgers need to be at least an inch thick before cooking. Otherwise, the insides cook too fast. It’s just physics. I think the torch allows me to do a better job with thinner burgers.

I wonder how a propane knife forge would do. Someone needs to try that. It sounds stupendous. I guess the melting fat would be a problem, because it would run into the insulation and burn.

There’s a Youtube video of a lady cooking a steak using a forge. She’s not much to look at, she has a whisker problem, and her miniskirt is too short for a woman of her years, but she may be onto something.

Poor thing. It must be hard landing a man when you look like that. You have to give her credit, though. She’s in there punching. Takes good care of herself. Look at those toned legs.

I’m sure I’ll report on the Searzall when it arrives. Try to contain yourselves.

My Fancy Sheath Gets Fancier

My leathercrafting adventures have not ceased.

I bought some sheath knives because I really wanted…I mean “needed”…them. The sheaths didn’t work for me because they were made for belts. I wear suspenders. I wanted sheaths that would fit in the accessory pockets of Carhartt jeans.

I got me a 12” square piece of leather from Amazon and made two sheaths, and they turned out to be perfectly okay, except for one thing. My Entrek Beaver…I mean my Entrek Roid-raging Mega Jaguar…fell out the other day.

The Mega-Jaguar (I can’t accept “Beaver.”) is a heavy knife with a heavy handle. I made a sheath which was tightly molded around it, hoping it would click into place and stay put. The weight of the handle apparently overcame the tightness of the sheath, and the other day I heard a tinkling sound while I was walking on my concrete driveway. The Mega-Jaguar had fallen out. I didn’t see anything wrong with it right away, but later on, I discovered a mashed place on the handle, and later still, I found microscopic chips on the edge.

I had to either make a new sheath or fix the old one.

The answer was a retention strap with a snap. I got on the web and looked up snaps.

Here’s how snaps work. A snap has four parts. It’s really two rivets. One rivet is the male part, and the other rivet is the female part. You have to get a rivet-setting tool, which is a steel rod with a little rounded tip, and you also need an anvil, which is a little bar of steel with several round depressions in it.

The whole business, including snaps and tools, is probably under $20. I can’t recall exactly.

You punch a hole in your leather. You take one your rivets, and you put one part of it on each side of the leather. You rest one side of the rivet in the anvil, and then you bang on your setting tool. It flares a little metal thing in the rivet, and you have half a snap, permanently attached to your leather.

Yesterday, having dropped my beautiful handmade knife in the driveway, I finally got around to making a strap. I also removed all the stitching from the sheath, removed the cheap aluminum Chicago screws I had used to attach the pocket clip to the sheath, and replaced everything. The first time I stitched the sheath, I did a job which was perfectly sound, but it didn’t look all that great, so I wanted to improve it.

Here is what I ended up with.

If you’re planning to use Chicago screws in leather, buy Tandy brand screws. Don’t fool with the crummy aluminum ones. I bought a bunch from a company called Grizzly, and they seem to be pretty bad.

I had a problem finding screws which were the right length to go through two pieces of 8-ounce leather. My solution was to make a little leather washer for each screw, to take up the excess length. It worked extremely well. The washers don’t slip at all when I tighten the screws.

The sheath is perfect now, and by “perfect,” of course, I don’t mean perfect. It’s not an example of great craftsmanship. But it’s only slightly worse than many store-bought leather items, and I was able to design it my own way instead of buying some piece of junk off Amazon and trying to make it work.

Last night, I worked on the knife’s blade. I have very nice DMT diamond stones, but I used cheap diamond hones from my kitchen. They’re easier to use, and the knife can’t tell how cheap they are. They put a perfectly fine edge on it. If you put on your reading glasses and squint in strong light, you can detect the places where the chips were, but they will disappear after one or two more sharpenings.

I had a piece of 300 sandpaper on my indoor workbench, so I grabbed it and polished the dented place on the knife’s handle. It looks very good now. I may polish the other side of the handle to make it match perfectly!

To hone the blade, I took a great tip from a reader. I used a leather strop with diamond spray. I bought the spray from a business called Sharpening Depot, I think. It’s a tiny little bottle full of a milky substance which contains 1-micron diamonds.

Initially, I charged my strop with green honing compound, and it worked perfectly well, but these days, people go for the diamond spray, and I can see why. The green stuff contains wax, and it accumulates on knives and interferes with the cutting action until you remove it. I had to stop stropping and use acetone on my knife every time I wanted to see if I was done sharpening.

Last night, I put acetone on a paper towel and used it to clean the strop instead of the knife. I pretty much obliterated the green compound, but it wasn’t helping anyway. I sprayed it again with diamonds, and it worked very, very well. It’s also fast. When you give a clean strop 8 or 10 strokes, it begins to turn black from the steel that’s coming off the knife.

Now what do I do with the green compound?

I would like to put diamond spray on an MDF wheel and strop using my buffer. It would be much easier to maintain the correct angle on a buffer. I could also put a cork belt on my 1×42 grinder and charge it with diamonds. That would probably be better.

Of course, I already have the cork belt.

The knife cuts like crazy now. It seems to want to bite into things.

I like the kitchen hones because they’re quick and easy to use, and they’re also light and handy. Diamond stones are heavy steel plate. I won’t even consider a wacky machine like a Tormek. I don’t want to have to run for a machine every time my knife gets dull. Maybe a Tormek is better. If so, hooray. I still don’t want one. My knives are sharp enough to scare me already. I don’t think it would do me much good to make them sharper.

When you sharpen a knife as much as possible, you end up with a very fine edge, and it sort of disappears as soon as you start using the knife. You start out with a knife that’s freakishly sharp, and after a few cuts, it’s merely very, very sharp. Is very, very sharp really that bad? It’s the best you can do unless you want to sharpen your knife several times a day. At least, I’m pretty sure that’s how it works.

I’ve sharpened plane irons until they were like razors. Use them for a very short time, and they’re not like razors any more, but they cut very well nonetheless. The whole game is not about perfect sharpness, which disappears quickly. It’s about excellent sharpness which lasts a long time.

People buy crazy things these days to get things sharp. Waterstones. Tormeks. In the old days, when a woodworker wanted to sharpen his plane or chisel, he didn’t have nutty sharpening tools, and he didn’t sharpen anything to 8000 grit, but he still did excellent work.

I’ve made two sheaths. Now I need one for my Benchmade Bushcrafter. It’s quite a knife. My hat is off to Benchmade.

I want to buy more knives, because if you like knives, that’s what you do. I think I should make my next knife, though. I can buy all sorts of high-tech steel, and I can send knives out for heat-treating. I should be able to make a stainless knife as well as anyone, and now I can also make sheaths.

I have to force myself to use my expensive knives, because I’m afraid to ruin them. If you can make your own knives, that fear goes away. There are a lot of $300 knives out there, but I consider a $150 knife expensive. I should be able to make knives from excellent steel for between $50 and $100 each, and I would get exactly what I want.

The ability to make knives and sheaths is pretty neat. If you have a reasonably well-equipped garage shop, you probably have nearly everything you need. If you have a drill press, an arbor press, and a 2×72 grinder, you’re most of the way there.

I don’t think any shop is well-equipped without a 2×72. It’s an incredibly useful tool. It’s amazing that they’re not more popular.

When I get the Bushcrafter sheath made, I’ll post a photo.

Do More With Dumore

Yesterday was productive. Spiritual progress began while I was still in bed; God helped me to be very effective in my time with him. Natural progress started before I left the bedroom. I had some problems with the recorder’s office in Dade County, as well as the Florida Revenue Department. People from both organizations called, and their errors were corrected. It’s not easy to call them yourself. You have to wait forever on hold. Much better when they call you.

I also fixed my TV before starting the day. I have a 55″ TV in my bedroom. In the past, I chose not to have a bedroom TV because it seemed inappropriate, but now that I use TV’s to listen to Julie True and watch Christian videos, it’s a different story. I got a Roku TV a few months ago. Unfortunately, it had started to make buzzing sounds when I played music.

I found that when I pressed my finger against the back of the TV in a certain area, the buzzing stopped. That meant something was touching the inside of the panel. I put the TV on my bed and opened it up. I found that a lot of wires and cables were stabilized with cheap vinyl tape, and one data ribbon was twisted unnecessarily, bringing it closer to the rear panel. I removed the cable, took the twist out, and reinserted it. Then I added a couple of pieces of Gorilla Tape. I put them on things that looked like they could vibrate against the cabinet. Bang. Problem solved.

I believe I would have gotten more done yesterday, but I had some issues with a weed eater and rotary tool I ordered. The weed eater’s box had been torn open, and things were missing. I contacted the manufacturer and the company that sold it to me. I ordered a new weed eater. Today the one I received goes back.

The rotary tool didn’t work out at all.

I have a Dremel I got in about 1995, and it has had a number of problems. It pooped out while I was using it to burnish the edge of a holster, so I Googled around to see who made good new rotary tools. I figured Proxxon was the answer. I already have one, and it seems okay. I learned that people often complain about the electronics failing, so I gave up on Proxxon.

I decided to go with the reviewers, and I bought a Dremel 4300 kit. I paid $100, and when the tool arrived, it turned out to be useless. I put my leather burnisher in it, and as soon as I turned the tool past 15000 RPM, it went nuts. It started screeching, and the tool wobbled in the chuck. There was no way to make it work. I tried a collet, and I got the same result. The same burnishing tool works fine in my Proxxon, and it worked fine in the old Dremel, so my best guess is that the one I bought is defective. If not, the design is incompetent. I’m sending it back. I started looking for options again.

It appears that no one on earth makes a good corded consumer-grade rotary tool. There are Dremel and Proxxon, and then there are the Chinese clones. I looked for tools made by real companies like Makita and Dewalt, but there was nothing. Milwaukee makes a cordless job which is probably good, but I’m tired of chargers.

I decided to check out Dumore. This is a company that makes industrial tools like tool post grinders. Their products are extremely expensive. A simple Dremel-like tool will run you over $300, and it won’t work with all of Dremel’s gadgets. On the other hand, they run for lifetimes, not weeks.

You can get a used Dumore inexpensively on Ebay. Oddly, the same tools that sell for over $300 new routinely sell for between $50 and $100 in fairly good condition. I checked the Dumore parts site, and things like bearings are not expensive. The highest price I saw was somewhere over $30, and most bearings I saw cost $4.41 each. Bearings and switches are the only things in a Dumore than can be expected to fail with any frequency (I think), so I don’t see any reason to be afraid to buy used. I would guess it’s unusual for the windings to fail.

Most or all of the Dumores I’ve seen don’t have variable speed, but this can be fixed with a simple, cheap external controller, so it doesn’t matter. A foot pedal is a nice addition to a rotary tool. You can put it down without handling the switch.

The Dremel is going back to Amazon, and my next rotary tool will be a Dumore. No more playing around.

Dremel prices keep going up, but the quality doesn’t keep pace. It’s strange that companies like Makita and Milwaukee haven’t gone into competition and exterminated Dremel.

I got the rotary tool mess fixed yesterday, and I also succeeded in burnishing the edge of my latest knife sheath, so it’s finished, but for improvements I may make later. I used the Proxxon.

I keep thinking I should get a Foredom eventually. This is a quality rotary tool with a flex shaft. I have a Chinese clone which works very well, but I know I’ll eventually want a second flex tool.

It appears that today will be productive, too. I already re-worked a lease with the lady who helps me rent properties, and I had a very powerful prayer session before I left the bedroom.

God willing, it won’t rain today, and I’ll be able to mow the yard.

I love it when God helps me get things done.

Now if I can Just Get it to Cast Itself into the Sea

God has given me another productive day. The trick is to pray, curse your problems, and bless your efforts, in the name of Jesus Christ, BEFORE the problems pop up.

I’ve been working on three stubborn stumps in my front yard. I got one out this weekend, and then yesterday, I went after another one, and I got a bonus. I located a huge rock near a stump, and I managed to get it out of the ground and move it out of the area. I also succeeded in removing the second stump.

Today I went after the third stump. I prayed for help. I spoke the Lord’s opposition to the difficulty of removing it, and I spoke his help to me. After maybe 90 minutes’ work with the subsoiler, drill, sawzall, and Root Assassin, the stump surprised me by surrendering suddenly. It popped out of the ground for no obvious reason.

Here it is. I may have it bronzed.

I bent the tabs that connect the subsoiler to my hitch. I don’t know how I did that. My tractor is not big, so you would think it wouldn’t be able to bend what appears to be 7/16″ plate. I don’t care, however, because the subsoiler still works, and even if it didn’t, the amount I paid for it is a lot lower than the cost of having people come in and remove stumps and rocks. I don’t care if I break three of these a year.

Now there are no stumps in the area where I was working, and a big rock which would have caused problems is gone. I have three little blackberry plants ready to go in the ground. I just have to get more soil. When I began this project, I didn’t know I’d have four huge holes to fill.

I’m wondering if I should put clay or some kind of waterproof material in the bottoms of the holes, to retain water. The dirt here drains way too fast.

The Internet, which never lies, says blackberry roots don’t go deeper than 10″. I could put pieces of tarp down about 15″ and then put soil and plants over them. I wonder if anyone has tried this.

I also finished sewing my second knife sheath. I bought a Lionsteel M4 with olive wood handles, and the sheath that came with it wasn’t right for my jeans. This sheath was harder to sew than the first one. I don’t know why. Anyway, here’s a photo.

I still have to finish up the edges. Right now, the sheath is drying. I wet it down and molded it around the knife’s handle so it would hold the knife in place without a strap. I may have to add a strap later, though. That’s okay. The stitching is not great, and I may redo it. If I do that, I’ll have a good opportunity to add a strap with a snap.

I sharpened several knives. I bought a Cold Steel Swift with CTS-XHP steel. Cold Steel doesn’t use CTS-XHP any more because they can’t get a reliable supply, so it’s getting hard to find these knives. I found one on Ebay for something like $20 below the street price, so I had to buy it. Yesterday, I used it to trim a piece of leather, and it went dull right away. I had to do something.

My understanding is that manufacturers supply defective edges on knives. They sharpen them with belts, and they do it too quickly, softening the steel on the edges. This gives you a very sharp knife which gets dull fast. I think this is what happened to the Swift. Cutting the leather shouldn’t have affected it at all.

I got out my diamond hones and a weird ceramic hone, and I touched it up. Did I get rid of the soft steel? I don’t know. I’ll keep using it. If it gets dull fast, I’ll know the answer.

It’s so sharp now, it’s creepy. The fact that it sharpened up so fast may indicate that the edge is still soft.

The Swift is a very, very nice knife, but it’s an assisted-opening design. You open it part of the way with a little button on the blade, and then a spring slams it open the rest of the way. I don’t like that. I can open a knife just fine by flicking my wrist. Using a spring seems dangerous.

The whole point of buying a steel like CTS-XHP is to avoid frequent sharpening, so I hope the knife isn’t a dud. I have a Gerber Gator II with cheap steel, and it’s a great knife, but for the fast dulling. I paid $15 for it. If I’m going to get cheap-steel performance, I might as well pay cheap-steel prices. The Gator II is indestructible, and it has a very comfortable handle.

I also sharpened my Entrek sheath knife. I have seen the way Ray Ennis sharpens these knives when he makes them, and I don’t think it’s their best feature. Apart from the heating issue, the knife, as it came from the factory, didn’t seem to want to bite into things.

I have DMT diamond stones, but I didn’t use them. I like kitchen-style hones. I have them in two diamond grits, plus the ceramic one and two steels. They seem to work just as well as stones, and they’re easier to use. Also, you don’t have to use liquid.

On top of all this, got a lot of business done. Leases for rental properties and so on. And I stocked up on groceries. Breakfast was sub-optimal this morning because I was running low on things. I had three fried eggs with cheddar cheese, plus whole wheat toast. I had been planning to eat fresh vegetables, boiled eggs, pita, and so on.

Tomorrow, the sheath for the Lion Steel knife should be dry, and after a little finishing, I should be able to use it. I want to get used to going out in public with a sheath knife. I feel conspicuous, but open carry is 100% legal, and I prefer sheath knives to folding knives.

Time to shower up and spend time with the birds. Hope your day was as good as mine.

At Least I’m not Talking to the Wallpaper

My painful (as always) trip to Miami and the sale of a house disrupted my life over the last two weeks, so now I’m trying to regain balance. I’m cleaning up the house and taking care of bills and so on. Both robot vacuums (Kim and Kourtney) are currently prowling the residence.

A fun item arrived via UPS today. I now have a Lionsteel (Or is it “Lion Steel? They send mixed signals.) M4 sheath knife in M390 steel, with olive wood scales.

I wanted a small sheath knife for everyday carry, so I bought a Lionsteel M1. It turned out to be the size of a small paring knife, and that’s a little too small. I don’t know if I’ll send it back, but I’m not going to carry it every day.

I could have gotten indestructible G10 scales on the new knife, but olive wood appealed to me because of its Biblical connection to the Holy Spirit. It doesn’t look as nice as darker woods, but I want it anyway. If I change my mind, I’ll look into getting new scales.

Here it is.

I will have to make a sheath for it. I look forward to that. The practice will help me. By the time I’m finished with my third sheath, I should be fully competent, if not highly skilled.

People brag on Lionsteel sheaths, maybe because they’re Italian. I don’t get it. The seem perfectly nice, but if you showed me one without a stamp on it and told me it was from China, I would believe you.

I’m not worried about the steel. A reader says Lionsteel’s M390 is suspect, but in at least one cutting test, Lionsteel M390 has stomped some pretty impressive steels, so I am willing to give it a shot.

I can’t let the knife-nerd culture get me. I am nothing like that. Oh, no. Not me. Although I do name all my knives “Mike.”

I can’t help liking the Lionsteel name. Reminds me of someone I used to know. Back when I was lawyering, I worked with a client named Giancarlo. Gian-something, anyway. Little Italian guy with a beard. Probably weighed 130 pounds. Whenever I asked him how he was doing, he always made a fist and said, “STRONG, like a LION!”

This weekend should be fun. My friend Eric is bringing his family for a visit. He and his wife are not happy at their Calvary Chapel church. They miss the Holy Spirit. They called me to see if I could help, so we’re going to see what I can do. More accurately, of course, we will see what God does through me and through them.

This will be the second time someone has come here just to get closer to God. That’s tremendous. This is what I want my home to be.

Guess I should get to work on the toilets. I get tired of explaining how the stains are caused by well water, not filth.

Tiny Sheath Knife for Sneaky People

It’s official. I am finally free of a house I was trying to sell. Today I can relax and think about trivial things. More than usual.

Selling the house wasn’t the only exciting thing that happened yesterday. I also received a new knife: a Lionsteel M1. This is a small sheath knife made from M390 steel. I’ve already written about it. I am trying to transition to sheath knives because they’re just, well, better. I have a couple of sheath knives in the 9″ range (overall length), and they’re a little bigger than I need them to be for general use. The M1 is under 7″ long, so I thought it would be a good choice.

It’s a very nice knife. Apart from the M390 steel, it has G10 scales. G10 is more or less the same thing as micarta. It’s fabric inside plastic. G10 uses glass fabric (fiberglass), and micarta uses other materials. G10 is stronger, but since micarta is way stronger than it needs to be, it doesn’t really matter.

I may send the knife back. It’s smaller than I thought it would be. The blade is somewhat thin, too. I would say it’s about 0.10″ thick. Actually, I can check. Okay, it’s 0.13″, so I’m off by 30 thousandths. To give context, I’ll add that my Entrek knife is about 0.1875″ thick. It’s a monster, and it’s not unusual these days.

That’s a $150 knife, believe it or not. A lot of money for not much knife.

I’m going to get a Lionsteel M4, which is 8″ long. It’s shorter than the Entrek, so it should be handier. The blade is 0.15″ thick, which is somewhat better than 0.13″. I want a knife I can use every day without fear of snapping it.

Micarta and G10 are probably the best handle materials there are, but I decided to get an M4 with olive wood scales. It won’t be as tough, but olive wood appeals to me because olive oil is important in the Bible. It symbolizes the Holy Spirit, more or less. I believe it should be possible to put G10 scales on it if I don’t like the wood. Lionsteel knife handles aren’t ground flush with the tangs, so new scales should fit as well as the old ones.

Lionsteel also makes a knife called the DPX HEST, which is a 7″ survival knife. I don’t think my survival will ever depend on a knife, but survival knives seem very practical. They’re supposed to be tough and versatile. I might try one eventually. They’re pretty ugly, but so are Glocks, and we all know how well Glocks work. Well, most of us do. Colt, Sig, and Springfield fanbois, among others, have their fingers in their ears.

The HEST has a super-thick blade, plus a pointy thing for prying and wire-stripping notches. It has a built-in wrench which only works for 1/4″ fasteners IF you can fit the knife over them.

The DPX line contains models with names containing the word “assault.” I don’t really see myself assaulting in the near future. It’s funny how many products have macho names that have no relationship to the ways in which they will actually be used. TRY NEW KELLOGG’S ASSAULT POP TARTS! ASSAULT YOUR TASTE BUDS WITH EXTRA FILLING!

You can get the HEST in Sleipner and Niolox steels, both of which are supposed to be really good. I don’t know if I want Sleipner. It’s named after a mythical 8-legged horse that belonged to the false god Odin. Creepy thing for a Christian to own. Also, Sleipner steel rusts badly enough to generate complaints.

It would be nice to have a real knife collection, meaning maybe 30 or 40 knives. I probably have 10 right now. When I was a kid, I used to trade pocket knives with my grandfather’s older brother, so fooling with knives brings back nice memories, just as shooting brings back memories of my grandfather.

If my life sounds unexciting, good. That’s exactly how I want it.

Because I Really Needed More Hobbies

In 2017, I started hunting. I did not accomplish a whole lot, but I did manage to kill a number of squirrels. I didn’t hunt much in 2018. My dad was declining, and I felt disinclined to kill things while he was approaching death. I can’t explain that. Killing squirrels and other pests is morally correct, so it wasn’t as though I felt it would be wrong. For some reason, I felt restrained.

When I started hunting, I knew I needed a sheath knife. A folding knife is a fine thing, but they’re less sturdy than sheath knives, and they’re impossible to clean well. If you use a folder to gut squirrels, it will always have a certain amount of filth trapped inside it.

I got myself a couple of very nice knives, but I was not happy. They came with sheaths made to go with belts, and I don’t like belts. They’re uncomfortable, they’re unhealthy (they raise blood pressure), and they don’t really hold pants up. They just slow the decline. You still have to pull your pants up many times every day.

Obviously, I needed sheaths that fit in the pockets of work jeans, but they don’t fall out of trees. If you want one, someone has to make it.

I got a kit so I could make myself a pocket sheath from Kydex. This is a tough plastic. You heat it and let it mold itself to your knife. In order to do this, you need a Kydex press, which is basically two thick sheets of foam mounted to boards. You put the knife and heated sheath in the press, you close it up, and when the plastic is cold, you have a sheath that fits your knife.

I haven’t gotten around to using the kit. Making a press is somehow unappealing to me, and I like leather better than plastic.

I looked into leatherworking, and I learned that it’s actually not significantly harder than using Kydex. You can get a world of leatherworking tools and materials for $150.00, and there isn’t much skill involved. I decided to try it.

To get going with leather, you need punches to make stitch holes, an awl to do the stitching, dye, appropriate thread for leather, and maybe a hole-punching tool and some Chicago screws. You can also get little tools for dressing the edges of leather and putting a shine on the edges of finished goods.

Chicago screws are screws that work like rivets. One end is a T-shaped nut, and the other end is a screw. When you screw the screw into the nut, you end up with a spool-shaped contraption. You run them through holes in leather and tighten them, and you get removable rivets.

Making leather knife sheaths takes very little time. A lot of the time it will take you to make your first sheath will be spent waiting on deliveries because you didn’t know what to get. Cut that excess out, and it takes around two days to make a sheath. It takes over a day because you will want to use water to mold your sheath to your knife, and water takes time to evaporate.

I decided I wanted sheaths with pocket clips. I found what is considered to be the best clip out there: the Ulticlip. You can look it up. They were created for gun holsters, but you can get models that fit smaller items. They lock very securely to waistbands and pockets. In fact, they’re a pain to fasten and remove, which means your knife is never going to fall out of your pocket.

I just finished the main body of work on my first sheath. I’ll post photos. The stitching is a little rough, so I think I’ll redo it, but it will work for now. I used a type of thread known as artificial sinew. It’s like tough, greasy dental floss.

The knife is an Entrek Beaver. I originally wanted a model called the Javalina, but they sent me the wrong blade shape, and I ended up returning it and getting a Beaver.

I have no idea what thought process led to that name. They no longer sell it. I guess I can rename it. I’ll give it a more masculine name. I’ll call it the Entrek Roid-raging Mega-Jaguar.

Entrek, as I understand it, is actually a man named Ray Ennis. He makes handmade knives and sells them at very reasonable prices. You can find him on Youtube. He has videos showing exactly how he makes his knives. Once you’ve seen the videos, you can pretty much make your own Entrek knives if you’re handy.

He seems like a great guy. He’s having health problems, so it’s not certain the company will continue to produce.

Ennis uses 440C in all his knives. This is a very corrosion-resistant stainless that became popular in the Eighties. It’s not 440A or 440B; those are loser steels. My first really good knife was a Gerber made from 440C, so I wanted a sheath knife made from the same material.

People complain that 440C chips when you get it really hard, but Ennis says he has his blades treated with super-low temperatures, and he believes this makes them chip-resistant.

In any case, the Bea…Roid-raging Mega-Jaguar is a very nice knife. The handles are rough Micarta, a material so tough it may well be the last thing God manages to destroy when he remakes the earth. It’s shaped so you can grip it very securely. It should serve me well.

I’m planning to start carrying a sheath knife everywhere. Florida allows open knife carry. You have to be careful about local ordinances, but they’re easy to look up.

I used to think I could carry a switchblade anywhere in Florida because Florida law allowed it, but it turns out I was mistaken. Snowflake officials in some areas have banned large classes of knives with ordinances, so it may be that back when I carried a switchblade, I committed a number of serious crimes. Sorry for the many, many felonies I may have committed before I looked the ordinances up.

I always say virtually everyone is a felon. If you look hard enough, you will almost surely find a stupid law you violated in the past.

Dade County’s ordinances seem to ban open carry of knives, but it’s not clear. I don’t care, because Dade is a tacky, festering hole of unhappiness and immorality, and I plan to avoid visiting for the rest of my life, except when forced.

The Roid-raging Mega Jaguar is fine for squirrels, but with a thick blade over 4 inches long, I think it’s a little cumbersome for everyday carry. I decided to try a smaller knife. I’m getting a Lionsteel M1, which is a shorter sheath knife in M390 steel. I don’t know a whole lot about M390, but it’s among the “super steels.” I think Superman uses it to make stays for his underpants. It’s supposed to be really great. I tipped my hat to the past with a 440C knife, so now I feel like I’m free to get into snob metal.

The M1 is something like three inches long, which should be very handy around the farm. For all I know, it will even be better for squirrels.

Believe it or not, fixed-blade knives really do work better than folders. I learned this the other day when I took my drill press and band saw out of my truck. I had to cut a lot of rope. I was taking my Cold Steel folder (CTS-XHP super steel!) out over and over, and because I’m too lazy to close it, I kept leaving it in various places, open, and then forgetting where it was. With a sheath knife, you just slap it back in the sheath every time you’re done with it.

I have a lot of hobbies, and sometimes I pick up hobbies that are useless, but I think I hit a home run with leather. It takes almost no skill, and it fills a gaping hole in my tool repertoire. Think of all the times you’ve needed a leather sheath, bag, belt or something, but you couldn’t get what you needed. Maybe you have a tool you use a lot, or maybe you have very specific ideas about a carry holster. If you can do basic leatherwork, you can get what you want without a lot of hassle or expense.

I know almost nothing about leathercrafting, but I can pass on a few tips. You don’t want Fiebing’s low-VOC dye. “VOC” means “volatile organic compound.” It refers to dangerous chemicals that give off fumes. It’s nice that Fiebing is trying to avoid killing customers, but the dangerous old dye works much better. Also, you want 7-8-ounce leather for knife sheaths. Lighter leather is flimsy, and heavier is hard to work with. The leather has to be vegetable-tanned, not chrome-tanned, because chrome-tanned leather rusts knives.

I don’t know what “vegetable-tanned” means. Maybe they take cowhide and rub it with salad.

My first sheath looks pretty good, even though I made a lot of errors. The second one should be as good as what’s available in stores. It’s just not that hard to do.

Plus Ham

Today has been a very good day.

Yesterday, I finally gave in. Rib roasts have been on sale for about two weeks, and I was tired of passing them by. I grabbed a small one, and this morning before breakfast, I seasoned it and coated it with butter and garlic. It sat at room temperature until not long ago, and now it’s cooking at 250 degrees.

After I prepared the roast for cooking, my cousin called, and we had a long conversation about God. I helped her out with some information and Youtube links. Very productive. I think she, her mother, and her son are going to get a lot closer to God.

We also discussed other things. For one, my grandmother’s country ham recipe. My aunt had it. My cousin sent me photos of the cards my grandmother wrote it on. I am in business. The nearest grocery has already confirmed that they will sell me an uncured ham.

While I was on the phone with my cousin, my neighbors invited me to Easter lunch. I enjoyed free food and good conversation. Among other things, those assembled discussed our shared hatred of squirrels. I said I never lifted my foot off the accelerator when I saw one on the road. My neighbor’s wife said she always tried to hit them.

Nice.

After lunch, her husband took their grandchildren out in their front yard for some healthy childhood activities: shooting a compound bow and a BB gun. He put some clay pigeons on a cardboard target and let his grandson and granddaughter do their worst. I took a photo.

Naturally, like any red-blooded American male, I sensed a challenge. I talked some smack and said I could do better. Then I pulled my Glock, put the laser dot on the upper clay pigeon, and graced my hosts with a mag dump.

The kids protested that they were only 7 and 9, but I wasn’t having any of their excuses. Then I told them the Easter Bunny wasn’t real.

Actually, I stood back quietly and told them they were doing great. They did pretty well with the bow.

In any case, I was inspired. I got out my VZ.58 and giant Chinese laser and shot 60 rounds in my pasture.

People have a lot of different strategies for home protection. Many choose pistols, which seems ridiculous. It’s easy to miss, or shoot yourself, with a pistol, and they don’t hold much ammo. And the ammo is weak. My current solution is a folding semiauto rifle with a laser, shot from the folded position.

Everyone says you shouldn’t shoot from the hip, but with a laser, you don’t really need to see the sights. That’s my theory.

I took the gun to the pasture in bright sunlight, and I found I could shoot a pretty tight pattern at 30 feet with very little effort. I’ll put up a couple of targets. The third target, which I shot first, isn’t quite as good (because I wasn’t trying at all), but the rounds still landed within a five-inch circle.

I feel like my theory makes sense. Keep electronic hearing protectors by the bed with your rifle. Put them on when you realize you have guests. Use the laser to pop them from 30 or 50 feet away. Your average criminal would be lucky to hit a cruise ship at 30 feet, so even if they shoot back, you have a huge advantage.

I don’t know if I would actually choose to shoot another person in a situation like that, but I feel I should have the choice.

The laser is easy to see in bright sunlight at 30 feet, so it’s impossible to miss inside a house. Even if you manage to find 100 feet of open space, you will still have no problem seeing a green laser.

I like it. I think it’s a great idea. My guess is that 0.01% of the shooting world will agree with me, but then they love dumb ideas that defy common sense. They tell women to carry crummy little revolvers instead of compact Glocks, for example, as if women are just too stupid to work semiautos. They take pistols seriously as home defense weapons, when there is no conceivable reason to forgo the superior performance of long guns in the home.

Pistols are for carry, period. That’s the whole reason they exist. A pistol should only be used when you can’t have a long gun. When you’re in your own house, you can carry a bazooka if you want, so there is no reason to settle for tiny guns that fire small numbers of weak rounds with poor accuracy.

In a famous 1998 shooting, a war veteran with an M1 carbine shot a deputy with a pistol 10 times, and he shot from the hip part of the time. The deputy emptied at least one magazine and only hit him once. Using a long gun, the criminal disabled the deputy with accurate shots to his limbs, and then he was able to approach him and execute him with a shot to the right eye. It was a complete mismatch.

If you want to see why I don’t like pistols, check out the video below. Two trained cops armed with pistols take on a nut armed with a pistol, at close range. Many bullets fly. Not one hits a human being. What else can I say?

Tell me that would have happened if one particpant had had a long gun.

I guess you could say I have an opinion.

People have told me you can’t fire a shotgun from the hip. Well, I’ve done it, and it works just fine. I fired a Saiga-12 at 50 feet using a laser, and I didn’t shoulder it. No problems at all. I don’t know where people get their weird ideas.

They say you can’t reacquire a target with a shotgun if you fire from the hip. Like it’s easy when you fire from the shoulder! And if you have a laser dot telling you where to shoot, reacquiring targets is not hard no matter what you’re shooting.

I like lasers and rifles for home protection. What can I tell you?

I hope your day is going as well as mine.

“I’ll Take a Double Room and Some Leftist Indoctrination”

I have more to write about my trip to Kentucky.

Today I fired up Youtube to watch during breakfast, and I chose a Derek Prince video about the Antichrist. I had seen it before, but that didn’t matter.

Prince, a scholar of Greek, taught something important: the prefix “anti” means “against,” but it also means “instead of.”

For a long time, I’ve been writing about what I call “the alternative righteousness.” Leftists (there isn’t much point in distinguishing leftism from enmity to God) are attacking the children of God forcefully these days, and two prongs of the attack are the alternative righteousness and the incessant accusation of the church.

It’s a smart strategy. If Satan gives us an Antichrist who looks like a monster and tells us he’s out to get us, we will be reluctant to worship him. Instead, he’s going to give us a warm, fuzzy guy–probably sexually ambiguous–who will teach us that we can live in love and peace without Christianity (and with a heavy emphasis on the acceptance of homosexuality).

Years ago, God told me Satan’s children would use homosexuality as a club to beat the church, and at the time, very few people saw the threat. Look where we are now. You can be turned down when you apply for college admission or a job because you oppose sexual sin. It’s not enough to leave sexual deviants alone and treat them with kindness; you’re not allowed to have an opinion they don’t like.

My friend Travis, a young black man, is house-sitting for me in Miami. The other day, there was a homosexual pride march in that city. People who wanted to march did so and left everyone else alone, right? No, they badgered them and asked them why they weren’t marching. Travis’s friends bugged him about it, and he told them he wasn’t on board. In all likelihood, that will be remembered, and it will eventually be used against him.

Many Christians have failed in their obligation to treat sinners (other sinners) compassionately in the past, and many of us still fail. Most of us do a fairly good job, but the left accuses all of us anyway. They tell the world we are the reason there is tension over the issue of sexual preference, and they teach that getting rid of Christians who oppose sexual sin will bring peace and tolerance.

Of course, anyone who knows leftists knows that leftism is about hatred, murder, covetousness, and oppression. People who vote for candidates like Obama and Clinton may not see themselves as agents of oppression; they just want free stuff taken from other people. They ignore the fact that their movement has caused more misery and death than any other. Leftism may start out with mild measures, but in the end, it ramps up and leads to totalitarianism and poverty.

Leftism is the perfect system for the Antichrist, because it attempts to set the government, which he will lead, up as the Messiah. Have babies whose fathers don’t want to support them? Messiah Government will feed them. Having a hard time succeeding because your work ethic is poor? Messiah Government will take from people who work and give to you. Messiah Government will give you EBT cards without making a real effort to find out if you deserve them. It will give you Section 8 housing. It will send the police to your home over and over to help you behave and to protect your kids from you.

I shouldn’t say people fail because their work ethic is poor. It’s true that lazy people generally fail, but the world is full of hard-working people who are poor. The real reason people fail is that they don’t have good prayer lives. I may say I do this or that for a living, but when my Christian friends ask, I say I pray for a living.

The Antichrist and his flock tell us they care more about people than Christians do. It’s not true; conservatives give more to charity than leftists, even though we are less wealthy. Still, it’s what the masses are told, and because very few people pray in tongues, people are gullible, and they believe it.

Prayer in tongues will lead you out of deception. I have believed some awful doctrine in the past. I believed the prosperity gospel, for example. It wasn’t until God helped me pray in tongues for a couple of hours every day that I saw through the lies. If you’re not praying in tongues, your root in God is short, so any wind that blows can push you over.

It’s amazing how easily we give up on God when we deny the Holy Spirit. We’re supposed to be baptized with the Holy Spirit, but generally, we’re not. It’s not the same thing as water baptism. If we were Spirit-led, praying in tongues and repenting and so on, we would be powerful. We would see miracles all the time. We would be able to help people with things like the curse of poverty, the curse of disease, and the curse of sexual perversion. Most denominations reject the Holy Spirit, so Christians are weak and less loving than they should be. When unbelievers turn to us for answers, we are usually unable to help. No wonder they’re looking for a new husband.

If we were doing what we should, power and love would flow through us, and people would throng to us to be changed. The Antichrist would have real competition.

As it stands, we are very good at saying “no,” but we’re not great at saying “yes.” We can tell people they’re wrong to live in sexual sin. We can tell them it’s a sin to take drugs or to drink or eat excessively. On the other hand, we generally can’t get them delivered from the habits that make them do these things. They see the poor results we offer, and they assume Christianity is a false religion.

Anyone with any common sense can see that it’s crazy, silly, and pathetic for two men to sleep together, but when such men can’t find deliverance, it’s only natural that they would give up and decide that what they’re doing must be right. I would do the same thing. If it were wrong, surely God would help them, right?

Satan has pulled our teeth, rendering us powerless, and now that we are weak, he is offering his own solutions. Tempted? Give in! If you’re abnormal, we’ll just change normal.

While I was traveling, I watched TV in a hotel. I saw a remarkable promotion for the alternative righteousness. You would think it would be sufficient for a hotel chain to provide access to programming, but they went beyond that. While I went through menus to get to Youtube, they showed a video of their own, over and over.

A black woman is stranded in a broken-down car in the rain. There is no husband around, but let’s not go there. Does she call her insurance company, the police, or AAA? No, she calls her hotel. A woman (not a man) who appears to be Chinese shows up in a car and drives her to the hotel. The hotel’s employees say comforting things to her. In the background, we hear platitudes about love and making the world a cozier, comfier place.

What does this have to do with renting rooms?

Notice an important thing about the video: white men are in the background. The woman in the car is trying to use a machine invented by white men, on a road built by white men, patrolled by police who are mostly white men, but forget that. Her savior is a Chinese lady who didn’t do well enough in school to get a job better than hotel clerk.

I think I know why leftists are so eager to demonize and trivialize white people. We have done more than anyone else to spread the gospel.

The Bible says the Jews are the light of the world. Jews are Caucasians. There are swarthy Jews in the Mideast, but they’re still Caucasians, and most of us would call them white. The gospel of Jesus Christ has been spread, and continues to be spread, chiefly by whites. Unless the church in China explodes, that will probably be true until Jesus returns.

We’re not better than other people, but as long as we are the primary proponents of salvation, we are more dangerous to Satan. It makes sense that Satan would try to convince his children that we cause all the problems in the world, and that we need to be controlled or exterminated.

Black slaves were sold to slave traders by African Muslims. Alex Haley lied when he wrote about white men jumping off boats and kidnapping people one at a time. Chinese communists killed tens of millions of people without white help. Africans and Indians treat each other extremely badly, in countries white people don’t rule. During World War Two, the Japanese were so vicious and barbaric, they sometimes offended Nazis. Right now, in the United States, the biggest threat to a black person’s existence is other black people, and the biggest threat to a white person’s existence is black people and Hispanics, at least when it comes to crime.

We didn’t invent evil. We didn’t invent racism. We didn’t invent genocide. We don’t cause all of the world’s problems. Get rid of us, and things will probably be worse than they are right now.

These things are true, yet somehow we are portrayed as predators and slave masters. Leftists treat us the way Nazis treated Jews in propaganda films and posters.

They are not ashamed to say “the problem of whiteness.” That’s amazing.

We’re not a problem. We invented calculus. We invented the automobile. We gave the world electricity. We did most of the work in creating modern medicine. We taught the world how to grow food efficiently. We spread the gospel. You would think someone would have noticed.

I won’t say the Messiah came from us. He was a Caucasian, but he was probably so dark it would have been iffy to call him “white.” David and Noah were white, however, and it may be that Jesus was, too.

Satan is doing a great job, setting the world up for the brief rule of the Antimessiah. He has drugged and muzzled the sheepdogs, and he has provided his own path to earthly nirvana stocked with poisoned bon-bons.

It’s a fascinating thing to watch.

I can tell you what I expect to happen.

1. Hatred and persecution of Christians will become very open, the majority will take it up, and the government will back it.

2. Whites and straight males will be included because the enemy identifies us with Christianity.

3. Leftists will promote the alternative righteousness on a larger and larger scale. “Love” will become an obsession, and we will see public events dedicated to the celebration of non-Christian “love.” Speakers will tell us how wrong Christian love is, and they will persuade the masses to give it up. They can’t get us to give up Christianity and support sexual deviation unless they can give us a substitute that sort of feels like Christianity.

I wouldn’t be surprised if we started seeing “Christian” terrorists, shooting up public places. That would certainly be helpful to Satan’s campaign.

One white “Christian” terrorist proves Christianity and white people are bad, but tens of millions of dead victims just prove socialism is a great thing that needs a few adjustments.

This is a good time for Christians to move farther away from cities. Leftists are lazy, and they will attack their neighbors before they start getting in buses to come after the rest of us.

We need to get the baptism with the Holy Spirit. We need to pray in tongues a lot, every day. We need to ask God to move in us so we are purged of hate and anger and so we can be filled with love. We need to get him to deliver sinners through us so people will realize they are wrong to give up on him.

It’s nice to own guns and all that, but we can’t save ourselves with them. I think God is moving us to buy guns so we can protect ourselves while we develop supernatural weapons and supernatural good character. When the final confrontation comes, I think he’ll tell us to lay down our guns and surrender from a position of peace. I think anyone who advises others to make a ridiculous last stand, shooting at waves of approaching leftists, is working for Satan.

If we lay down our weapons, we will show leftists we’re not like them. We’ll show them we trust in God, not carnal tools. We can’t glorify God by fighting Satan’s children physically. We have to step back and let God do the fighting. The Bible says vengeance is his.

Why would you want to soil yourself with physical violence? I’m tired of this world. If misguided leftists will execute me quickly and give me an excuse to leave and let them wallow in their folly without my continued assistance, I will not be strongly tempted to shoot at them.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the baptism with fire. John said Jesus would baptize us with it. I have wondered what it was, and I have had a sneaking suspicion that made me uncomfortable. I think that suspicion is correct. I think the baptism with fire is a succession of problems a Christian has to defeat by repenting and getting closer to God.

I wish it were something more pleasant.

The Bible speaks of gold refined by the fire. I think that’s us.

Guess what? The Bible confirms it. I checked. Here is what Peter said:

In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials, that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ, whom having not seen you love. Though now you do not see Him, yet believing, you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, receiving the end of your faith—the salvation of your souls.

Many Christians have found that their troubles increased, at least temporarily, after they turned to God in earnest. I believe this is the baptism with fire. If you respond by defending yourself and denying your sins and iniquities, the fire keeps burning. If you confess and repent, God leads you into peace. This is my best guess. It seems to be what’s happening to me.

If you remain determined to fight leftists in carnal ways, I suppose God will leave you trapped in that battle until you wise up.

You need to snap out of your slumber and listen to people who are hearing from God. When things get bad, if you haven’t listened, God may not listen to your cries for help. The Jews who got out of Germany and Austria in 1935 fared a lot better than the ones who stayed and assumed things would work out. Develop a relationship with God now, while the storm is still a little ways off. It takes time to make Christianity work for you, so last-minute bandwagon-jumpers will suffer much more than they should.