Gun Room Starting to Blossom

I’ve been dreading attaching my ammo press to an indoor workbench because I didn’t want to drill holes in the bench. I was inventing devices that would clamp to the table without gouging it. I had some ideas for welding a plate to steel tubing. I could screw the press to the plate, put rubber under the tubing, and clamp the tubing to the bench.

Today, I realized I needed to do something if I ever expected to get started. I decided to go quick and dirty with the Rockwell Jawhorse.

The Jawhorse is a weird steel tripod with a foot-tightened vise on top. It’s very heavy. It’s awkard to move. If you can get past those problems, it’s a startlingly useful tool. It holds things for sawing. You can clamp a little table in it. You can get special attachments for sheet goods.

It’s one of those tools which is so annoying, you peridically consider selling it, but then you find yourself using it, and you’re glad you have it.

Harbor Freight now makes a good clone.

My plan: construct a wooden platform for the Jawhorse, clamp it in the jaws, and mount the press on it. Then I could keep the platform, and when I wanted to make ammo, I could slap it in the Jawhorse and go to work. IF it was rigid enough. That was the question.

I used to have my press mounted on my garage workbench, which is very sturdy. For reasons too boring to go into, even though the bench was strong, the press still tended to wobble during use, and I had to add some wood to the bench to make it stop. When a Hornady Lock n Load press wobbles, it can cause rounds to fail to complete the reloading process. It’s a problem.

I don’t want to make ammunition on my old workbench, which is now in my un-air-conditioned shop. I want to do it in my gun room, a few steps away from the refrigerator. This is why I got the Jawhorse out.

Using a Sawzall, I cut two pieces of 2 x 8 from a wet board I found behind the shop. I cleaned them up on the band saw. I used 4 Tapcons to screw them together. This gave me a platform. I drilled two 1/2″ holes in it. I found some mismatched 1/2″ bolts and some washers. I stuck the press on the platform and used the bolts to fasten it down. I guess this took 20 minutes.

I gave the press a few test pumps. I think it’s going to work. It seems more rigid than my old workbench system. How about that?

This will give me time to create a real reloading stand or come up with a device to mount my press to the indoor bench.

If I can get the press to run, I’ll be able to produce a lovely stash of 10mm, .38 Super, and .45 ACP from my components. I may use some of my endless pile of .40 S&W brass to make ammo for my buddy Mike. Then I won’t have brass overflowing from my brass container, and I’ll be able to shoot my new Glock 20 without paying ridiculous prices for ammo. It will be nice.

Seems like I have gotten much better at finishing projects. I used to be very good at starting them but not so great at following through.

Now I need to machine a handle for the press. That plastic ball loves to unscrew itself.

Inheritance Beats Striving Any Day

I’m not even bothering to check my coronavirus equation this morning. The point appears to have been made: this was never a plague, and it never had the potential to be. You don’t need an equation. Just look at Sweden. They have a relaxed approach, and their infection rate is lower than Norway’s. Norway has a heavy-duty lockdown.

You may ask how I can say this didn’t have the potential to be a plague. How can I be so sure things won’t change? The answer is a question: why would they? The epidemic can’t just speed up because you want it to. It has to have a reason. Something new has to happen. It would have to be a completely different disease. You can say it can mutate. Why would coronavirus do that? Isn’t the common cold just as likely to turn into a plague through mutation? It’s more likely, because the common cold is caused by many viruses.

Tuberculosis hasn’t turned into a plague. Chickenpox hasn’t turned into a plague. Lots of old diseases haven’t turned into plagues, even though they’ve been with us for centuries. You can’t bank on bizarre occurrences that are so unlikely they should be considered impossible.

The known number of infections is under 1.8 million. The US alone had about 40 million flu cases this year. In all likelihood, the real coronavirus number is in the hundreds of millions, and we don’t know about it because the disease simply isn’t very severe, except for rare individuals. I think we will find out that these things are true. Just a hunch.

We still have zero major celebrity deaths. That’s astounding. Wynton Marsalis’s father died. Not a major celebrity. Most people don’t know his first name. Then we have Joe Diffie, John Prine, and Tom Dempsey. Where are the Biebers, Anistons, Pelosis, and Clooneys? I’ve been predicting a failed plague, and even I thought we would see a few dozen celebrities die.

Celebrities are behaving pretty badly. They’re posting things to get attention, as always. “Here I am, bravely weathering coronavirus in my mansion, surrounded by guards in N95 masks.” “Yoga is keeping me sane during this terrifying time.” “Why did Trump do this to us? He has to go.” “My vegan diet will protect me.” “Here is a really bad, maudlin, hysterical song I wrote in order to call attention to myself and make me look like I care.”

Here at the ranch/compound, I continue my idle pursuits. Maybe I’ll stand on my head in yoga pants, surrounded by disinfected tarot cards, and put it on Instagram.

I am not happy with my new Instagram account. While I was using it to try to get in touch with people after my friend Travis got shot, I saw that a married friend who appears to be on the outs with her husband was posting provocative swimsuit shots. This is someone who used to sing at my last church. I remember why I gave up social media.

This morning, I decided to try using citric acid to clean .45 brass. It seems to work well. I don’t know if the insides of the cases are as pretty as they would be after using a tumbler, but they look ready for reloading. I put about two teaspoons of acid in a mixing bowl, filled it partially with warm water, and added a squirt of Dawn, which I have, in spite of the hoarders. I dumped the cases in and mixed everything up. I let them go for 15 minutes, and then I rinsed.

This is much easier than using a tumbler, and it reduces my carbon footprint (practically all I think about, when I’m not crying about whaling) because it’s not electric. I mean, yes, electricity heated the water, and I guess they use electricity to make citric acid and pack it and ship it. Other than that, it’s so green, it hurts.

It makes me feel good about opening the French doors to cool the patio.

In all seriousness, tumbler media tend to make a mess, and the tumbler makes noise.

Now I just need to mount my press to a bench and go through my reloading components. Having reloading components is great, unless it means you’ve been too lazy to turn them into ammunition. It’s better to have cartridges than bullets.

I’m getting very tired of self-righteous Youtube ads. They keep popping up. “STAY AT HOME IF YOU DON’T WANT THE TORCHES AND PITCHFORKS MAKE THIS A TIME OF UNITY AND LOVE.” Today I got an ad about a ridiculous coronavirus concert. I knew this was coming. “We are the world; we have a mild cough and a slight fever.” Celebrities never, ever miss a chance to turn events into self-glorification festivals. It’s disgusting. They should sing about the giant future tax burden we just took on over nothing.

I promise you that if I die, I will not come here and act like a martyr. I’ll try to be a man about it.

The “stimulus” program is insane. They’re sending people money to stimulate the economy, but they’re also killing the economy by forcing us not to work. Can anyone see the problem with this? It’s like doing CPR on someone while holding a pillow over his face. You can’t stimulate anything while you’re doing your best to kill it.

It’s not the only remarkable piece of cognitive dissonance we’re seeing. There is a meme out there about our jails. My paraphrasal: “You’re arresting people for leaving their houses because they’ll spread coronavirus, but you’re letting criminals out of jail to keep them from spreading coronavirus. Hmm.”

I have Roku, and my home screens changed to an ominous, pseudo-friendly “STAY HOME OR ELSE” theme. Totally inappropriate. It’s not your place to tell me what to do, from a cubicle in Silicon Valley. Butt out, put on some real pants, and cut off your man bun.

The leftist power-grabbing and maternalism (definitely not paternalism) are very disturbing. It’s coming from every side. We are being mommied ruthlessly, with no regard for the disgusting consequences that prevail in a feminized society. Matriarchy is poisonous. There is a reason why Satan portrays Jesus as a helpless baby in the arms of a grown woman.

There is no “baby Jesus.” He was a baby for two years, like everyone else. Then he became a man. Would you put a baby picture on your driver’s license?

Satan is very effeminate. There is no doubt about it. Consider his vanity, his beauty, and his methods. Consider his rejection-obsessed, vindictive personality. Consider his love of attention. Look at all the feminine men he has used.

He’s like a rejected girlfriend who didn’t get palimony.

Conservatives always spout about civil rights and how great they are, but look how easily Auntie Sam took them away this year. You don’t even need a leftist president. You just need a godless mayor and governor who worship the state. One day you’re free, and the next day, BANG! It’s 1984, only without toilet paper.

The Russians were always short of toilet paper under Soviet rule. Maybe the current American shortage is Satan’s little leftist joke. “We’re coming for you and your Charmin.”

I have some uplifting news, as if the continued failure of the coronavirus plague weren’t uplifing. I’ve gotten a huge revelation about God’s status as father.

Fatherlessness is a huge curse. People whose fathers are inadequate grow up to be punks. Many males get caught up in pride and haughtiness. Many females get caught up in ugly, attention-craving female rebellion. People who don’t have fathers don’t know how to live, because no one has taught them. If you don’t have a father to tell you things, you have to learn over a very long period through trial and error.

Fatherlessness Personified

My parents were not very competent. My dad didn’t watch over me and give me tips. My mother didn’t teach me discipline. As a result, I haven’t had a good feel for the presence of a loving father who takes an interest in me and is always available and eager to advise me and solve my problems. I know such people exist, but I haven’t been able to feel what it would be like to have one in my life.

Suddenly, God has helped me understand that feeling.

One of the worst curses you can have is a heartfelt conviction that God is reluctant or unable to help you. I’ve fought that curse for a long time. In my mind, I know God forgives me and wants to work on me. I know he loves me and wants to help me get through life, all the time. But knowing and feeling are not the same, and feeling is important. Supernatural gifts don’t come through knowledge alone.

God has helped me to understand, in my heart, that I can go to him and say, “Dad, I have this problem. Will you please show me how to defeat it?”

I knew this in my mind, but it wasn’t in my heart until yesterday.

Faith doesn’t just work in the mind. It has to work in the heart. The word says to love God with all your heart and mind.

This is a wonderful breakthrough. I have a much more direct type of communication with God now. I have much more faith that he will help. The big problem is that once I get started, it’s hard to make myself get up and deal with my daily obligations. I don’t want to stop talking to him.

That, however, is a problem, and a loving father solves problems for his children.

Here is what Paul said about this:

For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together.

My whole life has changed, so I am anxious to see what happens from here on out. I’m looking forward to internal change. I’m looking forward to being rid of juvenile priorities and being filled with divine ones.

I feel like I’ve died. It’s very strange. I hope it continues and increases.

All this being said, I suppose I will continue to amuse myself with trivial pursuits until something important comes along.

I have at least 3,600 rounds of .22 LR on the way, so I feel I have the green light to hit the pasture and improve my shooting. I’m also thinking of giving away my bedroom furniture, which is heavy and depressing. I’d like to get something newer and lighter. Easier to deal with in a move.

I need to clean up the workshop, which has suddenly become very productive. There is a layer of steel filings and flap-wheel grit on the floor. I should consider getting a better welding table. Mine is great, and it was very cheap, but I would like something a little bigger.

I have to move my non-firearm-related junk out of the gun room and into the storage room. Or maybe I should just throw it on the burn pile. Maybe I should get some kind of man-friendly couch and chair for that room. Something like you would see in a Firestone waiting area. I have to put a computer in there and put a monitor on the wall.

There is no limit to what a single man can do to a dining room.

I need to look into holsters for full-size Glocks. Maybe a shoulder holster is best. I already have one for my Glock 29. I guess I could try it out on the farm, and if I like it, I can get one for the big Glock. Which I haven’t shot yet.

I expect things to go better for me now. If so, I can be of more help to other people.

Are we Peaking Yet?

Here are my coronavirus figures for today.

My prediction (total global cases): 1,466,645

Johns Hopkins number: 1,446,557

Percentage error: +1.39

I’m not sure why I’m even doing this any more. My number is correct, within a tiny margin of error, every day. I do want to see the deceleration start, though.

My number has been higher than the official number two days in a row. Let’s hope that continues and increases.

I have been wishing I had historical data, so I could look at other trends. For example, I’m wondering if the figure for total cases minus recoveries can be predicted. That gives you the known active cases. The lower that goes, the better life is, regardless of the overall total.

Of course, playing around with disease figures is not my biggest thrill in life, so I have not been working hard at it. Not at all. I spend a few minutes on it once in a while. I haven’t been digging to see what’s available out there, because I really don’t care much. It seems very obvious that this epidemic is never going to approach fulfilling the hype, so I’m not lying awake wondering how I can get better data.

Today I finally checked the Johns Hopkins site, and they have an archive. It’s a bunch of CSV files, not to be confused with CVS files, which would involve very long cash register receipts. I don’t know how to work with CSV files, but I guess I can figure it out. I’ll see what I can do. If I can get numbers for March 5 and a more recent date, I’ll be able to fiddle with an equation. It would be trivial. “Trivial” is a term math and physics people use to describe calculations that are incredibly easy or even unnecessary. All the stuff I’ve done with regard to coronavirus has been trivial. If it weren’t trivial, I couldn’t do it.

Guess what? I got myself a Github account and learned how to download Johns Hopkins’ data and turn it into spreadsheet files. I learned this: since March 5, which is when I started doing equations, the ratio of sick victims to total victims has increased a lot. It went from 2.2202 to 3.6933.

Now I’m trying to figure out what it means. Maybe the ratio of sick people to recoveries is a bad indicator, because it takes longer to recover than to get sick.

Let’s see. The average incubation period is 5 days. It’s hard to get an answer regarding the duration of the disease, but it appears that a typical case takes two weeks to clear, and bad cases take three to 6 weeks. So, assuming 15% bad cases, maybe close to 2.5 weeks on average? That’s a lot longer than 5 days.

Given how recently the epidemic started, I guess recoveries will always lag the total number until some time after the infection curve plummets.

Speaking of the curve, I found pleasant information on the Johns Hopkins site. I’ll post it here. They allow downloads.

How about that? You can go to their page and see curves for individual “hotspot” countries. They’re all on the down slope. Not one exception.

Why am I playing with calculus? Johns Hopkins itself thinks the infection rate’s acceleration is over, unless they don’t believe their own graphs.

That little bump on the left is China. Isn’t that great?

Didn’t I say I thought the curve would turn around this month? Am I a genius, or was it just something any smart person could predict, without calculus, if he was only willing to pull up his pants and look at the numbers?

Reluctantly, I must say I can’t go with “genius.”

Maybe it’s time to buy stock.

Things look good. They couldn’t look better, barring a miracle. Let’s hope the good news holds out.

I hate being manipulated. The lies and manipulation are what disgust me most about the epidemic. Christians know that manipulation is the essence of witchcraft. I have always hated it. I can’t stand people who pull it on me. I can’t stand people who drop guilt trips on me. It makes me angry. I strive not to do it to other people. It’s a filthy, vile thing to do.

If guilt trips are your thing, and you can’t make yourself stop, I will drop you permanently no matter who you are or what we’ve been through. I’ve dropped a whole lot of people, and I have not regretted it even once. The world is full of people who will treat me with respect. Everybody can be replaced.

When I was a kid, I was cursed with a father and older sister who were manipulative. It was unbearable and unsustainable. I’m all done with that.

My friend Mike, who is probably still my friend because he doesn’t manipulate, once told me I was the least codependent person he knew. That was a powerful compliment. It was a nice surprise. I hope he was right.

I’ve had a very good time during the pandemic. Life is better now than it was last year or even in January. God truly does look after people. You just have to stay close to him and do things his way. You don’t have to be all that good at it, either.

Yesterday, I had some fun. I had to move branches out of my yard. We’re not allowed to burn them right now because the fire department has somehow decided coronavirus requires limited coverage. I’m dumping them in the woods.

I started the tractor up, drove 50 feet, and watched my left front tire come off the rim.

Until yesterday, I figured a tractor tire that looked inflated was inflated. I guess I won’t judge tractor tires by the way they look in the future.

Right away, I realized I didn’t have a tire wrench for the Kubota. Never fear! I have three sets of SK sockets plus a Makita impact driver.

I didn’t want to haul a heavy floor jack across the yard and try to jack up the tractor on soft soil. Now what? Well, I had jackstands in the workshop, and I had scrap lumber. The tractor had a front end loader. I used the loader to lift the wheels off the ground. I put wood down. I put a jackstand on the wood. I lowered the tractor onto the jackstand.

Nice.

The impact driver wouldn’t budge the nuts. Problem! But I had 1″ conduit. I put a 4-foot-long piece over the wrench handle and used the conduit as a breaker bar. Problem gone!

Jocko Willink, the professional ex-SEAL, likes to say “no factor” when a problem turns out not to be a problem. No Kubota wrench? No factor.

I got the tire and rim over to the shop. I fired up the big compressor. I had to get the tire back onto the rim. I put it on its side and stood on it. It popped into place. I used a wet paper towel to clean the mating surfaces of the tire and rim.

Knowing the tire probably wouldn’t seal, I gave the compressor a shot, and the tire didn’t fill. Now what?

NO FACTOR!

As a Youtube University honors student, I knew that it was possible to mount a tire using an explosion. You shoot starting fluid into your tire and light it. The explosion expands the tire and fills it with gas.

I didn’t have starting fluid, and I didn’t feel like driving to Tractor Supply, which is nearly 6 minutes away. But I had gasoline!

I put a teaspoon or so in the tire and lit it with a barbecue lighter. POOMP! Mounted tire!

I used the compressor to pump it up, and I was all done.

Guess what? If the tire keeps leaking, and I can’t fix it, I can put a new tire on the rim, myself. I’ll save, probably, 10 dollars. That’s over two Whoppers! And I won’t have to drop it off, wait for it to be fixed, or go back to pick it up.

I can mount my own tires! How about that? Balancing is another story, but don’t count me out until I’ve tried. I haven’t checked Youtube yet.

They have fancy machines for mounting tires in tire shops, but they’re not always necessary. They’re just easier and faster to use.

My biggest problem during the pandemic has been weight gain. The epidemic makes me think about food. I’ve probably bought 1.25 times as much food as I usually do. I refuse to hoard, because it’s tacky, but, to give an example, I bought 4 pounds of spaghetti. Also, Ben & Jerry’s has been on sale, and Tractor Supply put Gimbal’s jelly beans right next to the register.

I told the cashier at Tractor Supply it wasn’t fair to put the jelly beans there, and she said they did it on purpose. I said she needed to move them to the back of the store, and she said, “Not gonna happen.” Never missed a beat.

You have to love Southern humor.

Even though I ate the jelly beans.

Gimbal’s jelly beans are as good as, or better, than Jelly Bellies, but they’re a lot cheaper. You have been warned.

My new Glock is taking forever to arrive. I think I made a great choice. The caliber is probably even better than .357 SIG (which is also tempting).

I saw an interesting story the other day. I got wind of it from a video featuring Massad Ayoob. He mentioned a guy named Gary Fadden, who was a salesman for Heckler & Koch.

Fadden was driving with his fiance, and he had at least one submachine gun in his vehicle. He used submachine guns in his work. He got in a road rage confrontation with two armed bikers and their…lady friend. He fled and look for cops, but he had no success. Eventually, he was cornered, so he got out with a Ruger submachine gun which was already set to full auto. He called the cops on his cell phone. He fired a warning burst, but his new friends rushed him anyway, so he filled one of them with lead.

This happened in Virginia, which is NOT NOT NOT a good 2A state. I know people who think they’ll leave liberal areas for “paradises” like Virginia. They think all Southern states are alike. No, no, no. They are not. Virginia is jammed up with leftists. Avoid.

Florida is not bad, although that won’t last. Tennessee is great. Kentucky is messed up because Kentuckians hate work and love the government teat. You have to be careful.

A Virginia prosecutor charged Fadden with murder, and then he did him the favor of offering him a manslaughter plea, which Fadden rejected. Fadden was acquitted, but the experience didn’t do him a lot of good.

The prosecutor was bursting with enthusiasm to put Fadden away. It wasn’t like his hands were tied and he did his work reluctantly. He even told the jurors they had released a murderer.

Ridiculous.

Reading between the lines, it appears that Fadden gave the finger to the bikers, or did something similar, but guess what? Insulting people doesn’t affect your right to self-defense. I can call your mother everything you can think of, and if you put your hands on me, I can defend myself using whatever degree of force is needed. If I attack you illegally, then I lose the right to defend myself, but I can say anything I want and still be protected. I can give you the finger with both hands and still be innocent.

Ayoob is a self-defense expert. He says using a scary-looking weapon is a bad idea. He says Fadden wishes he had been carrying a shotgun. Ayoob believes people who use scary-looking guns are much more likely to be charged falsely.

Ayoob is an interesting guy. Gun people nearly worship him. He’s a cop. I assumed he was a New York City cop, or maybe Chicago. It turns out he’s a part-time cop somewhere in New Hampshire, where most of the crimes involve moose poaching. He lost a lot of credibility with me when I read that, but he’s still a smart guy.

I used to keep an AK in my truck, because why not? Pistols are for people who don’t have rifles. We carry pistols because carrying rifles is inconvenient or illegal. A person in a vehicle can keep a rifle handy without any aggravation.

After reading about Fadden, I wonder if I should stick to Glocks while on the road.

I used to be concerned that I would miss with a pistol, but now that I’m shooting gongs, I realize I’m a much better long distance pistol shot than I thought. It would be very hard for a dangerous criminal to get within 100 feet of me without getting shot. Maybe the greatly reduced effectiveness of a pistol is okay when balanced against the increased likelihood of being arrested.

On the other hand, I live in the most conservative county in Florida, and if I hosed an assailant down with 7.62mmx39 and then set fire to his blacked-out Camaro, the cops here would probably have a barbecue in my honor. So maybe the AK is still a good idea.

Whatever the story is, I think a full-size Glock will be an asset.

I think I’ll stick with pistols when traveling.

Hope everyone is having a pleasant lockdown.

Home Shooting Gallery Becomes a Reality

I accomplished a couple of neat things today.

First, I made doro wat, which is a spicy Ethiopian chicken stew. It came out great. I also made fake injera. Injera is a type of savory pancake. You spread these pancakes on a platter and pour doro wat over them. Then you eat the doro wat by rolling it up in bits of pancake.

Real injera is made with teff, a brown grain that smells a little bit like cow manure. I have tried it, and I don’t think much of it. I have eaten in Ethiopian restaurants, and I haven’t seen real teff in one. I used flour.

Injera is supposed to be a little sour, I think. I tried to get buttermilk to sour mine up, but the stores were out. People hoard the funniest things. Today I added citric acid to my batter to make it sour, and it worked perfectly. Really nice.

Second thing I did: I finished my target array. Nearly. I made 6 stands for bottles or bowling pins or whatever else you might want to shoot off a stand.

It took me around half an hour to make 6 stands. Very easy. I bought 3″ squares of 1/8″ steel. I also bought 4′ lengths of 3/8″ rebar. I cleaned the squares up on the belt grinder. Then I welded the rebar to them. Simple. Some of the squares weren’t as level as I wanted them to be, so I clamped them in a vise and bent the rebar. When I was done, I sprayed the tops of 5 of the stands with truck bed coating. After that, I ran out. I will finish up tomorrow after a run to an essential store.

Here are a couple of photos.

Using these is simple. You drive them into the ground with a big hammer.

They’re a little small for big bottles. I just realized that. But then I don’t see myself shooting giant bottles. Shooting isn’t fun if you’re not challenged.

Guests may see things differently.

Maybe I’m making things too hard for visitors. I didn’t think about that. You have to stay a certain distance away from steel to shoot safely, but my targets are small, so people who don’t shoot well may be unable to use them because they’ll be too far away to hit.

I don’t know if I want guests shooting my steel as a general rule. They will tear up the stands when they miss. Also, they could get hit by fragments of bullets.

I’m all set for steel targets, paper target stands, and bottle stands. I may want to add something in the future, but I am doing great as it is. Didn’t take long at all. About four weeks from start to finish, including ordering stuff and procrastinating.

The last thing I really need is a portable shelter for shooting semiauto weapons. I need a shelter to catch the casings. Sooner or later, the pasture will fill up with casings if I don’t recover them, and besides, I want to keep my brass.

I was thinking of building a shelter from wood, but I’m considering weld one together now. Simple frame with metal roof panels screwed to it and a plywood floor. I may not be living here next year, so building a fancy shelter that can’t be broken down and taken with me seems like a bad idea.

Getting this done has taken a load off my mind. Now I look forward to improving my shooting.

No Telling How Much Money $40,000 Worth of Tools will Save You

No one can say my day is being wasted. I finished assembling my new steel gong target stand. Photo to follow.

I feel like I’m in heaven.

The gongs arrived today. I decided to hose them all with black truck bed coating. It seems to resist bullets very well. I thought it would be good to put it under the orange paint on the small gongs because if the paint flaked off, the black would give a nice contrast.

I’m extremely happy with the stand. The whole job probably took less than 6 hours, including the paint. From a distance, it looks like a professional did it. In just the right light. If you squint.

I went to the grocery today, a little earlier than usual. It appears that the governor’s lockdown order scared people, because there were some hoarders there. You can tell who they are because their carts are piled high. The store had lots of eggs, there was bleach in the detergent area, and I even saw rubbing alcohol in carts.

Forget toilet paper. You have to get there pretty early for that.

They had big stickers on the floor near the checkout stands. When you stand in line, you’re supposed to stand on a sticker to maintain your distance from other people. I like that idea. They should keep those stickers. I don’t want people’s kids bumping into me. I don’t want their dogs licking me. And the added distance should hinder all sorts of diseases, not just coronavirus.

I wonder if it would offend people if I had some stickers of my own printed up and put them down wherever I am when I socialize.

Yesterday I wasn’t able to find a package of chicken suitable for Ethiopian chicken stew. Today, at a different store, the chicken-hoarding wasn’t as bad, and I got what I wanted. That was nice. They also had Ben & Jerry’s on sale.

I hit an auto parts store to buy truck bed coating for my target stand. Hey, car parts and firearms are essential. By extension, target practice is essential. I know my rights. The store was running normally, except they had a couple of things taped up for people to read. Curbside service and whatnot.

I plan to “test” the targets with the Marlin Model 60 and the Smith & Wesson SW22. I hate to say it, but the ticky-tacky Model 60 is growing on me now that I have spent two years correcting its faults. I shot my Savage A22 the other day, and while it’s ten times the gun, it’s somewhat lower in charm.

I found I had a harder time hitting the targets at 20 yards with the A22 than with a pistol. The reason? Wind. It was a blustery day, and a rifle really catches the breeze. The crosshairs roamed all over the place. Never thought I would wish for a pistol while shooting a rifle.

Time to go try out the new targets. This should be great.

If Snowflakes were Horses, my Neighbor Would Ride

The first day of lockdown is in progress. As your reporter on the scene, I ventured out to survey the misery. And to get sushi, which is clearly vital to my survival.

Here is my report: I can’t tell the difference.

Stores are bustling. There is plenty of traffic, by this area’s standards. Chick fil-A is open. I’m still not sure who or what, exactly, is locked down.

I’ll bet my barber didn’t close. But I don’t need a haircut, so I won’t know for a while.

I guess “lockdown” means different things to people in different areas, and it’s probably a lot worse if you have a 9-to-5 job or kids. Or if you live in a leftist-dominated police state.

I coped with the anguish and fear by completing a second stand for steel targets. I am beside myself with satisfaction. Here’s a photo:

It’s simpler than the other stand, so putting it together was faster. It will hold my weight in the middle. It should be excellent.

It’s on the low side. I do that on purpose, to make it harder to shoot over the berm and kill my neighbors. If it turns out to be too low, making adjustable extensions for the side supports will take about 90 minutes.

I blasted it with truck bed coating. I’ll need another can tomorrow. Luckily, car parts stores are essential.

Tomorrow, the gongs should get here. Federal Express is essential! Then I’ll be able to shoot at TWO target arrays at once.

I’m thrilled with this thing.

I’m also going to slap my bottle stands together. That should take half an hour.

Things are getting better at stores, although judging from some bulging carts I saw today, the relatively toothless lockdown order is scaring people who don’t think very carefully.

Flour is coming back. I bought eggs. Hadn’t seen those in a while. The cashier told me the store had toilet paper until noon every day. That’s how long it takes for the selfish to show up and remove it.

I ask cashiers about toilet paper purely for entertainment, and it upsets them. Not my intention. They are not happy with the hoarders. They have to watch them waddle past their registers all day.

I have to wonder how Miami is doing. Cubans have an incredibly selfish me-first culture. I’ll bet there has been violence in grocery stores. There are probably hoarder-stocked new businesses all over Hialeah now, under the table. During the Andrew mess, gouging was everywhere. We are the world! We are the children! Hold hands, everyone!

Don’t give me a hard time for my assessment of Miami culture. I lived there. I’ve seen how people behave. I’ve seen how they fish. In Miami, anyone who obeys the fishing laws is considered a fool, and Miami boats clean out the reefs in the Bahamas. I’ve seen how people cut in lines. I’ve seen how they treat other drivers. I’ve seen their attitude toward fair taxes and reasonable environmental laws. I’m not making anything up.

I was going to get chicken today and make doro wat, which is a spicy Ethiopian stew, but apparently someone hoarded the chicken at the store I visited today. It only takes a few immature customers with freezers to ruin things for everyone for an entire day. The Winn-Dixie near me hasn’t been having chicken problems. Maybe I’ll run over there. It’s essential.

I had a minor problem. I wanted liquid chlorine for my pool. It needs a shock to get the swimming season started. Of course, hoarders have been taking the chlorine. I can’t figure out what they’re doing with 10% pool chlorine. It’s brutal. Bleach is not that hard to find. Hoarding pool chlorine is not necessary. Besides, bleach is not the best thing for coronavirus. You need alcohol, which can be found in hardware stores and possibly liquor stores. Everclear ought to work.

I had to buy powdered shock treatment, but it worked out fine. I wanted to avoid the kind that has calcium in it, because it leaves a residue in the pool. The brand I bought contains sodium.

My cousin in the Chicago area says people there are whispering that the government is going to shut stores down for two weeks. I marveled when she told me. How can anyone be that gullible? Imagine the riots. “Sorry, everyone. Just fast until the 28th. If you feel you’re going to die, make sure you unlock your front door for the collection people.” That’s not going to happen.

They can’t starve us, but they’re doing an awful lot to us. It turns out the Constitution tears much more easily than I thought. It’s a very thin document, especially after years of being abraded by statists.

Today I was thinking it would be funny if I got coronavirus, after telling people the truth about the overblowing of the epidemic. If I got sick, people would say it proved I was wrong. Of course, it would not. One robin doesn’t make a spring. But people aren’t logical. They would not understand. They would be sure it proved I was mistaken about everything.

Being right is frustrating when you swim in a sea of people who are wrong. I feel like God gave me a simple cure for cancer and then cursed me with a language no one else can understand.

About 1/2000 of America is believed to have the disease, so there is no medical reason why I couldn’t get it. I would just have to beat great odds. Like when I got pink eye in spite of being a hermit.

If you get a mild case, you will probably feel relieved, because it will put an end to the anticipation. You’ll know you’re not going to die.

I would not be beside myself if I got a typical case. I would be pretty bummed out if I got the other kind, however. The relatively rare kind. But then I would also be bummed out if I got a severe case of the flu, which is many times more likely.

This disease obviously spreads much more slowly than the flu. This is proven. It did so even when no one was locked down or socially distancing. Also, there is evidence that warm weather will get rid of it. Still, I do wonder what will happen. I’m not sure how a disease that spreads slowly to begin with can infect a large percentage of people when everyone is struggling to avoid it. Maybe it can, but unless the Chinese are doing a phenomenal job of keeping a secret, it’s not happening in the birthplace of coronavirus, so it would appear that it won’t happen anywhere.

I feel some reluctance to go out and shoot the gongs. The gunfire that is usually so common in my neighborhood has been silent lately. My guess is that people are afraid to expend precious ammo. When they hear me out there banging away, it may seem to be in poor taste. It may seem like showing off or irresponsibility.

Ammo is not in short supply, however, except locally. It still rolls out of factories and into stores. If you shop online, as you should be doing anyway, you can find it. There is no reason to be shy about using it. That may change if whichever Bolshevik the Democrats nominate starts to do well in polls.

I’m going to shoot. People who don’t like it will just have to man up and bear it. I don’t think there’s anyone like that here, though, except maybe for the strange lady who thinks no one should be allowed to shoot within a mile of her inbred, untrained horses. I shoot all I want, and I count on her and her horses to find coping strategies. Things will work out fine if we all do our jobs. My job is to blast steel gongs with various types of bullets.

You can’t start making concessions when spoiled neighbors with boundary issues make crazy demands. If I let her prevent me from shooting, next she’d be texting me to tell me to turn the TV down or to watch a different channel. “I thought we agreed you were going to watch Oprah.”

I like to think it does her good when I go out and pop off a hundred or so rounds. It will toughen her up, and maybe it will make men out of her horses.

I’m enjoying using my tools. Sometimes I find myself putting off working on a project, and as I have probably said before, I tell myself, “If you don’t want to use your tools, sell them.” Then I get started, and I have a great time.

Life is better when you end the day with bits of torn steel in your hair. It’s like cruising home from fishing with fish blood all over you. It shows you did something with your day.

Of course I will post photos of the stand when the gongs are attached.

Fears Wiped Away

Let’s get this out of the way first. I wrote an equation to predict how many cases would appear on the Johns Hopkins coronavirus site. I got it working so well the predictions were leveling out at around 20% below the actual figures. Then it occurred to me that I could do better by simply adding the error (~26.4%) to the predicted numbers. Yesterday, I was within one percentage point.

Today, my math says there should be 937,081 cases on the website. Actual figure this morning: 941,949.

So this equation has worked incredibly well for what? Five days in a row? It has worked since the last time I changed the constant, whenever that was.

Yesterday, I was about 0.83% off. Today I’m 0.52% off.

That’s so precise, there is no possible way to attribute it to skill. Even if the disease obeyed an equation precisely, there would be errors in collecting the data and putting it on the website, and they would be big.

I’m tempted to say the infection rate is slowing down, because 0.83 is bigger than 0.52, but of course, that would be ridiculous. There are probably a lot of people it would fool, though.

I wonder if anyone other than my 4 readers will ever know how well I did with this. I guess not.

I seriously wonder if God is helping me for some reason.

Yesterday, longtime reader LauraW (Internet names are so weird) thanked me for blogging during this insanity. That was nice. I didn’t think I was helping anyone. Hope I am.

Tomorrow’s figure is 1,007,033, as reported here yesterday. No one can say I predict retroactively.

With that behind me, it’s time for a testimony.

God keeps providing for me during this time of hysteria, authoritarian virtue-signaling, and selfishness. I had a lot of toilet paper before the fuss started. I got what may well have been the last package of paper towels in Ocala. I’m retired, so I won’t lose a job. I got a great deal on a bulk .22 LR buy right before the ammo panic hit, and I got good deals on other things even after it was underway.

I found two canisters of disinfecting wipes I didn’t know I had. I keep rubbing alcohol in the house in big quantities all the time, so I had plenty when things went nuts, and I found a gallon of denatured alcohol at Lowe’s yesterday, in a store with no wipes and no hand sanitizer. I need it for my workshop, but it can also be used for disinfecting if the hoard horde keeps emptying store shelves.

I’ve been using spray bottles of alcohol in my house for years. It’s not new. I cared for my dad when he had dementia, and I have two parrots with dirty feet.

Life here is better than it was a month ago. Stress is down. I keep feeling the sensation of God’s benevolence. It hits me every time I see something he has provided for me.

Yesterday, after visiting Lowe’s, I went to my metal supplier to get steel for a target stand. I always wipe rust off my hands with a disinfecting wipe when I leave that place. The can I keep in my car has been with me for over a year. I don’t use many wipes. Mainly, they’re for cleaning my hands when I visit the dump.

There were only a few wipes in the can yesterday. During the steel errand, I bought gas at a very low price, and it occurred to me that I could put DNA from the new jug on the wipe I had used to wipe off rust and use it to clean the pump handle at the gas station.

I’m not paranoid, but those things are filthy all the time, and this one could have had flu viruses on it. Or one of the 20 alleged coronavirus victims in my county could have touched it. Might as well use what God gave me. I wiped down the handle, the keypad, and the buttons that select the grade of gas. Why not? I think I’ll keep doing it after the craziness subsides. It’s a good idea.

Last night, I did what I always do. I put detergent and trisodium phosphate in the dishwasher. I keep these products under the sink. I look under the sink every day, because I use the products every day.

Last night, I saw something I had never noticed before: a nearly full can of Lysol disinfectant wipes.

I started laughing out loud. I couldn’t stop. Funniest thing I had seen all day. I knew it was a message.

I have three known containers of these things. For all I know, there are others somewhere. I’ve had them since before my dad died. I probably won’t need new ones for a year.

They don’t do much to kill coronaviruses, but it’s still comforting to have them. They work against diseases which, unlike coronavirus, I might actually be exposed to in the near future.

Here’s something else. My friend Amanda has three sons. They used to visit a lot. I noticed that when they visited, the soft soap in my guest bathroom seemed to disappear. I wash my hands over and over, all day, and it takes me over a month to get to where I need to refill anything. You only need a few drops of soft soap to get the job done, unless you’ve just changed your oil or something. Using a handful of soap is completely unnecessary.

I asked Amanda if she could counsel the boys to go easy on the soap. She said she was going to bring me a new container to refill my dispensers. I said I already had a big jug of soap. I said I didn’t care about the cost of the soap, which was nearly nothing. I was just tired of filling the dispenser, which is a pain.

She brought me a jug of soap anyway. I could not dissuade her.

Then coronavirus arrived, and I had well over a gallon of soap on hand (poor choice of words).

Hand soap will actually kill and wash away this virus, and people have been stripping the shelves for a couple of weeks now.

They’re also hoarding dishwashing liquid. I buy it in large quantities because I use it for pressure washing. No worries there.

In the future, never ask me how coronavirus affected me. You may not like the answer. God has been wonderful to me.

Yesterday, our governor finally gave in to the hysteria and issued a statewide lockdown. Because I have no mayor, I was free until he spoke. I got on the web to see how I would be affected. “Essential businesses” were still open.

Where do I go when there is no epidemic? Grocery stores. Hardware stores. Gas stations. Takeout places. To sum it up, I never go to non-essential businesses. Nothing is going to change for me.

I’m not sure which businesses are considered non-essential. Strip clubs? Florists? There must be some businesses that are off-limits.

I’m reminded of something my grandmother said. She told me that when the Depression hit her area, people’s lifestyles didn’t change noticeably.

I have to hand it to governor DeSantis. He stood up to the authoritarians and neurotics for a good long time, risking his political future. I am impressed. That’s leadership.

I assume my metal dealer has an essential business. I picked up my steel the day the lockdown was announced, however, so it doesn’t matter.

Don’t be angry with me. If I have favor, it’s not coming from me. Get your own. It’s available.

Join me in prayer that the epidemic ends. More importantly, pray that the epidemic of fear and selfishness ends, because unlike the viral epidemic, it’s a big problem. Pray that people get to know God in their homes and get filled with the Holy Spirit.

Hope I can finish my target stand today. The targets are scheduled to arrive tomorrow.

New Target Stand Takes Shape

I have had a fantastic day in the workshop.

Last week, I finished creating a stand for steel targets. After I tried the targets, I got so excited, I ordered more of them. Today I bought steel and started making a second stand, using a different design.

My first stand was all square tubing. I made two steel A-frames with short pieces of square tubing across the tops, and I ran a long piece of tubing from one A-frame to the other. It works great, but it took too long to fabricate. My second stand is simpler. It’s easier to show you than explain. The main crossmember will be round, not square, and the end supports are just inverted-Y shapes made from square tubing.

Fabricating these supports is easier than fabricating the other kind. Also, they’re lighter, and they use less steel.

One part of the job was time-consuming. I was too tight to buy drawn-over-mandrel round tubing, which has no weld seam inside it. I bought the cheap kind. Because the main horizontal tube has to go into the short pieces on top of the supports, I need the short pieces to be unobstructed. I could have just jammed the crossmember in over the welds, but I wanted to do a good job, so I put the short pieces on the lathe, bored them, and sanded the insides. Must have killed 90 minutes.

The targets will hang from pieces of the same tubing, slipped over the horizontal crossmember. I bored and sanded those, too. My first stand has square tubing which is a loose fit inside the round tubing attached to the targets, so the weld seams aren’t a problem. When you put one round tube inside another, everything is closer together, so one tube can gouge the other.

I used the lathe, the mill, the buffer, two angle grinders, one welder, the welding table, my phenomenal new welding helmet, and a 1/2-13 tap today. Lots of fun.

Tomorrow I have to make the rest of the stand. It will be easy. I got the tedious lathe work behind me today, and I learned how to put this particular type of stand support together for welding. Doing a second support will be easier.

The targets should arrive Friday. After that, Katie bar the door.

I also bought 6 lengths of 3/8″ rebar and 6 3″ squares of 1/8″ steel. I’m going to weld the squares on top of the rebar, pound it into the ground, and put things like soda cans on them. I could also put bowling pins on them.

I know what you’re thinking. It would be easier to build a single long platform. If I did that, every time I shot one object, the motion would travel down the platform and knock others over. Also, I would be limited in how I could place the objects.

It’s great to have the workshop up and running. I missed having tools more than I can say.

Hope everyone is enjoying life in spite of the big scary pandemic. Just because the world has gone crazy doesn’t mean you have to.

Goebbels’ Children

Today longtime reader Rick C provided a link to a highly disturbing coronavirus video from conservative media personality Todd Starnes. It’s a video of a Brooklyn hospital that tests people for coronavirus. You can imagine the droves of infected people, lying on the sidewalks because they can’t stand, hoping against hope that someone will test them before they die and get rolled into the gutter.

Here’s a link: LINK.

For those who don’t care to click, the area outside the hospital is deserted. Maybe the truck and front end loader already came, and the bodies are being dumped in a mass grave in the South Bronx, where no one will notice.

It’s really something, the way journalists and even doctors are flat-out lying about the scary pandemic, which still has an official global infection toll far lower than the US flu toll for a single week.

Is this how Jews felt when inane Nazi lies were swallowed by the majority of Germans and Austrians? I wonder.

I think they’re just trying to get rid of Trump. The Chinese essentially put this disease in a box and Fedexed it all over the world in secret, and everyone knows it, but leftists are willing to say anything to get a backward socialist elected in America.

Human dishonesty is so deep and broad, it’s hard for me to conceive of it. I hate to use this expression, but I can’t wrap my head around it. The natural inclination is to think people can’t really be that bad, but they can, and they are. Every day.

I haven’t checked my epidemic prediction equation today, because it’s becoming less and less interesting with time. It is now beyond obvious that my ballpark prognostication is correct. The divergence between the prediction and the official number is probably still growing, but it’s way, WAY close enough to prove I’m right. My thesis isn’t that the official number will be x on a certain day in the future. It’s that if we continue testing pretty much the same way we do now, coronavirus will never be anything like as big a threat as the flu. Remember: coronavirus 850,000; flu 650,000,000.

I was thinking I might create an equation for the divergence itself and see if I could tighten up my basic equation by adding the divergence equation. That would be funny. Maybe the divergence is changing exponentially and predictably.

It would be nice if I could make the results extremely close to the official numbers, but life isn’t a video game, and even if the epidemic numbers obey an equation precisely (doubtful at best), the official numbers, which are different, probably will not. Doctors diagnosing the disease are biased. Testing prevalence can go up and down. Society’s response to the virus can affect the transmission rate. No one can predict anything with true precision.

Scientists don’t have to be told this. Only lay people expect precision.

I guess you could ask why I would trust Todd Starnes, about whom I know nothing, over the press. That would not be a smart question. Here: Dan Rather. Not enough? Brian Williams (who still has a job).

It’s interesting that Bill O’Reilly, whose crime was very bad manners, can’t find work, while a man who betrayed the public as a matter of policy and failed at the primary purpose of his trade is still being paid millions. If Matt Lauer had merely been caught lying repeatedly, he would still be working.

From the perspective of the general public, a major journalist who lies is a much bigger problem than one who acts like Bill Clinton at the office. Ask anyone who has escaped from North Korea.

Interesting stuff.

Now I’ll get back to my own life, since I seem to be unable to offer my hardheaded species much help. Before I move on, I’ll repeat the obvious: Jesus is real. Receive salvation. Be baptized with the Holy Spirit. Pray in tongues as much as you can. Learn to hear from God. Learn to obey. Focus on being transformed supernaturally. That’s all I can offer.

I have four new steel gongs on the way. This time, I ordered two round gongs, a zombie figure, and a bear. Everything is 3/8″ thick. I’m hoping thinner targets will absorb more momentum from bullets, and aside from that, they’re cheaper and easier to move.

I’m trying to come up with a good stand design. My last design is great, but I think I can do just as well with less steel. Right now, I have four vertical members. I can reduce that to two. Actually, one would work, but I want the stand to be more rigid than necessary.

I’m very happy with the CCI Troy Landry ammo I bought, but since I got it, the supply has dried up. Question: do I keep shooting it, secure in the knowledge that the epidemic will go away soon, or should I count on hysteria to continue the problem through the election? It’s generally a good idea to bank on the selfishness and irrationality of the human race.

Whenever you start thinking human beings are rational, remember that when they were faced with a minor RESPIRATORY epidemic, they hoarded TOILET PAPER. That’s all you need to know.

I believe I can still get Remington Golden Bullets in buckets. Maybe I should spring for a bucket, just in case. The ammo is perfectly good. The mess it leaves on guns is the problem.

I just checked Ammoseek, and it looks like I can get Troy Landry ammo without Troy Landry’s picture on it for 6 cents per round, but I have to buy a case. I might as well go ahead. I know I’ll use it, and ammo never gets less expensive. I have never regretted buying too much, but I have often regretted buying too little *cough* GP11 *cough* 7N1.

The site selling the ammo says shipping times are back to normal. That’s a good sign.

I’ve been saving up purified water bottles. Last night I filled a bunch with dyed water. I filled them to the tops so they would explode better. The more air you leave in a bottle, the more the air will contract when you shoot, and that cushions the reaction. I want red water everywhere.

There are Youtube shooters who use colored soda. Seems like a needless expense, although the carbonation adds a lot of action. Maybe in the future I’ll buy the cheapest soda I can find.

It’s ironic that I was getting back into shooting just as the hysteria started. If I had done this 4 months ago, I would be sitting on 10,000 rounds of the .22 LR of my choice.

I wanted to use my .204 Ruger on steel, but I have read that it tears it up. The .204 shoots tiny rounds at close to 4000 fps. Speed is what damages gongs. When your gong is damaged, it may send fragments back at you. The recommended shooting distance for .204 Ruger is 300+ yards. Distance allows the bullets to slow down. I don’t think I want to shoot 300 yards here.

I suppose I should buy steel today. So far, my county has been an idyllic oasis from lockdowns and real shortages. A friend tells me her kids can’t go to school, and you can’t sit in a restaurant, but I can go to Target or Lowe’s whenever I feel like it. I predict that my own freedom will last throughout the panic.

When she told me her kids had to be home-schooled through April, I asked her who would teach them about homosexuality, drugs, and socialism.

If I do a simpler stand design, I should be able to put a nice stand together in a couple of hours. My last design included a bunch of non-90° angles, and that made it harder to create.

I could make stands for bottles. I could get rebar or steel rod and weld flat steel platforms to the tops. Drive the rods into the ground…instant bottle stands.

The cows must think I’m nuts.

Once I get my indoor tools moved to the dining room (yay, being a single man), I can set up my ammo press, and after that, I’ll feel better about shooting big pistols at steel.

I’m going to be a seriously good shot pretty soon, God willing.

I’ll post a photo of the new gongs.

New Toy Graces the Compound

I finished building my steel gong stand!

I was so excited when I finished, I took the stand to the pasture and started shooting after 7 p.m. Here are some shots of the gongs after a few rounds from 50 feet.

My squirrel rage now has a ready outlet year-round.

I didn’t realize steel was so liberating. With paper targets, I concentrate on my grip, pull, sight picture, breath control, and whatever else matters, and I try to put shots into the tiniest area possible. With steel, you just aim in the general direction of the gong and let fly. This is what shooting used to be like when I was a kid, terrorizing my neighborhood with BB guns.

It’s interesting to see how the paint holds up. The black stuff is truck bed coating, and it seems to be holding onto the gongs in spite of being blasted with CCI Choot Em’s. The orange paint is plain old Rust-Oleum, and it comes right off. Maybe I can find orange truck bed coating somewhere. I don’t expect gongs to stay pretty forever, but it would be nice to do better than this.

I shot these gongs with my Marlin Model 60, and it worked so well, we have reconciled. The Model 60 is a great gun, as long as you spend a lot of money upgrading it and then force yourself not to think of what’s inside it. The inner workings of a Model 60 are not a lot better than those of a Daisy BB gun.

When I got my Model 60 in 2018, I found that it shot 4″ groups at 50 feet. I sent it for warranty work, and Marlington replaced it. They couldn’t make it work any better than I could. The new one worked okay for a brief moment, and then the magazine tube fell out. After that, I put it away. I figured I would send it to Remlin eventually.

I decided to fix it myself. I bought a new pin to hold the tube in. Pins like this are supposed to be so tight they have to be hammered in. My new pin went right in with a push from my fingernail. The band it fit into had an oversized hole.

I bought a new band and a second pin for insurance. Then I Loctited the first replacement pin in place. If it falls out, I’ll replace the band and put the second replacement pin in it. One hopes the hole in the second band is not oversized.

The Marlin has a peep sight, which I installed shortly before the magazine fell out. The original sights are pretty cheap. The peep sight is really nice. I love peep (or “aperture”) sights. I had one on my old Crosman M1 BB gun. Regrettably, it accounted for a number of unwary lizards on my block.

Let’s tick off all the stuff the Marlin has now. I altered the stock myself and installed a correct sling stud, and then I added a sling. I put an MCARBO trigger in it, which, while not stellar, is worlds better than OEM. I installed a recoil spring that allows the use of hyper ammunition. Finally, I put a Williams peep sight set on it. So for a little over $300, you can have a pretty good $180 .22 rifle.

The Marlin is a beautiful gun. The stock is highly figured for some reason, and the basic lines of the gun have always been great. The balance and handling give it a sweet feel. It cycles well. It’s accurate. I just won’t think about what’s inside it.

POT METAL! POT METAL!

That just slipped out.

I feel like I need more gongs. I didn’t realize they were addictive.

Can’t wait to blast these with a 10mm pistol. Should be a joy.

No Soy Here

The Hickok45 starter kit is shaping up.

For those who don’t know, Hickok45 is a Youtuber who is so popular, he makes a living from videos. He shoots steel targets and containers of soda in his backyard. Wishing you had thought of it first? Who isn’t?

I have a berm and a target stand made from a realtor’s “for sale” sign frame. The stand is great for paper targets. I decided I wanted some steel gongs, too, so I needed a second stand.

The other day, I posted a video of the stand without paint and the bolts that tighten it. Today I have a photo of the [virtually] finished product. I just put the paint on it.

As you can see, it now has T-handles on top of the little sleeves that hold the crossmember in place. Those handles are made from steel I cut from a Hawaiian sling spear today. I welded them across the tops of a couple of 1/2″ black oxide bolts I happened to have on hand. With the handles in place, I can tighten the crossmember in position without a wrench.

I used Rust-Oleum truck bed coating to paint the stand. Truck bed coating is unbelievably tough. I screwed the bolts in as far as I could and painted the stand with them in place. This covered the exposed parts of the bolts without gunking up the male and female threads that actually hold the stand together.

The stand is surprisingly non-wobbly. The first time I fitted it up, I thought it needed more of an angle between the end supports, but with the bolts tight, it doesn’t move.

When the stand is fully painted and dry, I’ll mount the gongs on attachments made from pipe and flat bar. I already have the materials.

The friction from the gongs swinging back and forth will eventually cause rust, but come on. This is going to a cow pasture. It’s not a bench for Princess Kate to sit on. I guess I could wrap the abraded areas with Gorilla Tape before slipping the gongs onto the crossmember. That would greatly extend the rust-free period.

I don’t know how long Gorilla Tape lasts outdoors.

It’s very satisfying to be able to fabricate steel projects. For a long time, I was not able to do this, either because of lack of equipment or lack of skill. Now I have plenty of equipment and just enough skill.

Right now I’m going to make pizza. The faux plague and hysteria-related food supply problems got me thinking about making pizza with supermarket ingredients. My local Winn-Dixie sells whole-milk grated mozzarella, which is a dream come true, because part-skim mozzarella is generally nasty.

People snapped spaghetti sauce up after the insanity started, but I found some. I would be stunned if it was anything like as good as the pizza sauce I make myself. But it could be acceptable for times when the real thing isn’t available. Maybe it will even surprise me.

I hate to say this, but canned sauce has gotten so good, there isn’t much point in making sauce. I mean for pasta, not pizza. You can’t throw pasta sauce on pizza and get optimal results. Pasta and pizza are not the same. I can make pasta sauce somewhat better, but I would call it a 10% difference, if that.

I used to eat Paul Newman’s sauce sometimes, but plain old Ragu is better. They have a ton of different flavors, though, so you have to pick and choose.

Today I plan to make thin pizza with pepperoni, pineapple, onions, and ricotta. I make pan pizza better. I want to brush up my thin-crust technique.

On a related note, I wrote about a local chain called Five Star. I had a pepperoni slice that made a great impression on me, so I bought a small pie this week. It turns out their cheese is not fatty enough. The pepperoni slice was saved by the fat from the meat, so I didn’t realize the cheese was flawed. The pie I bought had little brown dots on it. The signature of dry cheese. Also, the crust was bloated, like Domino’s.

I think they would do a fine job if I ordered thin crust and a meat topping.

I tried their garlic rolls. Not good. The bread was fine, but they put some kind of salty yellow sauce on it. I assume it’s margarine. I don’t think they could afford to use that much butter. The garlic was burnt. Maybe I could make it work if I got rolls without sauce and nuked my own garlic.

I could make rolls today. I’ll try to resist.

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.

Plus Drawer Liner Discovery

I finally “finished” my arbor press stand today. I’m insufferably pleased with myself.

Yesterday, I used my finger brake to make a storage shelf to fit the stand, and today I ground and welded to make it work. I also welded a bottom in the catch bin I made for the stand.

I may go back over it, grind here and there to make it look better, and fill in around ugly welds with J-B Weld. I think this will be a great sneaky way to improve the appearance of the project. Once it’s painted, people will think the smooth, pretty J-B Weld is steel.

My next project is a stand for my dry saw. I already have the steel. Having bent the shelf for the arbor press, I have to say that making the top of the saw stand is somewhat intimidating. I don’t care. I have to get on it and see what happens. Here’s what I tell myself when I think a job is too big or intimidating: “You don’t want to use your tools? Sell them.” That puts me in the right frame of mind.

Life without tools is life as a woman, for most practical purposes. Although there are a lot of women who use tools very well, which makes it even more disgraceful to be intimidated.

In other news, I found a great cheap product to protect the trays on my amazing Harbor Freight 3-tier $39 tool cart. Initially, I used clear Flex-Seal, which is a rubbery substance you apply like spray paint. I could have used toolbox liner material, but it’s generally black, making it hard to see little things in your box or cart, and it’s extremely overpriced. It’s also thick. I wanted to be able to use little magnetic parts trays in my cart, and they will not stick through a heavy drawer liner.

The Flex-Seal looked like a good idea, but then I found out gasoline dissolves it, so if you work on gas engines, you will get gas on your cart, and then you will have problems. It appears that it also reacts with the rubber bases of magnetic parts trays and makes them stick–more than you want–to the cart.

I found these things out after applying Flex-Seal to all three trays. Removing it was a challenge. I had to find a solvent that removed Flex-Seal while sparing Chinese paint. In the end, gasoline turned out to be the only answer, so I used gasoline and paper towels to clean the top tray. After that, I went to the local firehouse and asked them if they wanted to give me a safety prize.

I finally found the product I needed. Lowe’s sells clear adhesive-backed drawer liner material in rolls 30 feet long. The price? About $13. That’s about a third of the cost of useless toolbox drawer liner material.

The clear stuff I bought comes with paper backing that has one-inch squares on it, so measuring and cutting is a breeze.

I stuck this product to my top tray, and it’s fantastic. It’s thin enough to use with a magnetic tray, it’s clear so my trays aren’t black holes, and it does not react with solvents.

The product is Duck brand clear shelf liner. Buy it immediately.

This is all I have right now. More joyous announcements will be posted as things develop.

Finger Brake Goes into Action

Today I used my finger brake on a large project for the first time.

If memory serves, I bought the brake last year. It’s from SWAG Offroad, a company that sells innovative, inexpensive metalworking tools. They send you a kit, and you weld it together yourself. Then you put it on a Harbor Freight 20 ton press. If you’re smart, you also install an air jack on the press so you can use a compressor to drive it.

Last year, I built a stand for my arbor press. I’m still not finished building it. The press is on the stand, and it works fine, but the stand doesn’t have a catch bin for broaches (which fall through the base of the press when you use them) and it doesn’t have a storage shelf. Today I used the finger brake to build a shelf.

I wanted a 1/8″-thick shelf with upturned lips at the sides and back. The stand has 4 31″ pillars, and the idea was to put the shelf among them about halfway up. The shelf had to be recessed several inches to avoid obstructing workpieces that protrude beneath the press.

Most hobbyists have no way of making a thick metal shelf with a lip, and even if they can pull that off, making a shelf with lips on more than one side is much harder. You have to have a brake to make the lips, and it has to be a finger brake in order to make more than one lip in close proximity. A brake that can only make 24″-long lips, to give an example, is useless if you need to make a 24″ lip on one side of a piece and 8″-long lips on the sides perpendicular to it. A finger brake lets you adjust the length of the bending fingers so you can make bends in different lengths, and by removing fingers, you can also adjust the brake so it doesn’t mash existing bends when you make new ones. You just remove fingers until your existing bends have clearance.

You can buy small finger brakes from Shop Fox and so on, but they only work on thin metal. If you’re happy making things from 18-gauge steel, which is very flimsy, and you don’t mind paying over $600 for this limited capability, a stand-alone brake is fine, but SWAG Offroad’s brake will let you bend 1/8″ steel 19″ long, and it only costs $400. It will let you bend 3/8″ steel in shorter lengths, which a small stand-alone brake won’t do at all. You can use it to make heavy brackets and vehicle suspension parts.

Today I made a 15″ by 12″ shelf, and I got it ready for the brake. I was nervous about trying it, because once you screw up a bend like this, you’re committed. You can’t fix it easily. It would require an anvil and an acetylene or oxy-propane torch. I would have had to scrap the shelf had it not worked.

I shoved the shelf into the brake, aligned it as well as I could, and went for it. The result was a little out of spec, but I was able to grind it and make it work.

I learned a few things.

1. Finger brakes stretch metal a lot. If you have a 14″-wide piece of metal, and you put lips exactly 1″ high on two opposing sides, the resulting workpiece will be wider than 12″. How do you figure out how to measure and position things to get accurate results? I don’t know. I suppose you have to bend a bunch of practice pieces and take notes.

2. You can align things very well by holding them with one hand, lowering the dies to the metal, and watching the rear of the brake. You can use a hammer to bop things into alignment before the fingers tighten up to the point where you can’t move the workpiece.

3. If you want sharp bends, you need to make or buy bottom dies. The kit comes with a bottom die which is made from heavy angle iron, and it doesn’t produce sharp bends. I might be able to get better bends by using my milling machine to put sharp corners inside pieces of angle iron. I can set them on top of the kit’s die.

The finger brake is a phenomenal tool. It opens up possibilities you could never achieve with welders and machine tools alone.

I’m hoping to weld the shelf into the stand tomorrow. I may massage it some more to compensate for the errors and make it look better. After I get it done, I’ll finish the catch bin, and then the stand will be ready for paint. Then I can get started for the mobile base for my dry saw.

The finger brake takes skill and practice to operate, and it has limitations, but overall, it’s a transcendent shop tool. It will let you do things almost no hobbyist could do 10 years ago.