Oh, That “Dumbest” Law, My, My.

Ted Lieu (@tedlieu): Dear @realDonaldTrump: The “dumbest” law you refer to is called the United States Constitution. Specifically the 14th Amendment which provides due process to all persons, not just citizens.

You took an oath to the Constitution at your relatively small inauguration, remember?

In response to:

@realDonaldTrump

When people come into our Country illegally, we must IMMEDIATELY escort them back out without going through years of legal maneuvering. Our laws are the dumbest anywhere in the world. Republicans want Strong Borders and no Crime. Dems want Open Borders and are weak on Crime!

What in the fuckety fuck can one say anymore? I’m surprised people aren’t dropping dead from fatal eyerolls.

Source.

Admin Stuff.

Tomorrow (Monday, 7/2), I have to get packed up and head back to the apartment and treatment, so posts will be on the light side. I have some stuff scheduled, but everything else will have to wait until I’m settled again, and we have much to do all day tomorrow, so I won’t have much time until Monday evening. Things might start late on Tuesday, and that could be a super light day, because I’m fully booked with appointments from 1:15pm to 4pm.

For everyone who has sent something recently – I will get around to posting everything, and I will get back to you via email. Right now, everything is split between two computers, and I managed to not get everything on the effing USB stick (chemo brain strikes again!). I apologize if you’re having a wait or think I’m just ignoring you, I’m not, I promise.

I’m not exactly in a position to get bird shots right now, so if you all have birds, please send them along, with my thanks! There are birds flitting about the cancer center, but I haven’t had time to camp out and try to get photos yet. I’ll work on that this week, now that I’m feeling better.

And again, I cannot thank you all enough for the constant support you provide to me. I would be in a much worse place without you all.

Sunday Facepalm.

I had never heard of this lunatic before; if you’re like me, you can find an excellent rundown of “Dr. Bill” at Swallowing The Camel:

Dr. William Deagle is a physician, a prophet, a government insider/whistleblower, and one of the two witnesses described in the Book of Revelation. He knows what really happened at Columbine, the World Trade Center, and Oklahoma City. He could be the ruler of the world, but he has chosen to enlighten the masses instead. Thanks to him, the world may someday be safe from Modified Attack Baboons.

There’s a whole lot of material there, and if you search this man, there’s a whole lot of people not happy with him at all, including other christians, which was a bit of a surprise. “Dr. Bill” has had his medical license revoked at least twice, so he went into the supplement business, what else? Okay, on with the current shit pouring out from Dr. Bill.

Earlier this week on “The NutriMedical Report Show,” a radio program hosted by nutritional supplement proprietor Dr. Bill Deagle, Deagle repeatedly threatened to kill anyone who dares to harass him, President Trump, or any other conservative politician in America.

Outraged about recent incidents such as White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders being asked to leave a restaurant, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi being confronted by protesters, and Rep. Maxine Waters’ call for more such confrontations, Deagle declared that “these people need to understand, they’re not going to have a bad day, they’re going to die.”

Deagle said that if he had been on hand during the confrontation between Bondi and protesters, he would not only have pepper sprayed the protesters but “would have whipped out my concealed carry permit gun and I would have blown them away and put them in a box.”

He seems nice. It’s rather interesting how Deagle seems to think he has the perfect right to assault and murder people at will. That said, he seems to keep a cozy distance between himself and any protesters, so at this point at least, he seems to understand there would be consequences. I hope so.

“They need to understand the right is not going to be shouted down,” he said. “[If] they continue to think they are going to harass the right, these people need to understand they’re not going to have a bad day, they’re going to die.”

Right, because only one side is allowed to shout; only one side is allowed to march or protest. Everyone else needs a tank rolled over them. I get the feeling that “Dr. Bill” would be seriously at home with all aspects of Nazism.

“People need to start realizing they’re going to get a lot more than they bargained for if they want to harass us, supporters of Donald Trump and conservatism,” Deagle stated. “They’re not going to get just a little helter skelter and yelling, they’re going to get death.”

Deagle also issued a warning to Democratic candidates and lawmakers who are calling for the abolishment of the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) branch.

“We’ll ice them, how’s that?” he said. “We’ll put them on ice.”

Unfortunately, no matter how much Deagle protects himself from any action with consequences, there are people who listen to him who might not be concerned about any consequence, and that’s scary as hell. There are already enough aggrieved white men spraying bullets and murdering people. This open incitement to murder is terrifying.

“I’ve reached my limit now,” Deagle fumed. “They want to bring it on? You’re going to get a lot more than you bargained for, believe me. The destroyer is not the devil, it’s God and we’re his proxy. You want to bring it on? You’re going to bring on your own devastation and destruction. Don’t push it.”

Every day, I wish more and more that christianity would just fucking die already. Religious fanatics are frightening, and christianity is chock full of them. For all that they scream about religious fanatics on the ‘other side’, they never seem to look within their own ranks, or face up to the reality that there are a lot of scary ass christian fanatics out there not only doing a great deal of damage, but with intent to do even worse at every step of the way.

RWW has the full story.

Making a Rondel Dagger – Part 10 – A Bolster and a Guard

Whilst the blade was the most time-consuming part, in a project like this there is still a lot of metalwork to be done. Once the handle is turned, next step is to make a bolster and a guard, and fit all these four parts together. Precision is important here. Not precision as in adhering to measurements from a drawing, but precision of how the parts fit together. I have made myself a set of measurement from the game 3D model that I aim to get near to, but I will not fuss about getting them exactly.

The bolster I have made from a piece of pipe of unknown origin that has almost the exact diameter that I actually want to have. It is also completely free of rust, which has made me suspicious whether it is not stainless steel. No matter, I have simply cut off a piece and polished it.

I did not polish it on the belt grinder all the way through the finest belts, but I stopped at around Trizact A16 and I went straight tot he buffer after that. Only I did not use the felt wheel straightaway, but a coarse sisal one with coarse polishing paste, then a felt wheel with medium polishing paste, then felt with fine polishing paste and finally felt wheel with jeweler’s rouge.

In order to be able to work with the piece on the buffer safely I have hammered it on a round dowel. During the polishing I took care to turn it in different angles against the wheel in order to get slightly satin surface – buffing in one direction only makes mirror polish and I did not want that.

The bolster is not completely round, but very slightly oval. I wanted to be able to feel the edge alignment of the dagger when held in bare hand. To further help with this I have also filed a fine grid of grooves on each side of the bolster. With that done, I could affix it to the handle. For that I have coated the relevant part with hot hide glue, stuck the bolster on there and hammered a few wooden splinters between the bolster and the handle to center it properly and to hold it in place.

With that done I had to shape the tang on the belt grinder so it was continuously ever so slightly smaller than the blade and square the shoulders (those were round prior to hardening because a sharp edge could lead to the tang breaking of in quench). To protect it from scratches I have covered the whole blade with masking tape. When the tang was shaped, I have affixed the blade in the vice with additional protection of a wet rug, and I shaped the hole in the handle to fit by the previously shown burning technique. I had to be careful for the heat to not overheat the blade base, but to be hot far enough to get a fit where the bolster was mere 3 mm from it.

Next piece in this jigsaw was the guard. I wanted that to be between 3 to 3,5 mm thick, but I had no suitable piece of steel that was not pitted too much. In the end I had to cut a piece of a structural steel V profile that was way too thick. I have spent rather more time on truing it and grinding it down to desired thickness than I wished to. Unlike for the bolster, I had no good and comfortable way to hold on that small flat piece of steel safely, so I nearly ground my finger tips off. Luckily only fingernails got slightly chewed and I have learned how to do this safely later on, when I was polishing it. I have to finish the supporting table for my belt grinder in order to do these finicky things.

When ground to slightly above the desired thickness, I have punched the centre and drawn the design of the guard. I like to make my own tools, and I have indeed made my drawing needle, but I wimped out and bought the compass. The work required to make it might be fun, but it would be way too much time that would definitively be spent better elsewhere.

Next step I have just drilled a 4 mm hole in the center, 0,5 mm smaller than the maximum width of the tang at the blade base. In order to transfer the outline of the blade base onto the steel I have poked a hole with the tang into a piece of paper – Lipton tea box was the right thickness and firmness.

Cutting the hole for the tang I have done with a fret saw. In the past I broke a lot of blades whilst doing this, but it seems I have finally learned how to do it properly this time. I broke none and it was done in lickety-split. Note the aluminium covers for the vice jaws. These are important, because I need the piece to be held firmly and safely, but I do not wish the hardened jaws of the vice damage the soft steel of the worked piece.

After cutting the rough outline of the hole came of course the most difficult part – fitting and shaping the hole to fit the tang precisely. This took the better part of an hour with fine and diamond files, and another hour or so the final shaping and polishing of the piece to the same finish as the bolster.

Here you can see the face of the guard. The other side, facing the hand, has rounded edges. I was thinking about doing that, then I was thinking about doing both sides flat and in the end I had no choice because before I figured out how to polish it properly, my hand slipped and I chamfered an edge that I did not want to chamfer. I was lucky – the result is comfortable even against bare hand and it looks good. I might however take some more time for polishing this piece. A few hand courses with coarse hematite might be needed, right now it shines a bit like a bare arse among the bushes.

Here you can see the parts assembled. Of course there is a lot of masking tape covering all the bits that I do not want to get dirty or scratched, and most of the focus is on the mess that is my workbench. But you would not expect me to show you pretty pictures at this stage, would you?