Welding Cart Project Begins

My latest metalworking project is well underway. I’m turning a tool chest into a welding cart.

I went to Harbor Freight today and got me a 26″ tool chest in blazing green to match my Titanium welder. I also went to my metal dealer and bought steel. I always buy things I don’t need when I’m there, so I can’t say exactly how much of what I spent will go into the project, but it was somewhere around $32. I went to Tractor Supply and picked up some bolts and washers, too. That was under $8. I will eventually have to buy a can of truck bed paint, so add another $13. I discovered I’ll have to add some aluminum spacers, and I estimate they may cost as much as $15.

Add it up, and you get $68. I’m pretty sure. I may put another $10 in it before I’m done. I’m making a cart which will duplicate the features of the ZTFab prefab kit. The kit would have cost me $310, delivered.

I’m using the plan I described in an earlier blog post. I’ll put the chest on two long pieces of rectangular tubing, and they’ll extend past it. I’ll put a piece of plate on the exposed tubing, to make a shelf. The cylinder will sit on it. I’ll make a bracket from bent plate and attach it to the side of the cart to hold the cylinder in place. Very simple, especially if you have a finger brake and a plasma cutter.

Here, you can see the box the chest came in, with the tubing and plate on top of it.

Today I did some cosmetic work. I welded the ends of the tubing shut so they’ll look nice. This will keep bugs from living inside them, too. It’s totally unnecessary, but it gives a finished look you can’t get with open tubes.

I cut short pieces of 1″ by 1/8″ flat bar and welded them over the ends of the tubes, and then I used a Walter flap disk to grind the weld beads and make them invisible. Now the tubes are airtight, which is a little weird. They’re completely sealed.

It probably took me 40 minutes to do this job. I was going to drill holes in the tubing to attach it to the cart, but I discovered I needed to make spacers first. There is a rim around the bottom of the cart, so if I put it on the tubing, the cart would rest on the flimsy rim. Tomorrow I’ll buy a piece of flat aluminum and make 4 spacers with holes drilled in them.

I have said this was a one-day job, but that’s only true if you start in the morning and you have all the parts you need. I can’t get the spacer metal today, so that stopped me. I could have made cylindrical spacers out of round bar, but I would have had to make 16 of them, it would have been a drag, and they wouldn’t have been as nice as rectangular spacers.

Tomorrow I plan to get the needed metal and the truck bed paint, plus a short piece of chain and a snap clip to restrain the tank. After that, things should fall into place. As Jeremy Clarkson says, “How hard can it be?”

Once this thing is done, I’m going to move my Harbor Freight welder and my AlphaTIG welder to the top of it, and I’ll fill it with welding tools and paraphernalia. Then I can put my Lincold welder on the cart I used to have the Harbor Freight welder on, and I can move the big cart the Lincoln was on out of the shop. This will save me a little space, and I will finally have most of my welding stuff off my table and in places where I can actually find it.

I plan to build a second cart and move the Lincoln and my plasma cutter to it.

Moving the tool chest around was not too hard, because I have a Harbor Freight hydraulic cart. I bought the small one. It lifts 500 pounds. The big one lifts twice as much, but moving it in and out of a vehicle by yourself pretty much requires a second hydraulic cart, so I didn’t want it.

At Harbor Freight, I went to to an employee and asked them if they could shove the chest into a Ford Explorer, expecting the answer, “yes, obviously,” but she expressed strong doubt. She hollered at a more energetic employee who gave the answer I wanted. They put it in the car without damaging anything, so I didn’t have to drive the pickup, which has a broken stereo.

When I got home, I slid the box out onto my hydraulic cart, lowered it, and rolled the box off, onto its bottom. No problems at all.

Material handling is a big part of enjoying tools and getting things done. If you don’t spend money on material handling, you will always be limited.

I really look forward to finishing this thing and getting the old one out of my workshop. Things will come together if I just keep pushing.

Giving Atrocious Beer a Purpose

I used to smoke chickens occasionally, and they were delicious. Now I have a new smoker, and I can’t recall my old tricks. I’m trying to get back on top of my game.

Today I got me a chicken, and I use a cattle needle to shoot it full of Jim Beam, brown sugar, salt, Sweet Baby Ray’s, and garlic. Then I applied bacon grease. Then I put my rib rub on it. I bought one of those little chicken chairs to hold it up.

The bird is smoking at around 235°, and I put a can of Busch in there with it to add flavor.

Hoping for the best.

More

I took the chicken out when the internal thermometer read 165. It looks like 165 won’t get it done. The meat was done, but it wasn’t really tender. At least not all the way to the bone. I had to use a knife to separate a wing and thigh.

It was very juicy, and the flavor was good, but next time, I need to use more salt and make sure I inject a lot of stuff into the bird.

This recipe will work just fine. Just a matter of fine-tuning.

I Feel the Urge to Fabricate

When my dad and I moved to northern Florida, there were tons of expenses, and a lot of cash was tied up. I developed some pretty stingy habits. Things are different now, and I feel like God is telling me it’s okay to spend a little money and stop struggling to economize. This is why I now have a nice insulated stainless smoker instead of a shopmade creation cobbled together from things I bought at Home Depot.

I feel like I need to target my workshop. I have made a lot of compromises when I didn’t really need to.

Here’s a compromise I made: I bought a Klutch welding table for around $180. Real welding tables which are truly flat and made from thick steel start at maybe a grand. The Klutch is made from 4mm steel, and you can lift it by yourself.

I’m not knocking it. It’s an incredible deal. It will hold hundreds of pounds, it’s flat to within 1/16″ from one end to the other, and it comes with fixturing tools that actually work. I believe the original price was close to $400. Anyway, they used to put it on sale often, and it looks like they’ve slashed the price permanently. If you like welding, but you’re not a fanatic, I highly recommend this table. It works very, very well for me.

Still, it’s only 3 feet long, it does have that 1/16″ crown, the steel is not thick, and a bigger, flatter, stronger table would be easier to use. I didn’t buy it because I thought it was the perfect table. I bought it because it was cheap and I thought it would be easier to take with me if I moved.

I also bought two Eastwood welding carts on sale. Actually, I bought one on sale, it had a problem, I complained, they sent me another, I fixed the first one, they didn’t ask for it back, and now I have two. For $50 each.

These two-tiered carts are very strong. You can put 350 pounds on one. They work just fine. But they are compromise carts. They take up a huge amount of real estate, and they aren’t all that easy to move. Tool storage is not good, either. Each one has two tiny trays.

For a hundred bucks, an Eastwood cart is very nice. It’s not as nice as the $80 Harbor Freight Vulcan cart I bought later; that cart blows the Eastwood cart away. But it’s a good cart. Still, I am tired of wrestling with my cumbersome carts, and it would be nice to have some tool storage.

When you have no proper storage for your welding stuff, you leave a lot of it on your table. Then your 12-square-foot table becomes a 5-square-foot table, and your tools are always full of grit and steel filings.

Welders used to be heavy and large. That has changed with the development of inverter technology. My 200-amp Harbor Freight welder is very light, and it’s the size of a large tackle box. Because welders are small now, people are rethinking welder cart design. A lot of people are putting welders on top of tool chests and adding shelves for gas bottles. You wouldn’t want a giant welder on top of a tool chest, but a 40-pound welder is a different story.

I’m thinking I should get a couple of US General tool chests from Harbor Freight and fabricate mobile bases for them. I could add shelves for gas bottles, as well as cord holders for ground cables and al the other things that hang off welders. I could add tubes for TIG wire. I could put my clamp collection in the bottom drawer. I could put rods in another drawer. It would be stupendous.

A company called All-a-Cart jumped on the trend and started producing prefab kits you can bolt on a tool chest. Their brand is ZTFAB. The cost for the model I need? It’s $279.00. For two bent sheets of steel and a couple of other things. I’m sure it’s a great product, but a) that’s a ton of money for something that should cost half as much, and b) if I’m buying fabrication tools, shouldn’t I be fabricating things for myself?

I believe I can create a better solution for maybe $35, not including paint.

A number of people have created their own solutions, and they have put videos on Youtube. The problem with most of them is that they’re overbuilt. For example, people create heavy-duty closed frames to put under their carts. Why? Every US General tool chest already has a closed frame made from heavy tubing. It’s what the casters attach to. It can support 1,000 pounds (for the 26″ cart). Why do you need to add another complete frame?

My plan is to run two pieces of rectangular tubing under a chest, the long way, and drill holes in them for some of the caster bolts that screw into the chest. I’ll drill holes in the tubing for the bolts, and I’ll get longer bolts. I’ll attach the original casters to one end of the chest this way.

The tubing will extend a foot past the chest on the other end. I’ll put a piece of 11-gauge plate on it and weld it to the tubing. I’ll weld casters to the bottom of the tubing.

When it’s over, I’ll have a tool chest that sits an inch higher than before, on two tubes united by a piece of plate. The bottle can sit on the plate.

I’ll fabricate a bracket to attach to the cart a couple of feet up, to hold the bottle in place with chains. This will only take up part of the depth of the cart, so I can use the rest of the room for TIG wire tube racks and something to hold the air filter for my plasma cutter. Then I can put the Harbor Freight welder and the plasma cutter on top of the cart.

This is a one-day job.

I can get a second tool chest and make another cart for my Lincoln and my AlphaTIG. Then I can put the Eastwood and Harbor Freight carts on Craigslist.

Total investment for my “kits”: maybe $100. Total joy: impossible to measure.

I said I was going to stop being cheap, and then I said I was going to make my own carts in order to avoid paying ZTFAB $400 more than I have to. Okay, I’m not totally over it. But the tool chests themselves will cost me $600, so we’re looking at around $700, all told. That’s a lot more than the $200 I currently have invested in far inferior tools.

Cost for ZTFab carts: $1100+. Cost for fabricated carts: $700. Added value from ZTFab carts: $0.

I like it. It’s a plan.

Yelp Lets Imbeciles Call Terrorists Down on Businesses

You know what hurts? Being right.

As I’ve observed the decline of America, I have made a bunch of predictions. Many involved technology, which I know little about. Even though I don’t have deep knowledge of technology, I have been proven right over and over. My misses are few in comparison. Surely God must have been telling me things.

One of the things I predicted was that the Internet would replace the government. Eventually, people will be wired together so effectively, they will resemble a single consciousness that reacts to things very quickly. Too quickly and decisively for the government to react. It’s happening.

Today I learned that Yelp, the Internet review giant, has a new policy. If enough idiots and liars flag your business as racist, Yelp will put a notification on your page.

It’s extortion. It’s a protection racket. “Play ball, or go out of business while violent, unprosecutable mobs menace your store.”

Why do I say “unprosecutable”? Because we have major cities in which it’s nearly impossible to get yourself prosecuted for terrorism related to Antifa and BLM. People are being arrested, released, and arrested again.

I had 95 Yelp reviews up as of this morning. Now I have none. I deleted them all. I tried to replace them with messages protesting the extortion, but you can’t do that. You can add to a review, but you can’t remove it. Yelp offers you a little box in which you can explain why you deleted your review, so I used it to call them extortionists.

Remember what happened around 50 years ago? The government stepped in and forced business owners to accommodate minorities. Whether it was a good idea is debatable, since the public was turning against segregation anyway, and passing intrusive new laws extended the federal government’s control of individual citizens, but it was something the government was entitled to do. No private entity could do it. Now government has been supplanted. We don’t have to draft laws or have Congressional debates or votes. A bunch of imbeciles with cell phones can shut you down pretty much instantly, and there is no legal recourse, nor is there any due process. Then when terrorists show up to break your windows, the police ignore them, or they get arrested one night and show up to terrorize you again the next day.

Jewish legend says the people of Sodom and Gomorrah tormented visitors because they loved their cities and didn’t want anyone else to share in the blessings. It says that when merchants visited, locals would swarm them. Every person would steal one small item. Each crime was too small to ground prosecution, but the merchants were ruined. It was like being attacked by piranha. Or flies. Satan is the Lord of the Flies, after all. That name wasn’t given to him without good reason.

Now we have swarms of unnaccountable terrorists, performing the same basic function as the Sodomites, with just as little accountability. In fact, they receive approval and financial and social rewards.

Cell phones and the Internet are facilitating our decline into lawlessness. Fifty years ago, it was much harder to coordinate large numbers of cruel morons. Now it’s a breeze, and I promise you, it will get easier.

I keep telling people: this is the Beast. Yes, the Bible says one man will bear that title, but he will not be alone. He would be powerless alone. He’ll have a body of servants, just as Jesus does. The body of the Beast is part of the Beast, just as we are parts of Jesus.

Jesus influences, but does not control, people through the Spirit of Holiness. Satan is a weak loser and the father of all losers, so he doesn’t have a comparable, ubiquitous spirit. He has Skynet, however, and it has given him power greater than any power he has ever had.

The net human beings are weaving for themselves will choke them to death. No one can withstand constant scrutiny and exposure or a system of quick rewards and punishments that come without recourse or due process. We are sewing a straitjacket around ourselves, and we’re just too stupid to see it. We can’t handle this much power. It will destroy us. Only the perfectly righteous can handle omnipotence. This is why God cast Satan into hell. Satan wanted the power of God with the character of a cockroach.

It will keep getting worse. We will not magically develop the character needed to wield this kind of power correctly. There is no hope that will happen. Conservatives understand this, because conservatism is based on the knowledge that people are selfish. Liberals pretend people are good and that they can solve their own problems, so they will keep feeding the flames.

I’ve used Yelp a lot. I’m not sure why, because the recommendations haven’t worked out well. Business owners queer the reviews. There are tons of glowing reviews which clearly were not written by actual customers, and I’m sure business owners write bad reviews for competitors. I’ve eaten plenty of slop at places with good reviews.

Yelp gives you the illusion that you’re getting something you can trust, but in reality, it’s not that good. My experience suggests consistently bad reviews can be trusted, but a huge string of good ones means nothing. A lot of business owners have big families and no integrity.

In the upcoming civil war, the left’s ace will be control of information. Censorship and ecommerce restrictions will be used to counter the right’s control of most of the land and most of the weapons. Yelp, Google, Youtube, and so on will be on the wrong side of history. Tech kids are overwhelmingly leftist, and tech people tend to be cruel and arrogant, with undeveloped hearts and no interest in fairness. It will be interesting to see what happens.

I wonder what the next sign will be. Yelp isn’t the biggest influence on the web. The bigger players may be able to cause real suffering on a very wide scale.

Satan’s Leftists Starting to Look Ripe

The red horseman of the apocalypse is either riding among us or playing his entrance music.

The newest focus of the Antichrist’s mindless mob violence: Wauwatosa, Wisconsin. The next name terrorists may try to force you to say in order to avoid a beating: Alvin Cole.

Alvin Cole, who was black, went to a mall. He took a Smith & Wesson M&P pistol with a 30-round magazine. He got in a moronic argument with a man, and he showed him his gun. The police were called. Cole ran, and he was pursued. While he ran, he shot at his pursuers, a cop and a security guard. In response to his unspoken request, the police provided him with a generous serving of hot lead, and he expired.

Alvin Cole made himself garbage. He treated himself as though he were disposable and forced others to do the same. He put himself in a position where the only option was to send him to hell. Somehow, in the minds of our domestic BLM terrorists, this is the fault of the police and the security guard. Terrorists ran amok in Wautosa, entering yards and breaking the windows of random homes.

The disturbing thing is that terrorists went into the suburbs this time. We’re used to seeing them attack police stations and businesses. Now they run down streets and break house windows while the occupants are within.

It’s a bad development. I can’t tell you what the law says in every state, district, and territory, but here in Florida, a person who enters an occupied home without permission is presumed to be likely to kill or do other great harm, and it’s okay to shoot them dead without running away or making much of an effort to investigate their intentions. Going into someone’s yard doesn’t necessarily raise the same presumption, but it probably can, and once a pattern of trespassing in yards is established, home invasions will follow. When BLM and Antifa home invasions become common, bodies will start piling up, and the vast majority will be those of terrorists.

We already know what terrorists and potential terrorists will do when a violent criminal is killed by police in a jusitified shooting. What will they do when we start hearing reports that this or that victim has shot 7 or 8 “teens” dead in his or her yard?

How many potential terrorists do we have? How deep is the bench? Do we have enough privately owned guns to discourage them? I wonder.

Maybe it varies by location. Where I live, terrorists would have a very difficult time. But there are many residential neighborhoods filled with liberals who are self-righteously determined to live unarmed. Jews come to mind; it’s like they never heard of the Warsaw Ghetto. And gun and ammunition supplies get tighter all the time, so strapping up now is not a viable option for most unarmed people. On top of that, leftist officials are very likely to respond to terrorist aggression by trying to shut down further sales to people in their areas. They will also try to confiscate arms that are already present, regardless of what the law says.

I suppose the chickens will come home to roost. Liberals made their beds, and they will have to lie in them and harvest the rewards of their efforts. They raised the chickens.

I saw a video of a man in Wauwatosa trying to tell terrorists they were vandalizing homes belonging to Democrats. It’s so sad; he doesn’t understand. They don’t care. Why do people think they care? How can people be that stupid?

Police shootings don’t matter. They’re pretexts. Black racists and self-hating whites (who are taking BLM over with an astounding demonstration of the power of whitesplaining) aren’t really motivated by police violence. They’re motivated by bigotry and cruelty. They don’t care if you voted for Obama. They don’t even care if you belong to BLM. They’re just looking to hurt people. They love the joy of humiliating helpless human beings, injuring and killing them, and taking or destroying what they have.

The man who tried to talk to terrorists should have stayed in his house with a gun. He was deluded. He didn’t understand that he was waving bait in front of sharks. He was old, white, and fat. He must have looked the way a chicken with a broken wing looks to a fox.

One of the reasons for the tribulation is hatred of truth. Leftists, as children of the Antichrist, have abandoned truth. It means nothing to them; they find it offensive. When you abandon the truth and love lies, you become immune to growth and correction. Truth is what people use to help you. When it can’t find a way in, you become worthless, and efforts to save you become a waste of time and resources.

Antichristians say things like, “Only whites can be racist.” It’s a hate-excusing mantra, coined from thin air, spewed by racist academics and ghetto philosophers. They say all whites are racist. They say speech is violence. They even say silence is violence. When you try to talk to them, they vomit their Satanic canards at you, condemning themselves to abandonment and destruction.

Why do they say speech and silence are violence? Because violence justifies violence in response. They love violence, and they’re looking for ways to get permission to do it. What they really mean is, “We hate whites, Jews, successful Asians, conservatives, and real Christians, and we want to hurt you and keep hurting you forever.” Their father is Satan, they are just as crazy as he is, and they feel pretty much what he feels.

God told me that people who reject him are afterbirth. When a baby is born, a lot of live flesh comes out with it, but it dies in the process, and then it becomes garbage. This is the fate of people who hate Jesus. Like afterbirth, they have to exist, and they serve a purpose, but once the purpose is served, they go to be incinerated and kept away from the living.

Plants have afterbirth. A seed comes with a husk and other non-fertile parts. When a seed grows, the afterbirth rots. This is very relevant to the tribulation, because the word “tribulation” literally means removing the afterbirth from grain so it can be burned. A tribulum is a device used to separate grain from husks.

The Antichristians are afterbirth. They have no hope of remaining free after death or of leaving a legacy. Their names will die with them, and they will stay dead. Their memory will die. The tribulation will be the final winnowing in the age of the gentiles.

Until today, I felt very concerned about people who will miss the rapture. In my heart, I somehow conflated missing the rapture with eternal damnation. This morning I realized that was wrong. The words says people who are alive during the tribulation will be able to accept salvation. The problem is that they will live in complete misery until they die. The prayers of God’s children won’t be rising from the earth any more, and God’s fury won’t be restrained as it is now. It will be very bad, but not so bad that we should beg God to put it off unnecessarily.

It’s better for Antichristians to suffer the tribulation now than for Christians to remain here until their suffering becomes excessive and unprofitable. Antichristians have made their choice. If anyone has to suffer, it should be them, not us. And maybe that suffering will help them more than a few extra years of grace would. The word says stripes are for a fool’s back. Persuasion and kindess are inappropriate, and counterproductive, for many people.

A big, big percentage of America is deeply in love with lies. Even if they’re not committing terrorism, they’re supporting it and voting for it. It seems to me that we have sunk very deeply into the love of evil. Trump may win, and we can pray and have revivals, but dishonesty and pride are like strong armor. I don’t think we can make real change, because you can only sell people things they want. If they want evil, they won’t swallow the truth even if they understand it well.

Another reason for an imminent rapture: the more violent and cruel the left becomes, the more likely they will be able to tempt Christians to become like them and be damned. God already raptured Enoch and Elijah, and some believe Enoch was removed because if he hadn’t been, he might have turned to sin.

I used to think the world would have to be completely chaotic in order for the rapture to come. I no longer think that’s true. I think 2020 would make perfect sense. The only major refuge of godliness in the world is gone. We have to bow to idiots, whores, and murderers as a matter of course. If God wants to put an end to this act of the drama, I say may he do it.

May it come before large numbers of us find ourselves presented with the choice of shooting terrorists or being beaten, murdered, and raped.

I have regretted not doing more for God in this life, but it occurs to me that this life will not end with the rapture. If I make it, I’ll be eligible to return here after 7 years. That’s what the Bible says. I would still have time to accomplish things for God. The post-tribulation world won’t be cursed, but it won’t be perfect, either. There will still be rebellion and sin, and Christians will still have missions to accomplish. Maybe I should look forward to that instead of feeling bad because I was rejected over and over in this stage of my existence.

I think Trump will win, for a few reasons. For one thing, witches curse conservatives all the time, and antichristians make fun of God and say he won’t help us. I think God has a wonderful opportunity to show them their “gods” are garbage. Also, I believe a Trump victory would lead to an instantaneous increase in leftist violence. That would fit in with the release of the red horseman of the apocalypse. Some kind of trigger would be useful. Leftists have already been triggered by coronavirus, several years of Donald Trump, the rejection of Merrick Garland, and the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett. I think a Trump victory would be a great way to push them off the cliff and into full-scale, mindless, cannibalistic civil war worthy of scared rats.

I have wondered if I was accumulating guns and ammunition so they would be here for lapsed Christians who didn’t make it in the rapture. Now I’m wondering if they’re for antichristians, so they can find them and kill each other.

I suppose cutting gun safes and vaults open will be major occupations for leftists in the days following the rapture.

Today I ordered 800 rifle casings, target bullets, and a pretty decent amount of H3450. Target bullets aren’t optimal for killing and maiming, but at 2700 fps, they will certainly do a fair job.

I think I’ll just pray for God to go ahead and wrap things up. The insanity has gone on long enough to suit me.

Ribs Don’t Barbecue Themselves

I’m back on the barbecue warpath.

I fixed myself a bunch of leg quarters day before yesterday, and the main thing I learned was that I had forgotten how to smoke chicken. The skin drew up and hardened so the meat was exposed, and the meat wasn’t as juicy as it should have been. I started thinking about my old practices. One thing I remembered was that I didn’t use a rub for chicken. I used an injector.

I dug out my remaining horse syringe. I don’t know where the needles went, so I ordered a bunch of 1-1/2″ 14-gauge needles on the web. I also ordered a few more 60ml hypos. The vendors must think Keith Richards is stocking up.

I plan to do chicken again in two days. By then, I should be able to do it right. I think I’ll try leg quarters again. I’ll grease them so the skin doesn’t dry up. Bacon grease sounds right; it has worked in the past. I’ll shoot them full of a preparation containing diluted BBQ sauce, salt, garlic juice, hot sauce, and Jim Beam.

I’m going to get a new chicken chair. That’s what I call the little supports they make for beer butt chicken. They hold a chicken upright for smoking. I don’t think I’ll put a beer can inside the chicken. It slows cooking. When I smoke whole chickens, I’ll probably put trays of cheap beer under them instead.

I don’t use good beer for smoking. Cheap beer works much better. It’s disgusting to drink, but the green apple flavor of low-grade beer yeast is perfect for smoking.

Today I made a big error. I bought St. Louis-style ribs. These are made by cutting the big ends off spare ribs, I assume. I paid $4 per pound. I could have bought spare ribs for $2.49, cut the big ends off, and smoked St. Louis-style ribs as well as the big trimmed-off part, and I’ll bet it would have cost about what I’m paying for the little ribs by themselves.

I love whole spare ribs, but little ribs are handier and a little less trouble to eat.

I needed bourbon for flavoring chicken, so I went into the liquor store while I was at Winn-Dixie. I have always used Jack Daniel’s in the past. I consider it an inferior bourbon because it’s not smooth at all, but it has a ton of flavor, and it seems to me that the strong flavor is an advantage for barbecue. Today, though I decided to try Jim Beam. It was two dollars cheaper, and for all I knew, it was better.

I put it on the ribs. I applied it before the rub. Can’t hurt. I tried a little before applying it, and I was surprised. I hadn’t had Jim Beam since high school. I didn’t realize it was so much better than Jack Daniel’s. The flavor is not as strong, but it’s much smoother and more civilized. Maybe it won’t work as well for smoking, but I can make bourbon balls with it if I have Christmas guests. You really need smooth whiskey for bourbon balls.

If this doesn’t work, I’ll just keep smoking until I get results. Restaurant barbecue is not an option.

MORE

The ribs are done. I had to give them 5 hours to make them tender. At 4 hours, I took one out to see how they were doing.

They are phenomenal. Best ribs I’ve ever had. I finally got it right. They’re juicy and loaded with flavor. Absolutely perfect. I’ll post a photo.

I’m all set for lunch for the next three days.

I may never be able to enjoy restaurant barbecue again.

Browning!

I figured out what my house needed to brighten up the decor: a firearm. I have heard that other people enjoy guns a lot, and I thought maybe I should try one, so I went to Gunbroker and picked one up.

Okay, okay. My house was already stuffed with guns. But you always need another one. You don’t ask a woman why she has 200 pairs of shoes, and you don’t ask a man why he has a gun for every day of the year. It’s understood.

What did I get? A .22 pistol. Because I only had two of them. No, wait. Three? Four, I think. Anyway, I obviously needed one.

My grandfather used to shoot pistols with me, and we used a Colt Woodsman, a High Standard Field King, and a High Standard Double Nine, which is a cheap gun with an aluminum frame. When my grandfather died, the Field King and the Woodsman disappeared. I got stuck with the Double Nine, which was the only non-flintlock gun I inherited from him. I resolved to replace the guns I missed.

I got a Woodsman last year, and lately, I’ve been thinking about a High Standard semiauto. I started learning about them, and I found out I preferred a different model. My grandfather’s short-barreled Field King was not a great-looking gun. I started looking at Sport Kings with longer barrels. The Sport King is slim and elegant.

While I was shopping, I found the Browning Challenger. Internet nerds say this pistol was designed by Bruce Browning, the grandson of [genuflect] John Moses Browning PBUH. The claim is that Bruce started with Browning’s Woodsman and improved it.

The early Challengers were made in Belgium, and they are the most collectible and the most respected. By the time I started learning about them, I had lost some enthusiasm for the Sport King, because I read that high-velocity .22 ammo, which is now the standard, eventually cracks the frames. I wasn’t excited about trying to find standard velocity ammo (which is no longer the standard) in the current climate, and I was also concerned that I might get stuck with a gun that was already cracked. I looked into Challengers.

Lo and behold, some guy had one listed for $335 (high bid) on Gunbroker.com, and it looked very nice. I asked the seller about the condition, and he said very positive things. He only accepts money orders, and ordinarily, I won’t deal with people like that. The only reason to refuse to take credit cards on the Internet is to put yourself in a position where you can cheat people. He had an A+ rating, though, so I decided it might be worth it to keep an eye on the gun.

I put it on my watch list, assuming the price would double before the auction ended. For some inexplicable reason it did not. The day the auction was to end, I got an automatic Gunbroker email saying the high bid was only around $350. This was for a gun with a legitimate street price of $700.

Okay, I had to do something. I entered a modest limiting bid and went about my business. Then I won the gun. All told, including shipping and the FFL fee, I will be into this pistol for under $480. That’s crazy.

It appears to be in beautiful shape. If it’s not, as long as it shoots, I can flip it and get all my money out of it.

I love getting a good deal on Gunbroker. You’re not supposed to be able to do that, but I’ve done it a number of times.

Buying extra magazines will be a problem. I’m hoping it’s sufficiently similar to a Woodsman to accept a Beretta Neos magazine. I modified two Neos magazines for my Woodsman, and they function.

Of course, now that I own it, I’m troubled. I’m troubled because I don’t have enough guns. I better get out there and see what I can still snap up.

A very nice High Standard can be had for under $500. That’s ridiculous, because they were made to match the name. The standards were very high compared to those of other manufacturers. If it weren’t for the ammunition issue, they would probably sell for three times as much. I found a couple of nice ones. I may buy one. Then I’ll be able to say I finally have every gun I shot with my grandfather.
Except for a Remington Model 500 .22 rifle, which also disappeared when he died. I better keep looking.

Investing in a multi-decade supply of .22 LR was one of the smartest decisions I’ve ever made. I wish I had also cornered the market on 9mm reloading components and 6.5 Creedmoor bullets, but you can’t have everything. The .22 shells will provide all sorts of amusement while other people are dropping 15 or more cents per round for 6-cent cartridges.

I was also smart to get extra Glock barrels. I’ll be able to shoot relatively cheap lead safely, so I’ll be able to practice with reloads instead of paying $35 per box for $10 factory FMJ.

I hope to have the Browning in around 10 days. I will post photos. Unless I got taken and it’s a total dog. Then I’ll pretend it never happened.

Meanwhile, Leftists Protest his Recovery

If you learn nothing else before you die, learn this: God created the universe for love.

Thought I’d just toss that out there.

Donald Trump has coronavirus. You may have noticed. It’s a bad thing. Occasionally, healthy people–like President Trump–have serious problems with coronavirus, or they die. Hopeful leftists are saying there is a 5% chance he’ll die, simply because of his age. I call BS. At least 5% of people his age are in terrible health–unlike President Trump–and people in terrible health will obviously make up most of the 5% who die. Hello? Common sense? Sometimes healthy people die, and it’s not good to be sick at all, so his illness is a bad thing. But it looks like there is a huge silver lining.

The President went into the hospital on Friday. By Saturday, people all over the US were gathering to pray for him and wish him support. That’s wonderful. If he has to have the sniffles for a day or two in order to motivate people who show him their love their faith in God, I say it’s a good trade.

There is a movement called Drag the Interstate. I don’t really understand the name, because it sounds like something Eddie Izzard would do, but people hold rolling Trump rallies in moving vehicles. They were all over the place this weekend. Massachusetts, Florida, New York…lots of places. They had three public prayer meetings in The Villages, a huge retirement community near me. There was a big boat parade in Virginia. Lefty journalists are taking care to point out that many of these events were planned before Trump got sick, but some were not, attendance was surely increased dramatically by news that the president was ill. His illness also changed the tone of the events. It may be improving the tone of the whole campaign.

Mike DeWine, the governor of Ohio, declared a statewide day of prayer for Trump and the first lady! How about that?

I’m not a Paula White fan, but give her credit: she appeared on the Trump Youtube channel and hosted a long prayer service. That’s important, whatever her faults may be. Surely it means something to God when a president acknowledges him during a pandemic caused by humanity’s rejection of Jesus Christ.

Night before last, after hearing about the outpouring of love, faith, and solidarity, I had the powerful sensation of being loved. I know that doesn’t seem to make sense, because the love was directed at the president. But I felt it.

It got me thinking about the rapture. In heaven, people swim in love all the time. There are no shadows in heaven, because there is nothing to hide or which wants to hide, and there is no sun. The word says God is the light of heaven, so there is no need for any other source. Because Jesus visited me twice, I know how God’s love feels. It makes you feel like a hamburger under a heat lamp, except the warmth is the warmth of God’s heart, and it goes right through you. We are transparent to God.

In heaven, people live in an atmosphere of love, and we could be living in love here, too. The Trump rallies and caravans brought this to mind.

Leftists are full of hate and murder. They love being snotty and impudent. They love cruelty. They love humiliating older people and their betters. They’re perpetually enraged and depressed. They live in a dark alternate reality constructed of infantile, demonic delusions. Conservatives are closer to God, and we are happier and warmer. It’s a fact you can observe simply by watching leftist and conservative political gatherings. One side is throwing feces, literally, and tormenting people whose feet they aren’t fit to lick, and the other side is praying, singing, waving flags, and talking about how great their president is.

Have you noticed that leftists don’t praise Biden much? They don’t particularly like him. They have no loyalty to him. Conservatives feel genuine warmth for Trump. We praise him and thank God for him all the time. Totally different.

The rapture will be wonderful, because people who make it will be separated permanently from the Antichrist’s murderous, tamper-throwing, lie-loving, truth-hating children. They’ll bathe in love all the time. Everyone will be in agreement. No one will ever be stressed about an election. God has always been king, and he always will. Satan dethroned Adam. That won’t fly in heaven.

President Trump has done very well so far, as his doctors tell us, but leftists are making up fantasies about his condition. They say his prescription for dexamethasone proves he’s seriously ill. They claim, falsely, that his team is sending out photos with false time stamps. Meanwhile, he is appearing on camera occasionally, and he even got in an SUV and drove by the supporters outside the hospital. He also made his chief of staff go outside and give his supporters Trump-labeled chocolate kisses. That’s the kind of president I want!

Of course, lefty journalists are excoriating Trump for risking the lives of the Secret Service agents who rode with him. Yes, seriously. Secret Service agents risking their lives by accompanying a president!

Secret Service agents risking their lives to protect a president? Wow. I hope this new practice doesn’t catch on.

Meanwhile, leftists actually showed up–at a hospital–to counter-demonstrate. One character held a sign saying “Science Matters,” and a couple of hefty Latinas in stretch pants showed up to dance and sing while giving everyone the finger. One of them chanted, “Your president is gonna die!,” with a happy expression. She said what you would expect her to say. Sometimes it almost seems like Trump’s first name starts with “F.”

Only leftists would protest a sick person’s medical treatment.

People who have severe cases do not stand up, walk, speak clearly, or go for car rides. Obvious? They lie flat on their backs inhaling oxygen. I don’t know how the president feels today, but as of yesterday, he clearly did not have severe symptoms.

Journalists are generally not intelligent–this is true, not a baseless insult–and they are also extremely lazy. They don’t do much footwork. They don’t research. They wait for other people to call them with stories. They also find out what other journalists are covering, and they join in. When they report on Christians and conservatives, they almost never dig for the truth. For example, they keep saying the Proud Boys is a white supremacist organization even though it’s full of minority members and the founder married a full-blooded American Indian (not a fake 1/32 Indian who scams the government for affirmative action and poverty bucks).

When journalists talked to Trump’s doctors, they were suddenly different people. They asked questions that were pretty esoteric. Suddenly, they knew a great deal about treatments and symptoms. It was very clear they had been Googling for hours before the press conference. They kept prying for sound bites they could use to make Trump look seriously ill. They were aggressive and rude. They were extremely determined.

It occurred to me that America would be a much different country if journalists worked this hard all the time.

Leftist outlets are full of the “Trump is dying” theme. It’s like they’re living on another planet where what they say is true. When I say they live in an alternative reality, I’m completely correct.

Trump is right. The press is a public enemy. It’s necessary, but it’s diseased. It’s also dangerous, as the victims of Joseph Goebbels could tell you. Fake news is a very real thing. It’s a weapon for people to whom the truth looks like a problem that must be contained.

Here’s something interesting: Yahoo News got rid of the commenting function on its stories. Why? Here’s some information which may be relevant: commenters were overwhelmingly negative with regard to many, many far-left-narrative stories. This was especially true for stories promoting “transgendering” (an impossibility) and the attendant castration, mutilation, and hormonal sabotage. It sure looks like the leftists at Yahoo couldn’t take the heat, so they bricked up the kitchen.

Public comment is news, and stifling it is a form of fake news. Fake news doesn’t have to be affirmative. You don’t have to say something that isn’t true. Withholding the truth is also fake news.

I can’t recall ever hearing anyone else say that. Why isn’t everyone saying it?

I want to live in love and joy, even here on earth. I worked hard to make myself a caustic person, and I regret it. Love and joy are better, and the Holy Spirit will actually pour these things through you so you don’t have to manufacture them on your own.

I keep praying for Trump. I keep cursing the spirits that want to take him down. I also curse the Biden campaign. I hope to see good news, but the truth is that Donald Trump isn’t the source of my safety, joy, success, or love. I’ll be okay no matter what, and when I die or the rapture comes, I’ll do even better, by orders of magnitude.

Leftists: it’s okay to be happy and upbeat. It’s okay to stop being snotty. Cruelty is toxic. Warmth and kindness are good things. They’re not signs that you’re stupid or ignorant. Join God’s team and see. He’s ready to take you in.

Backlog of Chores Dwindling as Spiritual Warfare Takes Effect

I got loads of stuff done today.

My utility cart has been giving me problems. I did a trigger job on my Thompson Center Venture, and because of the weather, I had to wait weeks to shoot it. A few days back, the weather got nice, and I threw my mat and rifle in the cart. It would not start.

I took the carb out, which was not fun at all, and I threw it in the sonic cleaner in gasoline. I did this twice. Didn’t help. I decided to take the main jet and the float needle out and look at them.

The float is held on a pin that goes through two posts made from what I suppose is cast aluminum. Generally, float pins are not fitted tightly. They are held captive by the bowls, so there is no reason to have a tight pin. The people who made my carb didn’t know this. It was jammed in there.

I tapped it out with a punch. I really had to whack it. Unfortunately, one of the posts snapped at the base.

I was not happy. I can do a lot of things with tools, but I had little confidence in my ability to refasten a tiny broken aluminum post to its base, inside a carb bowl. I tried some Hail Mary solutions. First, I tried to get solder to stick to it. I figured I might be able to glom enough solder onto it to hold it in place. Didn’t work at all. Aluminum does not seem to like solder.

I then decided to bury it in 5-minute epoxy. Maybe that would stick. Epoxy is impervious to gasoline, and carb floats put nearly no stress on their pins, so if I could get the post to stick, it would probably stay there for years.

Unbelievably, it worked. I’ll post a photo.

How did I fix the tight pin? Two ways. First, I have a number of junk carbs. I happened to have one with the same size bowl and float. There was no possibility I would ever use it, so I took the pin out and put it in the cart carb. One hole was still too tight, so I opened it with a small drill bit.

The bowl gasket in the old carb was destroyed. I guess someone overtightened the bowl nut. Because I had a carb with the same size bowl, I had a usable gasket.

The sonic cleaner didn’t fix the jet because corrosion was the problem. Ethanol gas has water in it, and water makes things corrode. The jet was narrowed because of corrosion. It looks like sonic cleaners don’t do well with thick oxidation. I also saw something protruding into the bore of the jet. A varnish flake? I didn’t know.

My answer was to put the jet in a citric acid solution. It ate the crud, and the jet opened up. I also soaked the needle.

The plugs were black, and I replaced them, too. The old ones had the wrong number on them, so I assume they were the wrong size.

I put the carb back in the cart, and it ran better than ever.

While I was working on this, I ordered a Chinese carb from Ebay, with gaskets. Cost: $13.56. I inquired about carb gaskets on a cart forum, and some guy told me I should stick with OEM products. He said OEM carbs only cost $126 each.

You know, I would love to support American businesses, but a 9.5-to-one price differential is not acceptable. I have a bunch of cheap Chinese carbs, and they are just like OEM carbs, which are probably also Chinese. When you pay 10 times as much for “American,” you don’t get a better product. You get the same Chinese carb, at a Chinese price, from a different American vendor. Good enough.

In all likelihood, my epoxy repair will hold for the life of the cart, but I will have a Chinese carb on hand anyway, because you never know. I may install it preemptively. In any case, I will never again have to go several days with no cart to drive to the mailbox. Getting your mail on foot is just not the Southern way. It’s wrong.

I also ordered a new PCV hose and choke cable. Someone had Bubba’d the old cable with a piece of wire.

My cart is unbelievably useful. I’ve done lots of gardening and tree cutting with it, and I always use it when I shoot. I can’t risk more cart down time. Ain’t nobody got time for that.

After I fixed the cart, I put a new transmission in my Makita cordless drill. A while back, I snapped the screw that holds the chuck in. These screws are hard to get out, and while I was trying, I did something to the transmission that made it fail to work. I think I lost a ball bearing. I pictured myself trying to find the right ball bearing and paying a fortune for it, and I gave up and ordered a transmission. I didn’t know it would take weeks to arrive.

Whatever. It got here, and I installed it. Check that off the list. I also bought a backup drill. Cordless tools aren’t expensive when you buy them without batteries. Life without a cordless drill was not pleasant, so I won’t let it happen twice.

After the drill triumph, I installed a $240 Timney trigger in my Ruger Precision Rifle.

The Ruger comes with a nice trigger, but it’s not TOO nice. I think rifle makers have lawyers who tell them not to sell really soft triggers. You can adjust your RPR trigger, but you can’t really get it down to the target level.

You can make it better by simply removing the trigger spring. So I’m told. They say the trigger spring’s only purpose is to make the pull heavier. It works perfectly without it. So I’m told.

I thought about it, and I thought about all the triggers I’ve modified on my own. I decided to go first class for once.

Installing a Timney trigger is easy. You remove a few screws, pop the old trigger out, and put the new one in. It has two stages. The first stage is 8 ounces, and the second is one pound. THAT’S a trigger.

Now I’m ready to find out what the gun can really do.

But wait! There’s more!

When I was done with the RPR, I took the .204 out and shot a few rounds to see if the new trigger spring was light enough.

Here’s a funny thing about rifle triggers. They all seem light and crisp in your living room or at the counter at the gun shop. When you’re looking through a scope, aiming at a bullet-diameter spot on a target 100 yards away, they suddenly become very heavy and gritty. When I put the new spring in, I thought it was very, very light.

Today, it seemed much heavier. I was not happy at all.

I didn’t shoot all that well. I’ll put up photos. The barrel may need cleaning. I’m not sure I’ve ever cleaned it. When I took my shooting class, the instructors appeared to be in favor of leaving barrels dirty until they started losing accuracy. That’s what I’ve been doing. Whatever the problem is, I decided to do more work on the trigger.

I put the gun on my bench, yanked the new spring out, and cut about two coils out. Now it seems light and greasy-slick. I’m not fooled, though. They always seem that way in the house. I’m going to clean the barrel and try the gun again in a little bit.

I feel like this has been a productive day. Tomorrow, I hope to lube the turnbuckles on my tractor forks and put them back on the bucket. Then I can move some logs I cut.

The weather is gorgeous. Cool, not very sunny, and a little breezy. I was outside for over an hour, and my shirt isn’t even dripping on the floor. Fall is here, and fall should be more productive than summer.

I believe I’m getting a lot done because I’m remembering to do supernatural warfare against demons that try to restrain me. I do it every morning, and sometimes I do it at night. It’s funny how Christians are ashamed to fight demons. They believe God is a spirit. They believe Jesus and the Holy Ghost are spirits. Somehow, they can’t make themselves believe in other spirits! Why is that?

If demons don’t exist, neither does God, so why do you think you’re a Christian?

Christianity says we are also spirits. Do you believe you exist?

Guess that’s all I have. Hope everyone is praying for President Trump. His doctor says things are going very, very well.

New Smoker Beats the Pros

My smoker has smoked.

Yesterday, my new Smokin-It #2 smoker arrived, and I put it together. The manufacturer includes some wood with smokers, and you’re supposed to do a break-in run with wood but no meat. I tried to do this, and the smoker tripped my GFI outlet. I didn’t know about this until long after it happened, so I was not ready to smoke meat until about 6:30. I decided to do it. I had to see whether the smoker worked.

I made my usual rub, except I used cayenne pepper instead of chipotle powder. I didn’t have what I needed. I used three 1-1/2″ cubes of hickory. I smoked the meat until 10:30, and then I gave it half an hour in the oven at 300°.

Here’s the result.

I had forgotten how to apply a rub, so I put way too much on the meat. I didn’t know how much wood this smoker needed, so I used too much wood. The seasoning was heavy, and the ribs were dark because of the excess wood. The cayenne made the ribs a little spicier than I wanted. I think I may add more salt next time, but I can’t say these ribs were under-salted.

Yesterday, I thought my rub recipe was wrong, because it took two batches to cover one rack. Now I see what the problem was.

So I failed, right? Not exactly. With all their flaws, these ribs were much, much better than anything I’ve bought from local (or any) restaurants. They were juicy, tender, and loaded with flavor. My plan was to try a couple of ribs and go to bed, but I ate half a rack. I didn’t eat breakfast today. I didn’t need it.

I don’t know why restaurants can’t produce really good ribs. They have great equipment, and barbecue is extremely easy.

My verdict on the Smokin-It #2 is highly positive, apart from the circuit breaker problem. I assume the manufacturer will respond to my email and tell me what to do. Maybe the element is faulty, or maybe there is a fault in the wiring.

Because it was so late when I finished up, I have not cleaned the smoker yet. I’m not worried. It’s all stainless, and I have a steam cleaner. I assume I won’t need to do much apart from throwing the loose parts in the dishwasher, but steam is there if I need it.

This would be a wonderful machine for roasting turkey, smoke or no smoke. You could cook at 200°, use your oven for other things, and throw the turkey in the oven at the end to make the skin crisp and brown. A smoked, boneless, stuffed turkey would be wonderful for Thanksgiving.

I miss the Hoginator, but I don’t miss the extra work and fuss. This box should last the rest of my life, it will hold more meat than I will ever need for one event, and it won’t require much work.

I think the expense of moving up from bottom-tier electrics is worth it. They rust and break. By the time you’re on your second cheap smoker, you’ve paid almost as much as a Smokin-It costs.

More photos as work progresses.

Ribs in Progress

Call me immature, but I am smoking ribs even though they won’t be done until 10:30.

I ordered myself a Smokin-It #2 electric smoker, and it arrived today. It comes with instructions saying to run a load of wood through it without meat before trying to cook. I tried to obey, but after a couple of hours, I went to the smoker, and I saw that it had tripped a poolside GIF breaker. I had to move it to a real breaker. That put me hours behind schedule. I was going to forget about it until tomorrow, but it nagged at me.

I’m pleased with the smoker. It’s light enough to put in a vehicle. It doesn’t take up much room. The manufacturer says it will do 31 pounds of meat. Not sure why they think it’s 31 and not 30. Anyway, even if it only does 20 pounds, it’s ample for my use. If I had friends over for ribs, I would expect to be under 15 pounds every time.

I don’t expect to get heavily into cooking again, but a smoker is a good thing for any man to have.

I now have a rack of spare ribs going. I put my signature rub on it. By “signature,” I mean the rub I made up a few years ago in a couple of minutes. Is it the best? I have no way of knowing. Probably not. But it’s excellent, and it’s a known factor.

There was a mistake in the recipe. It said it was enough for two racks, but I wasn’t able to cover one with it. I made two batches.

All I did was cut the rack in half so it would fit and bury it in the rub. I don’t remove the membrane from my ribs. I think that would be like cutting the crust off a peanut butter sandwich to make a precious little snowflake happy. I like every edible part of the rib.

The smoker looks very nice. It should last forever. It’s a double-walled stainless box with insulation between the walls. It has casters, so I don’t have to slide it around.

The temperature control is way off. I set it at 250°, and it went to 341°. That’s a plus as far as I’m concerned. It means I can go higher than expected. I can always turn it down for proper barbecue temperatures. I’m using an additional remote thermometer anyway. I never planned to rely on a knob.

I emailed the Smokin-It company to see if they knew why it tripped my breaker. Hope they have useful input.

My old smoker, the Hoginator, was wonderful, but it was not handy. It had electric heat in the meat area, but I had to burn wood in a separate box for smoke. It used a great deal of electricity. Each heating element was like an electric hair dryer. The new smoker is very simple to run. I’m hoping for the best.

I haven’t seen any black smoke. The smoke is light-colored, and that’s a good sign.

This looks like a nice trouble-free way to get excellent barbecue. I won’t know until later tonight.

This was no Debate

I resisted temptation for a while last night, but I ended up watching maybe half an hour of the Trump/Biden debate. What a mistake!

I hate debates. Even when done properly, debates don’t establish the truth. They establish the identities of the best debaters. A fantastic president can be a terrible debater, and a great debater can be a pathetic president.

I was a member of the debating society in my high school. I went to the best prep school in Florida, so you would think we would have had a great debate team, but our faculty sponsor was Mr. Frishman, a man who posed for his yearbook photo standing in a garbage can. He was a lot of fun, and everyone liked him, but he was not a great instructor or leader. We only participated in one event, and I did some kind of improvisational speaking. Never debated. It would have been better for me if I had, because I had a real gift for argument, and I would have excelled. Back then, I liked debating. I was young, and young people have a lot of stupid interests.

I like the approach Jesus took to argument. He did very little of it. When he did argue, he said whatever he wanted, regardless of whether it had any relationship to the questions, and people could take it or leave it. He wasn’t pushing a point of view. He had the truth, and he was simply delivering it. There are no opinions in heaven. There is no debate there. Everyone knows the truth, and everyone agrees.

If people on earth were in touch with the Holy Spirit, they would argue much less, because he tells everyone the same things.

I really hate presidential debates. One thing that bugs me is that they are not real debates. In a real debate, you take turns. You can’t just pipe up when your opponent is talking. Speaking out of turn prevents participants from doing their jobs. It’s cheating.

Usually, Democrats cheat like crazy in presidential debates, and Republicans behave better. Conservatives think rules and logic are important. Leftists have no self-discipline, and they think their emotions put them above rules everyone else has to observe. Last night, however, both participants violated the rules wholesale, and they also insulted each other personally. It was like a food fight.

Of course, Chris Wallace did some of Biden’s debating for him. This is another thing I don’t like about presidential debates. The moderators almost always help the leftists and fight with the conservatives. They also fail to maintain order. Perhaps because they’re generally not conservative, and they lack respect for rules, moderators tend to abandon control and let the participants do as they please. Wallace didn’t surprise me. He made some effort, but overall, he was very weak. He failed at his job. His dad was much tougher.

They should put debaters in different locations and turn off their mikes when it isn’t their turn. And peppermint sticks and hundred-dollar bills should fall from the sky without warning. It will never happen. The American people just aren’t smart enough to demand real debates. They want to see food fights. And journalists, with very few exceptions, aren’t smart enough to moderate debates.

I saw some pluses for Trump. For one thing, Biden looked like a corpse. That matters. His flesh looked white, even for a man of Irish extraction, as though he had been pickled. He seemed weak and almost transparent. His transplanted hair looked like bleached cobwebs, and his surgically altered eyes were tiny and puffy. Biden has always been a physical bully who bragged about his strength and liked to assert he could beat other men up or defeat them in physical contests. Now he looks like he’s stuffed with paper napkins. He’s frail. It appears he lacks the genes for longevity. My dad looked stronger when he was 87 and dying from heart failure and dementia.

Trump was aggressive and angry, and Biden, a man known for his short temper, love of confrontation, and arrogance, didn’t seem to know what to do. I think he can’t think fast enough to return fire. Look at old videos of Biden insulting and challenging people. Not the same man. It’s not a big deal if a candidate who has no job is dominated during a debate. It’s different when a president can’t stand up to foreigners, Congress, and the press. Biden would give us a basement presidency.

I didn’t see the whole debate, so I can’t be sure, but it may be that Biden seemed nicer. Women vote based on their emotions, not the facts, so if Trump comes across as a bully, it may firm up Biden’s female support. Women are already in the tank for the left, though, so I don’t know if it matters. Female suffrage sounds like a wonderful thing, but it really hurts America.

What about the issues? My response: who cares? Biden makes facts up as he goes, so there isn’t much point in listening to him. Trump tends to exaggerate, so you have to check what he says, too. It seemed like Trump’s presentation of facts was better, for what it’s worth. Biden seemed to avoid discussing facts, probably because he’s not sure what they are, and also because they generally work against the left. Biden seemed determined to convince America he was the warm, non-creepy uncle who would protect us from the billions of pickup-driving white supremacists leftists think are coming to get us. He was pushing a fantasy scenario. Facts would have gotten in the way.

I read that Hispanics overwhelmingly thought Trump won. The ratio I saw was about two to one. Hope that’s true. Maybe aggressive macho leaders get them stirred up. I’ve known tons of Cubans and Puerto Ricans, and I will just say it: they’re emotional and, perversely, proud of it. Calm, rational Hispanics complain about it all the time. It embarrasses them.

I don’t care if people think I’m prejudiced. Look at government in Central and South America. Look at crime. The proof is in the pudding. In Honduras, you can barely walk outside without getting shot.

Cuba, Mexico, El Salvador, Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, Nicaragua, Venezuela…no point in pretending things aren’t different down there.

Biden’s dementia wasn’t as big a hindrance as I expected. It may be that they gave him a handful of Ritalin or some other drug to keep him alert and awake. He refused to be tested. He was nothing like them greasy-confident Biden we saw in his debate with Sarah Palin, but he knew where he was, and he didn’t sundown. Maybe he could survive a couple of years in office. It all depends on the disease’s trajectory.

I don’t think Trump prepared much. I believe he is a very busy president. He is extremely effective, and he has gotten a great deal done. I think he counted on using his job experience as preparation. He referred to his own doings a lot, the way you would if you worked hard at your job and some know-nothing started criticizing you.

I believe God chose Trump partly because of his pugnacious character and his fearlessness. Trump is thin-skinned in that he’s easy to provoke for brief moments, but he’s very thick-skinned in that he never worries. Example: a person close to him said it means absolutely nothing to him when people sue him. If you’ve ever been sued, you know that says a lot about him. God needed a tough conservative who would survive continuous attacks and sleep like a baby every night. That’s our Trump. His blood pressure is low, his appetite is good, he never shows uncertainty, and he sleeps as much as he wants to. Nothing gets to him on a deep level.

I’m sure Trump didn’t worry about the debates. That probably made him hard to coach.

I keep feeling that Trump will win. I certainly hope so. On the other hand, I also keep feeling, very strongly, that I won’t be here on earth during the next inauguration, so maybe it shouldn’t matter to me, personally.

I would hate to see Biden win. He’s a creep, a liar, a career plagiarist, and a man of questionable intelligence, having graduated in about the bottom 15% of his class at a lackluster law school. He has no soul and no integrity. He will say or do absolutely anything that gets him through the next 5 minutes. His administration would be a flabby, rotten slide back into regressive leftist policies from which we were starting to recover. He would surrender to every foreign country on earth except Israel. He would persecute white people and people who work hard. He would let domestic terrorists do anything they wanted, and he would almost certainly mainstream them and include them in his initiatives.

Biden would bring back Critical Race Theory instruction, a racist practice which greatly resembles Hitler’s anti-Jewish propaganda. It must be wonderful, going to work and realizing you’re going to spend the day being attacked for your race. I don’t know how people stand it.

This year has been wonderful for me, apart from the tragedy of seeing a close friend die. All over the US, leftists are literally throwing screaming tantrums and posting them online. They curse 2020 as though it were a person who kept them in a cage and gave them electric shocks. I’ve had financial abundance, free time, a wonderful home, good friends, and great health. My relationship with God has improved every month. I feel closer to him than ever. Leftists and other people who don’t know God are floundering and weeping, but I’ve had a great year. A day or two ago, I was thinking about the election, and it occurred to me that if I can have a wonderful life during a pandemic, I can certainly have a wonderful life under a Biden administration.

My peace and happiness don’t come from the government. They come only from God, and his administration will never be voted out. It will always be on top.

I curse Biden’s campaign daily, and I pray for Trump to win, but more importantly, I’m trying to continue in the pleasant path God has created for me. If I’m wrong about the rapture, and I’m stuck here in a nation which suddenly resembles Venezuela, God can still insulate me. This is what people should be striving for.

America is in a supernatural centrifuge. God’s children and the children of darkness are being separated and defined. To me, this looks like something God would do in preparation for a harvest. It makes sense to me that the rapture would be preceded by a choosing of sides. I hope that’s what’s happening. I do not want to live in Venezuela, and I am not at all afraid of death or leaving the earth.

I can’t believe we’re seriously considering electing Biden president. People like to use the name “Fredo” to describe individuals who are close to power yet considered too stupid, venal, and immature to be given real authority. Biden is a classic Fredo. In 2012, he was vice president, and after serving 8 years, he was told he had to take a seat and let a very unpopular female secretary of state run. Biden was dusty furniture in Obama’s administration; a necessary accoutrement everyone hoped would never be used. Now he’s the best the Democrats can come up with.

I am reminded of the Chinese proverb people quoted when unaccomplished, unremarkable, Democrat toady junior Senator Barack Obama was elected: “when little men cast long shadows, you know the end of the day is near.”

They don’t come much littler than Joe Biden. Maybe AOC is next.

Getting too Southern for my Own Good

My oldest friend is a guy named Mike. Just to show you what a rotten friend he is, I will post a photo he sent me recently.

This represents part of his output for one week. He bought a Masterbuilt smoker, and he has smoked his weight in pork and chicken.

These days, I stifle my interest in cooking. It’s not good to be a lover of pleasure, and gluttony is an invitation to inhabitation by demons. I rarely cook anything impressive. But here is Mike, telling me one more rack of ribs won’t hurt.

I live in an area where even the worst barbecue is pretty good. It’s not like Miami, where Cubans and yankees think only of money when they prepare food. Still, the obvious truth is that I make barbecue better than any restaurant I’ve been to. Also, it’s much cheaper, and if I barbecue at home, I won’t have to go to restaurants, which are considered prime coronavirus transmission hubs.

These are the thoughts I had as I pitted Mike against mere reason.

Of course, Mike won. I ordered a smoker.

Years ago, I built my own smoker: the Hoginator. I took a big Char-Broil grill and cut holes in it so I could mount to electric heating elements. I cut another hole so I could feed smoke into it. I fabricated a steel smoke box that sat behind the smoker, and it had a hinged door in it so I could shove wood into it. I smoked with flaming wood, the way you’re supposed to, but the smoke box was over a foot away from the smoker, so not much of the heat got into the smoker. I was able to maintain a nice low temperature.

This time, I thought about building another smoker. For about three minutes. Yes, I think men who buy things they can fabricate are really women, but you have to choose your battles. In order to make a really good smoker, I would have to bend and weld a lot of stainless sheet, and I would have to make it double-walled so I could put insulation in it. Forget that. I already paid my dues with the Hoginator. This time, I’m going to let someone else do the metalworking.

Digression: yesterday I finished straightening the mounting tabs on my middle buster and welding gussets in to keep them from bending again. Metal still bends the knee to me.

I ordered a Smokin-It smoker. They’re made in Michigan, hopefully by Southern immigrants. They have double-walled stainless cabinets. People swear by them. I ordered the second-smallest model. I wanted to be able to jam a turkey into it, and the little one did not look promising. Also, when you buy the cheapest model of anything, you’re usually asking for a bunch of after-purchase Band-Aid modifications and add-ons that take the fun out of it. This smoker will come with everything it needs, including wheels.

I believe it’s a little smaller than a waist-high fridge. We shall see.

While I was trying to figure out what to buy, I learned some things.

First, people say Masterbuilts fall apart in a few years. I didn’t want to take a chance. There are competitors such as Pit Boss and Cuisinart, but they look to be of similar quality. I don’t want to drop $250 on a new smoker every three years until I die. The box I bought should last for eternity.

Here’s another thing: propane smokers are hard to use. The temperature fluctuates. Forget it; not interested.

I learned that electric smokers don’t produce smoke rings in meat. A smoke ring is a layer of reddish meat just under the surface. I was upset to read that I wouldn’t be getting one, until I learned that barbecue judges all agree that a smoke ring doesn’t improve the flavor of the food.

Smokin-It has a close competitor called Smokin’ Tex. Smokin-It gives you a lot more for the money, so that’s why I chose their product.

The smoker will be here Thursday, God willing. That means barbecue on Friday. I need to get some ribs.

I don’t do baby backs. I don’t get them at all. I think they’re for suckers. Spare ribs are much cheaper. They’re bigger. They have more fat and flavor. They’re not dry like baby backs. I plan to pick up a rack of spare ribs.

I’m about to dig up my rub recipe. I’m considering adding a little black cardamom.

I would post my rub recipe, but in all honesty, they’re all about the same. Sugar, salt, mustard, pepper, cumin, garlic…it’s not rocket science.

Actually, I shouldn’t say that. A barbecue celebrity named Myron Mixon opened a joint in Miami, and his rub was disgusting. Very litte salt. No flavor. This was after he talked a lot of smack, belittling the competition. His place went bankrupt, even after a lot of Miami people who knew nothing about barbecue posted ridiculous positive Internet reviews.

I prayed before ordering the smoker, and my impression was that God likes it when I entertain friends and that he was in favor of me buying it so I could barbecue for them and still have time to talk about Christianity. I hope my friends don’t read that.

The Hoginator was a lot of work to use. The new smoker should be much less bother.

I should be able to barbecue for 30 people with this thing, so the small gatherings I am likely to draw should be no problem.

Here’s a neat hint for applying a rub: use a bath towel. Drop your ribs on the towel, add the rub, and use the towel to contain the mess while you press the rub onto the meat. When you’re done, roll the towel up with the excess spices in it and put it in the laundry. It won’t stain. This is my original idea, so make sure you send me royalties when you use it.

What about sauce? Here is my conclusion. Store barbecue sauce is so good now, there is not much point in making your own. Yeah, I said it. Stubbs, Sweet Baby Ray’s, Cattleman’s…you name it. There are lots of good ones. Buy four brands every time you barbecue, and make notes on the ones you like.

I will post pork photos eventually.

Real Men Don’t Pay Other Men

It’s a pivotal day in human history. I used a big-boy gas outfit to heat a part and bend it.

As my stalkers know, I just finished making a cart to hold propane and oxygen for cutting and heating. I have bent things using a hand-held plumber’s torch in the past, and it was okay, but a real torch is like 10 plumber’s torches, and a plumber’s torch can’t cut. I had to have more power. There are just too many heating and cutting jobs in a home workshop.

Today I summoned my androgens and used propane to bend the mounting tabs on a middle buster.

A middle buster is a 3-point implement. It drags or lifts a hook-shaped blade. You can use it for things like digging trenches for wiring and pipes, and you can also rip out stumps with it. I got mine for stumps, and I have torn out a bunch of them. In the process, I bent the tabs holding the pins that attach it to my hitch.

I don’t care about the damage, because the middle buster probably cost $150, and try and guess how much money it has saved me. I don’t know what it would cost to pay a guy to tear stumps out, for the same reason I don’t know what it’s like to ask a big, strong man to parallel-park for me, but it must be a lot.

I clamped the middle buster to my welding table and heated it, destroying a lot of powder coating in the process. Doesn’t matter. Truck bed coating is better than powder coating, and I already have a can. I thought I would have to twist the tabs with a wrench, risking pulling the table over, but it turned out a blacksmith’s hammer was the tool for the job. I beat the tabs until they were very nearly straight. Excellent.

Now I have to cut and weld gussets to reinforce the tabs. I already have the steel. I also want to run a 36″ bar through the tabs instead of using one short pin in each tab. I think a bar will resist bending somewhat better. If it doesn’t, it will bend in such a way that I have to cut it in half to get it out, but that’s okay, because I’m a man, and men have tools.

I love the propane rig, even though I don’t have a proper propane rosebud yet. The acetylene rosebud I used worked fine, which makes me wonder if something is wrong.

Wonderful day in the shop. Think I’ll let my hair down and have a wheat beer.

Precision Costs Money

I ooze smugness today. I got back to work with the Ruger Precision Rifle, and I got good results. It turns out I’m not the main problem with my groups. It’s the ammo and trigger.

I bought 1000 rounds of Sellier & Bellot FMJ because it was cheap. I also liked it because a Youtube guy shot 1 MOA with it at 656 yards. Until today, I had never put anything else through the gun.

I started out with S&B, and I did not do all that well. I shot 20 rounds at 100 yards. I began by shooting at the center of the bullseye, and then I went clockwise, shooting at several places where yellow lines intersected. I ended on the right side of the target.

After shooting the first group, I checked to see if I had ever adjusted the rifle’s trigger. I had not. I took an Allen wrench and reduced the pull as much as possible. I also tried to perfect the scope’s parallax, I moved the reticle a couple of clicks, and I decided to focus on putting the same part of my finger on the trigger every time.

The first group was not spectactular. Then things got better. Then they got worse.

I opened up a box of Hornady ELD Match 147-grain ammo and lit up another target, starting on the bottom-left bullseye. As you can see, I did a lot better. Part of it may be due to me being warmed up, but most of it is the ammunition. Lesson learned.

The last group opened up a little. That could be fatigue, or it could be the barrel warming up. I’m betting on fatigue. When you don’t practice enough, every shot takes a great deal of concentration, and it wears you out.

Can I complain? When you shoot at 100 yards, and your flyers are 2 MOA, you’re not having a bad day. A bad day would be 5-MOA flyers.

I’m still glad I got the S&B, because it will be perfect for shooting steel, but if I want to be really good, I’ll need to shoot the good stuff. I have some reloading materials for 6.5 Creedmoor, so I should be able to do well eventually. I have to decide what to do about brass. I don’t want to waste my S&B brass, but if it won’t give me good accuracy, I don’t want to use it.

I don’t think S&B will give me consistent 1-MOA groups, even if I put the gun in a clamp. It’s obviously inconsistent.

I am not in love with the rifle’s trigger. I think it’s time to upgrade, unless I can find a hack to reduce the pull a little more. It’s too heavy for target shooting.

The gun has a new Anarchy Outdoors bolt shroud, and that helped a lot. The Ruger shroud kept catching on things. I would like to be able to keep my cheek on the gun between shots, and you can’t do that if you have to wrestle with the bolt. The Anarchy Outdoors bolt is very smooth.

With an improved or replacement trigger, I should get fewer flyers.

This thing is going to work. It’s just a matter of sticking with it.

MORE

FYI, I measured the Hornady target with calipers, and my best group was about 5/8″. The worst group, and the only one over 1 MOA, was about 1.2″. Not bad.