2016-03-15
Can Comparison
On the Minnesota NFA FB group, a guy posted a link to an Arfcom thread and YT video of a comparison of a bunch of popular rifle suppressors. Very cool. Apparently
2016-01-24
DIY Heat Treating
I came across this post on heat treating that looks quite useful. It's reproduced here in case the page goes down:
First, know your steel. If you bought commercially available tool steel you should know precisely what it is. But if you are using something found, scavenged or of otherwise uncertain provenance you may have problems hardening it. The steel used in any given blade is not an easy thing to determine. A metallurgical lab charges a fair amount to test for alloy and there is no home test kit that I know of ("Look, Honey, it turned blue!") And there is some risk in quenching, say, an oil hardening steel in water. It could fracture at worst or warp like crazy at least. The old-timers "sparked" steels to tell what was in them. The sparks generated from a grinder will burn with different visual characteristics depending on the alloying elements. (Like the different colorants in fireworks.) So you can grind a corner, observe the sparks, then grind a known steel and try to compare the little spark-flares for shape, brightness, complexity, etc. and attempt a match.
Mostly we're talking oil vs. water hardening steels. The air hardening ones are the Cr-V and stuff that us Galoots don't use too much and that weren't used in old tools at all. It is safer to quench an unknown, perhaps water-hardening steel in oil than vice versa. The water-hardening steel may not harden in the oil and if that is the case, you can try again in water. I don't mean to muddy the water with all this but, hey, if it were easy, everybody'd be doing it.
The first step is to get the metal to its critical temperature, which with good old O-1 (the oil hardening stuff) is 1450° - 1500°F. Got a good pyrometer? No problem. During the crystal transormation from ferrite to austenite steel ceases to be magnetic at that temp. This phenomenon is called the "Curie Point" after the discoverer, Pierre. So one can simply heat the metal till the magnet is no longer attracted to it then quench in oil. I like to use peanut oil because the flash point is very high which minimizes the risk of fire (the risk is still there, though; be prepared: use long tongs to handle the work to keep your hand out of the way, wear gloves and keep the fire extinguisher handy) and it smells nice(r) when it smokes. How to get the blade to the Curie point is probably the biggest problem for the DIYer. When the metal is glowing red, the carbon behaves as if it's in a liquid and can therefore migrate around as it pleases. This is necessary for the hardening to occur but near the surface of the metal those unfaithful little carbon atoms would just as soon run off with any available oxygen-sluts it runs into (oxygen is soooo seductive) and they're lost then forever. We hate that. We attempt to prevent this by: heating the metal in an inert (oxygen free atmosphere) and/or limit the time at red-heat (in air) to as little as possible. A torch makes both of those very difficult. It's very hard to heat something as large as a Norris-type blade evenly with a small torch-generated spot of heat. A forge fire is better because of its uniformity and it can be starved for air a bit to decrease the oxygen in its immediate vicinity. A small lab-type test oven works quite well. (Also used for ceramic glaze tests.) Toss in a charcoal briquette to scavenge some of the oxygen.
Update: There are coatings that prevent oxidation and carbon loss at www.rosemill.com that promise to make home heat treating a more successful endeavor.
When it's hit critical temp, remove it from the heat and quickly dunk it into a sufficient quantity of room temperature oil. Swish it around a bit until it's cooled throughout to below 150°F. It should now be very hard and too brittle to use. (If you attempt to file it, the file should skid on the blade.)
Two ways to temper to a useable hardness/toughness: by colors or by temperature. If you have a very accurate oven in the kitchen, just heat it to 325°F and you're done. An accurate deep-fryer will do the same but use a good thermometer to double check on the oven or deep fryer's thermostat. Without accurate temperature control, you'll have to use the surface oxide colors to know when enough is enough. First, clean some part of the blade (probably the flat area back from the bevel) till it's bright metal again. When heated, that spot will change colors (you've seen the rainbow of colors on any overheated steel) starting with a very faint yellow (called light straw). Since we like our blades Good-n-Hard(tm), stop there (remove from the heat, quench if necessary to stop any further increase.) Any color beyond the faintest straw is too much. (The blade will still work, it just won't hold the edge you want.) Be overly cautious with tempering. You can always re-temper a too-hard blade, but if you go too far and soften it too much, you have to re-harden it all over again. So if a blade seems too hard, just toss it back in the oven and go a little higher. The oven/deep fryer method is preferred, however because you can leave the part at tempering temperature long enough for true tempering to occur. The torch method, using the surface colors, may leave some of the transformation undone.
You're done. If the blade looks awful, you can sandblast or grind it pretty but it should work well regardless. Before honing, be sure to grind back the bevel a bit . That thin section probably took more than its fair share of carbon burn-out abuse and you need to get to the good stuff. (it could take as much as .025" to get through the de-carbed layer.) Same for the back. Doing a good job on the back is at least if not more important than the work on the bevel. A little extra elbow grease will remove the de-carbed layer and get to good metal. Don't forget: the back IS the Cutting Edge. Think about it. If the back hasn't been honed deeply enough, the blade will never work well.
Good luck!
-- Ron
Rem 870 Receivers
When Black Aces Tactical was still selling receiver kits separately, I thought about assembling a mag-fed shotgun...but wasn't sure where to get all the parts. Similarly, if I wanted to build a tactical tube-fed pump, I'd have to buy a normal one and trash the stock parts (or pay out the nose for the stock tactical). I'd heard that the Police and Marine models had superior non-MIM parts, too.
So I found a site, AI&P Tactical, that sells both virgin receivers and parts. Cool! The owner also builds custom shotguns, but as of 2016 only will do 50 per year to avoid the excise tax on firearms manufacturers.
Can Knowledge
Mobile link dump.
I had been concerned about having "extra" suppressor parts, like mounts and endcaps. Here's an example of apparently acceptable use in the industry. There's a post on Reddit NFA regarding a SilencerCo Octane 45 that has an available 9mm endcap, apparently only available at SilencerShop. (The description says "replacement," so perhaps that's how they get away with it.) The interesting thing on the Reddit post was hole dimensions of the baffles: they seemed fairly loose at 0.493-0.495" for each of the eight, and 0.509" at the endcap.
Another post on Form 1 builds is from SilencerTalk. It linked to an apparently famous thread dating back to 2008 regarding one user sub-sonic's build of a freeze plug can. This must've been the prelude to the whole solvent trap suppressor craze....
The original thing that drove me to question mounts was mention of YHM Wraith cans, which apparently had the flash suppressor be the back of the can, yada yada yada. Apparently it's a non-issue normally.
I came across another site that definitely treads the edge of legality, because it isn't until halfway down the page that it mentions one needs an NFA stamp to do this legally. Unconstitutional or not, if one gets caught with an oil filter can and no stamp, one's gun rights are gone.
I had been concerned about having "extra" suppressor parts, like mounts and endcaps. Here's an example of apparently acceptable use in the industry. There's a post on Reddit NFA regarding a SilencerCo Octane 45 that has an available 9mm endcap, apparently only available at SilencerShop. (The description says "replacement," so perhaps that's how they get away with it.) The interesting thing on the Reddit post was hole dimensions of the baffles: they seemed fairly loose at 0.493-0.495" for each of the eight, and 0.509" at the endcap.
Another post on Form 1 builds is from SilencerTalk. It linked to an apparently famous thread dating back to 2008 regarding one user sub-sonic's build of a freeze plug can. This must've been the prelude to the whole solvent trap suppressor craze....
The original thing that drove me to question mounts was mention of YHM Wraith cans, which apparently had the flash suppressor be the back of the can, yada yada yada. Apparently it's a non-issue normally.
I came across another site that definitely treads the edge of legality, because it isn't until halfway down the page that it mentions one needs an NFA stamp to do this legally. Unconstitutional or not, if one gets caught with an oil filter can and no stamp, one's gun rights are gone.
2016-01-23
Formula
Another couple tabs that were in my browser from at least a year ago....
About organic formulas
Making baby formula
About organic formulas
Making baby formula
OBD-II
These links have been open in my browser for months. Time to dump them!
ELM327 support in Linux
Viewing OBD-II codes on an RPi
Being able to adjust engine parameters would be amusing, although my understanding is that they're proprietary.
ELM327 support in Linux
Viewing OBD-II codes on an RPi
Being able to adjust engine parameters would be amusing, although my understanding is that they're proprietary.
2016-01-12
RPi Power Save
Haven't posted here for a while...no time!
Since I'm looking at running an RPi B or B+ for a HomeGenie server to drive a Z-Wave network, power consumption becomes an issue. I started looking into power options.
This one Muslim dude (I wouldn't have known except the final comment in the post) has a page listing some of the options, which are to disable the USB hub/Ethernet, use the model A, underclock the core, and disable video output. I hadn't realized that dynamic clocking could be used as power save; that somewhat compensates for the lack of sleep functionality.
The config.txt file is described at raspbians.com (which sounds like some strange flavor of lesbians...). Actually, the official documentation is at raspberrypi.org. The arm_freq_min, core_freq_min, and sdram_freq_min settings are used for dynamic power as long as force_turbo=0.
Edit [2016.01.24]: Using external hardware, it's possible to put the RPi into a suspend mode: Sleepy Pi and Witty Pi. What I really want is something that'll go from suspend to active on network traffic (not WOL, which boots on network traffic).
Since I'm looking at running an RPi B or B+ for a HomeGenie server to drive a Z-Wave network, power consumption becomes an issue. I started looking into power options.
This one Muslim dude (I wouldn't have known except the final comment in the post) has a page listing some of the options, which are to disable the USB hub/Ethernet, use the model A, underclock the core, and disable video output. I hadn't realized that dynamic clocking could be used as power save; that somewhat compensates for the lack of sleep functionality.
The config.txt file is described at raspbians.com (which sounds like some strange flavor of lesbians...). Actually, the official documentation is at raspberrypi.org. The arm_freq_min, core_freq_min, and sdram_freq_min settings are used for dynamic power as long as force_turbo=0.
Edit [2016.01.24]: Using external hardware, it's possible to put the RPi into a suspend mode: Sleepy Pi and Witty Pi. What I really want is something that'll go from suspend to active on network traffic (not WOL, which boots on network traffic).
2015-11-18
Form 1 Suppressor Stuff
I'd mentioned SD Tactical previously. They make a "B tube" size "solvent trap" in titanium, suitable for conversion to a sound suppressor when in possession of an approved Form 1.
There's also JM Performance Fittings, which sells "storage cups" that fit in flashlight bodies. They make a B-tube model, but unfortunately it's only aluminum.
The SDTA forums have some information on builds.
J&S Tactical makes jigs for forming the B-tube freeze plugs; however, those tools cost more than the tube!
Other solvent trap makers include Apogee and Diversified Machine (who only takes orders via email).
There was mention of "reflex" suppressors on the boards. One description I found had a picture but it still wasn't clear exactly how it differs from non-reflex. Another one clarified it as basically jamming the barrel up in the can. And another showed an adapter for a reflex-type design.
One concern of mine was multiple mounts. One solution:
I like that better than the set screw solution.You need another use for the adapter, if you're worried about possession of suppressor parts.
For me, I built a set of three cans, with three different lengths and calibers. The thread pitch and length for all adapters is identical. So, I will always have three complete cans, but any of them could be mounted on 1/2-28, 5/8-24 or a YHM mount.
If you had a piece of tube that didn't suppress sound, like the MAAD brake I linked, it could "hold" a mount and an end cap, so that each piece is always in use.
There's also JM Performance Fittings, which sells "storage cups" that fit in flashlight bodies. They make a B-tube model, but unfortunately it's only aluminum.
2015-09-04
2015-07-10
2015-06-26
Software TNC
2015-06-25
Remainder of Link Dump
It's been a link dump kind of morning. In addition to FFL-Related, BTC Stuff, Aeropress, and Books, I have:
- Andy's Most Useful Knots, a useful reference I found
- Walker Display picture system, seen at Hope Church
- Stamping World's The Strip Joint has a section on draw dies
- Connections, what AJE thought of when I mentioned my technology bootstrap idea
- Cora Deitz images, found via the Kate Upton FB page
- How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic: fodder to counter
Books
- Harvey Silverglate, Three Felonies a Day (examples)
- Mira Locher, Zen Gardens: The Complete Works of Shunmyo Masuno, Japan's Leading Garden Designer
- Bill Gifford, Spring Chicken: Stay Young Forever (or Die Trying)
- Damon Root, Overruled: The Long War for Control of the U.S. Supreme Court
FFL-Related
Link dump regarding FFLs.
- Minnesota Statute on firearms dealers: 624.7161
- Also relevant: legislative research on state firearms laws, circa 1999
- Minnesota Administrative Rules 7504 regarding security standards for firearms dealers
- Olmsted Planning Department; one would be wise to check
- Getting a home-based FFL, in four parts, from TFB.
- Department of State list of who must register with DDTC for manufacturing munitions list articles
- Tax and Trade Bureau's FAQ on the firearms excise tax
- ATF Ruling 2010-10 regarding what constitutes a manufacturer
2015-06-07
Joseph Olson & GOCRA
The lawyer I spoke with got her degree from Hamline University, and she mentioned that one of her professors was a Joe Olson, who she described as a big 2nd Amendment guy. The name sounded familiar, like he was involved with the Permit to Carry law passing. Well, I found his bio on the Hamline site, and he's got an impressive list of publications, including several with Clayton Cramer and David Kopel.
Furthermore, he founded GOCRA in 1989. GOCRA was instrumental in passing the permit to carry law, as well as legalizing suppressors in 2015. Prof. Olson stepped down as president of GOCRA in 2013, turning over the reigns to Andrew Rothman.
Furthermore, he founded GOCRA in 1989. GOCRA was instrumental in passing the permit to carry law, as well as legalizing suppressors in 2015. Prof. Olson stepped down as president of GOCRA in 2013, turning over the reigns to Andrew Rothman.
Firearms Laws
I loaned my copy of the ATF law book to my trust lawyer, and I realized I wanted to look up something. Oops. Well, it turns out that the guide is available in PDF, but picking out the individual constituent documents is useful too.
According to the National Archives, when a bill is signed into law, it's assigned a Public Law number, published as a Slip Law, and is included in the next Statutes at Large.
National Firearms Act of 1934 (NFA34, Title II) [Wikipedia]
Public Law 73-474
Statutes at Large 48 Stat. 1236 [legislink]
26 USC 53 [GPO]
27 CFR 479 [GPO]
Destructive Devices weren't included in the text of the NFA, only MGs, SBRs, SBSes, and AOWs. The SCOTUS case Haynes v. U.S. [Wikipedia] [Justia] essentially said that a person couldn't be compelled to register an NFA item because it could be incriminating based on the 5th Amendment, but this was remedied by the passage of GCA68. (The case was decided Jan. 29, 1968, and GCA68 was passed Oct. 22, 1968.) The effects of GCA68 on NFA34 are described in a document from the ATF.
Amusingly, the other legal challenge to NFA34, U.S. v. Miller [Wikipedia] [Justia] [LII] [rkba.org], was predicated on that a sawed-off shotgun isn't a militia weapon, and therefore wasn't protected under the 2nd Amendment. This was patently false, since SBS "trench guns" were in fact used in World War I; unfortunately, the defendant didn't show up, due to being deceased, and the assertion was uncontested. However, GCA68 reversed that line of assertion, in proclaiming that items without a sporting use are not protected.
Public Law 90-618
Statutes at Large 82 Stat. 1213-2 [legislink]
18 USC 44 [GPO]
27 CFR 478 [GPO]
The Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 [Wikipedia] slightly predates GCA68, and prohibited inter-state trade in handguns.
The Wikipedia list of gun laws in the U.S. shows a bunch of other legal noise, too.
ATF NFA FAQ
Bardwell's NFA FAQ
Re the Pittman-Robertson Wildlife Restoration Act of 1937 that imposed an excise tax on firearms and ammunition: CRS 7-5700.
2015-05-29
Anonymity
PIA is cool. So is Mailinator.
BitTorrent over Tor is a bad idea because most BT clients insert the IP address into tracker info, and web traffic is bundled with the BT traffic, resulting in piercing the veil of anonymity.
Get a gift card and sign up for PIA using Mailinator. At the very least, one can skirt the DMCA! ;-)
BitTorrent over Tor is a bad idea because most BT clients insert the IP address into tracker info, and web traffic is bundled with the BT traffic, resulting in piercing the veil of anonymity.
Get a gift card and sign up for PIA using Mailinator. At the very least, one can skirt the DMCA! ;-)
Suppressors
Holy hell, it happened! Minnesota legalized sound suppressors!! As per SF 878 / HF 849. May 22nd was a beautiful day.
There's going to be one helluva backlog, though. According to NFATracker.com, the Form 4 wait times are in the realm of 3 months from the time the check is cashed. According to SilencerShop.com, the Form 4 wait times are at 4 months for trusts, and 6-8 months for individuals. And that's after the Form 3 transfer between dealers!
The ATF isn't accepting e-file for Form 4 (transfer of NFA firearm) submissions, but they are for Form 1 (making NFA firearm). Hence some people are recommending using a kit to build one's own for minimum wait time. SD Tactical Arms makes one such kit, as detailed on ar15news.com.
There's going to be one helluva backlog, though. According to NFATracker.com, the Form 4 wait times are in the realm of 3 months from the time the check is cashed. According to SilencerShop.com, the Form 4 wait times are at 4 months for trusts, and 6-8 months for individuals. And that's after the Form 3 transfer between dealers!
The ATF isn't accepting e-file for Form 4 (transfer of NFA firearm) submissions, but they are for Form 1 (making NFA firearm). Hence some people are recommending using a kit to build one's own for minimum wait time. SD Tactical Arms makes one such kit, as detailed on ar15news.com.
2015-05-12
Net Neutrality Noise
Well, this has been open in my browser since...February. Time to dump it into here.
The Daily Caller had an article against NN that linked to Ajit Pai's dissenting statement and has a video with some remarks. The FCC's "Open Internet" (a misnomer if I ever saw one, considering government regulation) page has some of the other remarks as well.
Of course I don't agree with the co-opted version of network neutrality (distinguished in uppercase) because it inserts government into something that's supposed to be open. That ought to cause cognitive dissonance in anyone with a brain. The prior net neutrality was to avoid such interference, and then the FCC picked up the name and changed what it meant. Brilliant. And people are stupid, so they fell for it. Ah well.
The Daily Caller had an article against NN that linked to Ajit Pai's dissenting statement and has a video with some remarks. The FCC's "Open Internet" (a misnomer if I ever saw one, considering government regulation) page has some of the other remarks as well.
Of course I don't agree with the co-opted version of network neutrality (distinguished in uppercase) because it inserts government into something that's supposed to be open. That ought to cause cognitive dissonance in anyone with a brain. The prior net neutrality was to avoid such interference, and then the FCC picked up the name and changed what it meant. Brilliant. And people are stupid, so they fell for it. Ah well.
2015-04-28
Processing 300 BLK Brass
Here's one process, anyway:
The brass is first cleaned and polished including a final polish in stainless steel to get that new car shine. It is then deprimed using a Dillon Universal Depriming Die and trimmed to 300 BLK length using a Dillon RT1200. All cases are trimmed to no longer than 1.355 +/- .003 to fall within SAAMI specs, which should allow you to reload several times before having to do any trimming yourself. The cases are then swagged [sic] using a Dillon Swagging [sic] tool to remove the military crimp from the primer pocket.
mhddfs & GlusterFS
I haven't posted any links for a while. They've been piling up.
There's a FUSE plug-in for Linux called mhddfs that aggregates storage devices into a single virtual filesystem.
I'm thinking I'd like to use a SATA port multiplier to pull together a bunch of drives. (Such as those made by DAT Optic.) Unfortunately, that system wouldn't have any redundancy, although one could still copy to individual drives manually to establish multiple copies.
I also found reference to a distributed filesystem called GlusterFS that appears worthy of further investigation.
Addendum: SATA-IO has an article about port multipliers and the difference between implementations, i.e. command-based switching (CBS) vs. FIS-based switching (FBS or just FIS).
There's a FUSE plug-in for Linux called mhddfs that aggregates storage devices into a single virtual filesystem.
I'm thinking I'd like to use a SATA port multiplier to pull together a bunch of drives. (Such as those made by DAT Optic.) Unfortunately, that system wouldn't have any redundancy, although one could still copy to individual drives manually to establish multiple copies.
I also found reference to a distributed filesystem called GlusterFS that appears worthy of further investigation.
Addendum: SATA-IO has an article about port multipliers and the difference between implementations, i.e. command-based switching (CBS) vs. FIS-based switching (FBS or just FIS).
Porn Face
This collection of before and after images is highly disturbing. The power of cosmetics is truly frightening.
2015-03-18
.300 Blackout
Looking into what it takes to make .300 BLK (7.62x35mm) from 5.56 NATO, it seems as though using a cut-off saw with a jig is preferable to using a case trimmer. The latter is more for smaller lengths, and could be very time consuming to do.
A thread on FAL Files lists one guy's process. I saw a jig for sale on Amazon, but another thread mentioned "the original" on 300BlkTlk, which can also trim down 5.56 NATO for conversion to 7.62x25mm. This could be interesting.
2015-03-15
Link Dump!!
- Crash-only software, etc.
- Eat More Fat (sitting in my reader for five months?!)
- Surviving a winter storm without power
- 10 prepper games
- Augmented reality display comparison (Oculus Rift, etc.)
- Radon mitigation (diagram included)
- StartMail (whitepaper)
- Sullivan's Travels (saw this in Nov.)
The Millenial Mentality and Work
WSJ had an article on the recent trend that businesses are doing less criticism of employees and more talking about the positives. This reminds me of politics, where one comes off as negative when criticizing, even if true. My hunch is that the reported shift in management attitude is because of Millennials.
Yeah, I know I'm harsh on Millennials. As someone on the tail end of Gen X, I see a lot of people younger than me being totally vain and self-centered, expecting praise for every little thing they do, even if mediocre. There are very few Millennials who I can say that I trust, simply because from what I've seen, they have a lame work ethic. But yeah, they're the young people of today, so I can't totally shit on them.
Yeah, I know I'm harsh on Millennials. As someone on the tail end of Gen X, I see a lot of people younger than me being totally vain and self-centered, expecting praise for every little thing they do, even if mediocre. There are very few Millennials who I can say that I trust, simply because from what I've seen, they have a lame work ethic. But yeah, they're the young people of today, so I can't totally shit on them.
The Internet Doesn't Need to Be Saved
Libertarianism.org, the Cato Institute's broad blog on libertarianism, had a piece on "Net Neutrality" earlier this month.
2015-03-03
BaoFeng Radio Hacks
RJS sent me a link to a page with some information on hacking the BaoFeng UV5RA.
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