Certified Scales

To weigh metals in trade and gunpowder for repackaging and resale, a certified scale is necessary.  That is, one with a pedigree traceable back to standardized weights, which is legal for business use.  Required accuracy and maximum load determine what kind of scale is needed.  For 1-gram accuracy, the CAS ED series looks good.  For 0.1-gram/0.005-ozt accuracy, there's the Citizen CZ1200.

Military Hand Signals

The decoder ring for basic military hand signals (posted by American Specialty Ammo on Facebook):

Edit [2014.04.03]: The image link is busted, so here's another one.

Emergency Primers

No idea if this will work, but it sounds like a fun experiment:

1. Extract the anvil out of the fired primer. Using the multipurpose tool, gently hold the primer cup and carefully pull out any old primer with a metal pick. Place the primer cup on a hard, flat surface. Examine the case carefully to ensure there are no defects. For safety's sake, defective cups must be discarded. Keep the anvil with the cup.
2.  Insert the point of the star-tipped driver into the primer cup and tap very gently with the plastic mallet to remove the slight protrusion inside. Insert the flat-tipped screwdriver into the primer cup to clean out any remains of the previously used primer material. To minimize any undesirable results, get the cup as clean as possible. 
3. Using the box cutter, gently scrape off the white tip portion only of the match onto the folded index card. The white tip is a chlorinated compound that serves as the "ignitor" for the primer. You'll need about 10 to 12 matches for each primer. Avoid scraping off the sulphur portion of the match.
4. Roll the plastic mallet across the scrapings, being careful to "crush" rather than rub the material. Place the primer cup on a flat surface and, using the crease in the index card, pour the match scrapings into the cap until it is full. Use the bottom of a matchstick to gently tap down the primer.
5. Use the large tweezers to carefully set the primer cup into your machine press, being careful not to spill any of the primer material. Place the anvil into the primer, point down, to seat. Raise the ram of the press up and seal the primer into the shell casing. Keep your face a safe distance away while you're doing this step, as the primer material may pop.

Berdan Rifle Primers

On a whim, I googled "Berdan primers" and the top hit was a place actually selling them.  I'd read that RWS Berdan primers used to be available in the U.S., but sources dried up.  These are TulAmmo non-corrosive primers for 7.62 NATO.

One concern I have is that the dimensions (incorrect on the DAG Ammo KV762N page) don't match the information I found previously on Berdan primers.  Still, it might be worth experimenting with, considering the amount of 7.62 NATO ammo with nice brass cases and Berdan primers.  All of a sudden, the 33% cost advantage looks more attractive!

LifeSaver Jerry Can

Someone told me about a new water filtration product a few weeks ago, and apparently I forgot to store the info away for future recall.  It's the LifeSaver Jerry Can, which supposedly has 15nm pores, which would make it a purifier, more or less.  However, some viruses apparently get down to 4nm, so even this isn't 100%.  This filter was discussed in a TED talk.

The Flying Dutchman has another good praxis post, this time regarding a site selling stuff to "combat pack" 5.56 NATO.

Danny Choo

I'd never heard of Danny Choo before, but saw him in a photo on Facebook with Alodia Gosiengfiao.  Turns out that the dude is bad-ass.  He has a post on his site, "How I started to build my career in Japan", that writes about the experience I perhaps could've had in Japan had I not been such a short-sighted introvert.  This bit was particularly salient:

Its always important to understand what your skill set is and how much they are valued at. Keep your options open all the time and speak to folks in the industry who can advise you on job opportunities and your market value. You know whether a carton of milk is expensive or not because you know the market value - do you know your market value? If not you must find out today - not tomorrow.

Yeah.  I have no idea what my market value is.  Certainly less than I'm paid now!

Lotus Notes URLs

Yeah, we're still using Lotus Notes.  I needed to generate URLs pointing to a Notes database, and found the script to do so on da interwebz.  Check the comments for a more complicated script.  Works for me.

Building AK-47s

Might be a useful skill....

Numerous sites are selling Polish AK-47 80% receivers, which apparently don't need an FFL to transfer.  The holes have to be drilled, but the receiver also needs to be heat-treated.  So I found some info on how to do that.  It seems tricky in that the steel has to be hardened and then tempered.  Some people do it with a torch, but that seems error-prone....

There're other sites that sell build parts.  Personally, I'd love to get into building AK-47s and G3 clones.  All that I need is a shop and some equipment, like a welder and 12-ton press!

Lists

While searching for inverters, I ran into an interesting list on Amazon: the "Post apocalyptic disaster preparedness list".  Well, I'm already covered in most of the suggested areas, but it's interesting to see what other people are putting in their kits.

The portable solar panel is another list has a review that claims monocrystalline panels last 25 yrs, and that amorphous silicon only lasts 5.  Since that's one thing I have yet to get, the info is good to know....

Vampy

Linda Le, aka "Vampy", is a goddess.  99.9% of the cosplayers I'd ever seen at the couple of cons I'd been to were just freaky.  Vampy isn't just smokin' hot, she's also detailed and dedicated to the art of reconstructing anime/manga fantasy in real life.  Very cool.  Plus, she likes guns: she shoots a Kimber 1911 Custom.  I am definitely a fan.

I mean, just look at her!

RNC: The Aftermath

Michelle Malkin has to pander to the establishment a little bit to retain her position as a conservative pundit.  I get that.  Despite that, she wrote a nice article about the RNC power grab and what it means to be one of the ones who was disenfranchised by the party bosses.  There are a couple good "after-action reports" quoted as well.  Ms. Malkin is by far the best pundit out there, and this reinforces it.

Political Commentary

My response to a WSJ article on FB:

Anyone voting for Obama is either naive (if voting for the first time) or stupid (if voting for him again): look at the debt numbers, the unemployment numbers, the death toll in Afghanistan, the ongoing "drug war" despite Obama's admitted use in his youth (he was the Joint Interceptor, after all), his two-faced, volatile rhetoric despite his calls for bipartisanship, etc. The smartest thing Obama's done was to keep Biden around as insurance!

Even so, anyone voting for Romney is either naive (if they think this leopard has changed his spots) or deluded (thinking that voting against Obama instead of for someone is the right way to go). Paul Ryan was tapped to try to shore up "gun votes", but he's got other baggage, like his support for bailouts.

And anyone voting for Gary Johnson knows the score and refuses to play the game--but they'll still lose to the banks' influence and crony capitalism. Even so, at least pulling the lever for someone who doesn't suck affords one a clear conscience when things continue to go to hell in a handbasket in 2013.

Proof

After the shooting incident in NYC where there was more collateral damage from the police than there was from the bad guy, the gunblogs were atwitter with ridicule, as is proper.  After all, the media always claims that police are "highly trained" and so are the "only ones" who should be able to carry guns.  Never mind that cops qualify once or twice a year, whereas people who like to shoot hit the range much more often and are more likely to have taken better training.

Anyhow, Say Uncle linked to another gunblog that has a course of fire based on the LAPD qualification course, except he made it harder.  That'd be a fun test for USPSA shooters--to see if they can shoot well enough to be a major metropolitan police officer! *wink*

Unscientific Plastic Magazine Test

In case you were wondering what those plastic AR-15 mags could take, here's one data point from Arfcom.

Saudi girls packing heat

Yeah, that's one way to stick it to the powers that be.

Items you need in a crisis

Parts one and two.

Assignment of National Security and Emergency Preparedness Communications Functions

More nasty shit from our buddy Barack.  Did they stop numbering these executive orders so you don't know how many of them there are?

The Shape of Things That Hide

A guy I know self-published a book of short stories on the Tokyo life.  It's available on Lulu, and soon to be available on Amazon.

Steel Targets

Gongshot, a place to buy AR500 steel targets (link via the good doctor).

RAV4 Towing, Redux

A few months ago I went looking for info on how to get a trailer hooked up to the family RAV4.  It looked like it was going to be a problem because I thought we didn't have the towing prep package, which has some extra hardware for beefing up the radiator and alternator.  From some additional forum reading, I found out that RAV4s made in Canada all have the towing prep package, and it turns out that ours is Canadian.  There's another way to check by looking at the fuses in the engine compartment on the driver's side: if there's a 140A one instead of a 120A one, then it's the towing prep package.  This is mentioned in the owner's manual (for the '09 model, pp.394-395), but it's buried in there.

John Davies' site is very useful for figuring out how to install the towing stuff DIY. I haven't done it yet, but looking at the howto, I figure that I can manage.  He's also got a page for installing a brake controller, which links to a howto on installing the factory wiring harness, and also has a PDF of the wiring harness.

Several sites sell Toyota OEM parts.  One site lists the receiver hitch as about $400, and the wiring harness is another $100.  Plus the trailer.

Apparently, if the trailer plus load is over 600 lbs, trailer brakes are necessary, which means adding on a brake controller.  That might as well be done at the same time as the wiring harness.  (eTrailer.com has a FAQ on the trailer wiring connector types.)

On the forums, there's also mention of a "weight-distributing hitch" that helps stability when the tongue weight is on the high end.

Northern Tool+Equipment has a funky steel trailer that's supposedly made in the USA.  There are a couple downsides, namely that it's only seven feet long and the capacity's only 1500 lbs.  Oh, and it costs $1800!  Still, other than landscaping rock, I'm not sure what I'd haul that's that heavy, and sheet goods (4x8 plywood, drywall, etc.) could probably be left to hang out the back end as long as it's tied down.

The last thing that I need to know about is maximum speed while towing specific trailers.  The RAV4 owner's manual indicates that you shouldn't drive over 45 mph while towing, but obviously people do that all the time: contractors hauling stuff and people hauling boats, etc.  Presumably part of that is whether one has trailer brakes or not, but I assume axle construction and tire ratings are part of that.  I definitely want a trailer that I can take up to highway speeds, so further study is necessary.

Google Online IME

Google Transliteration has a web-based Japanese input method editor so that you can type Japanese even on computers that don't have an IME installed.  Kewl.  I knew that in this day and age, there had to be one....

Cannons for Everyone

From NC Gun Blog, a little reading between the lines in the Constitution shows that private ownership of cannons were intended!  To wit:

What’s going to be really interesting is when he’s presented with the historical information about crew served weapons. He thinks that cannons are not covered. He’s going to be shocked when he learns that at the founding of this country to well past the writing of the Constitution, cannons and warships were privately owned. In fact, we can prove that the writers of the Constitution considered cannon and warship ownership by private citizens to be normal.

[Congress shall have Power...] To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;

We don’t issue Letters of Marque anymore. While we are not a signatory to the treaty forbidding them, we generally follow that treaty. What is a letter of Marque? It’s basically an official commission from the government for a private person to attack enemy shipping without being branded a pirate. What do you think that a person would have to have in order to attack enemy ships with? You guessed it, a ship, armed with weapons appropriate to naval combat.

So there you have it. The very text of the Constitution tells us that it was not considered wrong for private citizens to own a ship nor to fill that ship with cannons.

Makes it pretty tough to argue that the Government has the power to prevent people from having cannons without running afoul of the Second Amendment, doesn’t it.

I'm all for it!

Link Dump, 2012.07.23

Since I found out that Firefox really sux the CPU cycles--although I don't know if that's due to Ajax or not--I need to clear some tabs.  The problem is, I usually forget that I cleared them, and never get back to them.  But I suppose if it didn't come up again, that's ok.

What your defensive gun says about you (When the Balloon Goes Up) - amusing...and startlingly insightful
Basic Gunshot Wound Kit (guns, cars, & tech) - could save your life
CJ GLS [Wikipedia][site] - a Korean shipping company that I was looking into as an alternative to the Greek ones
Hanjin Shipping [site] - another Korean shipping company
What is wrong with the world? (Write Science) - scientists (and engineers) need to learn to communicate better and teach laymen the importance of their work
The M1 Garand for Homeland Defense (some gun forum) - of course I'd rather have an M14, but they're way more expensive...
The Poor Man's Guide to Survival Gear (Alt-Market) - married men are economically poor

High-Yield Energy Stocks

A while ago I was looking for energy stocks paying out big dividends, and came across a couple sites [1] [2] that listed a few.  This was before I found out how to search Google Finance for dividend yield.  Still, every once in a while these sorts of lists are interesting to go through.

M16 PM Comic

1001th post!  Well...not all of them were public.

On one of the usual gunblogs, probably SayUncle, there was a link to a vintage comic on how to do proper preventative maintenance on the M16A1.  Sweet!  They should totally reprint this.  I'd buy a copy just for the novelty!

HK-91 Miscellany

Numrich's website can be difficult to navigate, so here are the HK-91 and HK-93 pages.  I want to get the G3 schematic poster!


Also of interest is the Command Arms AR-15 stock adapter for 91-pattern rifles, available at Apex.  I didn't see it on their webpage, so I presume they discontinued it, like Smith Enterprise discontinued the Vortex for the 91.  TAPCO makes a plastic one, but I want metal.  ACE apparently makes an aluminum adapter, but I've read that it can't be used with the standard buffer, whereas the CAA one uses the standard recoil spring assembly.

Babolat

The wife was asking me if Babolat was a public company, so I looked into it.  The official site doesn't really say, and other search results turned up responses that it's a privately-held company.

Except when I put "Babolat" into Google Finance, a Japanese company called Descente turned up.  The company profile was from Reuters, and states that Descente makes Babolat products.  The Descente website has almost nothing on Babolat in English, except one line in the history, but the Japanese page has mention of the French brand started in 1875.

So the question is whether or not to invest in Descente.  The French company likely retains the brand rights, and could switch manufacturers should they see fit.  Plus, it's hard to analyze financials of overseas companies that don't have the same accounting practices that the U.S. has.  But nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?

Logan Stanton

At work I got ahold of a Logitech C910 webcam, and noticed the cutie on the box.  So I consulted the interwebz and found out that her name is Logan Stanton, a former UFC ring girl.  I dig the half-Asian thing, but is this what she's resorted to, post-UFC...?

Blogger Problems Again

"Your browser is no longer supported by Blogger. Some parts of Blogger will not work and you may experience problems.   If you are having problems, try Google Chrome."

Eat me.