Dumb Looks Still Free

Some thoughts on computers

2012-01-25T08:02:00.001-05:00

I've been into computers since the card era. Not the smartcard, RF card or adapter card era, but that era which featured paper cards with data grids on them that were either punched or had a reader that would accept pencil filled in rectangles... that you filled in with a pencil. My first computer interface was a paper-fed terminal. My first computer language that I learned the basics of in 7th grade was APL. Yes, I've been around to see a few things change, and gone are the days when the teacher said that you only got so many sheets of paper to do your work per month... and then my dad would bring in boxes of used terminal paper from his workplace as they only used the lined and colored back part of the sheets. Amazingly at the end of the month I was the only one still using the terminals.

From time-sharing on a mainframe to my first almost PC to the first PC and then through the 386/485/Pentium eras all the way to today's quad core, LED display monsters with terabytes of drive space and gigabytes of memory, I have been around the block a bit on computers. I am not, of necessity, retro on my computer use but it is purpose driven. Purpose driven use concentrates on certain aspects of computing, such as document creation or gaming. Back in the day it was document creation that drove the early days of computing for office use, and the gamers had to adjust to the advances that getting simple work done on a computer drove as it was the marketplace. That changed just around 2000 and now the gamers and, increasingly, entertainment use of computers drives displays, memory and storage. This means that usability has gotten much, much, much better from the paper terminal days and the systems are pretty 'user friendly' and have been for awhile. Yet, because I have limited uses for computers, mostly in the document creation and research areas, that means that a stock, out of the box computer or Operating System comes with all of the fun, glitzy, entertainment stuff turned on.

Growing up through the era of the early PC and early Internet means that there are some credos and maxims that exist for computers that haven't changed much, although a few have changed greatly. I'll go over a few of those as a personal look at computers, overall.

The first great maxim of computers from the mid-1980's to just a bit after 2000 has been: the computer you want always costs $2,500. Add in an extra $500-$1,000 if it was a laptop. For a few short years between 2001 and 2005 that dropped to $1,500 and it was in this era that the gamers finally took the lead at high end computing and office document generation dropped off the screen. For general office work without glitzy presentations, you can get a computer at $300 that will do absolutely everything one of its mid-1990's predecessors did and much, much more. The only thing that would be the same with this $300 Nettop or sub-notebook is the screen size, but the resolution today is much higher and the color rendition much, much better... do note you would be dropping from a 14" CRT monitor to a 10-12" LED display in that transition.

The second great maxim of computers that still holds (and may for about 5 more years) is a simple one. The greatest resource of your computer is the screen real estate space and this dates to the Windows Icon Mouse Point concept of interface. Your screen real estate (even in 3D) is limited and, therefore, it is the most precious commodity of a computer since it is the one that allows you to interface with it to know just what it is you are doing. There have been a number of proposed solutions to this, but they all involve creative ways to compress or otherwise shift the use of the screen real estate while presenting more on it. Getting a larger screen is the first and best way to increase computer functionality for a desktop machine, and while it is a pricey option, there is nothing as valuable as an extra 4 square inches of screen real estate space. This is mandatory because of the 1960's WIMP paradigm and will not change until the interface space expands beyond the screen and nothing delivers information in such dense amounts as visual interfaces.

From Jerry Pournelle, the man doing stupid things with computers so you don't have to, comes a few key and essential concepts of computer troubleshooting. The main one is: if it isn't the cables its the memory, and if it isn't the memory its the cables. Most computer problems can be solved by taking out and reseating the memory and the cables of a system. If you need to ensure good electrical contacts, use Stabilant 22A and an eyedropper bottle I got in the early '90s is still going strong today. Unfortunately for sealed devices or those where your ability to actually get to anything beyond the memory is limited, like laptops, nettops, etc. you either have to have the basic confidence to strip something down and get it back into original condition or send it to a shop... or buy a new one. When I was more actively building computers this set of advice meant that I could easily find the problems on a system and then ID it. Early on I had problems with cables, and not just the low-end cheap stuff, either... and that was in the early '90s. By the end of the '90s I had a few bad memory sticks that showed up during the era of the memory wars for pricing. Since then has been relatively trouble-free computing, but the few problems I have had are right back at cables and memory.

Another Pournelle rule is that cruft builds up in the computer's disk system over time. 'Cruft' is left over parts of programs, bits that didn't uninstall or install properly, left over pointers in the registry that didn't go away properly, old drivers that interfere with new equipment, and the general slow scattering of data on a hard drive as bits and pieces of programs get fragmented due to poor disk maintenance on the part of the OS. Every OS ever created has that problem, just that some have it to a lesser degree than others. A system that slows down over time is due to cruft, and the cure is to either get a cleaning utility that will remove old parts of programs and clean up registry entries and then do a boot disk fragmentation on it, or get a back-up copy of your disk contents, wipe the disk and re-image the hard drive. There are a plethora of things between those, including getting a new hard drive and ghosting the old one over to the new one with an optimization routine. Depending on what you use your computer for cruft can start showing up in a few days (if you install and uninstall lots of software) or years.

Just after the beginning of the Internet era came ads. Lots and lots of ads. Mostly the 1-cent per click-through type that then dropped to tenths or hundredths or thousandths of a cent per click-through. In the beginning there wasn't much to deal with, but as advertising for revenue increased the need for weeding out ads arose. Why? Simple: you own your computer, your screen and your screen real estate is the most precious part of your computer and if you don't want something on it then there must be a way to make it GO AWAY. The Firefox browser has all sorts of nice add-ons for that, like AdBlock Pro and NoScript plus a few others to get rid of the tracking leeches and so forth that try to infest your browser. Users of MSIE have only recently gotten a semi-useful pop-up blocker that Firefox has had for some time, and unless you are using Avant as your MSIE shell, then you don't get much beyond that for blocking ads. The alternative is to block the stuff before it gets to your browser via Privoxy, which has a plethora of geeky hand coding capabilities and a few free action scripts that you can modify to start getting rid of entire sub-domains of advertisements so you never, ever see them and they never, ever get to your hard drive. For me Avant through Privoxy tends to be my main browser, but I use Firefox for a lot of work, and then things like Opera and Google Chrome to see if I can't get around user-hostile sites that don't like being weeded badly on the ad-side of things. Basically, I don't see many ads... and when I do it is because I have temporarily gone to a direct connection or otherwise shut off the blocking capability so I can get to other content. The moment I have the content (the wanted part) the rest goes back into place.

As I'm no longer in the gaming world of things (the rise of the FPS and the decline of my health basically leave me out of gaming now) I am not into the spinning, twirling and always there aspects of the modern OS that have started to become standard features. Basically my computer screen real estate is devoted to simple document creation and, therefore, I don't want many features to clutter it up. Thus there are no widgets or small apps infesting my screen real estate. There are no transparencies enabled for the 'ooooo! neat!' of getting blurred material from around material I need to concentrate on. I do not mind simple warnings from the status bar, and the clock there in simple text is useful. The taskbar is small and permanent, I don't need it sliding around and out of the way or doing other fun things. In fact I turn off anything that tries to fade in menus or otherwise do neat animations with them as when I want a menu I want it now, not in 3 seconds and when I get what I want it is to go away now, not in 3 seconds.

As I can get around my hard drive pretty easily I have two directories I added after reading an article in PC Magazine back in the 1980's. One is download and the other is TEMP. When I download things I don't want an OS created place that you can't easily get to because they have decided to hide it on you, but one directly off the main drive (or data drive if I have one) called download. Similarly if I need to expand or unzip material, or work on items they get a sub-directory in TEMP. Over 95% of all my user generated material resides in TEMP. And if I have to back up anything then that directory gets a priority as it is, by and large, data that I've created. A final directory I have started to create is Programs Contained which are programs that do not get registered in the registry, run as standalones, and really should have a nice place to be contained so I can find them. The first time I get one of those, I create Programs Contained to hold them.

I have witnessed people with their computing screen real estate taken up by documents. Sometimes there are so many of them that it is hard to figure out where the important system level icons are. There is a way to clean that up and it is by use of a desktop folder. The best way is to store those documents in TEMP, of course, so they NEVER appear on the screen interface which needs to be clean so as to make it easy to use and not prone to click errors. Simple desktop folders and saving to them would solve most of the problems, as would creating such folders and dragging and dropping the icons into them: problem solved. But having a simple TEMP directory means you don't even have the folders to clutter your computing desktop. And since so many documents seem to come from one or two applications, opening the application will be something that will have to be done and then finding the document you want from its place on the TEMP directory is an easier task... made easier by applications that keep a Most Recently Used list of the last 5 or 10 items you have most recently generated. Mankind invented folders and filing cabinets for a reason, and even though I enjoy a physically messy desk, my computer desktop can be kept neat via a bit of forethought that I never have to think about again.

A good keyboard is hard to find. I use an old clicky style that should survive through Armageddon and still work on my main machine. For other machines... there are keyboards that aren't bad on laptops... and there are keyboards that aren't all that good, either. If I could get a custom clicky keyboard for laptops, I would, but I can't so I'm stuck with what the designers have put on those types of machines. I can use a mouse, touchpad, arrow keys, joystick or trackball. I prefer a trackball since it doesn't require much motion nor actual desk space. Mushpads...errr... touchpads aren't bad but, like some keyboards, they aren't all that good, either. If you get the idea I have a very modern monitor, old fashioned keyboard and out of step pointing device for my main desktop computer... you are absolutely correct.

If you get the idea that I don't have much on my desktop, you are right. In general there are a few items of necessity that end up on the desktop and they include: My Computer or just a C: drive shortcut, browser icons, one spreadsheet I use constantly, a writer application, one calculator that can do a few math shortcuts, an alarm app, and a folder of Utilities. Bluetooth puts a couple of shortcuts I can't move on the desktop, as well, so they stay there by default. I used to use the Quick Launch area of the task bar a bit, but have found that it is more a short-short menu of items I use a bit less often. That's it. The rest is a pleasant blue with high contrast to it and the smallest icons I can use for the screen resolution. The status bar is the equivalent of the computer items of interest and letting me know that the network is connected, battery or UPS system is OK, and a very few other things to let me know things are working well. There are a total of 12 items there and if I got rid of the Bluetooth I could move that down to 10 items.

What I know is sacrilege to many is that I also don't listen to music much any more so there are no music apps, no background music and the speaker is muted at all times. Anything that must get through from the OS can go through speaker for beeps, very simple.

I also don't watch much video and it is usually short items from blog presentations and if I want it I will click on it. And if it auto-runs, well, the speaker is muted... its almost like there was a plan, there. I do have the free software tools to do all sorts of video but they sit on my main computer mostly unused with just enough skill to do some transcoding if I need to.

I don't need a weather app as I have this thing called a 'window' that I can look outside and see what is happening. If I want more weather related information I can go to a website. I don't need an app to tell me it is daytime or raining, I have that capability built into this thing called a 'house'.

I also have zero RSS feeds coming in. Yes, zero. None. No one is saying anything important enough to cause me to want to subscribe to them and I don't need an app on my desktop for it.

I am also on zero social media sites. Yes, zero. Since I have no wall to deliver messages on, I don't have that to worry about. No Facebook, no LinkedIn and no Twitter. If you see someone using a hashtag related to me, its not me. I do have a cellphone, I turned it on and made one call that was free to make sure it works. I turned it off after that. I turn it on periodically to check its charge. It will probably go in my medical bugout bag.

In no way am I a Luddite, and I love computers and the capability they have with them. They are, as with any firearm or any of the woodworking equipment I own, useful tools. A well maintained computer should last you five years before something critical goes on it. Often it will last much longer, but the Mean Time Between Failure has you on the decreasing half of continued function that is now below 50%. Just like you can still find Edison bulbs from the 1900's dimly glowing here and there, the majority of them didn't make it this far and out of the thousands, tens of thousands, perhaps million or two of them produced you now have a few left and their MTBF still holds. Like any tool it is best when it is suited to your purpose and requirements and does what you want it to do... not what some marketer decided would be a neat thing to put on your desktop.

The Second Flight

2012-01-23T08:59:00.001-05:00

Looks like things are getting shaken up in Republican Party Land! It is like Candyland, save they are the ones bringing the Monopoly money over to get dibs on some of the best spots to land... the spots marked 'massive debt'. It appears that the concept of Republican Party Establishment 'electability' that has gotten us such winners as McCain, Dole, and to a degree H.W. Bush is now taking it on the chin. Getting to the headline thread at Hot Air sees that support in FL, where Romney has been campaigning for well nigh five years, has done a switcheroo after SC. Remember now, Romney has saturated the airwaves, put out tons of robocalls (up to five a night in some households between the official campaign, the local campaign and the various PACs) and the man is now trailing... Newt Gingrich? OK, it is alternate universe time as something is going on... and taking that to light here is what I wrote... given as is, barely getting breakfast finished and my first cup of coffee is STILL in front of me...

Now which alternate universe did I wake up in today?

Is it the one where a staunch fiscal conservative is ahead in the polls in primary? Hmmm… no… a couple of government tweakers and streamliners lead…

Is it the one in which a candidate is looking to rollback government power? Hmmmm…. no… just a couple of good managers for an authoritarian State, each with their own little cubbyholes and idosyncracies.

Is it the one in which a candidate will actually look at the Constitution word by word, sentence by sentence, clause by clause as it is written and then put that into place as the restricted and enumerated powers that the federal government is granted? Ooooo… nope… still not in that universe… yet…

Is it the one in which the base has gotten fed up with the elites and have decided that 2010 was only the beginning and a kamikaze mission is needed at the highest level to wake everyone up from their dreamland of thinking that getting rid of Obama is the ONLY thing that needs to happen? Hmmmm… you know… hmmmm… COD, Whitman… hmmmm… why yes! What happens when a political party decides to ignore the warning signs in a major interim election that was clearly telling it that it must support candidates who will STOP THE SPENDING? Why a kamikaze du jour to start the break-up of the establishment’s power in the party, to shatter its aura making of ‘electability’, to remove the final shreds of its credibility of being able to lead a National party that actually will PROTECT the Constitution and the Nation.

Yes, that appears to be the universe I woke up in this morning.

2010 redux, the second flights of the kamikaze attacks as the Republican leadership and its supporters have been bashed over the head with a simple cluebat of STOP THE SPENDING and haven’t listened. And this time the attack is only tangentially going after the officially approved-of candidate: the real target is the facade of power of the old Rockefeller Republican section of the party. Their new and improved, yet old and indifferent 5 year running candidate is suffering the merest blow-by of the attack… he is as unprepared as the establishment is for this kamikaze attack. Gingrich isn’t winning because of anything more than his willingness to fight and he is being fueled because his direction, his bombast and his rhetoric will hit right at the old establishment heart of the party. Mind you, that doesn’t mean he gets the nomination or the election, but he will serve his purpose.

The Republican party has had 2 Years to clean up its act.

It didn’t do that.

Is anyone surprised at these results?

ajacksonian on January 23, 2012 at 7:58 AM

Elections, as they say, have consequences.

I would expound a bit more on that, but I was more or less just enhancing the fact that Newt Gingrich's support isn't coming because of his POSITIONS nor because of his POLICY outlook. Nope, not much difference between Romney and Gingrich, and blessed little between those two and Santorum... Ron Paul is in another reality all together, and if he wants to make an impact on the party during the nomination process, he should concentrate on the place he will get traction which is economic policy.

Newt Gingrich is the happy kamikaze, and we had a lot of those in 2010, and they weren't the most electable, the most stable, the most pure of candidates. Some 'lost' races that an Establishment Republican might have 'won', but they would then be representative of a the Establishment, not the party base. You can't win for losing that way, so you might as well send in an expendable candidate. And the secret is that sometimes those expendables will win, which doesn't make them perfect or even good, but they do drive a message home and if they decide to flip on policy they will find the next kamikaze is coming at them.

That is this time around: the Second Flight of the Kamikaze Attacks Upon the Republican Party.

The Party had two whole years to mend its ways.

It didn't do so and didn't even try, what with the internal spending and extravagances that went on pretty much flying in the face of those who wanted money frugally spent. Apparently there is a faulty receiver system in the Republican Party, and because I once sent money to that benighted organization I get calls to send them more money... and my original $25 was ill-spent... so I let them know my money is staying home and going to worthy candidates. Not through an organization that skims off the top for fancy retreats and expensive dinners. If they flew coach, stayed at a Red Roof Inn and ate at McDonald's and didn't go to the swanky bars and strip clubs, they might have gotten the clue or at least put on appearances of same. It is STILL a big spending party on the Establishment side. And their happy holiday retreat on the party member's money is now getting a high level kamikaze attack headed their way.

No I don't support any of these guys.

But someone needs to get the message driven home and Newt Gingrich is, at least, generally on target although he is coming from a quarter that doesn't really work, at least he has a clue as to what the target is.

Fuel him up, give him another ton of bombast to carry, and send him on his happy way.

The rest of us will concentrate on putting a Counterweight in place.

Dissatisfied Republicans

2012-01-10T10:36:00.001-05:00

Yup, yet another in the series of comments turned quickie blog posts. And, yet again, from Hot Air on the 58% of Republicans dissatisfied with the current field of candidates.

I've been pointing out the mess the 2 party system has been since my first year of blogging. It has only gotten worse. Now I will drop a suggestion and rationale for it... and if you are a Republican and want to change things, I suggest that the top of the ticket or any running for federal office close to you are NOT the answer to the problem. This is a symptom.

Now, on to my commentary, left intact with spelling and syntax errors for the amusement of the population.

= = =

What was that break-out I saw last night on BOR for political affiliation? D – 32, R – 27, I – 40.

Yes, Independents 40%.

Rewind to 2008 and it was something like 36/33/30, very close to being 1/3 each.

Today Independents have pulled 5% out of each of the 2 parties, pretty much equally.

What is fascinating about the trainwreck going on this year is that in four more years there will be problems having 2 parties as their affiliations in a few States where they have rigged very high registration numbers to BE on the ballot as a party will be threatened. Wherever you see I start to cross that 50% threshold and there is unequal party distribution, you will start to see 1 party States.

It isn’t surprising that 58% of R’s want more choices.

It is surprising that 42% are taking whatever is spoon-fed them by this horrific, archaic and biased towards the elite system.

This field was essentially set in NOV 2011 and there were very high levels of dissatisfaction then… not the majority, but that has GROWN since NOV 2011 – JAN 2012, where satisfaction was hovering much closer to the 50% mark. Another 2 months like that and the party may start to hollow-out, and while people will still want to vote Obama out, getting in will not be a mandate for anything WITHIN the party that nominated you. Thus the ‘winner’ will have a very first task of starting to address the major problems not just of the Nation (and they are massive) but of the actual party, itself. That means, yeah, those Tea Party people are still around and still dissatisfied with the R’s and if the elite don’t start to get out of the way or realize that they are on the line to extinction, one of the tottering parties will be the R party. The other will be the D party as those disgusted with Leftist/Liberal/Progressive ideas will walk from the party that only knows that and refuses to change when that ideology doesn’t work.

There is no satisfactory candidate in the wings, and a brokered convention will get you someone the SuperDelegates will be comfortable with (one of their own). So you don’t want a brokered convention because the system is catering to the elites who hold a swing block of votes if everything gets tied up… just like with the D’s last time around.

A movement by Republicans in the party at the lowest level to start petitioning their precincts and State machines to FIX THIS MESS OF A SYSTEM and neuter the RNC and other National organs will begin to address these problems and remove power from the top and start moving it down to the State bodies, thus making them important again. Do THAT and there is a REASON to start joining the party as you can make a difference once the elites can’t dictate from the top-down.

That is your choice as a Republican: keep taking the spoonfed elitist junk, or start the movement to reshape the party at the convention to something that must actually listen TO members and RESPOND TO THEM.

Stop bitching about what the process yields up.

Change the process.

ajacksonian on January 10, 2012 at 10:19 AM

= = =

I suggest you find your local Tea Party that is involved with trying to get into the State level apparatus through local precincts.

You want a better system?

Join with your fellow disaffected friends and make a better one.

That power is in your hands.

If you dare to use it.

And for those local precinct and ward leaders who can't figure this out, I suggest that you, as local members, apply the dictum: Fire Until Competence is Found.

It works, too.

The three factions of the Republican Party today

2011-12-20T12:08:00.001-05:00

I'm using my prior break-out of the factions within the Republican Party from back in 2008 to look at where things stand today with the candidates in the field. I will be doing some re-posting of material from that and not going into the over-view of them within the current atmosphere of the pre-election cycle.

As they have broken out these three groups stand out, and they do have sub-groups within them but gain factional affiliation by their positions as sub-groups.

I) First is the SecCons or Security Conservatives. The strong position of the US to wage war in her defense was a vital concern during the Cold War and this faction was in ascendance then. By putting military concerns first they were able to back a strong and final build-up against the USSR that covered decades and put the Soviet system which was always on the ropes down and out for the count. These were the backers that won the equivalent of a World War without bringing on true nuclear conflict. Their problems are in the realms of Fiscal, Social and Domestic policy outside of the military realm and with the draw-down from Iraq, the ongoing relatively low-level conflict against the Talibe in AFPAK and helping out a few other Nations in COIN (Philippines, Colombia, Kenya, Yemen) they are losing a strong position within the Republican Party. While some of the candidates will support a continued level of military affairs, this faction has no backer who is first and foremost for the military. Without the Soviets and with China now having its economy implode in bad debt, the lower threat of terrorism going nuclear is not one that pushes people to actively support the old style military structure. The military, for its part, understands this and is adapting to the modern world, but it is a world with a lower need for capital intensive defense systems and without a large economic need the SecCons are being marginalized.

Part of the marginalization is the comfort to social moderates and liberals, plus a willingness to spend heaven and earth for the latest equipment. Our times are no longer ones that allow for such extravagance and socially the pendulum that started swinging in the 1890's with Progressivism has, apparently, reached as far as it can go on the other end of the cycle.

II) Second are the FiCons or Fiscal Conservatives. This part of the Republican Party has been part and parcel of the 'Rockefeller Republican' brand for decades. It is this section of the party that is now breaking up due to the Tea Party movement that hadn't even been thought of in 2008. Today there are two branches within the FiCons and they are currently the ones on the internal battle-lines for the party, itself. Thus I will go into a bit of detail here.

1) Rockefeller Republicans - These are the 'Establishment Republicans', the guys with the money and many of the reigns via the control of the party leadership and their influence has withstood the Reagan Revolution with its SoCon underpinnings. These are generally seen as the Big Business supporters for earmarks, subsidies, tax breaks and so on via budgetary work in DC. It is this segment that overwhelming benefits from the K Street lobbyists who use their outside money and revolving door connections to get inside influence on the federal budget. This is mirrored in the Democratic Party, to be sure, but in the Republican Party when anyone spoke of 'fiscal conservative' between 1950 and 1980, it was this cohort that was being referenced. Do note that they are FOR tax breaks but not FOR cutting the size of government, therefore any short-term gain in political advantage from tax breaks is off-set by further erosion of personal liberty of the individual due to larger and more officious government. While it was this faction that called out the problem of SSA and M&Ms, they are also the ones most notable for being unable or unwilling to get these programs reduced or on a road to being abolished as fiscally unsound. At least two of the current candidates come from this faction (Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich) or are affiliated with it via their business and political outlooks, and while they are (apparently) at odds with each other on the campaign trail, they are both unwilling to do any wholesale revision of the US government. Abolishing programs still leaves the apparatus to regenerate them in place, thus removing 'welfare' has allowed for other programs to flourish where there was once that single program and done at higher cost and less accountability. No one who believes that individual liberty is the basis for society, the Nation, government and the State would ever espouse 'mandates' for anything upon individuals in the name of fiscal conservatism.

2) Tea Party FiCons - The largest faction of the Tea Party is in this sub-group within the FiCons. Unlike the older cohort, this cohort sees small business and smaller government as the course to go for fiscal conservatism. The argument that government is doing things it was never designed nor meant to do and not doing those things well or efficiently for the citizenry and, in fact, is infringing on individual fiscal concerns is one that is a 'Fusion' concept, of which I will talk more about later. Unlike the RR-FiCons, the TP-FiCons are building a fundamental ECONOMIC case for the power of personal liberty to guide the economy that is not a RR-FiCon one. Where the RR-FiCons are inherently Hamiltonian or Progressive in their outlook, the TP-FiCons are inherently Jacksonian and Traditionalist in their positions. The inherent nature of an economy being made up of individual transactions at the lowest level seeking the most efficient means to enable such transactions and then allowing for a larger emergent phenomena to take root based on those transactions is one that is immediately identifiable to TP-FiCons: it is not just Hayek but the nature of human liberty and its source that argues for this and argues against the intermediation of government in any meaningful positive (that is to say in the realm of positive liberty) way and only that it needs to exercise its negative powers granted by the people to safeguard the economy from aberrant actors who will not play by the set of rules for economic exchanges. Government cannot make such low level decisions without huge negative impact on the overall economy and, no matter what other 'good' is generated, the lost value of human liberty to fully flourish is something that impoverishes rich and poor alike and makes it harder for the poor to advance. This sub-group is aiming to remove the Establishment RR-FiCon death grip on the party via campaign donations: members directly donate to individuals running for office, not to the party. This has only been going on, in a real sense, for less than 2 years and due to the economic times we are in and the failure of government to adapt to them (indeed it continues being the problem to the Nation, economically) the more the TP-FiCons will shift the RR-FiCons out of control of the party funds and the party system.

III) Social Conservatives - In the prior work I broke this category up into the Christian Conservatives and the Traditionalist Conservatives, each with their own outlook on society and the role of government and the church in people's lives. While not at logger-heads, they have not always marched to the same tune and it was only for a few short years under Ronald Reagan that both sub-groups had time together in-step and in-formation. Today these two sub-groups are now getting a new blend via a third group made up of parts of each of them and the TP-FiCons: the Fusionists.

1) Christian Conservatives - Here the prior break-out of religious observation and moral law guidance that was the bastion of the Christian Conservatives is now finding that it can make an economic case, as well, which is uncharted waters for many Christian Conservatives. Moral Law guidance is, itself, only secondarily economic and primarily about the duty of man to god and society to make both moral so as to get good government. Thus, until the last 2-3 years, the idea that government could be used to promote a moral 'good' was an idea taken up by some candidates (Mike Huckabee in 2008, Newt Gingrich in this go around). Yet this is fundamentally against moral teachings as government is the last, least and worst place to receive any moral teachings. Anything that gets between you and God should be disdained, and yet the Progressive Era had slowly shifted Christian Conservative SoCons into this idea that government is the last refuge for the poor and needy to go... not to the actual people who make up the Nation as caring for the poor and needy is a directive to individuals, not to States nor Nations. The idea that government can tell you when you can work, how long you can work, if you are worthy of 'retirement' benefits, and on and on have been a slow and steady erosion of the moral fiber of the Nation by assaulting the moral fiber of individuals inside and, increasingly, outside the realm of religiously observant Americans. The moral line in the sand against abortion was the first sign that this erosion had gone too far, but that Christian Conservatives could only do this small portion of the work of protecting society and could not grasp the larger threat to the entire society on a moral basis that government was pushing. The awakening of Christian Conservatives to the much, much deeper teaching of our rights being vested in us took over three decades to finally filter into this sub-group of SoCons, and the re-identification of not just Life but Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness being prime movers granted by God is now spreading amongst the Christian Conservative SoCons who used to just stick to their faction knitting but now find a way to express a much deeper moral and religious belief for society via economics. Being conservative it is a slow to move group, but once in motion little will stop it, and if the line in the sand is but a starting line for repeal of the Progressive Era, then it will be the individual who couple God, Faith, Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness as a continuous whole that will be the major part of the Fusionist sub-group.

2) Traditional Conservatives - These are the followers of Federalism, a society that treats its fellow citizens with respect, the builders of hearth and home (not just those who purchase one) and while religious to a large extent, it is the religion of conviction at home by the fireside with one's children and the role of man to build a good society for not just himself but for his fellow man, as well, as a great good and duty of man. While this is the quietest faction of the SoCons they have been a part of the party since Lincoln, and have always understood respecting government but questioning its extent and growth. For Traditionalists there is always an economic point to be made and it is centered on the family check book and how one spends money for oneself. These are the individuals who uphold thrift, of neither a borrow nor lender be, paying back one's debts not just promptly but ending them as soon as possible, and for supporting the notion that a man cannot be free if he is in debt to any other man or institution via his finances. This sub-group may be the first to fully Fuse with the TP FiCons as there are direct parallels (indeed very deep parallels) between household accounting and government accounting, and that if you owe someone then you are in their power due to your debt. The case that man who is in debt is living on borrowed time and that his works are prone to failure and collapse (no matter if they last) is one that is understood deeply within the Traditionalist Community. It is this community that is closest to the old Democratic Jacsksonian community (that left the Democrats in the late 1960's) and the amount of cross-over between the old trail blazers (Jacksonians) and the old first settlers (Traditionalists) have always made them able to get along on a social level.

IV) Fusionist Conservatives - Fiscal Conservatism has deep roots in not only societal good but the teachings from the Judeo-Christian heritage about duty to God and one's fellow man. Unlike libertarians the Fusionists recognize that not all of man's liberties and rights are positive, as Nature gives us both equally (although not in equal amounts), so that the necessity of society to generate organs to watch over and stop the exercise of negative liberties and rights within society requires government. Man is not wholly good nor evil, but has positive and negative rights and liberties which we can bias via moral teachings to curb the negative rights and liberties and enshrine the positive ones worthy of protection. Government is to recognize that these positive liberties and rights are to be protected, not infringed upon, and the case for this comes not from legal proceedings but from moral teachings, upholding society, and holding government accountable for the negative powers we grant it to safeguard society and the individual. This is a deeply libertarian approach, yes, but it is not made by modern libertarian channels but through ones of religious observance, religious teachings and understanding man's duty to God and his fellow man. Fusionist Conservatism is, at once, deeply conservative and extremely expansive in this day and age as it is the naturally recognized antidote to tyrannical or despotic government. When Barack Obama chided the people of Pennsylvania as grasping on to their guns, god and bible, he was mocking the very basis of what is the enemy of Progressivism and Socialism in all its forms. These three, together, give the basis for personal liberty (guns), the originator of our liberty (God) and the written moral teachings of God (the Holy Bible) all in one swoop. Throw in Gold and you have the result of protected personal liberty able to prosper with obedience to God and upholding moral teachings. Gold is a result of these things, not a cause of them, and it is garnered through liberty ONLY. Unwittingly Barack Obama named the Fusionist Awakening in these concepts and knows not the history of a debauched, debased and decadent society that adheres as leeches to government is dissolved by a devout people willing to undergo martyrdom for eternal salvation. One laughs at these things at their peril, and in speaking of them the seeds that were already planted over decades were given final fertilizer and water to grow again.

At the rate of change for the Republican Party and Conservatism as a whole, the next decade is one that will be fraught with danger and great promise.

Government will need to climb down from its Himalayan Mountain Range of debt. It can be tossed off, with great social turmoil, or it can climb down by jettisoning the infringement of positive liberties and rights in the way of retirement, medical aid and the million and one other things done in the name of 'good' from environment to energy to agriculture to 'the humanities' to education, either via slow phase-out or wholesale cut-off. Government so large, so officious and, at the same time, so incompetent creates a Law of Rules in which any person is probably in violation of some rule or regulation at any given moment in the day. The Rule of Law is simple and easy to understand laws that are clearly defined and enforced without favor nor fervor, while the Law of Rules is all about favoritism and payoffs. To do this requires and understanding of our fellow citizens that we, as man, have been living over the margin and near the edge of the abyss waiting for one ill moment to topple us into despotism or worse. To get back from that edge the argument that our personal liberties, rights and freedom are our own salvation in this life and the next, and that passing them off to others (which is so very easy) means that we, as individuals, become cold and cruel to our fellow man because we refuse to recognize his circumstances and help him out of them. Government cannot do that, indeed it MUST NOT do that as that is not its place as a part of society. It is just an organ of society, and one that processes the identified problems and waste material and gets rid of them... which is not the brain, in case this has been missed. No better argument for chasing appetites to constipation of debt can be rendered than is shown by our current government which has been eating so much in the way of the positive it can no longer accomplish its duties to us, as citizens, via its negative powers and responsibilities.

This is a hard argument to make as the Deadly Sin of Sloth is one that guides this age as no other. Yet the problems of our fellow man are not for someone else to attend to, but for us, as individuals, to ameliorate. One cannot sit back and let others take care of things, because becoming glued to one's sofa soon means that you can no longer remember how to move from it and become the very sort of problem you were unwilling to deal with in the first place. The heart of charity is not taxation, which is the negative liberty of theft who's power we lend for government in a limited area of commerce, but in the heart of man who is willing to give time, effort, though, a helping hand and last and least is cash to his fellow man to create a better society. To get a more cohesive society (albeit with stark and fun differences for that is the essence of liberty on the positive side) we cannot entrust government as a caretaker or the builder of a safety net as it is not only prone to corruption but inefficient and will seek to grant favor to the few via funds that are not available, so as to expand power over the many. Government granted positive outlook is tyrannical at its core because it can couple the whip with the reward and break man to it. To stop that require accountability on the fiscal side, first, so as to get rid of the unnecessary appendages of government that threaten liberty in the first place. When there is no safety net, no tax breaks, no subsidies, we are then left to our own devices to find a good way to live without the costly help of tyranny.

The current field of candidates reflects those trying to grasp on to the old, and dying, those trying to muddle through and a few trying to chart a path to a better future with smaller government and enhanced liberty for man.

Four years will not alter the fundamentals changing America. We may crash off the mountains into debt, but that is not oblivion as we then get to the end state in a few days, and with next to no government, to boot.

The trends cannot be changed.

What can be altered is the outlook of individual to embrace what is coming and help soften it and explain it, so that we can get to a better place as a society and a nation.

If you dare to, that is.

The End in Iraq

2011-12-15T20:20:00.001-05:00

My thanks to the men and women who have served our Nation in Iraq.

I send my deepest condolences and sympathies to the families and friends of the fallen.

I thank you all deeply for your sacrifice for our republic.

Victory has been hard won, now may others seek to win the peace.

A quick range report

2011-12-08T10:42:00.001-05:00

Over the holiday I got a chance to get to the range with my lady, my sister-in-law and her boyfriend, and it was packed on that Saturday morning! We were able to snag a couple of lanes for the four of us and put some of our recent acquisitions through their paces, which was all to the good. Of course not everything worked flawlessly as these things go...

First the Good:

My sister-in-law had picked up a Walther P22 for getting used to handguns and it had on the optional laser pointer. I did without the pointer and used the sights and did a fairly decent job of walking up a magazine, less one, of shots an inch and half above each other in a neat line as I got used to the sights. It is a comfortable fit for my hand and the recoil is very easy to manage. A good pick-up for her to get used to pistols and look for a self-defense gun next.

Her boyfriend had picked up a Ruger P95 (if memory serves) which is a good and serviceable 9mm. Accurate and relatively user friendly.

They had brought my niece's DE 50AE in Titanium Nitride which fired very well, save for the fact that someone had removed the iron sights and forgot to put on the red dot sight. It wasn't exactly 'firing blind' but without a sight picture I did put shots all over the place on the paper. I actually didn't notice the sound of it firing using sound dampening earmuffs, but everyone else did from what I was told. One casing bounced off the lane partition and hit me on the nose, leaving a smudge. It was a great gun to shoot and since I picked it up for about $1K as a gift for her two years ago, I was glad to get a chance to shoot it. Next time sights must be on it, though.

I used that after working up through other pistols to my Para-Ordnance 14-45, old style with the Canadian made frame that I got through Buds Gun Shop.

This was just a familiarization session, nothing fancy, left the sights as they were. I ran through some reloaded ammo and some Precision Cartridge Ammo, which got me reminded of the concept of 'gunsmoke'. All of it ran through well and the only thing I noticed is that I am habitually pulling shots down and to the left of the sight picture when aiming.

I need more range time, obviously.

Still shifting my aim up and a bit to the right did help out some.

Second the bad:

I have a C&R Browning 1910/22 that I got as part of a rig and while it functions well, when it functions, it has a Failure To Feed problem starting with the top of the stack in a 9 round magazine. I was using Prvi Partizan 32ACP FMJ going on the adage of using a European made cartridge for a European made gun. No dice. If it was just off the top of the stack, I could see it being just a tight bunch of cartridges, but it was also at different points in the stack of multiple magazines. Plus there were two stove-pipes across 4 loaded magazines and each of those caused a jam for the next cartridge. I spent time after the first magazine unloading and reloading each to see if it was a spring tension problem. That changed nothing.

There are two things about the gun that are of interest. First it wasn't used much before it was put into cosmoline storage in post-war France. It was a police gun and it was stored properly and only lightly used at the time. Second one magazine had a short spring in it. And by short, I mean just barely the length of the magazine so it was barely compressed. That may or may not be telling. Basically the feed ramp barely had some of the bluing worn off it so this may also be a 'less than 1,000 rounds through the pistol' break-in problem... for a C&R police gun from post-war France. That fits, actually.

And since I have some American Eagle laying around, plus some other 32ACP, I can do a 7-round load of other ammo and see if something functions smoothly.

The target went walkabout, but I also was pulling down and to the left with the sight picture (what there is of it with this gun).

Third is the Ugly:

It actually looks pretty good on its face -

This is from my Vz.61 Skorpion made of new lower receiver, trigger system, safety, barrel and barrel pin, and bits and pieces off of a kit for the upper, bolt, handle, etc.

The first magazine got a jam on it, right from the top of the stack using the Am. Eagle 32ACP FMJ ammo. Here is the cartridge in question -

I checked spent casings and they all had similar marks on them. This one flipped up on its nose and jammed the gun. Mind you this was just one of many cartridges, the rest fed but had similar marks on them after ejecting.

After the 10 round magazine I went to a 20 rounder, and on #19 (and I was just pulling the trigger as fast as possible at that point and the majority of those shots come from that) I got this -

Again, flipped on its nose and jammed.

The 17 shots between them went smoothly, no real complaints.

Now the contours of other cartridges may get me different results here, so the next thing to try is other 32ACP rounds. I have some Winchester Q4255, the aforementioned Prvi Partizan, some Fiocchi, Federal Hydra-Shocks (which have problems in my Seecamp), and Speer Gold Dots (the ammo my Seecamp adores).

A gunsmith did the barrel work on this gun, so it is aligned properly from all I can see and he ran it with Prvi Partizans I gave him, so that is next up on the trial list. Again, European made ammo for a European made (or parted together) gun.

So there you have it, lots of good guns and only two that need a bit of trial and error work on them. For the two that had problems, the fact that they are smooth when they get a good feed means that they are probably looking at an ammo type problem rather than a massive mechanical problem. Overall cartridge profile may mean more to cure these problems than anything done to the hardware can cure. And since the two with the feeding problems have unused (in the case of the Vz. 61) and little used feed ramps, getting 30-50 boxes of ammo through them might just do the trick.

That's it for now!

Global Warming – fraud in search of marks

2011-11-28T16:18:00.001-05:00

Found at Anthony Watts' site, Wattsupwiththat on 24 NOV 2011, is an interesting link to an email that is part of the Climategate 2.0 FOIA 2011 releases done by Gail Combs. The one of interest is #4678 on 30 JAN 2001 which Rob Swarts who is at the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment in the Netherlands (his latest paper about a third of the page down in the 2009 articles section is here) is an email sent to Robert Watson while he was at the World Bank. As is pointed out it is a strange thing when a scientist is being told to change the summary of his work at behest of a non-science based institution (and, no, it doesn't matter that it is another scientist telling him to do so, as that isn't kosher, either). With that said it is even more unusual to agree to it (and throughout I will use downloaded source copies, not those reformatted for easier searching and putting in a bit of anti-spam to stop people from being flooded, but the necessity for the address is the organizations the people work for):

date: Tue, 30 Jan 2001 13:15:15 +0100

from: Rob Swart <Rob.SwartATrivm.nl>

subject: Re: Synthesis Report (SYR): Summary for Policymakers

to: RwatsonATworldbank.org

Dear Bob,

Thanks for giving us the opportunity to react to your thinking. It forces us to think more clearly about the main messages. I must admit that I am somewhat confused about the 26 page summary, since this comes very close to (although it is different from) the full-scale document the various teams are currently writing. My view would be that those teams take their own text as the starting point and try to improve/shorten it on the basis of your text. Here, I only respond to your main messages in italics and mainly focus on WG3 issues.

You know, if this were one of those dreaded oil companies doing this to a researcher, I am sure that some Leftist would be up in arms about it. But since it is someone in the cozy Anthropomorphic Global Warming community, I am sure they can get all warm and fuzzy about scientists cozying up to the World Bank. Right?

So how is this scientist reacting to this stuff, beyond suggesting people on his team 'improve' their work along the lines of the paper sent to them from the World Bank? Probably got all huffy, right? I mean, scientific integrity and all that is at stake.

Right?

I mean if scientists started taking talking points from non-scientific organizations and were re-wording their findings to better fit that of an outside organization, that would be a pretty nasty thing to have happen.

Beyond that comes the more interesting part in which the scientific becomes the political:

Most points made may be introducing the rest of the SYR, but they do not address the question. I think the chapter should do both. In my view, in addition to your 6 paragraphs, one or more paragraphs could be related to five key aspects of Article 2: (a) dangerous interference, (b) stabilization, (c) natural adaptation, (d) food security, and (e) sustainable economic development. Three of these words (b), (c), (d) are not even mentioned. Two of your paragraphs now do hardly relate to the question (the 4th and 6th) but could be linked (see below).

The first italics could be positively relating to the question rather than negatively; e.g. take the 2nd and 3rd sentence as italics: "Scientific, technical and economic knowledge provides indispensable information needed to arrive at an informed judgement as to what level of anthropogenic interference would be dangerous, taking equity and social considerations into account. However, that judgement is a political, not scientific, one." An initial attempt to address my 1st comment, integrating some of Bob's italics but linking them to Artcile 2 issues: "Article 2 relates dangerous anthropogenic interference to the level and the time-frame of stabilization of concentrations of GHG concentrations in the atmosphere, which would be required to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner. Although many uncertainties remain, scientific, technical and socio-economic analysis as assessment in IPCC's Third Assessment Report provides information which can be used to arrive at the above mentioned political judgement about what constitutes dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.

[..]

Question 2:I would not include a WG3 paragraph, like "The Kyoto Protocol has led to the creation of new market mechanisms"; apart from the question if this statement is very relevant as such, I don't think it is "evidence of the consequence of changes in the Earth's climate since the pre-industrial era."

There is a question that needs to be asked at this point: when was the climate ever stable?

It is a serious question because, geologically speaking, the times when climate regimes are relatively stable coincide with periods of large agglomerations of continental plates into one or two major continents that do not obstruct circumpolar and global oceanic water flow. Those periods of slow plate movement within a large assemblage can give rise to volcanic activity, but the predominant system is stabilized by a single large oceanic expanse that moves without much obstruction around the large continental masses and from pole to pole.

When this does not happen, or when a large continental mass drifts into a polar region, or there are dispersed continents that break up global oceanic flows by creating separated oceans, the planetary climate stability declines (becomes less stable). This latter scenario is the one we currently live in, and through recent history there have been multiple ice age events with large ice sheets covering expanses of the northern hemisphere and, to a lesser extent, the southern hemisphere. Currently we are experiencing warming after a 500 year period known as the Little Ice Age and still shifting through the post-glacial period of the last major Ice Age that ended approximately 10-11,000 years ago. Major post-glacial periods are marked by rapid changes in climate both up and down, trending higher for some thousands of years before hitting an inflection point after which they trend downwards until another Ice Age starts. This current inter-glacial period in no way appears to vary from other, prior, inter-glacial periods in this respect. Rapid climate shifts on the scale of sub-1,000 year periods are the norm for such periods, not the exception.

Thus, the question: what is a 'stable' climate for our current time?

There can be no absolute mile-marker put on that, save for those long periods of slow continental motion after multiple continents assemble into one or two major land masses. These see much warmer temps and climates, as a result, and as the speed of the continents slow they shift downwards on the mantle. As the crust subsides ocean water goes over land and warms in shallow seas, and the ice caps shrink. Then you get a long lasting climate, which continues on often for millions of years.

Now, given that information, and that those periods see at least a 20 degree C higher average global temperature, how can the impact of man be measured on the global climate? Is a percent or two change in carbon dioxide, seen in other inter-glacial periods that experience a major eruption, say, going to change the over-all course of the global climate? Even if it did would the direction of change be towards warming or cooling? Would plant growth increase or decrease? Would there be more cloud formation or less? In fact, a major question of 'what is the overall heat budget of the planet based on what it gains via sunlight, what sunlight is reflected and what is lost via IR and other radiation at night?' actually needs to be answered not in a partial way but in a systematic way examining all aspects of the planet's distance from the sun (which varies over a year and over tens of thousands of years), types of clouds and other aerosols in the atmosphere, heat transfer between air and other surfaces, heat loss from air and other masses, reflected energy that prevents loss... what is the heat budget of planet Earth?

This is a simple question that, as yet, remains unanswered in any meaningful way. Until it can be answered and all the factors that lead to that budget known, there is no way to single out any one factor (beyond sunlight) as a driving force for climate. Yet that is what those pushing AGW wish you to believe, and they push a political agenda for it that is helpfully worded by large scale, unaccountable institutions. You can't get to the political/social questions without first answering the very basic questions that rely not upon just sunlight, wind, and water, but upon a host of factors that have not been completely or even incompletely examined. This is a cart/horse order arrangement problem, because if you don't know what the drivers of the climate actually are in an unstable climactic period, then you can't accurately say which of them is controllable and which of them aren't. Yet such political questions are being pushed without knowing the fundamentals.

In an effort to push such political and economic ends (because there is a profit to be made by changing the investment in energy production sources) one can expect other players to become interested in that effort. Here Anthony Watts takes a look at how to get 'committed environmental activism' as part of the UNFCCC process and I will excerpt a bit from the email 340.txt in question and leave in some of the interesting names and entities this is being sent to:

date: Wed, 29 Nov 2000 11:13:20 -0500

from: "Tom Jacob" <Tom.JacobATUSA.dupont.com>

subject: REFLECTIONS ON THE HAGUE...

to: climatepolicyATic.ac.uk. . .hadiATcmu.edu. . .eduschellnhuberATpik-potsdam.de. . .jonathan.pershingATiea.org. . .RKinleyATunfccc.int. . .m.hulmeATuea.ac.uk. . .jaeATpnl.gov. . .kchomitzATworldbank.org. . .dlashofATnrdc.org. . .pachuriATteri.res.in. . .munasingheATworldbank.org. . .

[..]

The two weeks were not without significant developments, though. The Hague was a melange of ceremonial formality, tedious negotiation, high-stakes back-room dealing, protests, and a seemingly endless stream of open side-events and closed outside meetings. On the surface, the affair was distinctly lacking in coherence. Beneath that surface, though, there were threads emerging that, woven together, begin to fashion a most intriguing tapestry. Following are a few of the observations that may have important implications as the process moves tentatively forward from last week's session:· Tightening The Scientific Noose· Beyond Environment· Reactionary Protests· Ever-Widening Embrace Of Mechanisms· The "Sinks" Thing· Markets Finding A Way· Keeping The U.S. Honest Comments and disagreement more than welcome...

TIGHTENING THE SCIENTIFIC NOOSE: Amid the pomp and circumstance of the opening of the negotiation, the voice most keenly attended to was that of one of the least-pretentious people on the planet, Bob Watson, Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- the global scientific effort supporting the work of the Framework Convention on Climate Change. While the IPCC's Third Assessment Report (TAR) has not yet been completed (scheduled for release next year), Watson previewed some of its likely themes by noting that: "The weight of scientific evidence suggests that the observed changes in the Earth's climate are, at least in part, due to human activity." He also concluded that: "If actions are not taken to reduce the projected increase in greenhouse gas emissions, the Earthe climate is projected to change at a rate unprecedented in the last 10,000 years with adverse consequences for society, undermining the very foundation of sustainable development."

It is significant that, while there is still uncertainty in the science and still sniping from the margins, the voices challenging the fundamental premises of the Framework Convention and its Kyoto Protocol (particularly in the US) have diminished in both their number and their pitch in the past several years. More and more, even those that continue to challenge the Protocol as a strategy, acknowledge concern regarding climate change as warranting attention. Similarly, even the countries that seemed most at odds with the sense of the negotiation on many points (Saudi Arabia and some OPEC allies) have not challenged the fundamental legitimacy of the concerns driving the effort.

Here is the science end of the cooption of science: a global 'panel' put together by the UN of selected scientists deciding what is and is not 'settled' science. This was way back in 2000 and yet it would be the drumbeat heard thereafter. The method of coordinating the drumbeat between the selected scientists, the UN, NGOs and industry is a meeting in the Hague.

The next point is, as Mr. Watts points out, a vital one, and I'll take it out in full:

REACTIONARY PROTESTS: It is perhaps not coincidental that as economic concerns have begun to rise, both in the increasingly serious consideration to market mechanisms and the emerging dialogue about economic impacts of climate action, we have begun to see an increase in traditional, confrontational environmental protests. Even in Kyoto, demonstrations were small and relatively non-confrontational reminders of the environmental concerns. In The Hague, we saw for the first time organized disruption of the conduct of negotiation and publicly staged confrontations. While organized and deeply committed environmental activism has long been an important part of the UNFCCC process through major groups such as NRDC, EDF/ED, WWF and Greenpeace, they have operated within the structure as constructive participants in the policy-setting process, along with industry. At The Hague, this "inside" role was supplemented by hundreds of young, relatively naïve demonstrators brought in specifically to energize the environmental presence and confront the process. Even some within the ranks of the more established participants -- while disavowing the takeover of the negotiating room -- saw fit to publicly offer Minister Pronk and the UNFCCC Secretariate a veiled threat of "Seattle" if the process failed to deliver.In the context of this resurgence of "environmental fundamentalism" it is also interesting to contrast the dynamics of the final give-and-take between the US and the EU in The Hague. The US has always approached major treaty negotiations such as this from a policy process that brings each of the potentially involved agencies (ministries) together to jointly frame priorities and strategy, with the process in the field managed by the State Department (foreign service) and the White House -- not, typically, by any particular agency "minister" (Carol Browner, head of US EPA, for example, has not represented the US in these sessions). In contrast, EU policy and representation in "environmental" forums such as The Hague is vested more narrowly in the Council of Environment Ministers -- opting to give priority to providing each country an opportunity to participate through their environment minister, but in the processes constraining the range of perspectives such that all the key players are answerable to the similar constituencies. Obviously, there are limits to the implications one can draw from this, but it may be significant that it was one of those Ministers for whom the portfolio is most broadly drawn (Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott) that was central in shaping the initial deal with the US, while those implicated by public accounts in turning down the deal (Voyner, and Trittin in particular) are among those with closest ties to their more activist constituencies.

Here is DuPont looking with favor upon the role of 'activists' of the 'established' sort playing a game of dealing one game with the policy makers (those negotiating) while putting on another face (that of vocal, naïve activists) outside the meeting so as to pressure those doing negotiations. That allows them to be 'constructive participants' in the negotiating process. Isn't that lovely? Leftist, environmentalist organizations playing with governments and large corporations and using young and naïve 'activists' as useful idiots to protest? Makes you wonder how it feels, as a Leftist, to be co-opted for an agenda that you aren't being told about by organizations you support, doesn't it? All that blather about how tainted oil based research on climate is gets washed away in the beautiful world of transnational global politics in which you, as a 'protestor', get used not just for environmentalism but for agreements between the organizations you support, large industrial outfits and then pressuring governments to help out BOTH. I'm sure these protestors are just fine with it, though, as their usefulness to the Greater Cause means that they, too, can participate in the corruption of their very own ethics in agreements with companies they would otherwise despise since they are so handy to both the 'activist' organizations and the corporations, BOTH. Isn't that swell? I'm so sure that is what they signed up for as 'activists' and 'protestors'.

Mind you, the science still can't point to what a 'stable' climate looks like or what the actual parts of the heat equation are drivers and which are backseat children that make a loud noise, but don't mean very much in the way of direction. That was true in 2000 and is still lamentably true in 2011.

So far we have:

1) Large, transnational banking institutions (World Bank, IMF) having input into the output of the verbiage of scientific reports.

2) Large, transnational corporations and NGOs utilizing a two-faced system to 'work' within the system on the inside while providing useful idiot protestors on the outside to pressure negotiators to come to an agreement that might satisfy the corporations and NGOs, but not, necessarily, the Nations involved or the useful idiots. That is how you keep them 'useful': you never satisfy them.

Now going back to the first post by Gail Combs looking at 5003.txt to examine the other people contacting the World Bank, this via an email sent via an Adjunct Faculty member at the Engineering and Public Policy part of CMU:

date: Fri, 20 Apr 2001 13:28:08 -0400

from: Hadi Dowlatabadi <hadiATcmu.edu>

subject: Re: [New] Editorial for Climate Policy, Issue 2.

to: <KchomitzATworldbank.org>, Climate Policy <climatepolicyATic.ac.uk>

Dear Ken,

I agree with your perspective, but why not set a realistic target? The editorial columns at Science, Nature and New Scientist have rarely hidden their subjective perspectives. I think there are shades to this, and Michael can be a shade grayer, but the passion is also important.The dialogue approach allows him to be editor, hold strong opinions, but still be viewed as someone who is willing to listen. This is how Steve Schneider has conducted his reign at Climatic Change and I believe despite his well known personal perspectives he has been able to draw on many in the community to contribute to the dialogue that defines the differences in perspectives permeating this subject.

Hadion

4/20/01 1:15 PM, KchomitzATworldbank.org at KchomitzATworldbank.org wrote:

>> Dear Michael,

> I really like the solution of presenting view and counterview articles. I

> retain some reservations about your proposed editorial. It seems to me that

> you

> have the difficult problem of wearing two hats: one as the advocate of

> particular policies and viewpoints, and the other as an editor of a journal

> which aspires to be a neutral forum for policy discussion. I appreciate and

> sympathize with the depth and grounding of your personal views. However, as

> editor, it seems to me, you have to bend over backwards to be neutral. The

> editorial uses charged words like 'demonize' and could easily spark the war of

> words you wish to avoid. A strongly worded editorial risks associating the

> journal with a particular viewpoint, and hence reducing the journal's value

> and> reputation as a neutral forum.

> > Maybe this just reflects a parochial American viewpoint of what an editor

> does,> or perhaps the hypersensitivities of someone working at an international

> organization. I'd be interested in others' views.

> > > regards

> Ken

> > > > ___________________

> Kenneth M. Chomitz

> Development Research Group

> World Bank

Yes, here you have a member of the World Bank telling an editor of a peer-reviewed scientific journal that he should be toning down his language so he can appear 'neutral' or at least open to discussion, while actually not stating his true perspective on science and scientific affairs. Indeed the editorial perspective of some publications is well known and that then goes beyond their perspective and into the various articles, themselves, thus those journals slowly lose readers, over time, as the editorial perspective seeps into the decision-making for articles and who reviews them. Here the advice is to mask the bias on the public side (that is published editorially) but not one word of retaining that beyond that portion of the journal. If an editor strongly backs an opinion the rest of the journal tends to get associated with it. With that said if there are multiple editors, this can be diluted by having multiple viewpoints on the editorial staff and to openly present bias on an article (pro/con) via editorials from different staff members.

Bias is something to be open about so that others can judge if you can set your bias aside to actually do and review scientific work or if your bias is persistent to the point where it slants the even-handed assessment of data and derived results. It also allows for open criticism of editors so that a journal may select other editors or reviewers if there is input that on certain topics an editor is suspect due to the bias being shown and discussed. Here we see the two-faced approach being taken not by organizations and protestors, but taken to an editor via a member of an organization that seeks to have the rhetoric toned down but the bias remain. That is deceitful not just towards those submitting articles (on if they can get an even-handed review process) but to the readers who deserve to know of any inherent bias in the publication, itself.

To 1 and 2 above, we can now add:

3) Large, transnational financial institution seeking to change editorial policy of an editor at a scientific journal with regards to how editorials are written.

I'm sure Leftists are all just warm and fuzzy with that thought!

Who else is on the Transnational financial list? There is always your favorite and that of the Democratic Party's, Goldman-Sachs. In 4092.txt (h/t Buffy Minton in the thread at WUWT) we can see what sort of cup rattling goes on behind the scenes with the AGW crowd:

date: Mon, 18 May 1998 10:00:38 +0100

from: Trevor Davies <t.d.daviesATuea.ac.uk>

subject: goldman-sachsto: j.palutikofATuea,p.jonesATuea,m.hulmeATuea

Jean,

We (Mike H) have done a modest amount of work on degree-days for G-S. They now want to extend this. They are involved in dealing in the developing energy futures market.G-S is the sort of company that we might be looking for a 'strategic alliance' with. I suggest the four of us meet with ?? (forgotten his name) for an hour on the afternoon of Friday 12 June (best guess for Phil & Jean - he needs a date from us).

Thanks.

Trevor

+++++++++++++

+++++++++++++

Professor Trevor D. Davies

Climatic Research Unit

University of East Anglia

Isn't this so sweet? Scientists looking to help Goldman-Sachs develop a 'strategic alliance' with them in pushing issues in the 'developing energy futures market' is just so cuddly you can't even begin to use words to express it. Yes, these climate scientists must be wizards to be able to know about such things as energy production and developing markets... do they ever get any time to do any real science?

Speaking of energy interests, here is Mike Hulme setting up a meeting with BP and Shell in 2000 from 0296.txt (another H/T to the comments section this time to Jimbo):

date: Tue Feb 1 13:34:27 2000

from: Mike Hulme <m.hulmeATuea.ac.uk>

subject: BP

to: shackley

Simon,

Have talked with Tim O about BP and he knows Paul Rutter but reckons he is junior to his two contacts Charlotte grezo (who is on our Panel!) and Simon Worthington.Tim is meeting Charlotte next week and will do some lobbying and we will also make contact with Simon Worthington.So I guess there is no necessity to follow up on Paul right now (I'll wait for Tim's feedback), but if you feel there is a strong enough UMIST angle then by all means do so (but bear in mind that we will be talking to some other parts of BP).We're getting a few letters back from people here too which I will copy onto you - two water companies, Shell and the Foreign Office (the latter is not really business though).

All for now,

Mike

Say, if you criticize the critics for working with the likes of BP and Shell, can you criticize those pushing AGW for doing the same? And does this make their science suspect, as well? Because if you think any contact for funding with an oil company is a reason to be shunned, then what will you do when those who have been pushing AGW are found to have been doing the exact, same thing as those doing work with them on other research?

How about a bit later in 2002, in 0736.txt putting a program schedule together for the ECF Autumn Conference:

cc: "Klaus Hasselmann" <klaus.hasselmannATdkrz.de>, "Mike Hulme" <m.hulmeATuea.ac.uk>

date: Thu, 16 May 2002 14:47:51 +0100

from: "Elaine Jones" <E.L.JonesATuea.ac.uk>

subject: ECF Autumn Conference

to: "Martin Welp" <martin.welpATpik-potsdam.de>

Martin, Just to confirm and clarify a few of our views expressed in Monday's telecom (I listened with interest alongside Mike) on the ECF Autumn Conference Preliminary Programme. The programme looks very good so far. We don't think that Tom Delay would be the best dinner speaker, but it would be useful to perhaps invite him to speak in the Technology Transition session on e.g. Key challenges for the UK's Carbon Trust or, (the title of their glossy ) "Making Business Sense of Climate Change" ? . However, he has appeared in the same session as Mark MS on a few occasions already.

In case Mark MS cannot accept an invite (he would also be an excellent dinner speaker) you could consider Phil Watts, who is actually Mark's replacement as Chairman of the CMD of Royal Dutch/Shell Group, (and a Yorkshire Geophysicist) but rather for his other role as chairman of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development ( a coalition of 160 International companies from >30 countries and 20 sectors and a global network of 35 national and regional business councils) , which he took on in November 2001, succeeding Charles Holliday, DUPONT Chair and CEO. Of course, he's incredibly busy but would be an excellent dinner speaker if he couldn't manage day-time - and with an attractive letter invite may be tempted (e.g. building on his "I am honoured to become chairman of the WBCSD, it plays a vital role in helping both to challenge and encourage business, governments and institutions to address the issue of sustainable development"). As an alternative, and not to be to Shell biased, Rodney Chase deputy group chief exec. of BP (former Exploration Head) is also on the WBCSD Exec. Committee. I don't know him - but I'm sure he would be good... he gave a Pew Centre presentation in 2000 - Innovative Policy Solutions to Global Climate Change www.pewclimate.org/media/rchase_speech.pdf - one might consider inviting him to "reflect on the subsequent 2 years track record of innovative solutions" ! he may be most useful for session 4, given the BP-Amoco (Arco) transatlantic make-up ! (and they are also a PEW member). He's also a non-exec. director of DIAGEO plc (Europe's largest Beverages co.).

Isn't this lovely? Look at the people they would want as a dinner speaker at their event:

I) Tom Delay – This is Tom Delay of the UK Carbon Trust, not the US Tom DeLay.

II) Sir Mark Moody-Stewart – Appointed non-executive chairman of Anglo American PLC, ex-chairman of Royal Dutch Shell, director of HSBC holdings and Accenture. Chairman of the Foundation for Global Compact, member of the Global Reporting Initiative up to 2007, member of the Board of Directors for Saudi Aramco.

III) Sir Philip Watts – Chairman of Shell 2001-2004 in addition to what is in the text.

IV) Rodney Chase – As stated in the text, a BP man in addition to other hats.

What isn't to like in this group? I mean you have organizations working on the entire carbon problem thingy, huge multinational oil companies, plus a slew of feel good NGOs... just the sort of people you want addressing the European Climate Forum. No, really, it is! I mean if you are going to have AGW/Climate Change/Climate Chaos or whatever the tagline du jour is, then you really, and for true, need the people ready to make a profit off of it as speakers at conferences.

Thus comes the next rule:

4) Always seek to get the heads of large organizations that make a profit off of 'climate change', either on the causing or the carbon trading side, at major conferences as dinner speakers so they can tell you what they see as the future of the direction of the 'movement'.

The idea that affiliation is grounds for denouncement and demonization is a Leftist cant, not one with a basis in reality. Science, if done properly, is about repeatable results not about who funds you. It doesn't matter if a government funds you, an oil company, a university, or that rich old coot down the street: if you get repeatable results and accurately describe and characterize them then it is science. When those doing the funding try to tell you what to say, then it is intellectual, ethical and moral prostitution of oneself to the highest bidder or at least the one willing to help 'the cause'. If you demonize based on fund source, then you must demonize the AGW crowd just as much as their critics as they are not adverse to chasing, begging, taking and using funds from such organizations.

This should be worrying to the 'street activists', 'protestors' and even those just willing to sing from the same hymnal as 'fellow travelers'. To date no one has demonstrated that the critics of AGW have had what they write directed by their funders. So far, to date, we now have evidence that those writing in support of AGW 'science' are not only willing to do so, but are willing to have the heads of such organizations show up at conferences or actually run such conferences as supports the goal of AGW followers.

The problem here isn't in the science of AGW: there isn't any.

Show me the data.

Not the interpretations, not the graphs, not the conclusions, but the raw, unadulterated data and let ME work through it so I can see if I can come up with the same results, plus cross-validate that any conclusions have something to do with OTHER datasets from OTHER sources so that the data can have a cross-check on it.

You can't make me a 'believer' but you can give me the data to see if I can agree with the conclusions drawn from it. That is science. No 'belief' needed.

Until the original datasets are made publicly available, and this was publicly funded research at the start of this entire mess, for public scrutiny and open scrutiny by the scientific community as a WHOLE and IN PART, there is no science being done in AGW.

When there is: obfuscation of the data, refusal to release publicly funded data(and thus held for the public by researchers), attempts to hide scientific criticism in secret but never speak of it in public, no safeguarding information exchanges that are the lifeblood of science, attempts no to be honest about the scientific process so as to intimidate editors or reviewers of papers and to not be open about what the people who are seeking to influence you are trying to do, then you do not have the performing of science to the public good but a conspiracy to defraud the public as a whole at a multi-national level. And not small fraud, either, when you consider the attempts to curb fossil fuel production and use, impoverish millions if not billions via economic stagnation through crony capitalism, and otherwise jack up energy prices with no valid science as a rationale... that may go into the trillions of dollars on a global scale. That is fraudulent science in search of a Great Cause which is then backed by other institutions that have their own agenda which are not accountable to any public of any Nation, so as to force National governments to create new agendas to support transnational corporations via schemes to divert money from productive energy jobs to ones that show no immediate value. Because if they were worthwhile to do they would be profitable and sustainable without a single penny from any government other than as a customer for a product.

I have said it before and I will say it again: science is a full body contact sport done without benefit of any padding, no handicaps and having the necessary requirement of being done out in the open to hold yourself accountable to your peers. Science is one of the nastiest endeavors of all mankind because to do it you must be open to criticism, must accept criticism (as old man Alvarez showed us with a smile and open arms) and then say that ANYONE CAN DUPLICATE YOUR RESULTS. Those who are perpetrating this fraud are not DOING THAT but are running a rigged con game and in that universe you are either the con man, a plant or a mark, and on something of this scale nearly every single plant will find out that they are the mark.

Student loan bailouts? No, but there is an alternative...

2011-11-21T06:54:00.001-05:00

Of the true stupidity of OWS there is the idea of 'bailing out' those with student loans.

This will not actually address the problem of the high cost of education nor will remove the problem from the system, nor does it hold one to their agreement for paying back one's debts.

And, yes, I didn't like the 'bailouts' of the 'too big to fail' organizations, either.

So when this topic was posted at Hot Air, I put out what an actual solution is to stop the high cost of higher education in its tracks. It would require that the OWS people actually mean what they say about what they see as their loan problems.

Here is the unadorned commentary, such as it is, spelling/syntax/logic errors all included for the amusement of the reader because all of this is written on the fly:

Say, if these people feel that they didn’t get the value promised them by an education they should sue all of those who promised them a high value education.

Really, they should writed down every written promise of having a ‘career path’ via these high priced educational institutions, with the names of who promised it and when. Push that all the way to those leading the tours for the place you went to.

Then work with all the other people who have similar views and start to put a master list together naming all the institutions and all the people who promised the educational value and what they charged for it in the way of tuition, books, dorm fees, etc.

Form a class action lawsuit against the whole kit’n'kaboodle.

Sue their butts off, including the endowment funds.

Get your money back from these places.

Impoverish them.

Put them out of business because they are not selling a product they promised to you.

Occupy a law library and get to work, you may need to get a few part time jobs to support yourselves while you gather the info and put the briefs together, but in 6 months every single high flying university and all of those pushing the high cost/low value education on the docket to figure out just how they will defend themselves from their rapacious cost structure for a bloated bureaucracy.

Question Authority! Get those university personnel on the witness stand!

ajacksonian on November 20, 2011 at 7:42 PM

This is how you hold people to account in America, isn't it? You sue their butts off.

Yes this means that OWSers must un-occupy parks, work with each other and start to occupy law libraries and look for part-time jobs to sustain themselves... and do something PRODUCTIVE WITH THEIR LIVES instead of bitch/moan/whine/complain and forever feel that they are 'entitled' to something. Nope, you are 'entitled' to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and the latter means 'happenstance' or 'fortune'. Heaven help you if you actually catch happiness as it will make you miserable the moment you realize it has slipped through your fingers and you are chasing that bugger again. You had it so good for that microsecond...

Really it is the educational institutions and their Leftist academics that are the cause of this problem.

OWSers should want to hold them both to account for the high cost of unproductive, useless higher education. Note that actual scientists and engineers are lacking at OWS, along with mathematicians. Why? Real jobs with real pay are involved at the end of those educational cycles.

You want an education that leads to a real, paying job?

Go to a trade school.

There are lots of jobs going begging to maintain our infrastructure and you can nearly set your own pay as a welder, electrician, plumber... hell, even pipe-fitters and bricklayers are doing pretty well, if you can stay out of a Union, that is.

But if you feel you got rooked on a product or service you purchased? Sue them. Sue them until they are white due to lack of money. Those selling such products are fiends and no friend of yours. Prove it in a court of law. Put up a site to garner funds for your legal team to actually, and for true, address the REAL bad actors who demand such high payments for this shoddy educational product. Put up a page tracking the funds that will roll in and get to know who your REAL friends are. Surprisingly you in OWS will find that the $500 K that those inside your movement are seeking to take for their own needs are looking at chicken feed compared to what you will garner for bringing down the corruption inside the educational system.

It will take guts, stamina and courage to confront these institutions and tell them how badly they have under-delivered on their promises to you as an individual and to all of you as a class in a class action lawsuit. Take all of those promising that college is a path to a sure job and career to court.

ALL OF THEM.

Without exception.

Really, which would have done you better in your life: a poli-sci degree from an Ivy League institution or a two year certificate that certifies that you actually, and for true, can weld?

Heck, I'll toss in $25 to your legal fund!

Practice some accounting on that fund, though.

Keep the grubby, so-called 'authorities' within your own 'movement' away from it.

Get some payback and get paid back, while you're at it.

I'll help with a bit of cash. Maybe a couple of meals, too, if you are nice about it.

Need some clothes while you are whiling away your hours in a dusty library? Gots spare work clothes for you. You don't need a suit and tie to file a petition in a court. And damned if paper isn't cheap and the ability to get to a word processor to do the typing is close to damned near free... and is pretty much free if you have a word processor already as many court documents have gone electronic.

Get what you paid for!

OR GET YOUR MONEY BACK WITH INTEREST.

Because, you know, revenge is a dish best served cold.

And I can tell you that those educational institutions, their endowment funds, the entrenched bureaucracy and some few of your professors truly are ripe for the picking. And a few of the really high flying ones should go away permanently on the pay-back side. Hit them where it hurts.

Wall Street?

Small fry.

Go after the big money people and the ones who have actually hurt you.

Gather the evidence.

Show you are doing so.

Ask for help.

And then sue them until they go broke.

Heck, its good job experience you can put on a resume to help track down the liars, their promises, get them all as evidence and then take them to court. You can't PAY for such experience.

But you can make the actual miscreants pay. Yessiree.

If, that is, you stop LISTENING TO THEM and get them on the witness stand and QUESTION AUTHORITY UNDER OATH.

Never so cold as a court of law, hey?

Put up a legal fund, get out of the parks and start getting the evidence together.

I will gladly PAY to help you in that.

It will be money WELL SPENT and your service to your fellow citizens will be beyond any price. Though there will be a price to be paid by those who lied to your face about the value of the so-called education they sold you. Plus you should get enough to pay your loans back once you hit those pushing them right in the pocketbook.

Really, the only losers are those pushing the bad service and product.

You become a loser by complaining.

You become a citizen by doing the right thing, staying within the law, and getting your money back. With interest.

Then you can pay off your loans.

You'll have a worthless degree, yes, but you will have experience and be out of debt.

That is what you want in OWS, right?

Debt-free with experience?

Do it the right way.

Do it yourself.

Our tax code: screwed up by design and intent

2011-11-11T08:20:00.001-05:00

The following is self evident

Certainty? In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.
Benjamin Franklin

In fact these are aspects of the exact same concept. Taxation if practiced upon one individual upon another would be theft of property earned by hard work. Death is the theft of life.

Both are theft.

Property is not theft: theft is theft and it matters not if it is used to steal property or life, although in doing the former the latter is put in jeopardy. These are intertwined concepts that to live one must be able to create for oneself and retain enough to not just survive but to prosper. When taxation is high, your life is at stake in a very real way.

Now on to the basis for our tax system, as opposed to the instantiation called the tax code which I will get to in a bit.

AMENDMENT XVI

Passed by Congress July 2, 1909. Ratified February 3, 1913.

Note: Article I, section 9, of the Constitution was modified by amendment 16.

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

Source: US Archives

Which changed this:

No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or enumeration herein before directed to be taken.

Source: US Archives

Before Amendment XVI the US government figured out how much it needed to run and could then do one of two things:

1) Levy a direct tax upon every citizen of an equal amount, or,

2) Tell the States how much money was needed to run the federal government and let them collect it.

This is part and parcel of the concept of the checks and balances of sovereign power in a republic which I go over numerous times, but most recently in The Process and Sovereignty fact explained by fiction. The problem was, such as it was purported to be at the time, that government had to plead with the States to get funded and the States were making it hard to pass bills by not posting Senators in a timely fashion. The argument was further extended that government had a lot to do and not enough cash to do it. The only way to go around this was to put together a campaign that made federal government taxation the centerpiece of the republic, not its necessary feed tube but a direct tap into the arteries of commerce that are your wallet. This was promised to be put in place only on the rich and never go above 7%. From 7% to 70% took 7 years, and it was not just on the 'rich' any more.

Lovely, no?

Taxation is a necessary evil for government to restrain those that would hurt the public directly, and at the federal level that isn't you, as individuals, but the Nation as a unit. Direct taxation that is non-apportioned (that is not equally levied) is something that is part of class warfare in that it pits the numerous poor against the few wealthy. And yet, by creating a system that does so, the wealthy then have a much larger stake in getting outcomes that fit their desires more in return for their much larger amounts paid into the system of government. The wolf does not come into the dining room by accident, but is joyously greeted as a protector from that monster under the bed... and soon you find yourself without food, bed, and possibly even shelter until you can figure out how to get rid of the wolf. Now if only the monster under the bed, which is to say class envy, had any real effect beyond making the poor greedy for that wealth that isn't theirs and inviting the wolf inside in the first place.

We bring our own doom upon us via greed and envy that is part of human nature.

Now since taxation is an expression of the negative liberty that creates the necessary evil we call government to restrain it, and the power of theft via taxation to sustain it, what is the positive liberty that is embodied by creation of wealth and giving freely of it?

Ah, yes, that is called 'charity'.

Charity begins at home.: Terence, Andria
Roman comic dramatist (185 BC - 159 BC); Source: The Quotations Page

Rome was still a republic, back in those days. Too bad the people wanted more goodies via their Senate and then instituted a means to take money from the rich, which then required an expansive military empire to sustain that growing hunger. The republican values enshrined charity, and while perhaps not as revered as the tax man, it was the builder of a republican society that cherished the values of divided government. Debase charity and the republican values fall away, and you soon get greedy people driven by human nature to take more than they make.

This attitude change destroyed the Roman middle-class by also including slavery into the mix and, before its downfall, there were more slaves in Rome doing work than there were people in the middle class. Actually there were more slaves (and Romans in slave status) than Free Romans in Rome once it became an empire, come to think of it. Once in old age Augustus would realize how far he had debased the Roman citizenry with taxation coupled with public expenditures and that the strong republic was now an empire with a void in its center. All empires have a void of public assent at their center, it doesn't matter which empire it is: those that rule, not govern, no longer listen to the wishes of the citizenry and the empire, for all its military might, is ripe to be destroyed. An empire can only exist on the backs of slaves or serfs, which is why Karl Marx cheered on the North in the US Civil War: mere wage slavery was a way out to a better life, and was a positive artifact of capitalism and needed to be cheered on so that the foundations of socialism could be built. Too bad he never read history to show what happens when people realize they can take everything from those that produce... but these nasty things called 'Dark Ages' or 'Iron Times' are really quite harsh. Only the effete elite ignore them due to the queasy feeling they get when they realize that they are encouraging yet another round of mass theft.

Charity, by this standard, is not theft at all.

It is the willful giving of the fruits of one's labor to those institutions that will tend to the sick and aged, care for the poor and needy, and offer solace to the beleaguered. Charitable institutions teach republican values by their very existence: that you have a direct say in the welfare of your fellow man outside of government. It is a value that does, indeed, begin at home as our poor, weak, needy and uneducated come in the form of our children. They need to see the lesson that being given food, clothing, education and schooling is a burden taken up freely by their parents to create society. The number one, most important lesson to learn from charity at home is that you are a burden to your parents and your greatest desire in your love for them is to stop being that burden. To do that requires lessons of self-governance, thrift and the willingness to take up your burden of your life from your parents so that you can be free and that you, in turn, liberate them from that burden they took up gladly.

Do you see the part theft plays in charity?

If you don't is because there isn't any: it is an expression of our positive liberty that comes from our free labor to live a life in freedom.

The tax code that comes from the tax system, seen above, does not enshrine charity as the prime value of the republic and a means to create self-sustaining citizens of a republic. This can be seen via the simple asking of a question:

Why is charity a tax deduction?

If charity and the institutions of charity are a prime bulwark to helping citizens stand on their own two feet to be productive citizens on their own, then why is government getting the first bite at your income and then allowing you might, just maybe, have a charitable instinct and let you take a bit of that tax bite back? Government is a necessary evil and not the prime part of building society. Indeed, by taking productive wealth from citizens, it is a drag on society and eats up wealth while, in its very best instance, providing equal justice via simple laws that are easily understood by all citizens. A republic that has citizens who cherish republican values would not put the government, any government outside of self-government, as the first to take a bit out of their income, no matter its source.

Our prime duty as citizens is towards our fellow citizens and it starts at birth, when we are cared for through the charity of our parents and we must continually give back in charity to our fellow man so that we have a vibrant society that can actually sustain this drag we call government which is only an organ of society. And not a very pretty organ, at that. If charity is the heart of society, then government in all forms come in just before the anus and just after the stomach: it is necessary and yet the products of it are waste.

The grand goal of Progressivism was to put government in your life before charity, which is to say that you only get raised, as a child, after government has taken its bite from your parent's income for its own purposes. While you suckle at the teat, government was stealing the bread necessary to let your mother make milk for you. In a very real sense it was suckling before you ever got there and would for the rest of your natural life and you, my fellow citizens, would be the burden of government.

That is evil because it is unnecessary.

If we truly enshrined charity as a hallmark of good citizenship and a necessary burden to us all before government, then we would have a tax code that puts charity via full deduction from gross pay FIRST and government SECOND. Our duty to our fellow citizens is direct via the application of our positive liberty expressed by the freedom to work, thus allowing us the marketplace to repay us for our work. A tax on commerce is one thing, and limited to States and local government, taking the direct food from your mouth via income FIRST before your family and then other charities, is a true evil that knows no bounds.

How can I say that?

What are the limits of the federal government today? Are there any left?

Government has a proper place and status in society and it isn't a high one. It is not a charitable organization as it requires theft to operate, and the only acceptable theft is one that is either equal, regardless of income, upon all citizens or mediated by a more local government to figure out how to pay for the larger national government. That is why it was set up the way it was: to keep government limited.

For all the talk of 'flat taxes' and reducing government should we not, as citizens of a republic, be demanding that our government recognize that its place is AFTER that of the positive liberty to build society as expressed by our charity? I have heard the moaning and bewailing of this concept in that 'charity would over-run us' and that people 'wouldn't put money where it needs to go'.

On the former, is there such a thing as a too giving society? One that enshrines our positive liberty and reinforces it so that all citizens know that their fellow citizens are there for them in times of need is a BAD THING?

On the latter: this is the basis for freedom and liberty, that no man is told what to do with his earnings via charity. There will still be necessary money left to feed oneself and keep a roof over one's head after raising children and donating to charity is performed. Government gets to take from that pile, that net amount, after an individual has decided how much they need to reinforce and give back to society FIRST. The rich will find they can only spend so much on charity before the allure of spending on themselves comes to the forefront and then it is that money that gets taxed: the greedy get taxed more. Encouraging spending on items that you may not see as necessary, schools, libraries and support of charity hospitals, can be done by rich and poor alike, and who is to say that we need more of any item than any other than the people who earn the money? What you may see as ill spending, may be something another man sees as a vital need to be addressed via charity and there so long as the poor, need, sick, disabled and young are cared for via these means, who is to say that they are wrong? Are these not the stated goals of Progressives? Then why are they so costly and run up such high debt so as to put the Nation into insolvency and, in a short time, into bankruptcy? Putting the intermediary of government in at every level and every choice costs too much and demeans citizens into the status of slaves to support government. That didn't work too well out for Roman and every other people who enshrined government as their centerpiece have faced a similar fate. History is our teacher and we ignore it at our peril.

Ask yourself: would you not give more and retain less for yourself if you knew that the money put into building society was beyond the reach of the thief of government? Bad charities can be taken care of by the scraps left for the legal system, the bad actors weeded out so that the good may thrive and prosper. That puts government SECOND and charity FIRST, which is the order that sustains society. When government is put in charge of determining who gets how much and when at the cost of the lifeblood of liberty, you also get the extreme overhead of government and the ill-use of funds that, strangely enough, never, ever gets addressed by removing power from government when it FAILS to do these functions efficiently and effectively.

Yes you did pay into SSA and when you are old you get to pick the kernels out of the droppings of the waste of government. Aren't you so thankful for that? That instead of asking your citizens for help or having build solid institutions, you are now living at the whim of far distant and remote government and become a pawn to keep abusers of the system by expanding it in power. Just make sure you wash up those kernels in the dung before eating them, because that is what you have asked for and you have gotten it and helped to tear down society via government. This is what you asked for and got. And it can be changed, altered and amended by realizing that the actual fiend is government and not your fellow man who is only painted as stingy for political purposes and then abused and demeaned once those politicians get in power to wield it over our children, our elderly, our sick and our needy.

Our choice, as citizens, is to put government in its place and really, and for true, recognize that charity begins at home with our children and continues on throughout our lives with the institutions that we build to succor the poor, old, infirm, young, destitute and beleaguered, and that we are made stronger by directly giving and volunteering our time and lives to this work than we ever are through the waste organ of society known as government. That is perfectly allowable in the course of human events when the necessary evil of government becomes the form of our own abuse and repression not just of the healthy, but of the poor and weak.

That is a pure evil that is self-inflicted.

Brought to you by our tax code.

It doesn't have to be this way.

We can change our priorities for ourselves and then demand that our government follow our lead as citizens and that it is we who form the republic, and our government is just a necessary organ to do so. Rather that the body run lean and mean through our digestion and leave little for government to subsist on than to be eaten by it as it becomes cancerous by taking directly from our life blood.

The top 5 current threats to the United States

2011-11-04T12:25:00.001-04:00

Over my years of blogging... damn, I never thought I would be able to say that as I never intended to blog for years... a few weeks or a month or two, maybe... I have covered a wide array of threat types to the United States. Be it terrorism, organized crime or geophysics, I've gotten a good look at some of the nastier things that can be unleashed at a moment's notice that will leave you next to no time to prepare. The fact that my top 5 geophysics disasters that will happen to the North American continent, sooner or later, are not being prepared for tells me much about how we, as a society, prepare to deal with just about anything. I like geophysics as it is reliable, cyclic and gives warning via the periodicity of events over time. If you don't heed the warnings then it is you who will pay the price. The planet will go on its stately way with or without us, which is why I am always advocating that the best place for industry is not in a biosphere but in the clean vacuum of space. Once we get off this rock and into our solar system with a sustainable population base that doesn't rely on Earth, then we will be very, very hard to extinguish as a species.

We aren't there, yet.

Outside of those 'known unknowns' of geophysics there are the other 'known unknowns' of terrorism, socialism/communism/fascism/anarchism, and pure old asinine political meddling in culture and economics. These latter are all inter-related, however, as old revolutionaries tend to hide who they are and become sanctified by their cronies and enter the system. When a guy like the terrorist Bill Ayers can be blessed by the MFM without any hint at repentance for his past misdeeds, indeed he said he hadn't done enough as a terrorist, gets into the position of helping to draft the very history books that is used in school districts, and no one raises a fuss, then one can say that the 'elite' structure is in bed with the radicals. This has a corrosive and corrupting influence on society, as a whole and as individuals, as actual history gets slanted towards viewpoints that remain unexpressed until they fester long enough to pop up like zits in OWS. These people don't need to breathe together to share the same hookah, and if their ideas have spread globally it is because those who would normally defend the standard culture of various Nations have been complacent or asleep at the wheel. This is the wet dream of Progressives: to dictate to society what individuals should think, eat, breathe and how they should live and die at the behest of government.

It is the dream of despotism and tyranny.

So for this remix I'm going to shuffle in the other sociological problems that these nefarious actors have put in place while we have all been hitting the snooze button. A fun treat it isn't because I will also be mixing in military threats of the 'known unknown' variety, which ought to scare the pants off just about anyone. Some of these I see as near-dead certainties. You can still search this blog under the DIY category and get some ideas of what it means to prepare, now, before they happen.

So here we go.

#5 - Good-bye to the EU - After WWII the US extended its nuclear umbrella and troops into Western Europe to defend it. The various leftists and social do-gooders realized that they didn't have to spend more than a paltry 1% or thereabouts on defense and the US expanded its defense budget to 6-8%+ to cover for that. With all that lovely non-spending doing on did the European Nations of the West: 1) cut back on all other forms of government to get thriving, world beating economies, 2) pay off all government debt to make their currencies sound and stabilize the world, 3) decide that after two world wars that they really, and for true, weren't going to solve their problems either militarily or via diplomacy (causes for both world wars) and settle into a generally neutral stance towards each other and attempt to keep the lid on both military and diplomatic adventurism or, 4) the opposite of all that.

If you chose #4 for the expansive welfare state, increasing regulations, attempts to 'integrate' highly different populations that didn't have a great history with each other, spend like drunken sailors who can't pass out, get perennial unemployment over 8%, go into debt that none of them or all of them could repay, see a declining demography because of the growth of the state into all areas of life, have to invite in foreigners who made it a point not to assimilate, and the only real economy left was then asked to support all the ne'er-do-well spendthrifts, all the while finding out that being weak militarily at home meant no real feeling of patriotism or even a need to continue the culture, then you have a Weiner! Ah... sorry... Winner!

Given a great protective umbrella the entire continent went towards socialism even before the commies disappeared and started calling themselves socialists, too. Now Europe is in a permanent demographic slide unlike any other seen since the Roman Empire hit the skids, has a debt problem about to sink all the Nations in Europe separately and collectively, has foreign populations now starting to not see themselves as Europeans and wanting to change the Nations into something different... and an elite class who feels that the general public is too stupid to recognize this as a good thing! Can Europe pull out of this tailspin?

No.

Parts of it might abandon ship in the next few months and then the jig is up. All of the 'social safety nets' will fall and all the 'collective' help will go away as it can't be paid for as the increasing debt load year on year should have clued them into. In giving a large umbrella over Europe the US, apparently, removed the cluebats. The answer by the Euro-Elites (be they Kings, Emperors, Princes, Dukes, Ministers, Members of Parliament, or the local Mayor and city council) in such circumstances is clear: war. With unrest in Europe comes war. The French Revolution was cleared up by a Corporal, a 'whiff of grapeshot' and then the great economy booster of foreign war. When the anarchists had been shooting down political leaders the world over for a few decades it was to get only one Arch-Duke that would trigger a global conflict. The rise of communists in Russia and the expansion of the prior socialist parties in Europe to deal with problems, particularly in Italy and Germany, grew out of the unrest of the post-war era and turned it into the inter-war era by yet another great war building spree that led to, yes, war. The nasty Cold War stalemate was won by the West when everyone who had red stars on in Russia changed their philosophy from communism to socialism. The red stars were kept around to adorn party functions, however. Needless to say getting in bed with organized crime is a mixed blessing in Russia. Western Europe spending itself into oblivion will lead to great numbers of unemployed and the state, having only one major way to help, will authorize military spending to 'boost' the economy. China, too, is facing this by propping up the price of copper by building vast, uninhabited cities and seeing its industrial cost rise to the point that people are being automated out of jobs or they are going, with delicious irony, to the next low wage destination of Vietnam. Needless to say the US was wise enough to see this folly and stopped going down that road...

Oh, wait.

We didn't.

The Collapse of the EU is the symbolic collapse of Western Socialism (socialism, communism, leftism, progressivism, and big government anarchists which are a delicious stab in the back to traditional anarchists) and it isn't going to be pretty.

#4 - The Next World War- I can now name some major governments undergoing economic decline from which military spending may be the only hope of keeping people employed: Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, Russia, China, Japan, Mexico (more on that later) and the UK. Even better is that a few of them have historical militarism that their elites can fall back on and resurrect. Greece has the Spartans, Italy has the Roman Empire, Spain and Portugal were once world colonial powers, France had Napoleon, Russia had Stalin, China had a slew of guys from the Yellow Emperor on to Mao, Japan had the military class and god emperor, the UK has a great history to work with like that Nelson fella, and even Mexico has patriots in their history of various stripes.

Pick three of those and say they take that path, even the worst off and most minor. Throw in a bit of 'expansionism for resources' to help get economies going again. Now put a large power into that mix doing that. Within 5 years that will be about the only option left as it will be the ONLY way to get out of collectivism as NO ELITE will say that it is a FAILURE. Internationalism just isn't a rallying point, and all the lovely bankers with their manipulation of world currencies will face a hard problem when a few enterprising countries realize that they can go it alone with just a few more resources under their belt. They will shear off debt, see their currencies disappear, put in a scrip, open military based systems using scrip and have no need for a social safety net.

The first Nation to clear out its 'social safety net' will be the new 'leader'.

And it doesn't matter how small your population is, either, as modern technology will allow the leveraging of some very elite tactical units to perform deeds that entire armies couldn't accomplish just 60 years ago. Technology is becoming a deadly equalizer between the large and small, and while quantity has a quality all its own, if you are stuck a couple of cycles back on the technology parade, you aren't going to make it.

No matter how chaotic and moribund economies and societies appear now, the simple solution for the worst off of cutting out the old currency, making a new scrip, torching the social safety net, killing off the radicals (always a crowd pleaser, that) and putting a military style order in place is a demonstrable winner throughout history. And it always, without fail, ends badly.

This is the know nothing Elites we are talking about doing this and their failure to understand history and become entranced with power always allows this to happen.

We gotta get off that merry-go-round.

#3 - EMP the Great Equalizer - One EMP burst from a low yield nuclear device over Kansas will destroy the electronics of nearly 80% of the US that aren't hardened or shielded. No modern commerce, no trucks, no planes, no cars (unless you got a pre-electronic one available... if you got points and plugs you have something that might survive), no industry, no farming, no hospitals, pharmaceuticals left to what is on hand...

Remember that technology is a great equalizer against even the US.

We haven't hardened our power generation infrastructure nor our consumer commodity infrastructure.

And you may not even need a nuke to do this, but you will need a missile.

Or very high floating balloons.

Who could do this the old fashioned way with a nuke and a primitive missile? There is a short list of supsects: the US, Russia, China, India, Pakistan, France, UK, Israel, North Korea, and Iran. If you throw in a small technical group working with a different way to generate the pulse and balloons, then you can expand that list down to any Nation with factories producing electronics. Gotta love that, huh?

Mind you this can also be done to China and Russia (probably requiring two devices each), all of Europe, Africa (about two devices), South America (two devices), all of North America (two devices), India, Australia, Japan if you have to get them separately, and maybe another six devices to cover all of the Pacific and three more for the Atlantic. And one more to get all of North America. That is N. Am. - 2, S. Am. - 2, Eurasia - 3, India - 1, Australia - 1, Africa - 2, Pacific - 6, Atlantic -3. Call it 25 total devices. If they are high tech and balloon delivered you can use GPS to make them go off (isn't that sweet?) as they are shielded by not being in the EMP zones. Missiles with AQ Khan style bombs might be a bit harder to do, but 25 is still a pretty magic number.

Hardened military equipment would survive, yes, but without a production system to produce more you are in a 'come as you are' war.

And if an eco-terrorist group did this with a bit of savvy on their part, or a death cult like the old AUM Shinrikyo? In one year the global population would be about 1 billion people.

Now replace all the EMP devices with a major solar storm putting out highly energetic particles just in front of the Earth as it passes through it for, say, 3 days. Same effect.

Bad enough the US and the fact that if we disappeared from the world economy most of the rest of the world would go into chaos once the big food supplier went away. Those asshats bemoaning hunger in Africa should be wanting a hardened electronics system in the US so that if a major solar storm did hit the planet there would be SOMEONE left to still grow food on a scale large enough to supply 2-3 billion people. That would require forethought, seeing how nasty a place the Earth and our fellow man can get, and then saying: 'You know it doesn't do us much good to have a social safety net if it all collapses due to one bad act'.

Damn I'm not even to #2 yet!

Wasn't the Cold War so nice? All you had to deal with was vaporization due to nukes!

Even better: you can prepare for these! Build some Faraday Cages for equipment (basically wrapping them in conductive mesh or foil that isn't in contact with the electronics, and ground the mesh/foil) and once the EMP is done, you can haul out your generator and equipment and get to the business of rebuilding society. Everything with a transistor and a lot of stuff with vacuum tubes are toast if they aren't protected. That laptop you tucked into the microwave will ride it out (it does have a mesh to protect stuff outside form the internal microwave effects) but that lovely desktop system is gone. Got batteries stored away? How about an inverter and solar panel array? Means to get clean water? Sanitary considerations need to be given top priority. Yup this is full, 'no grid exists' living. No medical supplies coming around, either, so what you got is what you got. Ditto groceries.

Global Nuclear War never looked so good!

#2 - La Palma landslide and tsunami - I'm not going to reprise my geophysics article, but this one remains at #2. Why? Here is the idea: name every city that is within 25 miles of the Atlantic coast or half of that in the Gulf of Mexico, all north of the equator. And that 25 miles is a pure, wild-ass guess.

Now make them go away with only 6-12 hours of warning time.

Simple, huh?

Entire islands will be washed over. Florida might not be around as we know it. London might survive, maybe. Paris will. The Netherlands, not so much. Nice knowing you, Denmark. Ireland's coast along the south just gone. Boston, Hartford, NYC, all of Long Island, Philadelphia, Newark, Baltimore, DC, Miami... New Orleans, Galveston... maybe the highlands of Cuba left... I shudder to think about coastal Africa and some of the waves will get to the South Atlantic, too. Maybe dislodge some polar material north and south, perhaps shift the northern polar ice cap a bit, or just break it up for a year.

Wouldn't that be fun?

There is zip you can do about it. No diplomacy will stop it. Nukes might trigger it. All the concrete on the planet would make it worse, not better. There is no 'bedrock' to stabilize, just a trillion tons and more of waterlogged dirt and weathered volcanic rock. It is waiting for one earthquake or volcanic event on an island with an active volcano. And most likely the other half of the island goes with it, too, due to subsidence, and the inrushing seawater once the mass slides in.

Would the current 'global community' pull together?

Or fall apart?

This will remove some of the largest transport hubs on the planet from the map, as well as killing hundreds of thousands to millions (or more) directly, and then the collapse of systems afterwards will ripple out economically.

And there will be no escaping this tsunami by going up as it will go over the top of the Empire State Building. Hell it will get channeled all the way up to Albany by the Hudson River at the Palisades. Places that normally couldn't be reached by any tsunami will feel the wrath of this one in the Atlantic. Gibraltar might go on wave one (the other side of the island going) and then a larger mass move into the Med to give the entire place a nice 20-30' tsunami like in Japan. Wonder what will happen to the Panama and Suez canals when they are over-topped and washed out?

You can prepare for this one, too. And while it doesn't, necessarily, take out things in the way a solar flare or committed global EMP attack would, it is more likely to happen.

#1 - Yellowstone - Megavolcano. Overdue. Last time its cousin went, the human race got put down to a few tens of thousands of individuals from diverse populations in the millions. Toba is smaller than Yellowstone. Yellowstone has been rising, steadily, for decades. It might not erupt for 100,000 years. Or a something might touch it off so soon that nothing could be done to even analyze it, much less prepare for it. The dust cloud will encircle the planet and while not every place will be uninhabitable, the growing seasons for the next decade might not be what one would call, uh, there.

Even if you don't get caught in the major dust cloud and have your lungs shredded by fine particulates, you will get a massive global cooling effect due to the reflected sunlight caused by the high floating particulates. They will come down via Stokes Law, and the finest will be last. Great for pretty sunrises and sunsets, horrible for storms and growing seasons.

Due to size and severity, and being that we are now in the zone for cyclic repetition, this tops it all as threats to the US.

There are lots of other things that can happen to us, here on Rock 3 from the star Sol, even such things as a gamma ray burst from a star that is likely to have one that is pointed like a search beacon in our direction, soft of like a gun barrel deal. A major boloid could come sailing in from out of nowhere and make a bad time for life here, too, as the dinosaurs found out. Really, that would suck worse than Yellowstone. Ditto the gamma ray burst, although you wind up dead within a few minutes for that, as compared to a few hours for a boloid and up to a couple of years for Yellowstone outside of its blast radius. These are 'known unknowns' but with a non-cyclic or non-determinative factor to them, which makes them drop far down the list.

Of those things that can be done by man, a few do raise up to the major threat level region, with the collapse of the Western Way of Life coming in at #5, and that only for the socialist, not capitalist variant of it. Capitalism actually works, it is this 'social control of capital' deal that doesn't no matter which way you cut it. The folks who are grey are not those pushing forward individual liberty and reward for same, no it is those pushing 'everyone gets a prize' folks. These are grey as they show no love of human ingenuity, fortitude and the rewards due the blessings of liberty. They prefer the despotism of reduced choices to impoverish all mankind, rather than achievement to enrich mankind. Those grey folks in various forms of red, green and black are about to go.

And it won't be pretty.

Lets try to keep things down to #5, and make some preparations for #2-4 and get off this planet so #1 won't get us.

I'm the optimistic guy in the long run.

The short run is always pessimistic, as I can only be pleasantly surprised.

What I'm looking for in the way of policy

2011-10-09T12:37:00.001-04:00

The United States has a problem.

That problem is the size, scope and power of its government.

We have a series of on-going economic crises, yes, and those stem from the problem.

The 'Housing Crisis' starts not with 2007 but back in the late 1960's when HUD lobbied President Nixon to create an agency to allow for the packaging of home loans with government guaranteed security on the risk of those loans. Yes one government agency was telling the President that we needed more government! It seemed like a good idea at the time, no doubt, but what this did is allow the large commercial banks to have guaranteed risk portions in their portfolio dedicated to residential lending. These large organizations could out-compete local S&L's who could not take on such wide and varied risk as the larger entities could. S&L's remained tied to what made sense for lending in a local market and the intervention of GNMA created a national market that had risk tolerances above and beyond what normal lending practices for the S&L's would allow. This meant that the S&L's had to seek to diversify their risk portfolio into areas they had never been in and, as inexperienced players, they went down in the 1980's. To get to the S&L crisis of the 1980's you have to have GNMA created by President Nixon.

At that point a home was still just a home, however, and not an upwardly increasing value property. Prior to the 1960's home base valuation would go up at 1% per year, if you were lucky, thus a home was not an investment that would appreciate but a roof over your head. After the creation of GNMA came a slow but steady rise in home valuation above the rate of inflation. This was tied to other regulations that were illiquid until certain dates, which is to say 401(k) plans and IRAs. These were protected assets that you could carry over after a bankruptcy, while a home became subject to bankruptcy proceedings. Consumers shifted their savings patterns away from reducing mortgage debt (via pre-payments or ahead of schedule payments) to put money into safer vehicles, like those provided for in the tax code. Those investment vehicles meant that money was tied into them for the long term, protected and could appreciate faster in value than a home could. Thus the home now became a secondary investment vehicle because the next round of regulations loosened up the Loan To Value ratio for lending. With less stringent loan regulations comes higher home prices as people can expect to ask more than their prior 1%/year appreciation and GET IT.

Were the banks involved?

Yes, they were, at every step of the way.

Are they the sole culprits?

No. The influence of Congress in its role to allow the creation of new regulations that allowed greater risk to flow into the system, while urged on by the banks, was something that was taken up by those Congresses. No one forced them to do it and no President was forced to sign on to these bills. To change the playing field you needed Congress and multiple Congresses obliged through vehicles like the Community Reinvestment Act in the 1980's, and then the loosening of requirements on how much had to be put down to get a loan in the 1990's. By the early 2000's the NINJA loan (No Income, No Job or Assets) along with highly leveraged ballooning loans were the vehicle pushed by the regulatory atmosphere that was enabled by the regulators via the Congressional bills to do that.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac played large roles in this, as well, since they could use their money to lobby Congress directly. This is an instance of a quasi-governmental agency getting a direct line into Congress, which means that the regulators and facilitators could now spend their money on politics to woo legislators. Today these two entities continue to bleed the US treasury in ill founded loans that are guaranteed for risk by Ginnie Mae.

Thus we now have as culprits: Congress, large commercial banks, quasi-governmental agencies, government agencies, Presidents and those doing the asking for so much money on their homes.

These are the pre-conditions for a bubble and the agencies, quasi-governmental agencies and regulations (along with regulators) are still around unchanged since the housing bubble popped in 2007-08. Not a single one of them has even been 'adjusted' by two Presidents. No Congressional majority or minority in either party has even SUGGESTED killing off the source of the rot and returning to basic and fundamental local economic institutions assessing local risk for local lending.

Mind you this isn't the FIRST TIME that the government has sought to reshape the physical landscape via housing policy. That goes back to Harry Truman and the Housing Act with its repercussions seen via a retrospective of those blacks who lived in areas deemed to be 'ghettos'.

Next up is the EPA started by... President Nixon.

Do not ever try to tell me that Nixon was in any way, shape or form a 'conservative'. These agencies he created are Progressive monuments to governmental power.

Throw in the Dept of Energy with the EPA and you have a nasty pot just needing the right legislation (like the Endangered Species Act) plus activist regulators (seeking to 'expand' their Congressional mandate), plus an overly regulated mining and oil industry (via the Interior Dept.) and what you get is a strategic attack on the energy infrastructure of the United States dedicated to stopping industrial production and impoverishing American citizens. Strangely enough the EPA didn't need to exist at all as States were already implementing their own regulations to stop pollution, clean up air and water, and didn't need federal help to do that. Burning rivers stopped before the EPA even existed due to those regulations. Simple observation shows that you cannot apply the same environmental regulations from sub-arctic tundra to sub-tropical swamp land. It doesn't work. And if you need to change it via local environmental needs the place to do that is the most local of areas, the State or local government, not at the highest end which is the federal government.

Indeed the federal charter we call the US Constitution allows for States to get together and ask the federal government for help in setting up a multi-State organization to deal with cross-border issues. So long as it does not tread on federal powers, such organizations are the way for States to deal with common problems across their borders. The federal government doesn't run such organizations, the member States do. This concept was also brought up under the recent health care debates to allow multiple States to pool their requirements, de-conflict them and create their own multi-State based insurance requirement system for those wanting to get health insurance. What these sorts of agencies do is cut the federal government out of the regulatory loop because it has no power to start that loop in the first place.

Not to harp too much on Republicans but the next place of rampant graft, corruption and federal policy going where it shouldn't is in the Dept. of Agriculture started by... President Lincoln.

Hey! He couldn't be right all the time.

The Dept. of Agriculture was a key government instrument for helping to expand farming into the Soutwest of the US. It encouraged the type of straight furrow, high water farming that was the norm in the Mississippi direct drainage basin in place that had a bit less rainfall. A bit less when we got to them, at least. What this did is encourage the expansion of farms with government help so that these techniques were used when the local natives didn't use nor want them at all. Why didn't they want them? Dry spells lasting years to a decade or more which cyclically go through the region due to Pacific wind currents. The result is known as the 'Dust Bowl' and it was miraculously 'ended' by USDA people wanting tree wind breaks planted and examining the idea of contour farming. Oh, the rains returned, too. The plus side of all this was knocking down the western locust so we don't get swarms of them going over the great plains every couple of years. That was due to farming in Colorado and Wyoming... of course those farms are now becoming uneconomical so they are dying out and you can expect the locust to come back as their population was only cut down to wild areas, not eliminated.

Isn't that great?

Along with 'modern' farming policy comes the draining of the Oglalala Aquifer which sits under a number of western States and is utilized for dry, upland farming via irrigation. Note this is not native dry, upland farming which used little irrigation, but the reduction of a deep aquifer that has a re-charge time that no one has measured but an inch a year for a few hundred feet of it begins to tell you of the time frames involved. Sounds like a good, multi-State organization is needed here instead of the corrupt blunderbuss of the USDA. No scalpel needed, just ignore the problem until it becomes a 'crisis' and expand government to 'solve' it! Gotta love how that works, huh?

Next on modern farming is turning food into fuel. What an asinine idea! You can't eat ethanol... well you can but its not a great foodstuff, unlike beer... and the conversion rate of corn to ethanol is excellent but ignores the fact that such policies are hitting the third world, and soon the first world, hard. Mexico has a problem in that their old, rural agricultural system that helped to sustain their population went north in search of jobs. First to the cities and then, when those manufacturing jobs from the US went overseas to places like Thailand and Vietnam, those migrants decided that the US was a great place to get illegal jobs. This was great while corn was cheap via the US, but corn has gotten very expensive because human food corn is now being replaced by corn to make ethanol, which I go over in this article. Now with jobs running scarce in Mexico along with food where is the money at? Why criminal organizations, of course! Jobs disappearing due to globalization is one thing, but food disappearing due to asinine farming policy of a neighboring nation is another.

Then there are the subsidies to agriculture beyond just paying people not to farm. Those are about 12-15% of the USDA budget and go far beyond corn to such things as setting price floors for some crops (like sugar beets) and guarantee payments.... plus payments to those farmers owning a farm in one State and not farming there to get their payment in another State.

Isn't that great?

The US government 'protects' certain crops NOT through long-term storage of a small percentage each year in case of famine but by paying people who can't compete in the world market and paying others NOT to compete in the world market, both on the taxpayer dime. Thankfully the current generation of farmers is in their late '50s and early '60s and as we aren't encouraging the next generation to take up agriculture as a business...

What problems could we POSSIBLY get from that?

Why I haven't even hit on the 'entitlements' yet, and I have already covered all of the energy and food production for the Nation under the lovely control of the federal government via regulations that only suit the feel-good Congresscritters and the petty tyrants in the bureaucracy wanting to control the Nation.

Who needs Islamo-Fascists when you can get the home grown regular sort at home?

Of course we also have the other sort to deal with overseas, too... not that we will have any energy or food to deal with them.

Mind you the rest of the planet depends on our food supply and the fact that China has not had a good harvest and even some dustbowls recently points out that they are on the brink of a catastrophe. There are already food shortages in the kleptocracies in Africa, but that is normal and cyclical... having governments that were relatively stable dictatorships go under to such things is a different matter...

The next President?

Name the one that will aim to take out, not manage 'better' or 'reform' but REMOVE any or all of the following: USDA, EPA, FHA, Fannie/Freddie/Ginnie, select parts of the Dept. of Interior, Dept. of Energy.

I can add to that list: Dept. of Education, DoJ (did you know when we had a small government that each agency had to enforce its own little jurisdiction and there was NO DoJ?), BATFE, Dept. of Labor (can't people figure this out on their own), SBA, anything involving the arts & humanities... and the UN and its dues and various hangers-on.

When you are facing insolvency it is time to do away with luxuries and that time is now here. These places can be closed down, their funding removed, and those that are part of the federal government have their property and equipment sold off to generate some final revenue.

Yes, the entitlements have to take a hit. I have a standard prescription for those.

Close off SSA to new entrants. End the retirement age. Turn SSA into a regular spending program and get rid of FICA. Give everyone an account they can spend from that is federal tax free where any investments can accumulate without any hit to them, and then allow spending after holding them for 20 years or 20 years after the date of issuance of the SSA card. In other words find good savings that appreciate even minimally and you are set. Anyone in SSA who wants to get out can, and have such an account in their name immediately with the thanks of the US government to becoming a self-sufficient citizen once again. Once the last person getting payments dies or quits the program, it is ended.

Add Medicare and Medicaid together. Divide by 2. Apportion via Block Grants to the States to spend on health care for their people. Stage this down to zero over 5 years. That is the end of the federal take-over of your medical care, and you are on your own. Lobby your State and local governments or help with charitable institutions to get something to cover those without the ability to get good medical care. The US government sucks at it.

Put together a flat tax for corporations and individuals, remove all other taxes. For those earning under the poverty line the tax can be graduated down, but everyone MUST pay into the US government as it serves ALL OF US without exception. If you can figure out how to live without having a job, then our blessings should be upon those people as they have figured out how to carry their load without burdening the rest of us.

These give a firm and stable position that if you want to 'retire' you must DIY with NO help from the government and if you can't figure out you need health care then charitable institutions are your answer.

Do taxes go up? Yes for those currently paying no federal income tax, but they may find that their new 'tax rate' is actually lower as there is NO FICA around to bite you.

No new taxes are necessary for this: no consumption tax or sales tax. Those are left up to the States as we don't TRUST the US federal government to have such income capability. Look how it has squandered the Progressive Income Tax by jerking everyone around with it.

Defense policy?

It starts at the borders.

Not Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya or Timbuktu. We have a massive criminal insurgency threatening to spill over into the US and we have zip, zilch, nada in the way of preparations for it spilling over. Sorry, that doesn't fly and neither do 'open borders' or 'path to citizenship' that doesn't start with an Embassy in a foreign country.

I'm willing to cut down on the illegal immigrant magnets by doing a 'Three Strikes and You're Out' policy for employers:

- First instance, fine and a couple of weeks in the pokey for all involved in the hiring chain from CEO to local approval office in a company.

- Second time is a massive fine (say 10% of the gross income of a business) and a year in Club Fed for all in that hiring chain.

- Third time the company is broken up at auction, never to be reformed and all in the hiring chain go away for 10 years in Club Fed.

There, that is a sane immigration policy in support of our defense policy and should get some of the corporate scofflaws out of the way in no time at all. See how that goes?

I'm sure that would deflate the OWS people in no time and taking the support for the big banks away would collapse their fun little support for tyrannical socialism/communism/progressivism/anarchism. They will hate not having Big Daddy Government to hit up for support, but them's the breaks.

In other words a policy that looks like:

1) A vastly smaller federal government getting back to basics and leaving the States and the people alone, which means ending entire agencies and their regulations all at one go.

2) Ending the entitlements as they cost too much, keeping promises to those on SSA and letting the States figure out if they want something better on their own for medical care.

3) Flat tax, no exceptions, everyone sends a check to the IRS.

4) Defense must start at home at the borders. COIN isn't just for overseas any more.

5) Letting the legal system handle the collapsing banks and corporations either via their own hand in tinkering with regulations that will not sustain them or in hiring those they shouldn't hire. Good companies go unmolested. The bad ones downsize or disappear via normal legal means. Nothing, and I do mean NOTHING, is 'too big to fail'.

Yes, Rome wasn't built in a day.

It was, however, looted in 3.

We are closer to the latter than the former.

For the life of me I can't seem to find a politician who has a clue on what policy is.

Plans come from policy.

Methodology is utilized to enact plans.

If no one has a policy, then their plans are based on nothing, anchored to nothing and entirely too flexible for my taste. I can tell a Presidential Candidate who has no policy in minutes. I am not voting for any who can't articulate what it is as they are, by default, a Progressive. No matter how nice the 'plans' sound, they are words spoken in the winds of opportunism.

Recent Arrivals - 2 months 3 weeks and done

2011-10-07T11:18:00.001-04:00

When last we left the SKS stock refinishing the two spirit based coats had been done and only the final coats were left.

Looking around at various art sites and ship building sites I came across two oil semi-varnish recipes that had elements of what I was looking for in an oil varnish that was simple to make. Beyond the oil I was looking for a bit more hardness and elasticity, both, something that instrument makers look for in the Viol family of instruments. That said running resin in boiling oil was not on my agenda. I wanted something that could be closer to a pre-mixed situation using solvents and what I found were a couple of recipes that hit right in this range. One was a varnish for going over sketches which is equal parts:

Stand Oil

Turpentine

Damar Varnish (1:1 dissolved in turpentine)

Venetian Turpentine

That is a very simple recipe, and leaves you with something that takes a few days to dry. It would have to be applied thinned and then left in a relatively dust free environment for 2-3 days minimum. This was not exactly what I wanted but close.

At a shipbuilding site I hit on a recipe for doing (or re-doing) wood floors, and the parts ratio is as given:

10 parts Tung Oil

1 part BLO

1 part Damar Varnish (1:1)

1 part Turpentine

This is getting extremely close to what I want: a solvent varnish that is high in oil and yet offers some hardening speed for its surface.

At this point I decided that the actual factors wanted would have to include Damar Varnish (1:1) which I already had, Citrus Solvent, Venetian Turpentine and Oil of Turpentine (Rectified Turpentine). The last gives some 'bite' to a layer for adhesion to a previous layer (if I understand my painting terms correctly), plus it is mentioned in a wide number of older recipes for other varnishes. I still needed good drying, low tack time, and hardness with elasticity. Thus I went with the base plus stuff mixed into it which is a great compromise as these things go.

My final mix is:

10 parts Tung Oil

1 part BLO

1 part Citrus Solvent (then 1.5 on second coat)

1 part Venetian Turpentine

1 part Oil of Turpentine

This gives a thin, light colored varnish that can be applied from a simple dropper bottle and I used 1.5 ml as the parts amount. I would up the Citrus Solvent to see if I could cut dry times between coats.

The methodology used is a wet sanding with the varnish with 400 grit sandpaper, do thoroughly with one drop covering up to 9 square inches of stock area sanding with the grain. Then a drop by drop hand rubbing (with latex gloves on) over the entire stock rubbing in the direction of the grain.

Let sit between 2 and 4 hours and clean excess off (it is mostly Tung Oil) and I found that it was tacky to start with but once the rag got moving it went very quickly. Basically you want to get rid of the thick coating (I used about 30 drops total for a coat, with extra added when the sandpaper got dry or when the latex glove stuck to the stock) and leave just what had adhered immediately at the surface.

This was done twice over 2 days and it dries pretty well overnight. If done on the plain wood this stuff nearly disappears. I tried it on some cut boards and one drop spread around nearly vanishes.

After the next day a light going over with 0000 steel wool replacement yields the final result. Here is the right side of the stock, no color correction applied.

I was worried about the darkness that the spirit varnish was giving to the stock and I was amazed that the entire set of tonal qualities lightened just after one application. With two the result is wonderful.

The left side of the stock:

This really is something much, much better than I was expecting after the spirit varnish coats. The entire set of tonal qualities has now evened out greatly from the original material.

After a day of sweating and cursing, and having to do just a bit of sanding and light filing to get off some errant finish, the actual hardware has been installed. So I can now give the finished product:

If you remember this is how it looked coming in:

Yeah, pretty bad and soaked with cosmoline. The entire left rear of the stock looked like something wholly different from the rest of it and with poor definition to it. Now it blends in very well with the rest of the stock, it is a world of difference.

And the right side:

And there you have it.

I want to thank all of those making this possible: Classic Arms Inc.,Steve Kehaya and Joe Poyer for their book The SKS Carbine (CKC45g) 4th Revised and Expanded Edition published by North Cape Publications, Inc. which has been my guide to stripping this weapon, Brownell's, Murray Gunsmithing, Buy Milsurp, Apex Gun Parts, The Real Milk Paint Company, my sister and her co-worker at Moog who helped get the pin pusher made, Colman's Military Surplus, and I can't remember the name of every supply house/ art house/ and reseller of resins that I've had to go to throughout this.

I'm expecting a longer butt pad to increase LOP and a few other bits and pieces to put on, but nothing to change the original equipment.

Now it is time to take it to a gunsmith and make sure I actually put it together right and that it is safe to fire.

Are you a Trustafarian?

2011-10-07T07:59:00.001-04:00

I am ran across the term Trustafarian while perusing an article by Zombie at PJM. She was using it to describe the class of people at The Ongoing Occupation of America post on 29 SEP 2011. I had never run across the term and decided it needed just a bit of personal definition which required a few days to mull it over. By the time I finally started to get the term I then came up with a definition after Herman Cain criticized those at the OWS (Occupy Wall Street/ Out With Sanity/ Ongoing With Stupidity/ Outing Witless Students... take your pick) at Hot Air. I will correct a few spelling errors and such just to make it clear who he was talking about and what a Trustafarian is by what they do.

= = =

You might be a Trustafarian if you are part of the OWS crowd and…

- Have any electronic device starting with an “i-”

- Have a pair of sneakers costing over $100

- Have a shirt, pair of pants or jacket with a logo emblazoned on it

- Have an ‘art’ shirt that cost more than $50

- Have a netbook/notebook/laptop/tablet computer

- Have more rings festooning your body than a packed bar has glasses on the bar

- Have a bandana/headband/keffiyah with a designer tag on it

- Have a pair of shoes that has individual toes as a feature

- Have any piece of clothing other than a belt made out of leather

- Have more pieces of artwork tattoo’d to your body than a SOHO art gallery has

- Have a pre-printed sign because you can’t figure out how to use a magic marker

- Have an item with the mass murderer Che on it

- Spout off about how a system you can’t even understand needing to go because your parents have paid your way through school

- Have a law degree

- Have any degree in any set of studies involving a hyphen or ethnic or gender in its title

- Have more gold jewelry on your body than a pawn shop has in its inventory

- Can say Media Matters with a straight face and think it means something

Yes these are leading indicators of being a Trustafarian.

Any Trustafarian needs to run, not walk, saunter, or just, you know, go more or less in the direction of, the nearest mental health clinic and report yourself with permanent detachment from reality syndrome… they will spend a decade ‘treating’ you and making you poor so you will then have something to complain about.

And if you think you paid too much for your college education then ASK FOR YOUR MONEY BACK as it has done you NO GOOD AT ALL TO GO THERE.

= = =

You see? A handy visual guide to the Trustafarians! If you see someone with MORE than one of these attributes who is at the OWS gatherings (or 'supporting them') you have a Trustafarian: those living off of their parent's trust funds.

Easy to do, no?

Then I realized that they also fit under another term, which is a bit broader, in this headliner at Hot Air about how these OWS folks just might be, you know, POPULISTS! Be still my beating stomach... I commented thusly...

= = =

Just a buncha Trustafarians.

Old hipsters and young dipsters.

The doucheoise.

= = =

Doucheoise was proposed as a new name for hipsters (I'm not going to bother looking up who proposed it) but as the class of people who are douche's, it also overlaps highly with the Trustafarians. In fact all Trustafarians are part of the Doucheoise, but not all Doucheoise are Trustafarians and come by their status via other means. The Trustafarians, in other words, are a sub-species.

Ahh... science!

I did a bit more after that on the Studentia branch of the Trustafarinensi.

= = =

And for the dipsticks complaining about their college loans and blaming the BANKS, just who is it that is ASKING for the money?

Oh, yeah, the COLLEGES.

How about BLAMING THEM for asking so much? And asking for your money back as you didn’t learn a damn thing there other than how to whine, moan and complain about how ‘hard you have it’. The banks are pushing you asshats to take out a loan the SCHOOLS ARE.

= = =

Yup! It isn't the banks, folks, but the bubble of higher education that Insty has been talking about for a couple of years. It is a much, much larger bubble than SSA, home loans, and medical cost inflation from 1970 to present. It is the biggest bubble right next to all of them taken together next to our federal debt. All these little bubbles gotta pop to get things set straight and the big one has to go down by removing the inflator we call 'government'.

Now since I'm the helpful sort with the guidebooks and such, though in no way the Shell Answer Man because I don't take questions, I decided to sum up not only what the problem is for the various sub-species of the Doucheoise, but what you need to do about it. I really don't have time for real posts these days, what with finishing up my SKS stock and getting the thing re-assembled, plus having another 2-4 projects on my agenda, so these will have to do.

This is from another Hot Air thread at a Quotes of the Day posting. A spelling error and one typo corrected, mangled syntax and logic left as-is.

= = =

Remember in a deal in which the schools ask for more money and the banks lend it to students, who is to blame for the high cost of education?

A) The schools for CHARGING IT?

B) The students wanting the money to PAY FOR IT?

C) The banks for LENDING IT?

These OWS people blame C, put no responsibility on B and can’t think that those actually doing A who are the originators of the cost are to blame.

Now put in homes and who is to blame?

A) Those asking for more money than a home is worth?

B) Those wanting to pay those high amounts?

C) The banks for lending the money?

Again if you are an OWS’r you blame C, put no responsibility on B, and never, ever blame those asking for unrealistically high prices A.

In each case the root cause of the ‘problem’?

Government regulation that sets the playing field for giving loans. In the first part are federally backed loans that MUST be paid back to the federal government and that you can’t get around paying back.

In the second it is the government determining the risk, setting regulations as to who MUST be able to get loans for FAIRNESS which allows such things as NINJA loans to meet pre-set quotas by the regulators.

Now when you put the government as the D option in both, who is to blame?

A) Those asking for extraordinarily high amounts that they know YOU CAN GET via regulation?

B) Those seeking such high amounts and not questioning the ACTUAL VALUE of what they are getting and not blinking at the COST being asked?

C) Those providing the money as intermediaries for the government regulatory system because, to do business, they have NO OTHER OPTION in those realms?

D) The government for rigging the system to allow A to put B into debt via C the regulated intermediary?

The banks are not the villains, here, although they do share some blame in setting up D, it is the regulatory system, itself, that is swayed by such input. When A and C collude with D, it is B that is shafted.

The answer to what to do is to get D out of the equation so that they do NOT write exacting ‘fair’ regulations and only put out statutes against misrepresenting value and cost from both A and C so that B can make a decision based on actual facts, not promises of ‘fairness’ in a system being rigged against them.

These Trustafarians, the members of the Doucheoise, are HELPING those in the A category to vilify the C category so that they can get MORE REGULATIONS THAT DON’T WORK AND MAKE THINGS WORSE from the D category. They are not playing class warfare but committing economic suicide on a personal basis. If they meant what they said they would join the Tea Parties and work to get the government out of the system so that there is less to no government save for cases of fraud that need be ruled upon. As it is they are supporting the existing fraud-backed structure and want nothing to do with removing it.

Yes Rome wasn’t built in a day.

It was, however, sacked in 3.

You are seeing the sackers, not the builders, wanting their bite and not expecting the collapse to effect them one little, tiny, bit. If they get what they want they have a greatly limited life span because of what they get, that will shorten down decades to years, months, weeks or even days.

If you aren’t prepared for that disaster NOW then you will be joining them.

Your job is to survive, help and educate. And all three MUST be done AT THE SAME TIME. And to those who don’t listen, who scream and rage, you must turn away FROM to help those that WILL listen to reason. That is your duty as a citizen to your fellow citizens. Those that aren’t listening, who are screaming, who are marching… they are the walking dead if they get their way. You can save them but only if you do the right things as a citizen, now. It all depends on YOU being civilized each and every single day of your life no matter HOW BAD things get, all the way to your last breath on this earth. Only your fear will stop you…

= = =

All that stuff I've written about for survivalism, DIYism, plus looking at terrorism, organized crime, money laundering, politics... all that stuff... still comes down to you.

These people blockading their common sense for freebies don't understand how the world works and just want everything to be free. Just like the USSR! They can't live there any more since it collapsed under the weight of what happens when no one CAN achieve and everything is FREE and damned scarce, but that doesn't matter to the Trustafarians.

It does matter to the person wanting to be civilized and a citizen.

What you must do in such conditions is clear and I've spelled it out via hundreds of posts.

Your duty to your fellow citizens is to survive and be the one at the other end offering a hand up to a better life of personal liberty and freedom.

The verbiage that goes with being a free man, an individual, is well known and alien to the ears of those in the Trustafarian crowd, but should strike home to any who wish to lead a free life of equal justice, not 'fairness' as what is 'fair' is in the eye of the beholder:

I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, de-briefed or numbered.

My life is my own.

The OWSr's? They DO want to be pushed (look at how they got there by having helpful 'organizers' push them), stamped (see the guidebook?), indexed (just HOW MANY loans do they have they can't pay up on?), briefed (again the organizers), de-briefed (they are going to lose everything including their briefs), numbered ('we are the 0.00001% who are the 99%'!). Listen to any of the 'call outs' done by 'organizers' or 'radicals' or Frances Fox Piven or Cornel West and you begin to imagine Monty Python's Life of Brian in which the call out is 'You are all individuals' and the response 'YES WE ARE ALL INDIVIDUALS' save for that radical saying 'I'm not...'

There you go!

Now back to my normal business around here.

Gotta get that SKS up and running and then put the drum magazine through its paces now.

I will not be pushed.

And neither should you.

Recent Arrivals - 2 months 2 weeks 3 days

2011-09-26T10:00:00.001-04:00

When last we left the intrepid SKS stock refinisher he was at the point where the stock had now gotten its proper oil finish. There was far more even tonal qualities than at the start with the first Tung oil go-around and the actual deep tonal differences side to side, front to back and top to bottom had finally started to even out. Only the grip area remained as a darker area and that is more from past use than actual wood tone differences. As a polymerized oil is good against some chemicals but not so hot against water, it was time to put on finish that would start to address that problem. This meant some older chemistry in the form of shellac with sandarac resin and a dollop of Venetian Turpentine to help give some flexibility to the shellac layer and cut its gloss just a bit. As seen previously such a mixture applied to fresh wood without any oil on it gives a matte coating (and one of the best I've seen so far for these things).

I had thought that adding a bit of lamp black (soot or 'inletter's black') would help, but a test board proved out that you get a weak black coating that isn't opaque and that you really can't do much with. Here the original matte is on the right and the blackened is on the left with one, single brush on coating.

Unless this is your aim, don't do this. If you are going for that 'wood that has been out in the sun for ages' look, then this is your solution. A couple of coats of this and anything later should look like driftwood... you know that is very tempting as an alternative if you wanted someone to think you had a decrepit piece of wood and then demonstrate that it was as sounds as fresh wood...

But I digress, yet again.

Now on to the actual varnish put on the stock.

Right side:

An attempt to get something without a flash artifact...

Note reflected light from varnish.

And on to the left side:

To me this is a pretty glossy varnish, although not as glossy as the original shellac. When applied over oil worked wood it is in no way matte in character. With that said it is very hard to say that the appearance is that of one applied 'over' wood in that it doesn't have any great amount of depth to it as, say, a Browning Auto-5 clear coat has. Yet it is not what most military users ever want in a color scheme as it is both too light and too glossy for what people consider for a gun stock.

This is, however, meeting a number of original criteria in showing up the actual beauty of the wood and retaining much of the original wood markings (including imperfections that were done at the arsenal or at the original manufacturing site). It is also done utilizing what would be available in the 1950's in Yugoslavia (although searching around a bit for some of the items might make it a bit harder to do). Here is how what has been done stack up against the original criteria at this point:

1) This will sand down (with 400 grit or higher sandpaper at this point) and steel wool replacement or bronze wool will also knock it down. Still high on the upside for finishing here.

2) Dries in one day - All applications do that to-date.

3) Must be able to take high temps near the barrel. This is not a Mosin-Nagant (which, it has been quipped, should have had a finned barrel with a handguard under it) but an SKS in which most of the real high temp work isn't next to the wood. All the inlet areas have an oil only finish, save where there is no actual receiver contact (the screw hole areas in the bottom and the front and rear of the stock for sealing purposes).

4) After steel wool replacement or bronze wool, I can add another finish over the spirit finish.

5) Visually appealing. To me this is getting to be pretty nice for a total amateur's first time around with a gunstock. I have, luckily, fooled around with other wood and am keeping to the KISS principle here. Remember to 'Keep It Simple, Stupid'.

6) Nothing fancy. This is not only not fancy to this point, but something that could have been done in the 19th century.

7) Need not match arsenal look. It doesn't. Anything over what I got is an improvement.

8) Easily available materials in Yugoslavia circa 1950's or early 1960's. In theory, yes, all of this to this point is available at that place at that time or with local substitutes.

9) Low maintenance. Unknown but the spirit varnish layer promises much of that if it has a final layer over it.

10) Hunting scent friendly. So far, so good, but would need nothing more than what is normally done on a hunt to hide its scent.

Things that can be done to give a final finish to the stock to get to the putting the hardware back in:

- An oil varnish like a spar varnish. Mix varnish with 1/3 Tung/BLO/Walnut oil and 1/3 Turpentine. I'm looking for a nice matte varnish for this. If going with a varnish that has polyurethane then #8 and possibly #6 are crossed off the list, which kills some variations like Waterlox if I read their ingredients correctly. Something like one of the Tried And True finishes would keep things in the ballpark if you could get someone like an instrument maker to supply an oil varnish in Yugoslavia (which they did have at the time, just tough to get in the field). If I could make my own without involving boiling oil but gently heating an oil, then I would consider doing that. More research on the last is necessary.

- Oil coat. Apply thin (1:1 with Citrus Solvent) for a quick coat and forget the glossy appearance. Or apply straight which is quick, easy, adds some alcohol resistance to the varnish and use 400 grit sandpaper to knock down the gloss, as well. Quick, easy, fun to do!

- Wax coat. A nice, sturdy wax that goes on thin would do the job of adding a different solvent resistance to the stock. This I can actually formulate my own with, yes, ingredients found in Yugoslavia at the period (if you can get waxed shellac and beeswax, then you can easily do this).

- Leave as-is, and do NOT use alcohol based gun cleaners (that means taking car with the old Backwoods formula of 1/3 Rubbing Alcohol, 1/3 Hydrogen Peroxide and 1/3 Murphy's Oil Soap mixture). Actually this is an option if temperature resistance will hold up at the exhaust port holes.

This is a different concern from the Mosin-Nagant that has a free floating barrel through the handguard area where the SKS has exhaust port holes for the piston that chambers the next round. With the Mosin there is hot air build up in the space between the barrel and handguard with the wood serving as a buffer for the finish. In the SKS the hot air is immediately exhausted out (in part) through the vents in the handguard with some intermix in the space between the handguard and the receiver. That really needs something that can take that immediate hot air mix which mixes with warm air in the piston then cooler air next to the receiver during the forward stroke (pulling air in) and then on the backstroke (exhausting the air). In theory that should be below the 140-180 degrees F. damage temps for shellac or shellac/resin. In theory. This is the old 'Theory and Practice Conundrum' rearing its head yet again. With that said, the arsenal only expected naturally polymerized BLO to do the job, so shellac should be relatively safe.

Actually a clear-coat enamel was available in Yugoslavia at the time (actually that dates back to the late 19th century via alkyd paints if I'm reading my history right), so picking up a matte clear bottle of Testor's would do the job... and enamel hardens with heat... hmmmm... decisions, decisions...

Recent Arrivals - 2 months 2 weeks

2011-09-25T11:15:00.001-04:00

This week started with using steel wool replacement to knock back the prior application of BLO/Walnut/Cedar oil from the prior post.

I was a bit surprised that this did start to lighten up the tonal qualities of the stock, overall, although not by a lot.

The left side of the stock:

The left part of the stock is now getting to the point, here, where there is a darkening going forward from the butt end towards the fore end part of the stock, where it then lightens up a bit.

The right side of the stock:

The right side of the stock suffers this more top to bottom and less so across the main line of the grain going from butt to fore end area. That top rear part at the end of the inletting is just dark. The actual hand grip area started to lighten up just a bit which gave me a clue as to what to do next.

Hand grips are the most handled part of a stock (naturally) and it gets the most impression from the user over time. This tends to press the grain down and any oils that come from the users hand tends to stay in that area. The upshot of it is that there is a burnishing effect (which I tried to remove with gentle sanding as the cartouche marks are there, also) along with darkening from skin oils (above and beyond any finish and what the cosmoline did). I don't actually want to remove all of that as the rifle should show prior use, but I do want some of the actual grain to show through clearly. This time the 0000 steel wool replacement was actually doing some of that, and my next course of action was clear.

What I did next was to apply straight BLO which was hand applied going with the grain to get an even coating across the stock and handguard. After that came the 400 grit sandpaper and giving the darkest parts of the stock a going-over with it and along the grain. There started to be some improvement at the grip area, and also in those areas that suffer from having darker tonal qualities (left/center part of the stock and right butt/bottom, top/inletting rear and fore/central). This was done as the BLO was applied so that added BLO could be finger-dipped on to help smooth the sanding. I paid a bit of attention to a couple of inlet areas that are rough (and will generally remain so) and a couple of larger pore areas that haven't gotten sealed yet.

I let that sit for about an hour and a half before wiping off excess oil, then again at four hours before letting it sit overnight. After that, I repeated the process with pure Tung oil to get a bit more of grain snap going on. It was hand apply, sand, add more as needed, let sit for two hours, wipe, sit for another two hours, wipe, and let it dry overnight before the final morning wipe and going over with steel wool replacement.

Now for what it looks like after that process.

The right side of the stock:

For the first time there is now a generally more even set of tonal qualities on the right hand side of the stock. The butt/bottom is no longer so starkly different as it was at the start of the process. While the upper part at the end of the inletting is still darker, it is now within a set of tones that looks like it actually belongs to the same wood as the rest of the stock. There is a bit of darkening in the fore end area, but again it is no longer a stark contrast.

The left side of the stock:

That last picture still shows the problem with the grip area, just at the neck of the stock transition, but it is nowhere near as bad as it was. The stark ring grain at the butt/bottom is still darker but now helping to balance the overall tone of the area. And while the forward part of the stock is still darker it is a gradual blend from butt to fore end with one part of the grain slightly lighter heading towards the forward grip area.

The handguard remains slightly lighter than the rest of the stock, and the shellac layer still offers a high reflective value.

During today's rub down I noticed that there were shiny flecks of what is oil that would come to the surface after rubbing down a section of the stock. Easily wiped away and I utilized a bit of Citrus Solvent on a rag (no more than a drop or two on the rag at one time) to wipe over those areas and then wipe them dry. This is an indicator that the wood has about all it can take of oils and that what is on there needs to actually polymerize. In other words that is the end of the oil on wood part of the process.

Now for the fun part.

These are two home made spirit varnishes that I whipped up over the last week or two. The top is a mixture of shellac, sandarac, colophony (pine resin), dragon's blood, alcohol and Venetian turpentine. It is the reddish area on the top board and you can see where it has some one coating areas around the main, darker area which is two coats of it. The total drying time, per coat, is about 2 minutes, which is about what it takes for a quick application of 1 lb. cut shellac to dry. The shellac I used is 1 lb. cut of Platina/Light Button Lac, which I had removed the wax from. The dragon's blood gives a near cherry red appearance to the varnish and is from a 19th century recipe. If you ever wondered how great-granddad ever got that cherry look to oak, now you know.

Below that is a coated area between the pencil line and the saw-tooth end of the board. It has had one coat.

The angle on the boards for lighting should highlight it.

Now without trying to show up the gloss.

No?

You do notice how in the last picture there is some darkening of the grain and in the center one there is just a bit of yellow hue to the covered area, right?

What is that stuff that leaves a matte and slightly yellow cast to the wood?

That is the same 1 lb. cut of shellac, with a proportion of sandarac and Venetian Turpentine to it. It is called 'Gun Stock Varnish'. And it dries faster than the red stuff. Close to 30 seconds, actually.

Shellac is one of those coatings that is put on by evaporation (of alcohol in this case) and usually leaves a nice luster to it, and it takes easily to being buffed out with very light abrasives (light grades of pumice or rottenstone). Shellac is the perfect sanding coat as it sands well, fills in the pore spaces, and easily takes on other varnishes or oil in that sanded state (or abraded state with steel wool replacement or bronze wool). It is resistant to water, other resins, stuff like acetone or mineral spirits, and is just about the only thing you can apply to the cut end of sap laden pine that will keep the resin in. I prefer making mine with zero additives from a manufacturer and get the flakes to make my own from a few places. The Mosin-Nagant has garnet shellac as its coating: the only oil is cosmoline that it gets from the arsenal when stored. Oils can get through it (as the amount of cosmoline on a well used Mosin-Nagant stock can attest to) which allows oil finishes to actually do a bonding with the wood and the shellac layer, both.

Downsides of shellac are: it dissolves in alcohol, discolors when heated (which turns it gray), it is a bit brittle and scratches pretty easily. Anything finished with shellac needs something on it (usually wax if you are doing it as a final coat) which is then puts a different layer of protection on the wood.

So if you could start to eliminate the defects by adding other ingredients, you would get a sturdier finish, due to the way the shellac changes its state as it dries. That means that alcohol soluble resins can be tried to change many of the negative qualities of shellac while retaining the positive ones. As mentioned above, sandarac resin is one of those that helps to make the shellac a bit less brittle and a bit more flexible, which reduces its ability to be scratched. Venetian Turpentine is a resin based turpentine (that is it has resin dissolved in it) and it has a lovely texture and color of honey... it even smells nice, though you wouldn't want to eat it... which means it is both a solvent for oils and it helps to add more plastic qualities to alcohol based resin mixtures as it will dissolve into them, too. Common pine resin (or rosin) is what you get in little pouches that pitchers in baseball use. Or you can find some older pine trees that have it already excreted for you if you have a forest of them nearby. That stuff is called colophony and it adds gloss to resin mixtures. Lots of gloss.

Now, having a spirit varnish that is resistant to some pretty nasty chemicals, save alcohol, and that is just a bit flexible enough not to chip off or scratch easily is a real nice concept for a gun stock. A matte finish is also highly desirable and the slightly yellow cast can be varied by either using different shellacs (blond, orange, garnet, or one of the button lacs) means you can do a lovely bit of grain popping with Tung oil or BLO in a few layers and then matte that down with a couple of layers of spirit varnish and then finish up with either another oil coat, a polyurethane varnish, or a wax coat. The fact that there are all sorts of alcohol soluble tints available is a huge plus to getting a lovely finish using something like Platina or Super Blond shellac as a base.

This now brings up the handguard, which has a shellac layer to it. Nice and shiny, isn't it? And lighter, too...

There is one other minor ingredient that one violin maker pointed out must be in all early industrial age finishes as they were made in the early industrial age. That ingredient you would get in any decent sized city or town and isn't horse dung. It is the sure way to start adding just a bit of darkness and reflectivity changes to any finish. The stuff is lamp black, also called soot, known to the gun stock maker's community as 'inletter's black'. The quantities are small, yes, less than a teaspoon per gallon, but many companies went to their outside walls to scrape the stuff off and use it as it had that price of 'free' to it (save for the lung conditions of the era which was a hidden cost). Now if I had to darken up the tonal qualities of the handguard, I would add just a pinch to some spirit varnish and put that on...

So far I have only used 20th century equivalents for mixing, painting, wiping and storing chemicals and equipment for finish application on the gunstock. There is no polyurethane in any of what I have put on. Not even an alkyd pigment or dye. Citrus Solvent is taking the place of turpentine, and they do work the same for thinning oils and drying them, and neither becomes a part of the finish (save Venetian Turpentine which has been around for thousands of years).

If you were stuck out in the boonies of Yugoslavia in the 1950's the hardest thing to get would be the shellac... or the alcohol given its consumption in the region. BLO is known and common. Tung oil less common, but known. Venetian Turpentine can be made and if you have horses, then you already have it. Lamp black you have with any candle. Walnut oil might be scarce, but it is used for cooking. Cedar oil very hard to get, but not unknown especially since you have a ready equivalent from the forests there. Sandpaper might be hard to get at 400 grit, but all the way up to 220 grit you would be OK. Steel wool or bronze wool would be available (hey, you need that stuff for gun CLEANING). For a fit and healthy young adult this process would not take months but at most two weeks, and you could cut back on that to a week if you had any idea what you were doing (or if your company armorer had a clue). Sandarac is the hardest thing on the list of ingredients so far outside of the shellac and/or alcohol ('You want to use your Slivovitz to do what, now?'). The only thing I haven't really hit on is a great, final coating, but could easily use Tung oil or Walnut oil for that.

In other words: you can do it ALL on your own with a bit of knowledge and time to experiment. The time may be hard to come by, but the knowledge and experience is priceless.

Just a few quick thoughts on the GOP 'debate' last night

2011-09-23T09:37:00.001-04:00

First I didn't watch it all the way through. I had some things needing to be done and got through some of the first half-hour and then the last half-hour and have done a bit of reviewing of the 'talking points' put up at other sites.

It wasn't pretty, that's for sure.

My basic complaint about the 'debates' is that they are not helping to educate voters but get out talking points by candidates. Some of that does help to illuminate what a candidate believes, but there is often a stark contrast between their record, their prior works and what they are now running on so as to leave the viewer a bit at sea about exactly what a candidate stands for. This TV format is dated, decrepit and essentially worthless in the modern age as no single question can illuminate a candidate while a single one can sink them. That is not fair to the audience, the electorate and the body politic as a whole. A single bad utterance, a single 'gotchya' and that could be the doom of a candidate who has worthy ideas in other realms but is out on a far limb on one or two topics. Without a more in-depth discussions (not a debate, but a discussion) the electorate is ill-served and the media is well served to become power brokers. That is how they see their function up until 2010: being that decisive 5 point swing for or against a candidate.

At the early stages a different form of discussion would provide a lot more interest, some illumination of individuals and offer a setting whereby the candidates are not about talking points but explaining their points of view.

The best format for this sort of thing I have ever seen on media are the Fred W. Friendly seminars or programs, hosted by the late Mr. Friendly. He was able to bring a diverse group of people in on a subject (be it on the economy, foreign affairs, or social programs) and lead an actual discussion amongst a group of individuals that ranged from politicians and policy wonks to industry analysts and corporate heads, plus a smattering of 'experts' to help keep things going. The questioning by Mr. Friendly was challenging, at times, but served as a basis to help examine differences between perceived political policy and actual effects and outcome. Even on those topics that were non-political, he always served as the intermediary for a discussion so that the audience was served by having a wide array of ideas and idea-makers present to create an understanding of what it was they were saying.

There are very few trusted figures with as good a staff and knowledge as Mr. Friendly today, and fewer still that are trusted as being open and transparent about what they believe and yet to challenge themselves and their own beliefs in front of the public. No hollywood star or even most of the modern news presenters can do that, today. Perhaps Chris Wallace, Britt Hume or Juan Williams (I've seen him put bias aside to be fair on programs, so think he could do this and well) from FNC, but he would need a lot of help getting trusted individuals into a Presidential mix to help move discussions along. Most of the weekend shows and roundtables are too media oriented to do much of any good, and the idea is to find someone who is unbiased and doesn't care about THEIR media image but in leading a discussion.

A major point of such discussions, say in a 2 hour format, would be to have the candidates interact with policy and industry specialists on a topic or set of topics, and keep track of what the candidates can come to agreement upon. The last half-hour would be to let the candidates work out a party platform plank that they can ALL agree to run on. It would be made in PUBLIC, not behind closed doors, and while an audience may be present as observers, they are not participants unless the experts would like to bin some questions on topics so that a few might serve as discussion points.

What this would do is two-fold:

1) It would identify and illuminate commonalities of what needs to be done not just by the President of the US but by political parties. Having a party committee or set of small voting blocks run the platform process is incestuous in nature and needs to be out in the open. Also it would REMOVE those areas from any future 'debates' and winnow things down to the major DIFFERENCES between the candidates. It creates 'common ground' based on the best ideas that every candidate can agree to.

Last night the only good thing to come out of the 'debates' was the essential feeling that there needs to be a major reduction in the size, scope and power of the federal government starting with the EPA, Dept. of Education, and then Dept. of Energy and those parts of Interior dealing with energy. Can we get that as a common platform plank for all the candidates so that the only differences are those candidates who JUST want to do that and those who want to get rid of MORE government?

2) You may or may not like a candidate in all areas, and this would help to show why you agree/disagree with a candidate as they would have time on an essential topic to outline their ideas. What it also does, however, is let those candidates with some very good ideas present them and talk about them which may preserve their good ideas even if they drop out as a candidate. Frankly I like a few things Ron Paul says and agrees with, as I do Rick Santorum and even John Huntsman who I generally disagree with, has some valid ideas on taxation and the economy that need to be explored. You can't do that in a 'debate' setting and, frankly, even the so-called 'top tier' candidates are not shining in areas that are making them lose votes and possibly voters.

I disagree with Rick Perry's stance on illegals, and the general good feelings Mitt Romney has towards just tinkering with a fundamentally broken system of government (where is Chainsaw Al Dunlap when you need him?), as well as Herman Cain's idea of a 'National Sales Tax' which is something that if it could have been done it WOULD have been done by Progressives decades ago as they love new ways to tax people which means it is constitutionally suspect to PROGRESSIVES. That says a lot, right there. Those are just ready examples, mind you, but they are indicative of the entire field in which a candidate can bring some valid ideas to the table and then, as they are forced to get a whole array of answers down pat, are put on a spotlight and expected to answer any question on anything. Yet where there is common ground, there should be no more questions: the answers are known and when they are common to ALL the candidates, then they become something KNOWN to the population as a whole.

As a citizen I am ill-served by the current 'debate' format and venue as it places too much emphasis on the media, gotchya questions, and some cat fighting verbal by-play that raises vitriol and distrust of any candidate taking part in such and the media asking such questions. In these long months long before a Primary, the candidates could serve themselves, each other and the general public by driving out their major points and coming to agreement about major policy needs that they will all agree to go forward with no matter WHO wins the election. Indeed they are expected to help, advise and move these points forward even if one or ALL of them lose. That would help the Congressional delegates to also understand that if they don't run on THIS platform, then they really don't belong in the party and that when they take office they are not only expected to push the platform forward but they can ask for HELP in doing that.

Yes some 'popular' politicians might be forced to leave by having their party credentials pulled, and flee to 'the other party': but do you really want a spineless blob Upon the Hill as YOUR Representative or Senator? Because your vote for a candidate from a party should MEAN something beyond the individuals involved. Even if you generally didn't LIKE a candidate but they AGREE to push these major items forward, you might just reconsider voting on one or two issues and see if the entire platform is a better fit for you even if it DOESN'T contain your one or two issues you care about.

The 'debate'? Some up, some down, lots of smoke, little illumination and no real help for the Nation or its citizens to understand the future that we will build together as citizens. And, strangely, if we can't find candidates individuals who can begin to understand their role as our representatives in government, now, then we will be ill-served in that future and even lose out on a major portion of it because political parties with campaigns and their drift towards being glib and not offering insights into our future well being are an awful way to run a Nation or express the will of the people.

This 20th century format and set of ideas must go in the 21st as the new century is presenting us with the tools to empower the individual to build a future unlike any dreamt of even 30 years ago. It is not the government that is of the horse and buggy era, but our political parties and their foundations, and it is showing badly in this modern age. And if they don't start to adapt NOW then in 50 years they will not be here as the people will find a better way to do things that makes the idea of 'gatekeepers', 'debates' and even 'campaigns' meaningless. And as my predictions on the out years seem to come true much, much, much faster than I ever expect them to, I am having to prepare to see that future within my life time and not too far down the road. That 50 years is a PESSEMISTIC OUTLOOK but the roads all lead away from our current media and party system and nothing they do will hold it together much longer.

We are entering a Dawn of a New Era and it will whipsaw you if you don't prepare for it NOW because it is happening NOW.

Recent Arrivals - 2 months 1 week 3 days

2011-09-19T10:37:00.001-04:00

Onwards with the SKS stock finishing, and it is getting to the home stretch!

When last we left the last Tung oil coat was doing its thing and it was decision time on what to do next.

Some Dr. Science observations on the utilization of Cedar oil allowed the observation that it helps to increase contrast, decrease tonal shifts and reduces drying time of normal oils used for finishing (Tung, BLO and Walnut). A revisit to previously used boards with Cedar oil mixtures has demonstrated that almost all of the aromatic parts of the oil have disappeared after 2 weeks. At most a slight earthy smell has been left that comes from the oil, itself.

I haven't been that satisfied with the contrast on the forward part of the stock, but that is due to the underlying wood having grain with lots of ring artifacts that intersperse into the inter-ring area. Bleaching with oxalic acid demonstrated that these are not introduced by outside artifacts (such as steel wool embedded in the wood from a previous finish) but are actual color and tonal qualities of the wood itself. While it is possible to actually bleach the entire stock to get rid of those natural colorants (mostly tannic acid with some wood resins), I am generally against that for a gunstock as no arsenal would take that sort of care to do that unless it was done to every rifle going through it, and its an added step that is for a military rifle, not a hunting rifle. That and some of the abrasions and abuse suffered while in use have been left as-is with only some sanding done to smooth over rough areas and a bit of glue mixed with wood dust to fill in a one minor surface crack and smooth over a part of the handguard. So far the only attempt at shifting color was done on the handguard with a two layers of shellac after the initial sanding coat and first coat with Walnut oil, and on the arsenal number area of the butt part of the stock to darken that a bit via using a quick brush-on of Walnut oil over applied Tung oil. After putting an oil coat over the shellac (Tung oil), both the handguard and stock were ready for a primary coat.

After hemming and hawing I decided on a BLO/Walnut oil/Cedar oil equal proportion mix with no solvent, just straight oil. Using 3.5ml of each oil mixed together in a stainless steel cup using an acid brush I applied that over the handguard and stock, itself. After 45 minutes I wiped off the excess oil, let it sit for 4 hours and then wiped it down again and let it sit overnight for drying and a final wipe-down.

Here are where things stand and the ambient lighting required the use of the flash for a number of pictures. Way down on the list of 'things I should really make in my copious spare time' is a lightbox. Needless to say it is not a front-burner project.

No flash on this one!

Lots of flash reflection here.

Light coming in from outside does make a difference and clouds started to darken up in the few minutes between pictures.

With that said the top picture shows a far more even set of tonal changes from the rear going to the grip area. This is nearly matched by the upper part of the other side in the lower picture, and there is a nice set of gradations going light to dark to light over the top of the butt portion of the stock and going to dark then much darker to dark along the bottom. It now looks like the wood on the left side of the butt stock actually is a continuation of the tonal qualities coming in from the right.

Notice that the arsenal numbers are nice and dark and in high contrast to the rest of the wood around it. That is the Cedar oil at work with the previous Walnut oil that I only lightly rubbed over in that area. In fact the heaviest areas of rubbing with 0000 steel wool replacement has been on the forward part of the stock with some actual 400 grit sanding up there. It is a nearly vain attempt to deal with the wood grain as it gets so dense in color with all the darker brown and even black specks that there isn't much contrast to begin with.

Now a few other close-ups.

The left part of the butt end of the stock. Numbers are looking good and the stark tonal differences from the grip to the end of the stock are a bit more gradual. I concentrated on rubbing steel wool replacement along the grain over that neck transition above the grip, and its having some effect.

With flash but with less glare. On the forward part of the stock, not much can be done particularly through here. It isn't tight grain, but the growth rings aren't well defined with some specks of bark captured throughout. The handguard with its Walnut and shellac treatments has darkened a bit and now BLO/Walnut/Cedar have actually lightened it a bit. Some gloss is coming from the underlying shellac, which I did rub down. It is still much better than it was and looks like it actually came from the same tree wood, not one two counties over.

This left side has been a PITA to work with. The flash is making it look lighter than it really is. With that said it is seeing some effects from the Cedar oil with the grain a bit better defined.

Right side, excuse the glare. If I have been working to darken the tonal qualities on the left part of the butt end, then on the right I have been working to lighten them and show the grain a bit better. When it came in this was a uniformly dark, mess that might have been wood if you looked at it right, through the cosmoline. The cosmoline hid a wealth of problems with the underlying finish, what there was of it, and trying to deal with the problems (not just cover them over) has been a pain and a joy. The butt end of the stock is turning out to be a real pleasure to work with with relatively well defined grain. Even with the tonal problems of the stock due to the cut angle in the wood (usually done at 7.5 degrees when cut for the arsenal) just catching the grain where it is opening up, this part has yielded the most to hard labor, sanding, and applying finish so as to help even out tone while popping out the grain visually. Almost makes me want to go into stock making, but I don't have a lathe and I have very little chisel experience, as yet.

For all the glare, the flash does help to point out the problems with the wood grain: it is dark, has flecks interspersed in the growth areas, and that causes a darker tonal quality throughout the main portion of the stock. Still I have assiduously worked first sandpaper and steel wool replacement to lighten this area up a bit. It is better than the left side of the stock is for this, that's for sure, but no great shakes. I'm starting to think the tree this came from had a pretty rough life given the condition of the growth ring areas.

And sometimes the flash is absolutely useless.

There is some nice grain in the wood here... even while still having the other problems previously mentioned.

At this point I am no longer that worried about the use of an aromatic oil as the volatiles from it leave the oil very quickly. The entire thing needs another day to let the last application cure, however and then it is either a colorant coat to add some red into the deal (probably a spirit varnish) or just say 'the hell with it' do a light bit with steel wool replacement and put on Waterlox and be done with it. I don't think another oil coat will get me much more than what is currently here or magically lighten the front part of the stock. A shellac colorant layer (aka spirit varnish in one form or another) would increase gloss and then need a final finish layer unless I add something to the shellac.

I am getting into that realm of things and whipping up my first batch of spirit varnish with platina/light button lac with colophony, sandarac and dragon's blood, plus a dollop of Venetian Turpentine, but that is to get a faux cherry look. I might substitute garnet shellac and remove the dragon's blood, which ought to do it, but that will take time to test and experiment with. Spirit varnishes are pretty easy to work with and I need to get a supply of either anhydrous ethyl alcohol or have a family member ship in a case of Everclear for me at 190 proof.

An oil finish is very easy to apply, user friendly with Citrus Solvent, and teaches a lot about how to use it if you are willing to dabble a bit. Every oil varnish recipe I have looked at has the words 'boiling oil' attached to them. Fun, fun, fun!

Recent Arrivals - 2 months 1 week

2011-09-17T09:49:00.001-04:00

After playing Dr. Science for a bit I decided that the best way to move forward with the SKS gunstock was to start the actual application of the finish. As I want to leave my options open I decided on a basic Tung oil sanding coat and then a next sealer coat of Tung oil for the main part of the stock. The handguard needed a bit more than that, however, as the wood it is composed of is very much lighter than that of the rest of the stock.

The procedure I used for that was to apply a basic Tung oil application (at 1:1) with solvent go through a 45 minute set and then wipe process, then another wipe down 4 hours later and then let sit overnight. This is the wipe/wipe/cure process which will be used throughout for all oil applications. I also did the entire gunstock with that (external and inlet areas), then sanded them down the next day with 400 grit sandpaper. Unsatisfied with the tonal qualities of Tung oil on the handguard I then applied a Walnut oil finish to the handguard, compared it to the sanded stock and found it to still be much lighter than I wanted.

At that point I decided to fall back on my favorite of shellac and put on a 50/50 mix of 1lb cut orange/garnet shellac in two coats to the handguard and sanded between coats, let those dry to a very light amount of tackiness and then sanded down the second coat. That did darken things up a bit and yesterday was the application of a second Tung oil over the handguard and gunstock, and did a brushing in of one loaded acid brush with Walnut oil on the left/rear portion of the butt part of the stock in the arsenal numbers area. That went through the standard procedure and received a 0000 steel wool replacement work over along the grain and then some more 400 grit sanding in selected areas to lift some of the darkening that happens with oil layers.

This is the result:

This is the side that received only two coats of Tung oil for the stock, the handguard is as described.

On the shooter's side of the stock the rear of the gunstock is still lighter, but with somewhat more pronounced brown tones than it had previously.

The underside of the stock and I've turned the handgaurd around, as well. There are some lightly rough spots at the left edge of the inletting near the rear screw hole that I have left rough with but minor sanding. I didn't feel it needed any putty treatment and shows wear on the wood, as does the butt end of the stock with minor chips missing from prior use in its former life.

From the top of the stock one can see the tonal gradations front to rear a bit better on the non-shooter side of the stock.

The rubdown with steel wool replacement and light sanding to lift tonal qualities in dark areas of the stock also revealed a somewhat slick feel to the stock, meaning the oil needs a bit more curing time. I will check it again in a couple of hours and then decide on what the final application(s) should be.

Putting on my Dr. Science hat for a moment:

I am pleased with a separate test of 1:1:1 BLO:Walnut:Cedar as leaving a matte finish, toning down the yellows but increasing the contrast with the browns vs inter-grain areas of white wood. Aromatic oils do help to thin down the other oils I used and decrease drying time and may actually speed the curing time by being aromatic. Because of the aromatic nature, however, and the need for molecules to detach over time, it would not be safe to put on a finishing layer that did not allow such molecules to go through the coat. Thus I wouldn't trust a spar varnish unless it had some proportion (at least 25%) of a Cedar oil in it if I applied the BLO/Walnut/Cedar mix to it.

Linspeed has fallen out due to the fact that it was nearly solid in the glass jar, which indicates it had sat in some exposure to air for a time and cold not be depended upon for a final finish. It had progressed beyond oil to gel and solid, and there is no way to really reverse the chemical reaction once it has taken place.

I do have the Cabot Spar Varnish available and as it is a finish that flexes over time, may prove more suitable to a gunstock's final finish coat. As I don't want to run a multi-month test to see how that reacts with Cedar oil or with Cedar oil mixed into it, I hold that in reserve as a possibility.

Note that if the Cedar oil does actually decrease cure time, then it will also help to cure previous applications of Tung oil via that process. On my test board I used no solvent and the oils ran thin and fast at the 1:1:1 ratio, just as had happened in prior tests. Adding 1 or 2 parts of Citrus Solvent would thin that even more, meaning less oil and better if thinner coverage. For brushing purposes 1:1:1 is perfectly acceptable because of the low viscosity of both Walnut and Cedar oils.

A final way I might be able to darken the handguard is to add a tiny amount of lamp black (common soot) to the oil mix, which is a method a few violin makers have used to change the refractive index of their varnishes and help to absorb some light in some directions (due to the nature of soot it will not form a single angle alignment in a varnish or oil application) while reflecting it in others.

I have used shellac intermixed for non firearms purposes (like putting it on my router table) and have noted no problems with it. As it forms an impermeable layer to the movement of water and other small molecules (say components of oil breaking off from the parent structure during curing) and has heat sensitivity problems, I used it sparingly on the handguard. With that said Mosin-Nagant rifles I own have gotten far, far, far too hot to touch on the surface of their handguard pieces (I have gotten the blisters to prove that) and I know that cured shellac on wood surface is pretty tough stuff and not a wilting flower in the wood finishing department for firearms. It has not clouded or otherwise changed its clarity due to that amount of heat. Intercoated between oil finish may be a different story and re-doing the handguard would be very much faster than doing the entire stock, that's for sure.

Shellac is very much not what is used on the SKS gunstock, but worth consideration if it can perform the necessary functions of protecting the stock as well as an oil based system.

One long, long, long term worry is that oils do react slowly with the underlying wood and while cases of wood softening are rare, they do happen. If I had to redo the stock I would actually aim for a shellac sanding coat of platina or platina/light button lac or blonde shellac as a base for the stock and garnet for the handguard. After sanding could come the oil finishing which would allow the stock to have much of its wood protected by the shellac and perhaps allow a means for some lighter molecules to finish their reaction with their surroundings and not continue them. With that said there are some really beautiful oil finished rifles from more than 130 years ago that show no wood degradation, so much depends upon the wood, the oil, the time, the environment in which the stock has been stored/used.

I am still, at this late date, undecided on the final top coat composition.

BLO is traditional and only changes color composition slowly over time. It is the oil used on SKS gunstocks when the arsenal remembers to finish them, that is... or allow the BLO to actually cure before placing them in cosmoline...

Tung oil has performed very well due to its being a bit lighter in viscosity than BLO and only does a minor hue shift to the yellow as compared to BLO. It is not a traditional SKS oil, but looks good on beech wood more than 40 years old.

A mixture with Cedar oil promises some interesting components and may safeguard the stock against some longer-term biological attacks due to the nature of the oil.

Spar Varnishes are great for outdoor use and flex well with changes in climate, humidity and temperature so that the finish doesn't offer cracks to expose underlying work to the elements.

At this point it is a toss-up, but I can say that the stock does not look like Bubba had gotten to it. For that I would look at some of those lovely chrome paints after basecoating with white, and then putting on a thick automotive clearcoat.... hmmmm.... shiny!

Dr. Science plays with wood finishes - Part 3

2011-09-13T07:44:00.001-04:00

Today's entry is about how changing wood media can change your perspective on what a finish does. The board change-over to one with darker tonal qualities with different hue for the grain was proposed to offer a different perspective on what each oil and oil mixture would do. As the gunstock I am about to finish has a variety of wood grain densities, getting something that would evenly enhance those tonal qualities and yet at the same time flatten them has been a hard thing to do. Tung oil has a light yellow cast to it when dry, BLO has a deeper yellow cast to it at the same point and Walnut oil has a light brown cast to it. Adding Cedar oil tends to dampen hue shifts, increase contrast, thin out the above oils and has an aromatic quality to it. Unfortunately if what I have read of Cedar oil is correct, when used as a mixture with other oils, there is then the requirement to have a small amount of it in layers going over that layer. This is not bad if going it alone with just the pure base oils, but if using something like a pre-mixed oil there will be a further need to experiment with that pre-mixed oil solution with Cedar oil.

On to the tests so the results of a large set of test applications can be seen. The board used was the back of luan board (not the front, but the side with the dark brown and red grain).

Columns of application mimic that of the original tests, in that they each vary the oil to solvent proportions (Straight, 3:1, 2:1 and 1:1), and then go from the Straight oils on the left, to a 3:1 then 2:1 base oil with Cedar oil mixture, then a final set of four columns of Tung oil and BLO to Walnut and Cedar at 2:1:1 and 2:2:1.

There are many problems in doing such a test, not the least of which is that as oils get lower viscosity they tend to flow with the wood grain (normally a good thing). I had left separating columns between the Straight and then Cedar admixture columns, but could not do that for the last Cedar admixture and base oil/Walnut oil/Cedar oil mixture. Thus final analysis is done using a relatively small area within each box to determine shift in tonal qualities and grain popping.

Three pictures are taken to demonstrate the problem of how a simple shift in lighting angle changes what you see on the board.

And then an attempt to get even lighting on the board:

Due to the nature of the board it is very difficult to do measurements as a minor change in lighting direction changes the underlying reflectance of the wood structure, thus changing what can be perceived in each sub-test area.

Grain spacing varies widely across the board, which was desired, from nearly 35 grain lines per inch (of over 75% of grain doing an edge to edge crossing) to 12 glpi in the less dense areas.

As the grain coloration is red, it has shown great contrast enhancement even with straight BLO, unlike what the white wood tests would indicate.

Yet, for all that, the initial white wood tests hold firm in that straight BLO does add a distinctive yellow hue which also tends to flatten wood contrast. Tung oil has a light yellow hue shift to it and adds only minimally to contrast enhancement. While Walnut oil does add a brown hue to its test areas, they are hard to differentiate as the background inter-grain color is also a light red-brown.

These changes are very hard to discern on the board, however, and one must have a constant light source that is near to the board and magnifying glass when using 1.5" x 1.0" strips to apply finish to. In particular the reflectance of the red grain tends to wash out minor tonal variations, which makes the sparseness of it in some sections of the board vital for examination.

The final variable area on the right of the board, broken down into four columns for the Walnut and Cedar oil admixtures, does indicate that even at a 2:1:1 set of ratios that the grain does darken moderately to the brown and has somewhat better contrast enhancement. At 2:2:1 some of the contrast enhancement is lost and there is an overall darkening of the wood grain both in growth and inter-growth areas.

Conclusion:

This test is more confirmatory in nature and demonstrates that there is a fall-off of what Cedar oil can do for reducing gloss and increasing contrast while reducing the hue shift of other oils. In all cases it does decrease the gloss of other oils, even at the least concentration (2:2:1) with other oils. At that lowest concentration the hue shift of other oils starts to re-appear as a factor for consideration.

Overall Conclusions:

Finding a oil finish for beech gunstock with a variety of grain densities and tonal gradations across the stock is difficult to do. While the most common gunstock finishing oil BLO is preferable for the look it brings to a gunstock, that is more via recent tradition and extreme ease of application than one of bringing out the natural qualities of the wood. Once you begin to see military gunstocks from a wide variety of Nations, you begin to see that it is the oddballs that are not finished with BLO that appear out of place. Yet with the Mosin-Nagants a simple change in growth area for the gunstock between Russia and Finland will mean a very stark contrast between the look of the gunstocks. They are finished with shellac, not BLO, and thus have a better opportunity to show the character of the underlying wood than does BLO.

Testing relatively non-traditional oils for finishing demonstrates a better opportunity for bringing out characteristics in the wood that may then have a possibility to being visually more appealing while containing much of the flattening effect of BLO via later layers of finish. The ability of Walnut oil to bring out the browns in wood grain is one that is both startling and pleasing, and it already has the start of the darker brown to red-brown seen in many military BLO finished gunstocks. Tung oil, being less reactive and having a lower hue shift with it means that a base or sanding coat(s) will then modify the later final appearance to one that is lighter than normal BLO finished gunstocks.

Of particular surprise is the changes that Cedar oil brings to wood finishing. Typically used on floors for a 'natural' looking finish, it brings very few changes to the hue of underlying wood when applied straight. When mixed with other oils it does multiple things simultaneously: flattens the gloss, improves contrast and lightens hue shifts. If used to make a hunting friendly firearm the utilization of Cedar oil at some level to all the finish coats requires a re-thinking of what the final characteristics of the gunstock will be. It may be very hard to utilize Cedar oil to get its desired effects and get something close to a standard BLO or arsenal finish. It is unknown what the effects would be of having a Cedar oil mixed topcoat on top of BLO or Tung oil coats would be, although surface adhesion should not be a problem what it will do with grain characteristics is problematical without finishing a full gunstock in that fashion.

From my initial set of parameters to examine results it is #5 of being visually appealing for beech wood that is key. I do not mind a non-standard finish if it performs this function well as a sanding and/or base coat. For this BLO cut with Cedar oil is preferable due to the ability to make grain pop, have high contrast and yet have a low gloss finish. To completely finish that, however, means that #4 is impaired as once you start with Cedar oil you must either cut concentration per layer or risk having the next coat not properly adhere to it. Aromatic oils are just that - they allow distinctive hydrocarbon chains to come off of their structure and that is something that further coats must allow.

Thus to retain #5 a relatively straight oil mixture must be used and that indicates Tung oil at 1:1 with solvent for sanding coat and inletting coat. This dries quickly, is thin and otherwise can be easily sanded (that from experience). At such a low concentration it does very little to shift tonal qualities, unlike BLO. A 2:1 mixture can be used for a base coat or more of 1:1 for a thin base coat can also serve. The first sanding coat will be sanded at 320 grit and then the base coat will be done at 400 grit. All other coats will get a 600 grit sanding between applications.

After the sanding and base coats the major coats will either be BLO or the commercial article Linspeed. The latter tends towards more of an arsenal or traditional finish color shift and darkening at a faster rate than does BLO. As its name implies, it is faster drying than BLO which is a plus. On the downside it is a commercial mixture with many unknowns involved if trying to modify it for use with other oils on application.

A hunting friendly coat can be applied last either as a Cedar admixture oil layer or mixing Cedar oil with a thinned wax. A wax may be preferable as it can be re-applied as needed and removed in a relatively easy fashion if the Cedar oil scent is not wanted for storage or use elsewhere (at the range, say).

Some variation to this can happen if the need to bring out browns is needed between coats, and a thinned layer of walnut oil can be used for that.

Notes:

- Typical amounts used for application were in the 5ml range for oils, and adding solvent reduces viscosity. A typical acid brush can hold 5ml easily but cannot coat four areas of 1.5" x 1.0" when only Straight oil with no solvent is used. At all other ratios, 5-10ml of finish can easily coat that much, and at the high end there is plenty left over as the application fluid is so thin.

- Luan board is not a good substrate for testing finish types to examine tonal gradations. Doing a comparison test piece examination over the board strains the eyes and counting the grain lines is a difficult process.

- Pipettes were failing during this test as the bulbs on many of them were breaking apart. By the end of the test only one of the original four pipettes had survived the testing situation. A bulkier pipette from a Testors paint kit was substituted and washed frequently.

- It is possible to get stainless steel cups squeaky clean. This is required between each test set-up.

As it was, so shall it be

2011-09-11T00:00:00.000-04:00

Never forgive.

Never forget.

Dr. Science plays with wood finishes - Part 2

2011-09-10T13:30:00.001-04:00

Today was the examination of results from yesterdays tests started with combination of oils for a first coat, sanding sealer finish for a beech wood gunstock. The tests have been done on anonymous 'white wood' bought in 1x6 boards from the local Home Depot, and yesterday's tests gave some good indications on some general directions to go in this. One of the minor points for the finish (making it woodland scent compatible) meant the utilization of Cedar oil as one of the finish types. On its own, while having a nice aroma, it doesn't do much, but does leave a very thin finish on the wood. From that the question of what happens when both Tung and Boiled Linseed Oil are mixed with Cedar oil was to be examined. Also started was a new oil typically not used for modern gunstocks that will be presented a bit further on.

All methodology remains the same, save that both boards used for the test got a 2 hour blotting to get excess oil off of them, so that there wouldn't be any gumming as had happened with BLO in the previous test.

Two ratios of main oil to Cedar wood oil were done: 3:1 and 2:1.

Oil to solvent continues to be varied by: Straight oil mix, 3:1 oil to solvent, 2:1 and 1:1.

Lighting remains similar, which is poor.

Humidity has varied in a range between 40 and 60%, but temps have been constant around 70 F.

All other apparatus and items remain the same.

Now to the board:

The top two rows are Tung oil and BLO with a 3:1 ratio to Cedar wood oil, and the bottom two are at 2:1 in the same order.

In the previous test BLO has not been applied to fine grain wood and that happened in this test in the 2:1 ratio, bottom row.

Now the straight and the mixture boards side by side:

Some of the reflection off of the BLO middle row on the left is part of what the finish looks like. It has a somewhat glossy finish when used straight with solvent.

This is in contrast to being mixed with Cedar oil at both 3:1 and 2:1 ratios. There is less of the noticeable yellow cast from BLO in rows 2 and 4 on the right and the long, sparse wood grain is now clearly popping out visually. Additionally the fine grain on the bottom shows that BLO mixed with Cedar wood oil improves definition and contrast of closely spaced wood grain without adding a yellowish cast to it (at 2:1). BLO and Cedar wood oil seem like a very good mix of oils to gain high contrast in light woods while dulling the gloss of the finish.

Tung oil has behaved similarly in losing some of its cast from the finish and having a higher definition of difference between the light and dark colors of the wood grain.

What Cedar wood oil brings to both Tung and BLO is to increase contrast, decrease any yellowish cast to the finish and generally improve the color that is brought by the oils to the wood grain. For percentages of 25% and 33% (1 part in 3 and 1 part in 2) this is fascinating. Cedar wood oil is a contrasting agent, gloss flattener and reduces native oil viscosity of Tung and BLO, so that even when used straight it both oils flow easily off of the brush and not like syrup.

Next up is the third oil being used:

This is Walnut oil used to finish salad bowls and some wooden eating utensils and has previously been used with cabinetry and even gunstocks before the modern era. Here the test is with straight oil to solvent in the top row, 3:1 to cedar oil in the middle row and 2:1 in the last row. The columns continue to be Straight (no solvent), 3:1 oil to solvent, 2:1 and 1:1.

Another shot to reduce some of the reflection on the finish:

Walnut oil for this light wood is a different experience than either Tung or BLO as it introduces a deeper brown to the grain, while Tung brings a yellow-brown cast and BLO a yellow cast to it. On both tight grain and widely spaced grain, Walnut oil has a deep effect on coloration and contrast when dried. As with both BLO and Tung oil, Cedar wood oil brings a higher level of contrast when used with Walnut oil. For light woods this is a very visually appealing finish at one coat, and it is food safe as well at least for the straight oil.

Now a comparison of Walnut oil to the other straight oil board, with the rows being Tung oil, BLO and Cedar wood oil.

The browns brought out in Walnut oil are similar to that brought out by Tung oil, but without a very light yellow cast that Tung oil has. The cast is, instead, light brown which tends to flatten contrast with Walnut oil even while making the grain appear deeper. The starkest contrast is the 3:1 Walnut:Cedar blend and straight BLO with similar wood grain: where BLO does little to enhance the contrast and brings a distinctive yellow cast and gloss to the finish, the Walnut/Cedar mix deepens the browns and has a flatter gloss to it. At the highest proportions of Cedar oil and solvent (at the lower right) Walnut oil is losing some of the stark popping of the grain as seen in all other parts of the Walnut treated board but still compares favorably to straight Tung oil at high solvent mixture (1:1).

Now for all three boards side by side and a few shots to try and get some perspective on conditions:

There has been no color compensation done to these pictures nor to ones in the previous post. Most of the deep yellow cast comes from lighting conditions, not the finish or wood itself, at this point, and tonal variations only show up on close inspection.

Conclusion: The one defect of this set of tests is that they are done on 'white wood' and not old grade beech stock. Tentative conclusions are just that, and not indicative of what will happen on a darker wood with less natural contrast to it.

Some general conclusions about Cedar wood oil as an additive to regular finishing oils can be made, however.

First - It is a very light oil for finishing wood, and does not leave a thick finish like BLO does.

Second - It imparts very little tonal shift to the wood it is on as a finish when used straight.

Third - As an additive it performs many functions to the finish of other oils. It is not a simple 'does one thing additive'.

Fourth - When added to Tung oil, BLO or Walnut oil, Cedar oil tends to dull gloss in the finish.

Fifth - Also when added to the above it reduces yellow and yellow-brown tonal shifts.

Sixth - Also when added it enhances tonal shift on the dark part of wood grains.

Seventh - Taken cumulatively as an additive it is a contrast enhancer and gloss flattener.

Eighth - When added to other oils it decreases viscosity and drying times of the other oils tested.

If pressed at this point I would go with either a Tung oil or BLO mix with cedar oil at 2:1 concentrations as a sanding coat, and then add small amounts of cedar oil to all further coats for adhesion. Walnut oil might do for a second to last finish coat if browns needed to be deepened and brought out visually.

Notes:

When prepared in tiny batches of <10ml in size, Cedar wood oil has a pronounced change to the viscosity of other oils.

Areas prepared with Cedar wood oil mixtures dried faster even when no solvent/drier was added to the mixture, although after two hours there was still visible oil on the surface of all samples, they were beginning to be puddles.

At concentrations above 25% of Cedar oil in a mixture and 1:1 solvent ratios, the drying time was approximately 20 minutes. At 2:1 they were upwards of 60 minutes, after which only droplets were left on the surface.

Walnut oil is of lower viscosity to start with and runs easily with even a small amount of solvent added to it.

When making a Walnut oil mix with citrus solvent, one gets hungry as they are reminded of salad dressing. Prepare only after meals, not before, as it is distracting.

A thorough set of tests will need to be done on luan board on the dark wood side as it is a good representative of old beech wood, save the ring grain is red, not brown. This will take a couple of days to set up.

Dr. Science plays with wood finishes - Part 1

2011-09-09T12:13:00.001-04:00

scientific method,

n a formal style of study or research in which a problem is identified, pertinent information is assembled, a hypothesis is advanced and tested empirically, and the hypothesis is accepted or rejected. [The Free Dictionary]

Well there you go!

I'm looking to figure out which is the best wood finish to put on my SKS gunstock as a first coat.

I have some requirements:

1) Must sand well. It will be sanded at either 320 grit or 400 grit sandpaper, either wet or dry with the 'wet' part being some of the same liquid used as the sanding sealer coat. It must not clog up sandpaper.

2) Must be able to dry in one day. I will not wait a week for it, pretty simple.

3) Must be able to take the higher temps next to the barrel and receiver in the inlet areas. I can do a two-part finish, as I will not be sanding the inletting save to clear out any rough spots. The temps of 180 F or more means that shellac is out unless it is part of a higher temperature varnish. I am still researching this.

4) Must not prohibit the use of other finishes over it. In other words, it can't have wax in it or be too acid/base to actually make it difficult to get a coat over it.

5) Visually appealing for beech wood. Grain type, variation, and texture must show through.

6) Nothing fancy. No ground coat that is opaque save once the proper varnish with the right refractive index is put on to suddenly pop all the grain coloration through. This is, in other words, an SKS gunstock, not a violin or viola.

7) Need not match 'arsenal' look. The arsenal botched the job. If I wanted a gunstock with a botched-job look, I wouldn't go through all this.

8) Not absolutely necessary, but if it can stick to easily available materials or equivalents to what an ordinary Yugoslav soldier would have while in service (meaning on-base or at any nearby town), it would be a big plus. Nice but not necessary.

9) Low maintenance, able to take regular use well and have some relatively easy method to fill in abrasions and scratches the finish will pick up over time. Nice, but not necessary.

10) Hunting scent friendly. Nice but not necessary.

Notice that 'easy to get', 'cheap' and a few other choice requirements are not, necessarily, part of this. That would be nice, yes, but I can find some hard-to-get stuff for making varnishes and such.

My initial line-up looks like this:

From left to right are: Tung Oil (from The Real Milk Paint Co.), Boiled Linseed Oil (aka BLO) from some big box store on the cheap, Virginia Cedar oil (from Something Cedar), Citrus Solvent (also at TRMPC), and Krud Kutter brush wash. Not seen are four stainless steel mixing cups, cheap acid brushes bought bulk from so many places its not funny, Slip 2000 725 Cleaner-Degreaser for cleaning out the cups (from Midway USA), and KG-3 (also from Midway) for the final cleaning of the cups after a day of using them.

The first thing I want to do is find out how each of the oils work separately for application at various concentrations of oil to solvent. Solvent is used to dilute the oil, break up the longer chains and decrease drying time. Solvent also lowers the oil viscosity so that it is easier to apply and spreads thinner.

For each of the oils I utilized ratios so that there was an amount of oil to an amount of solvent. This would be done at levels of Straight (no solvent), 3:1 oil to solvent, 2:1 and 1:1. Any sanding sealer layer must go on thin, dry quickly thusly being able to be sanded readily to fill in pores or otherwise level out the wood grain. Often a second sealing layer is used to do a final smoothing out and filling of the wood. To test this out I applied each in the concentrations given, and allowed a two hour to dry blot time to the 2:1 and 1:1 batches and then an overnight for the Straight and 3:1 applications.

Results:

The same with the board reversed for lighting and flipped around for display to remove lighting as a factor:

And the back side for comparison:

For the board there is a top to bottom line-up of Tung, BLO and Cedar oil, and across are Straight, 3:1, 2:1 and 1:1.

Notes:

- The wood is purchased in board lengths from Home Depot. Their supplier marks this as 'white wood' and is from Sweden. It is inexpensive at 1x6 dimensions. It does not have any odor of pine to it. It is relatively high density and relatively easily worked along the grain in a router. It chips when routed across the end grain. Now you know as much as I do about it.

- Tung oil goes on smoothly, loses viscosity evenly so that each addition of solvent makes it flow faster, and it pops out the grain of the wood, visually.

- BLO rapidly goes from a thick oil to one so watery that it is hard to contain at 2:1 and 1:1 concentrations. It puts a yellow cast to the wood and does not pop out wood grain, although it did not have as much to work with as the Tung oil.

- Cedar oil is relatively low viscosity compared to the other two oils to start with, comparable to 2:1 concentrations of BLO or 1:1 of Tung oil. While solvent increases volume it only substantially lowers viscosity at 2:1 and 1:1 where careful application is necessary to keep it in the test areas. Even at Straight it tended to flow to the left of the board. It has an earthy aromatic quality of cedar that is not as biting as western cedars. Cedar oil does some popping of the grain, but due to low viscosity it is unknown if the BLO just above it was mixing with the cedar oil.

- Comparatively BLO flows faster with additional solvent as compared to Tung oil and introduces a moderately more yellow cast to the wood.

- Cedar oil has an initially high pop factor for the grain, visually, but that goes down as it dries.

- At 3:1 concentrations BLO was gelling up overnight and came off in a spotty fashion. This was not the case with the Straight application.

- All are well suited for a 2:1 or 1:1 concentration with 2 hour blot time.

- Tung oil was amenable to an overnight blot down for the Straight and 3:1 concentrations.

- Cedar oil was dry along non-border regions with BLO at Straight and 3:1, and blottable at the margin area.

Conclusions

The reported ease of use of BLO reported anecdotally is one that is indicated by this simple test: at 2:1 and 1: concentrations with a citrus turpene, BLO flows very easily.

Tung oil is comparable to BLO at 2:1 and 1:1 concentrations and superior at 3:1. At straight it is similar to BLO.

BLO at 3:1 concentrations is a tricky business as it can, apparently, be wiped down before a longer over-night sitting. As it starts to thick-dry, it is hard to work with, taking some of the blot material which then needs to be rubbed off, and that takes off the gelling BLO. A 3 hour blot time would, apparently, be safe with BLO at 3:1 concentrations.

Cedar oil leaves no yellow cast to it on the wood, and is superior to both BLO and Tung oil for leaving as much of the wood color coming through it at all concentrations. As an aromatic oil it dries quickly, save at Straight concentrations overnight where some was left in non-border regions with BLO, but those cleaned up easily with a dry blot disposable wipe. Compared to Tung oil and BLO the finish left by cedar oil is relatively thin, indicating that it would need a post-sanding coat if used as a sanding coat.

The surprisingly rapid miscibility of cedar oil and BLO needs to be investigated.

Next it will be mixed with both, and with solvent, and all sections given a 2 hour blot time as the aromatic nature of cedar oil indicates it speeds drying time.

Another oil will also be tested in this on its own board both straight and with cedar oil and solvent. It is not a regular modern gunstock finishing oil.

Recent Arrivals - 2 Months

2011-09-08T08:05:00.001-04:00

Many days eaten by locust.

Actually I have been waiting for parts for a dust collection system for my router table and that has stalled out other projects.

With that said I have pressed on with the SKS gunstock and needed to get some additional finishing supplies in to open up some options. That has led me down many paths of what sort of finishing materials can be mixed together and how that is done. The major find is that it is possible to mix alcohol based finishes (such as shellac) with the addition of some form of alcohol soluble gum (mastic, sandarac, elemi) in alcohol, then adding lavender oil or something like Venetian turpentine (available for equine use and way cheaper than at the art store, let me tell you). So perhaps not locust but just a lot of background research, that led me mostly through violin varnishes. Violin varnishes were once a finishing type for gunstocks, mostly in Europe but to a degree in PA and KY as well during the Revolutionary War era.

While doing that sort of research I also found a gunsmith doing period muzzleloaders who recommends that the best way to get a gloss style finish is to utilize antler and rubbing it on the gunstock along the grain of the wood. This is, I suppose, a form of burnishing and allows for a higher reflectivity base on a gunstock so that more light gets reflected back through the finish than a somewhat rougher sanded and sealed finish on unburnished wood.

The stuff I find out while looking around, and as I tend to track down just why things work the way they do, that eats up more time in dead ends on research. I did that with terrorism, organized crime and other larger endeavors, but also do that with woodworking, finishes and firearms. That is a time consuming process, but does yield answers via this modern marvel of the Internet.

Finally I wanted to try and tone down some of the darker areas of the SKS stock which had one of three sources:

1 - Natural to the wood. As trees grow they add in a growth layer over a previous layer and anything effecting the prior bark will then be incorporated into the wood. Only a real bleach can deal with that and I really don't want to lose the color of the wood, itself, to deal with these.

2 - Cosmoline. Our old friend will show up as a fine pepper pattern in the wood, indicating the need for more work at its removal (thank you to all the M1 Garand collectors out there for that!). From what I can tell of the nature of the beech wood, it has a pattern that does have some fine graining in it, but is definitely lighter than black pepper. That doesn't mean there isn't cosmoline still in the pore spaces of the wood... but it may not be optically apparent at this point in time.

3 - Embedded steel wool in the wood. This will oxidize black over time. The solution to this is oxalic acid, which is made hot, applied and then allowed to set on the wood, and keeping damp via additional applications until the staining bleaches out. This is effective against all manmade stains as the wood colors remain.

For me I decided that Option 3 was worth doing, and that meant getting a low cost supply of oxalic acid. I made it up with one cup of hot distilled water (from a dehumidifier, which takes water vapor from the air in great quantities for our household) with one ounce of oxalic acid crystals, stirred with a wooden construction stick and then applied via a chip brush all over the exterior of the stock, not just in areas with dark flecks, so as to get a more even tonal gradation. After I had let it set for half an hour, I used a baking soda and water solution (one huge, heaping tablespoon to a cup of water) and did a triple application of that everywhere to neutralize the acid, then did a final water rinse. I set it up to dry overnight, but took some pictures after most of the visible water was gone.

This is the side with the worst of the flecking back near the end of the top where the inletting is.

Here it is a bit closer up.

During the sanding I noticed some streaks on the buttstock area and determined that it was growth rings showing up, not cosmoline as mineral spirits didn't do a thing to them.

Sorry I'm not color compensating or lighting this too well. This side is naturally lighter, no two ways about it. But I can trace dark growth rings from the inletting to the buttstock area because the wood was cut at a shallow angle which allows for some spatial orientation of where growth rings would show up if the complete board were there.

The handguard was also treated. It has that one dark area that I may have to use actual bleach on or mix up some fine sawdust and glue to make into a covering and then sand over that.

Next up is a fine bronze wool de-wiskering of the stock, then a go over at 320 grit, lightly, and perhaps doing some burnishing of a few areas to show up cartouche work and such. I'm still up in the air about finish, but the first sanding coat will either be tung oil or a varnish. If it were a Mosin-Nagant it would be shellac, and I have a mix of platina/light buttonlac ready for that if I want to go that route, but need something a bit more resilient for the inlet areas. Unless I make a varnish that can take high heat (a bit over 200 degrees f.). After that I will do at least one coat of Linspeed to get some of the reddish tones that come with BLO or just use BLO cut with turpenes. What I would like to do is add just a touch of cedarwood oil to the mix to get a low level natural scent to it, which would help make it a hunting friendly firearm.

And that is it for the update.

The things I learn by looking around...

Holsternet–a fiction

2011-08-24T15:13:00.001-04:00

***

Holsternet System: Start

User ID: 443905419

Network.... Start

Sub-Net GPS: Acquired

TimeStamp: 042DF2D6

Holsternet Time Check: After Hours

Holsternet Place Check: Master Bedroom

Service Main Audio: Active

Service Main Video: Active

Service AUX: ShureShot – On

Holsternet – ShureShot: Active

Service AUX: TameEars – On

Holsternet – TameEars: Active

Network Connection: LifeNet

Network Node ID: M1911

Holsternet - LifeNet Streaming: Active

Safe Node: D-Link 76617

Serial Number Handshake: Finished!

Network – Wi-Fi: Active

Network – Internet: Active

Serial Number Handshake: Finished!

Network – Bluetooth (v.3.o): Active

Serial Number Handshake: Available

Safe Node: Home Black Box

Serial Number Handshake: Finished!

Holsternet - LifeNet – Home Black Box: Transmitting

Holsternet - LifeNet – Home Black Box: Streaming

Holsternet - LifeNet – Home Black Box: Alert Condition

Holsternet - LifeNet – Home Black Box: At Home Stay Silent

Holsternet - LifeNet – Home Black Box: Contacting

Safe Node: Startravel Handy-Trav

Serial Number Handshake: Finished!

Holsternet - LifeNet – Startravel Handy-Trav: Transmitting

Holsternet - LifeNet – Startravel Handy-Trav: Streaming

Holsternet - LifeNet – Cellphone: Active

Holsternet - LifeNet – Startravel Handy-Trav - Holsternet Main: Connect

Serial Number Handshake: Transmitting

Holsternet - LifeNet – Startravel Handy-Trav – Holsternet Main: Direct Connect - Streaming

Holsternet - LifeNet – Startravel Handy-Trav – Designated POC01: My Sheriff's Office

Holsternet - LifeNet – Startravel Handy-Trav – My Sheriff's Office: Phoning

Holsternet - LifeNet – Startravel Handy-Trav – My Sheriff's Office: Busy

Holsternet - LifeNet – Startravel Handy-Trav – My Sheriff's Office: Retry

Holsternet - LifeNet – Startravel Handy-Trav – Designated POC02: My Lawyer's Office

Holsternet - LifeNet – Startravel Handy-Trav – My Lawyer's Office: Connecting

Serial Number Handshake: Finished!

Holsternet - LifeNet – Startravel Handy-Trav – My Lawyer's Office: Transmitting

Holsternet - LifeNet – Startravel Handy-Trav – My Lawyer's Office: Streaming

Holsternet - LifeNet – Bluetooth – Designated POC03: Neighbor Ron Willis

Holsternet - LifeNet – Bluetooth – Neighbor Ron Willis: Connecting Bluetooth

Serial Number Handshake: Finished!

Holsternet - LifeNet – Bluetooth - Neighbor Ron Willis – Holsternet: Active

Holsternet - LifeNet – Bluetooth - Neighbor Ron Willis – Holsternet: Alarm

Holsternet - LifeNet – Bluetooth - Neighbor Ron Willis – Holsternet: Streaming

Safe Node D-Link 76617: Low Power Condition

Holsternet - LifeNet – Home Black Box – RifleSAF: Contacting

Serial Number Handshake: Finished!

Holsternet – RifleSAF: Direct Connect

RifleSAF – Holsternet: Lockdown Condition

* * *

After being awakened by the sound of breaking glass downstairs, Linda Johnson took the pistol from her under-bed holster.

When seconds count, nanoseconds are precious.

Recent Arrivals–Seven Weeks

2011-08-21T19:49:00.001-04:00

I've been working on putting a finish on to some pieces to make a router table, so that had to play through at take up valuable workbench space. That project is nearly done, so now its back to the SKS.

At this point I have sent the SKS bolt to Murray's Gunsmithing as nothing, and I do mean nothing, that I can do could get out the firing pin retaining pin, which is necessary to install Murray's firing pin and spring arrangement. If my 3lb. forge hammer can't do it, then the cost of getting a 5lb. sledgehammer is about the same as sending the bolt to get it installed, so off it went to someone who is used to dealing with impossible Yugo SKS bolts.

After that I used my rotary tool to get the retaining rivet on the handguard ground down to where the rivet can be removed. Needless to say the first hit on that with the handguard being well braced and the punch centered on the rivet saw the punch go askew and mess up the ferrule holding the actual handguard in place. Still I got the rivet out and the damage isn't horrific, and it was worth looking around for a replacement.

There aren't any.

Period.

And no one is making replacements for one of the most commonly ruined pieces on an SKS. What I did find was a nice full used handguard with cracked wood from Apex, ferrule and all. That came in so I now have a gas tube spare and a cracked handguard to play around with, after driving a standard pin out of the piece. I am surprised that the ferrule is made of much thicker sheet metal on the spare (Russian I believe) than on the Yugo version. This handguard is heavily used and didn't have much cosmoline on it, and it was cracked all the way through. Just to experiment I did some turpentine cleaning with a nylon cleaning brush to see what could be removed with that.

The untouched half is on the left, the turpentine cleaned on the right. Yes a lot of grime came off pretty easily that way.

Then came the mineral spirit cleaning on the untouched half.

Turpentine cleaned on the left, mineral spirits on the right. Just by what I got off the piece on the right, I can say mineral spirits did an equal or somewhat better job to turpentine. Both good for what grime ails your handguard.

After getting to a stopping point on the play-through work, I stripped the SKS stock to get the old, blackened BLO finish off.

I'm playing around with some color correction and the tonal gradations are more towards the handguard than the butt part of the stock. Note the original handguard piece has also been stripped.

I got this snap of the grip to show the line in the stock at the transition point to the handguard on the center part of the picture in the lower transition. That is seen on both sides of the stock and is either a milling artifact or the grain of the wood exposed by the angle of the wood when it was milled showing up the ring line like that. It is an area I will look at more as I get down to sanding the stock to make sure it isn't an incipient crack.

Sorry about the lack of decent color correction on that, but it was worth not trying to get a good balance to show the growth lines in the wood.

The other side with a bit harsher color correction to bring the current color out. Again the dark line shows up pretty well in the lower transition area of the hand piece.

All of these were taken with halogen lighting which tends to put a really bad color shift into the yellow, which I've tried to balance out via filters and levels. As the lighting falls off the color darkens, naturally.

The underside of the stock.

Close up on the area of concern. I thought that this area still had some finish on it, and it has gotten two doses of the soy stripper. What is left may just be how the grain actually is when smoothed down properly. As that is the area that gets handled the most it may have that coloration due to that.

And looking at the top of the stock.

With the finish removed the stock feels pretty well shaped, thus all the roughness and irregularities were in the finish, not the wood as I had feared. That tells you something about the amount of care (or lack thereof) that was done in the application of the finish.

Next up is a gentle going over with 220, 320 and 400 grit sandpaper, done with the grain. I'm not expecting it to take much sanding, actually, and there are only a few areas of roughness and irregularities that need to be addressed and none are serious. Once that is done I will either use a high solvent tung oil mixture or platina shellac to get a sanding sealer coat on for some bronze wool work to get whiskers. Then a 1:1 tung oil mixture for a first base coat will follow. I haven't really decided if I want to do a traditional finish using BLO or Linspeed after that or layer in a light button lac or orange shellac between tung oil layers. These are decisions I will make when I get to them as I really want something understated and appealing as the growth rings in the wood have a whole lot of 'pop' to them on their own.

Recent Arrivals - Four Weeks

2011-08-05T07:56:00.001-04:00

At this point the SKS is stripped down and the majority of cosmoline is off the stock via light applications of acetone via rag. Do that in only well ventilated areas! With that off the assessment of the stock finishing is what I thought it would be: it is uneven, has drips and drops on it, and the underlying stock while having gone through two sanding phases doesn't appear to have actually been worked too much after basic shaping. There is enough uneven shaping to show that areas of the stock that should be relatively flat and smooth just aren't that at all. While those are limited in extent just after the firing port inlet on the right of the stock and on the buttstock on the right, they do need to be addressed. Visually its a mess.

Another set of shop projects moved up in priority while the SKS stalled out on getting out two pins: the bolt retaining pin and the handguard retaining pin (which is more like a rivet that has been flattened out and smoothed down on one side). For those I scoured the message boards and found this message thread on the SKS Boards which addresses forming a hex bolt to have a pin at the end and then thread it into the windage tool. Absolutely ingenious! I'm waiting for a few bolts to come in from Bolt Depot and then will send those with the tool to my sister who works in a machine shop to get them finished down to a 1/8" pin pusher for the front part of the bolt. I will probably end up having to dremel the handguard retaining pin and put in a replacement and for that I should have some decent pin stock which I can pound in and then just shear off the end with a hacksaw and smooth it. I will give a try at just using the new tool to push it out, but don't expect much success there. Either way the handguard piece must come off so that it can be finished with the rest of the stock.

I need to get a quick router table set up and need the workbench to do the finishing work on that. I'm giving it a nice coat of Herter's Red and then will do a tung oil coating... probably 5 or 6 of them, and that will take about a week to ten days.

Reading up on final finishes means that I now have a supply of carnauba wax in to help get a wax/tung oil based varnish made. I was doing the chemistry set sort of looking around with alcohol burners, stands, beakers and such until one fortuitous entry of 'alcohol burner set' got me the greatest possible invention for making this stuff ever: fondue sets. Think of it you have the burner, you have an oil resistant pot, if you hunt around you can find those with actual lids to them, you have a stand and, if you are real lucky, you can get a stainless steel one so as not to live with '70's avacado green in your shop! Found a nice one used for $25 delivered, 2 quarts. That should last a lifetime of varnish making.

On the finishing front I do not give up on shellac so easily and look forward to that with a set of bench drawers that I need to make to get some order to things here. Reading up I found that shellac wax is almost as hard as carnauba wax which means the button lac I picked up needs to be processed through to yield its wax and shellac. That is a week to two week process and since the wax is only 3-5% of the material I would need to make a lot of shellac to get it out. A quart ought to yield enough to do some tests with, at least, and it proves out I should then have a final varnish that would look good on most gunstocks and will only add a bit of luster to it.

That's it for this report, sorry for lack of pics but should have some once I get the pin pusher.

The Day After

2011-07-28T08:28:00.001-04:00

The following is a cross-post at The Jacksonian Party.

The following is a personal outlook paper by the founder of The Jacksonian Party.

With all the debt limit finger-pointing, yelling, screaming and such going on it is hard to take these supposed 'leaders' Upon The Hill seriously. We hear words of 'default' and 'Armageddon' plus 'Doomsday' bandied about. So what is it, exactly, that is going on?

First the government has allowed itself to spend approximately $4.4 trillion dollars this FY of which $2.4 trillion is deficit to be added on to the debt. Congress has previously set a debt limit, decades ago, to help keep tabs on spending so that everyone has to agree on the basis for new spending. That debt limit is coming and has actually been here, save for some Federal Reserve and Treasury accounting tricks. The tricks, smoke and mirrors are just about cleared out, now, and we are getting to see the problem without them.

If you back a 'compromise' then please set in your mind that you want a federal government that spends approximately 1/7th to 1/6th of our economic productivity in accrual of debt we can't pay now. While that has usually been bought by foreign investors, the Federal Reserve has been pumping money into the system to get that debt and has been the largest buyer at the last couple of debt auctions. Their hope is that either this blows over, or they are left controlling the purse strings of future federal spending.

Nice folks, huh?

Second if you back 'compromise' you are kicking the can further down the road to larger, more intrusive government that eats up more of our economy and, in the end, must do away with 'entitlements' as economic activity to sustain them falls through the floor. Who will invest in a people who can't get a government to spend within its means? Or seek to have a large part of its population unproductive by choice? That isn't working out so well for Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Ireland... or the UK and France, for that matter. That is the future ahead for more spending on our shores if you support a 'compromise'. You will live to see that.

Now what happens when the debt limit is reached and there is no compromise?

First even Turbo Tax Timmy, the man who can't figure out his taxes but is the head of the Treasury, admits that we will continue current debt maintenance. Left and Right that is admitted. If we DIDN'T do that it would be a DEFAULT. The US will not default on its debt as that is the reason the federal government was CREATED in 1787: to take care of Revolutionary War debt that was breaking up the States in the old Confederacy. If the federal government can't do the #1 primary job it was CREATED TO DO then it must go through civil means to allow We The People to figure out something that WILL make good our promises to others. I expect that would happen via elections and a Constitutional Convention in which States that spent themselves broke will not get much of a hearing from solvent States, either. So the debt will be paid because, for the first time in over a century, it is not clear that Progressives and Liberals will be able to sway the outcome of a Constitutional Convention. They don't like that, so they want our debt payments to continue.

From the approximately $2 trillion the US government takes in, about $600 billion (or $0.6 trillion) is in debt payments. You have about $1.4 trillion left to spend! I bet you could run a government on that....

What gets paid for next?

Well Obama is the Executive and in lean times Executives get a bit of a say in things for cutting back when the money isn't there. Remember, Congress unwisely put up an unsound budget and it is now up to Obama to cut spending back to meet revenue.

Stop that laughing!

He has no choice in this.

His first real choice will be between 'entitlements' plus the Constitutionally mandated cats & dogs (DoD, parts of State, a bit of the Interior, US Mint, USPTO, Government Accounting Office plus various other items mentioned in the Constitution which I tend to lump together as 'cats &dogs') or the other discretionary areas plus some entitlements plus the cats &dogs. The cats & dogs will take a haircut, probably around 20%, which doesn't free up much money.

Here is the deal: if Obama wants to have all the discretionary parts of government that are non-entitlement continue to work (like Labor, Education, Energy, EPA, FCC, FAA, IRS receipts offices and so on) then those will be fighting for money with the 'entitlements'.

Now after decades of fearmongering we have the visage of the most Progressive and Liberal US President in our generation having to cut government. First, think of that on its own and take a look at the holder of the Office of the President of the United States. He has no choice.

If only Nixon could go to China, then only Obama can cut government.

What will he do?

Well he could go against everything that every Democrat has said for over a generation and cut entitlements! That would be seen as a basic betrayal of The New Deal and The Great Society... by one of the most Progressive and Liberal Presidents in our generation. That is an abyss to step into for him as it is his name that will be on that, not that of Reid or Boehner.

So we can take it for granted that at most we will see a bit of trimming around the edges of 'entitlements' which will, itself, be a watershed moment.

That leaves between $60 billion and $100 billion dollars left to fund EVERYTHING ELSE outside of 'entitlements' and the cats & dogs. He can go the 'skeleton crew' route and keep an executive staff in each, but no other functions. All the regulatory stuff goes into limbo for as long as this 'stand off' lasts. There are some places that would eat up all of that and want more, like Agriculture that consumes at least $700 billion per year... it would be hard to keep on anything but a few top people there for $100 billion a year, so you can bet that baby will close down to allow shifts to other, more politicized entities, like Dept. of Justice. DoJ is not a cat or dog, but a discretionary organization that didn't exist before FDR. Before that Agencies and Departments were responsible for bringing their own prosecutions. Keep DoJ open and you don't have much left for anything else.

The spending, basically, stops for a large part of the discretionary part of government outside of the 'entitlements'. See how that works?

Outside of this what else happens?

A major part of this is the Treasury no longer holding debt auctions as there is no new added debt to auction. That is about $2.4 trillion not getting soaked out of the global economy, or $1.8 trillion discounting the amount the Fed. holds. The Fed might auction some of its recently purchased debt off, but that is just the 13 largest banks in the US trying to dump US debt which doesn't look all too hot on the banking front. It is like shooting yourself in the head to get rid of a headache: not so smart. Still they don't hold enough to go past a single normal auction... sooner or later US debt stops soaking up investment money.

That freed up money then will be invested elsewhere as the surest way to make money is to invest in productive industry.

Now if most of the Interior and EPA go to the point they can't process forms, industrial firms will look to the States, point to the track record of the company and ask the State if they can do drilling in off-shore waters. After a couple of months of non-processing of forms (in other words going back on a good-faith forms processing concept) the States will find themselves asked if they want productive energy sector jobs to open up. Without the federal government there to process forms, responsibility drops down to the State level. States have their own safety requirements and they are still open for processing forms. My guess is the day after the first debt non-auction, the States will hear from the energy companies. Maybe sooner.

If the Dept. of Labor isn't there, then no one will be backing its paperwork for businesses, loans and such. OSHA goes with that. A lot of those regulations are part of industrial standard work, at this point, so they will be kept up with or without an enforcement arm for awhile. Put in a few months of non-government and industry will begin to realize that there is no one telling it how much to pay people. Fun, fun, fun! The States do have regulations on this, of course....

The EPA has been trying to reneg on coal agreements, sequester land from energy exploration and, generally, trying to stymie energy production in the US. Without them the States get to decide as the federal government doesn't OWN any of that land but is allowed to USE IT by the States. Right there in the US Constitution that the federal government can only use land with the agreement of the State involved. States will begin pulling land back as the federal government really can't stop them from doing that, even with the EPA. Wonder why they haven't done that?

Consider something like BATFE which got scooted over to DoJ save for the IRS interest in the revenue part which is 'A' or Alcohol which is alcohol tax stamps. That 'A' part will remain open, more or less, to collect money on those stamps... actually it probably goes straight to collections. On the 'F' side, which is Firearms, the IRS has interest in the tax transfer amount on fully automatic weapons ($250 per transfer) but not much else. As no one is there to enforce the making of new weapons of that type it is possible that 6 months into not funding BATFE you will see a new market for these weapons arise with a base price of construction, plus materials, plus $250. And as no one is there to federally license manufacturers, and no one can stop individuals from manufacturing arms, and the 2nd Amendment has similar language in nearly every State Constitution... well we might see the end of the cutting up of old military full auto weapons and the direct importation of them. Mind you, before 1976 this is what it was like in the US, and we didn't have an FA shooting spree then and we won't have one if this happens, save for criminals who can ALREADY get their hands on such things. Private security firms may handle something like background checks to ensure that felons don't get their hands on weapons and if the States really want the federal instant background check they can pony up a bit of cash to run that part of the bureaucracy.

What doesn't happen in all of this is interesting.

Anyone who has federal securities continues to get their interest payments. A lot of retirement funds have them. These large institutional investors will see that 'the full faith and credit of the United States' is still good. So will the bond rating services. Do you downgrade a spendthrift who mends their ways, stops spending on frivolities and keeps on paying down their debt? I wouldn't as that person is making good their promises and mending their ways. Why would the US get a downgrade for doing the exact, same thing?

A lot of federally dependant jobs add to the unemployment situation, which might go up a full percentage point. Sucks, that. But there isn't a federal government to suck up investment dollars, either. Hmmm.... why there will be businesses without regulatory overhead, without mandates, without worries about credit... who knows what they will do when there is some CERTAINTY that they will not be PUNISHED for hiring people via new REGULATIONS? If and when that money comes off the sidelines the 'crisis' will end as unemployment drops and economic activity picks up. As soon as everyone realizes that the federal government is the problem and that you can get by without it, then why, on Earth, would you want to bring all that back?

It is that last part that is the worry of the political and economic elites. They are living in the 20th century and now see that Americans would be more than willing to chuck all the centralized controls in the 21st century. Anyone saying that a 'moderate' solution to continue spending into pure insolvency is very immoderate to do so. We have hit our credit limit and can turn back and not be Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Ireland, the UK, France... why that might be a GOOD THING, no? That is how much the equations have changed in the last few years: the old 'moderates' are not in the middle, just addicted spendthrifts who can't say 'no' to more spending.

Of course this will be messy.

It will be painful.

You will have to be prepared for it.

I've been saying that for awhile now and am getting prepared even as we speak.

Not to march on the streets, but to help my fellow citizens through the tough times ahead.

If you aren't doing that, then your hours to prepare are few.

Because the day after debt limit Doomsday is not Armageddon, not global meltdown, but the beginning of the first day on a path to freedom and liberty. I see that day coming much, much, much faster than I ever expected it. Yet I have done the prudent and cautious things as the survivors will step with Prudence who is one of the best women I know of to walk with as she always warns to pick your steps and be prepared for bad days. It is better to be prepared and never need those preparations as you can sleep well at night and be unafraid of the future. I can't sleep soundly due to physiology, at this point, but I have no fears.

In a crisis will you be yelling, screaming, finger pointing and waiting for someone to save you who may never come?

Or will you be prepared to help your fellow man through hard times?

I will join with those doing the saving, may you never need my help as it isn't free and you will be expected TO help TO BE helped. No free rides to salvation, sorry.

Recent Arrivals - Two Weeks plus One Day

2011-07-23T11:13:00.001-04:00

Just some observations on the SKS stock.

All these pictures are clickable to get a larger version, btw, and have been throughout this series of articles.

There is something a bit troubling about the finish on the SKS gunstock that came with this carbine. This isn't the first gun I've gotten for cleaning, its about my fourth but worst so far in that this one has been packed with cosmoline. Still getting the obvious stuff out of the way goes a long way to seeing just what went on with this particular specimen at the arsenal in Yugoslavia. In that picture there is a thousand words, but in particular it allows me to show the basic difference in finish even through the cosmoline.

The upper handguard is of tightly denser grain wood which is part of what I'm seeing, but the other part is that it has a more even texture to it for the finish. Notice that the closest match in color, not texture, is in the forward part of the grip that has a white paper towel under it to put more light on it, and that aft of that the part with less reflected light is darker. Now the handguard also has what looks to be a good (if somewhat spotty here and there) finish which I take to be BLO (boiled linseed oil). Thus there are firstly tonal gradations in the wood that are different and, secondly, the upper finish while applied well is not applied evenly. There is a little bit of that left to right between the more open grain to where it narrows down. The grip part of the stock is of a darker toned wood and still covered in cosmoline...

Now this image shows something very similar along the entire buttstock:

The flash artifact in both these pictures would lead you to conclude that it is the cause of the tonal differences, but that is not the case. From grip to where the butt plate would be there is a significant difference in tonal variation visually in the entire stock. After much handling and examination this does not appear to be a variation in the wood but in the finish. The finish is thicker in the front and thinner to the rear, thus darker to lighter.

Next up are some actual droplets of congealed finish on the buttstock. My picture taking ability is awful but there is only one significant droplet but also some other areas where tonal darkening increase and touching along those areas gets a slight rise and fall with the darkened areas. You also get some tacky cosmoline on your fingertips.

Then there was the struggle to get the barrel/receiver assembly out of the stock. Cosmoline, as a lubricant, should be able to do some of that, yes, and with larger amounts more of that sort of thing, but this was stubborn beyond all belief.

Beyond that there is that tackiness on the exterior part of the stock, which has had the most goings-over of antique restorer. There are a few parts that are close to actually being dry on the rear of the stock, that is blotchy in feeling by fingertip. This is not something that a light rag will pick up, but that your fingertips will. The further you go towards the grip area the more of the tackiness you get and lots of it. In reference this has had just as much wipe-on/wait/wipe-off/go overnight/rub off that the Mosin-Nagant had for its entire process.

Now reading up on BLO is a fascinating topic as regular linseed oil does not set up quickly without having some additives put in with it. Basically it remains tacky for decades. That is hard to do even in a relatively backwards Communist country as boiled linseed oil is done in huge batches and the ability to get raw linseed oil through an arsenal is just about nil. That does leave the cure time for BLO, however, the time it takes to set and harden. That has an overnight to basic cure and a week to nearly done and a month to fully cured. Thus you can do a bit of sanding and apply a second coat after an overnight, but the entire thing doesn't become a finish until at least a month sets in.

I am coming to a conclusion that is very interesting: the arsenal did not let this stock have its proper cure time and put it in a vat of cosmoline before the cure was finished.

Points for this are: the somewhat uneven finish appearance, hardened drops of BLO, uneven darkness with thickening of the finish, and the tackiness. Of all of those the most worrying is the tackiness, and not just for handling reasons.

Consider that BLO when heated and mixed with other oils can form a lacquer, that is something that will form a much harder finish that is more resistant than just BLO itself. With that said there are also accelerants that get added, things like turpentine, to speed up the drying process of a lacquer. Heat will do it to, and this is a problem that folks shooting Mosin-Nagants have with cosmoline seeping into the magazine area and mixing with the carbon and any firearm lubricants used to create a lacquer coating in the firing chamber. That can get so bad your rounds won't chamber. A good lacquer solvent will get rid of that but the problem is from the cosmoline, itself.

So if you have an uneven proportion of BLO to cosmoline, say one part to fifty parts, you get a very weak lacquer that has no accelerants and has lost heat in the first few hours after coming out of the vat. That creates a substance that is at once much thicker than BLO or cosmoline as it is setting up, but doesn't have a good enough mix to become a full lacquer. BLO after mixing with cosmoline might not even set up at all as it tries to cross-link with some very, very, very long chain hydrocarbons. Some of it that is closest to the wood pores will not get much of that effect (becoming a 'finish') but being cross-linked out means that it never sets up or dries. As far as I know there is NO accelarant that will do this for cosmoline-based grease finishes... are there such things, even?

The stock will get the full treatment to drive out as much of the cosmoline via pore action as possible, and there may even be some break-up that will happen to let the surface finish finally get severed from the longer mixture. As it stands, however, the stock is heading into the 'refinishing' category. Now since stocks were sent unfinished to troopers and they did it their own ways, that lets me have a lot of leeway on what I can do with the thing. As this is Beech wood, it should have a nice light tonal quality to it if done with just a bit of care... I like BLO finishes, don't get me wrong as I have a gallon of the stuff available, but having seen some Finn Beech stocks done with shellac... and that is an available and traditional finish for the region, too.

Time will tell. I had hoped to get this done and free up the workshop as its not a great idea to be woodworking with lots of volatile chemicals in the air. But if it is still tacky on the outside in a few days, then I will look into stripping the wood bare and refinishing it.

Recent Arrivals - Two Weeks

2011-07-22T10:12:00.001-04:00

The past four days have been interesting!

Yes, I've gotten to know the wonders of the way cosmoline will make an occlusive seal with just about anything so as to not allow you to separate parts with such a seal. On the SKS that I have been working on that seal has been between the stock and the receiver/barrel assembly. Getting the instructions right, in that the assembly moves away from the stock in a rotation style movement was a great help! I had spent time puzzling over the instructions and finally found another set of instructions with pictures to demonstrate the procedure.

Not that this helped, mind you, beyond knowing that you should expect to see some progress doing things the right way. Needless to say with anything that could be holding the assembly to the stock taken off, it wasn't budging. No, it was worse than that: I could get just the barest hint of motion and sweat at that and when I released the stock and assembly the pieces came back together again. That is the power of air pressure working against you. You are forming a vacuum because of the sealant and when you try to move the pieces apart the air pressure starts working to bring them together again.

What came next was a further application of Aero-Kroil (mainly because it is supposed to go along metal surfaces displacing other stuff) and putting pipe cleaners through any opening that was available, mainly between the assembly at the rear sight base. After struggling most of the day with that I then put on another application of antique restorer as it had moved the exterior of the stock from a dust magnet to a skin magnet. Yummy!

The next day, finally, with the use of a rubber mallet... if you don't have a rubber mallet around your house, get one! Mine has been ever so handy at non-marring use on things beyond pistols and rifles and if you really have to beat yourself on the head with something, there are far worse things than a rubber mallet. Now, where was I?

Oh! By holding the receiver in my left hand (like da book said!) and keeping the bayonet locked forward and pressed into a sheet of plywood and gently rapping the buttstock upwards to put force in the wanted direction of movement, I got my very first sucking sound in this project with lots of suck to it. One or two more light taps with the mallet and then a couple with my gloved hand, then some very continuous pulling and... the receiver and stock were forced back together by air pressure. The second attempt finally got the parts free as I had introduced some air into the sealant. Next time I will use that handy-dandy can of compressed air for that to start with.

The parts came free:

I folded the bayonet back once the parts were free, just like it said in the book.

More glistening and it isn't gold.

I now had a major component separation achieved for the takedown! Throw a party!

Amazing!

Progress had been achieved!

Except, of course, for the tablespoon or two of cosmoline that now was congealed inside the stock area and, of course, coating the barrel/receiver assembly. I am not joking about quantities, and I used up the better part of a shop rag and two paper towels getting the surface amounts off. Huge amounts came off in the antique restorer rag, as well. Not just soak in amounts, but glistening puddles of the stuff.

The next day was cleaning all the metal I could get to, removing some of the fun parts like the gas diverter for the grenade launcher and sweating over getting the sight leaf for the grenade launcher up so I could clean under it. Then sweating to get it back down again. I debated about taking the front sight apart, but realized that coating the threads of the adjustable pin for the sight was actually a good use for cosmoline. Anything caught under the ring will soak out when the barrel is heated from firing and that won't be much. All the exterior surfaces, however, got cleaned... and cleaned... then cleaned again... nylon brush, pipecleaners, tooth-picks...

For anyone wanting to clean rifles with gas block and escapement systems I can't picture living without pipecleaners and tooth-picks. Project type tooth-picks from your craft store, not toothy tooth-picks from the grocery store. If you need to push in a small amount of a rag or get something that will conform to a small hole to work away at material adhering to metal, those two are musts.

Yesterday all the exterior components were finished, the bore finally properly cleaned out using first the water based cleaner/degreaser, and then the evaporating one, then lots of swipe downs with Militec-1 patches that still got some blackness on them. I've come to expect that since I don't have a huge ultrasonic tank for such things or an electro system to force that stuff out. The bore is chrome lined and when I sight through to a piece of plywood against a wall I get that lovely triangle of inverted image on the top of the bore. I couldn't ask for anything nicer!

After that comes the first wipe down with drops of Militec-1 on the exterior metal surfaces.

The stock got to rest yesterday to let the restorer stuff do some more work, and I was already getting the hand tackiness feeling on it by the end of the day.

Today the metal got covered over and it is now time to work on the stock. Cosmoline is no longer being left in orange patches on my cleaning cloths, but it is still felt on the hand. It is just bad.

Some other discoveries were of some use marks on the stock covered by the finish. This includes what I think are pieces of tar... or possibly some asphalt... or someone just dropped the stock on the floor of the arsenal and it didn't get wiped down before a finish was applied to it. Pride of workmanship there isn't for the stock. And there are times I begin to suspect the finish hadn't even dried before they packed it away. There are also drip marks from the finish not being properly wiped down.

I'll have to search around and see if I can find a used Yugoslav SKS stock somewhere and refinish that. While BLO is the 'official' arsenal finish, there are a lot of stocks that soldiers had to finish on their lonesome, so there has to be some variety of that on the military side. With BLO the way it was put on you can't really tell it was Beech wood... no idea what to do on that front.

On the metal side I need to get the retaining pin in the bolt out so I can, first, clean that because it is still sticky and, second, replace the firing pin with a firing pin and spring combo so the pin can never go through a slam-fire or get locked forward... that is purely a safety issue and as I consider safety to be the first thing with firearms, it has to be done. So far the retaining pin is not coming out for love nor money... and a bench arbor press that I can put a pin punch into would be a lovely addition to the hardware around the shop. I know I can get the basic press, but pin punch adapters for the head? Haven't looked but there must be something for that given how often that routine is done with machine parts.

So that is where things stand as of right now. The stock has gotten another go-around with blemish remover and antique restorer and is now resting, the heat is bad enough that I am going to rest, and doing that I will look for a low-end bench arbor press with pin punch replaceable heads.

Life is grand.

Recent Arrivals - A Week and a Half

2011-07-18T07:34:00.001-04:00

When last we left our intrepid explorer he was finding out just how well the Yugoslavs had packed cosmoline into their SKS 59/66 arsenal reworked semi-automatic carbines at the factory. There is an interesting comparison between a Mosin-Nagant 91/30 reworked at a Soviet arsenal circa the early 1950's and a Yugoslavian arsenal circa the mid-1960's.

First up is the metal work is very good to excellent on the rifle and well crafted for what it is, which is an early 1950's design by Siminov from the USSR. It was made to be put together quickly and cheaply in the third world countries that had any manufacturing base available to them at all. Under Tito the relationship between Yugoslavia and the USSR varied a lot, but the underlying Communist system of the importance of basic metal work comes through. The M-N dating back to an earlier era of machining from the mid- to late-nineteenth century is always well done, of course and without doubt, and they are beefy rifles as the metallurgy of the late-nineteenth century just wasn't up to the task of a lightweight receiver and rifle barrel that wouldn't blow itself apart. While the era nearly a century later was different, the work to get precision machining done is apparent.

Second up is the stark difference in the wooden stocks of the two rifles. The M-N you feel was put together by some actual craftsmen who understood the wood's strengths and weaknesses and followed the old patterns because they worked and were good for the purpose. There are variations over time with the M-N stock, but I have yet to run across one that didn't feel that at the arsenal they actually did understand that getting a rifle stock that felt good in the hands was a morale booster: someone cared enough to do good work and entrust you with it. The SKS stock feels like it got a basic cut at a wood mill, about 10 minutes under a shaper, a quick pass over a belt sander, and then had BLO used to give it a finish. As I understand it some SKS's lack the finish and were packed away in cosmoline with bare wood. Also the lack of finish (though not fit) was addressed 'in the field' which you can picture as some soldier writing home to mom to see if dad had any spare sandpaper and something to finish wood with. If the smooth feel and deep, dark grain of a M-N stock made you feel as if someone cared about you and the rifle, the SKS stock definitely puts the rifle ahead of you. You are there to pull the trigger, nothing more.

I would like to compare precision parts making, but the M-N was meant for a different era and isn't, say, a Colt 45 or, just a couple of decades on, a Mauser C-96. It came from the early bolt-action era and that is that. I've taken a few trigger groups apart and the SKS is pretty much dead simple with all of two springs and a leaf spring stamped part. It isn't a VZ-61 Skorpion with a couple of tiny, precision springs and a hammer spring ready to fly around the room for the unwary. Nor is it that contraption that runs a Marlin 60, with all its tiny springs and retaining rings. Those are both later than the SKS, yes, but having looked at original parts for both that are within that timeframe, I have to say that the Yugoslavs don't have the raw ingenuity of the Czech gunsmiths. It is a good, solid, relatively reliable trigger group with nothing fancy on it.

Why is that important?

Just a second while the pictures from the start of yesterday's work start to give a feel of what you deal with on a carbine like this. So here we go with the basic Level 2 to 3 strip.

I got the bolt and carrier off pretty easily and didn't have to worry about the recoil spring being springy as the coefficient of friction that was given to it by 45 year old cosmoline was more than enough to render worries about springs flying all over the place pretty much moot. How bad is this rifle packed with this stuff? There is a piston in the gas tube that in the takedown books say you have to watch out for sliding out when you take the tube from the receiver. I used a wooden dowel to push it out.

Now lets see what is inside the receiver.

OK. It's not that bad.

No, wait I take that back!

It's worse than I expected.

You can even see the hammer from the trigger group there and what you can't see is the lovely coating of cosmoline all the way down and in. And the same goes for the magazine, too.

Plus I need the cleaning rod out from under the bayonet fixture. It is coated with cosmoline... not just the bayonet but the rod all the way down to the screws.

Yummy.

There we go with the piston out of the gas block tube, the cleaning rod, bolt and carrier plus cocking handle, recoil spring... and I believe I got the gas block tube spring from the receiver out by then. The warning was that it would come flying out at Mach 2 if you didn't watch out when you moved the lever on the rear sight all the way up. I moved it up. Then I checked to see if there was a spring in there with a handy-dandy pin punch. There was! And then it oozed out at a pace that snails would laugh at as pitiful.

Now onto the trigger group. You can see the exterior cleaning hasn't done much for it. On the M-N I would be close to half-way by now with the wood, the metal all finished and waiting on the wood. Here I have to extract stuff and always I get the unpleasant surprise that the Yugoslav arsenal probably pre-packed each part in cosmoline before assembling the parts... no they didn't, but that is what it feels like.

You can see the difference between cleaned metal on the lower part of the trigger guard and just about any other metal on this carbine. If it glistens it has a layer of cosmoline on it and the stuff here has even had a quick two-pass cleaning. This spells trouble ahead.

Out comes the trigger.

If the parts look indistinct it is due to the fact that they are coated well enough so that I had few worries of parts flying around with it.

This is where the trigger was. See that glistening on the inside where light barely bounces down to the paper towel and back up? No, you probably can't see that all too well. How about on the right where the inletting is orange and a bit circular? That is a spring.

After this came the part where I had to give the bolt and trigger group an initial ultrasonic cleaning so that I could start the detail strip to get a more thorough cleaning. The first ultrasonic did a wonderful job on the surface gunk and allowed some parts beyond the trigger to actually move. Amazing! Then, since I have never done a trigger group like this with the instruction of 'use the cleaning kit tube on the hammer, put the back of the trigger over the edge of the workbench, press straight down until the hammer moves below the trunnions, and then move the hammer slowly back until it comes free' or words to that effect, my spelling isn't so hot. That is only AFTER you get the hammer to swing forward. Getting the hammer to swing forward is a lining up of the interior trigger parts so the trigger engages the sear to release the hammer.

It said so in fine print at the bottom of the page!

Two hours of pipe cleaners, degreaser, Kroil, wiping, trying, getting some gunk out from under the disconnector via the tiny hole in the trigger, degreaser, Militec-1, and, finally, all lined up and the hammer came free and as I had properly positioned my hand so as to ease it forward, it was eased forward. THAT spring was free to maim you via compression release and it had a sworn duty to do so. With that came another half hour of grunting, complaining and generally finally figuring out that 'straight down' means straight down, the hammer came free and the cosmoline did its job of slowing the hammer spring no end. It wasn't coming out at Mach 2, that's for sure!

It is a good idea to dedicate at least one pair of gloves (leather work gloves for outdoorsy work, not garden gloves) for doing this sort of thing. I buy those suckers by the dozen pack at surplus sites and while the stitching on the back and interior sucks, the things still hold together (more or less) and serve as a wonderful way not to get bruises or your skin caught when formed metal gains a life of its own. By the time you are done with them they will be black on the front from cosmoline, and you can use them as a dust magnet.

All the pieces parts could now be disassembled including getting all the springs out and going down to just a couple of components that isn't worth any time disassembling as you can easily examine them for rust (hah!) and cleaning under them. Ultrasonic for all of that for 3 minutes, rinse, and Militec-1. Bag it all as I will be ordering a Wolff spring kit to get positive sear tension on the trigger group as it is currently neutral.

I did try to get the barrel out! Really! Bayonet in the forward, locked position, press down, left hand on the receiver and right hand hitting the stock, while the bayonet is pressed to some plywood on the ground. Uh-huh. 'The barrel will come free easily' so it says in the manual.

I've heard that one before.

Cosmoline is keeping it in place and I put tiny drops of antique blemish remover on the rings the barrel passes through. Just left it as the amount of caked on stuff at those points is awful. If that doesn't work it will probably either be Kroil or Aero-Kroil or WD-40 to let it all sit overnight. I still have lots of small part cleaning and inspection to do. So ordering the spring kit ought to just have it arrive in time for final stock cleaning prior to re-assembly.

If, if I say, I am lucky.

Recent Arrivals - A Week Onwards

2011-07-16T07:33:00.002-04:00

Now last we left the intrepid cosmoline cleaner he had finished with the hardware of the Mosin-Nagant 91/30 and was working on clearing the stuff from the stock. Ahhh... such heady times!

Now after repeated applications of antique restorer with a process of wipe-on, wait 5 minutes, wipe-off, go and do something else for a day so that you wipe down the next day before re-application... and this stuff will continue to leech out cosmoline for a month afterwards... it is now time for the final wipe down and re-assembly.

A beauty to behold!

The benefit of doing this slow route is that if you have an area dedicated towards gun cleaning you can go through this slow process and continue on with other projects. Makes me wish I had an area dedicated to gun cleaning...

The wood actually is pretty dark, but I should probably do a color balance there to get something a bit closer to what it actually looks like. Since I don't have P-shop on the machine I use for the majority of my posts, this will have to do.

That is much closer to what things are coming out like!

Sorry for the low-light effects for the pictures, but I also don't have a dedicated platform for taking pictures. The wood I'm using for contrast is whatever the anonymous 1x4x8' stuff is at the local Home Despot. They don't say and I would only guess oak, given the grain spacing and knots that show up, but that is probably wrong.

The finish is not grainy, as indicated by my poor picture taking, but smooth. And not 'cosmoline on finish' smooth, but clean smooth like shellac on wood. That is the finish on Mosin-Nagants, btw, garnet shellac (or a relative) at a pretty hefty cut. I use some 1 lb. cut that I mix up in small batches for touch-up work and it re-melts the old stuff and allows for a somewhat cleaner appearance where the finish has chipped or worn off.

Basically this rifle is finished and just needs a final check-out before firing. The chamber looks great, the rifling is sharp and the bore shines. There are times when I begin to suspect these rifles were never fired, but that isn't indicated by the carbon deposits on the stock. Still this one is in better overall finish shape than my prior ones, although the stock appears a bit more dented in the buttstock area from original use: minor dent irregularities were smoothed out, sanded and finished over from the arsenal. Either that or it was just poorly cut in the first place and they decided to smooth over the imperfections...

Now for box 2!

Yes, that other box behind the first one on day one.

This is not another M-N (although I do like the batch this one came from) but something different. Spooky, huh?

Time to pull up some pictures I took on the first day.

In comparison the M-N was just coated with cosmoline. This baby is packed with it.

Yup a Yugoslav SKS 59/66 with grenade launcher/compensator and bayonet! Unlike the USSR which must have been scrimping and saving on cosmoline, the Yugoslavs decided that for every SKS they must make sure a quart of cosmoline goes into it.

All that glistens is not gold... most of it is probably cosmoline. There is no real concept of 'bare metal' the way this thing was refurbed at the arsenal.

If you are unwise enough to touch that with your bare hand, you will be putting that hand into a degreasing solution. This is no thin coating of cosmoline, like with the M-N, but congealed masses of the stuff in every crevice of the rifle.

All I can say is every place you see a dull gleam... you wouldn't want to touch it with your bare hand. Plus some smart fellow along the way may have wrapped this rifle in paper for a few microseconds as there are flakes of paper embedded in the cosmoline on the surface. They are just so infused with the stuff you can't really see them.

I wore gloves getting this baby out for display.

It got put back in the box while I got a nice book on the SKS rifle that would go through its lineage and have a detailed strip described in it because this rifle will have to go down to component parts.

Now a week later, with those materials in hand, I started out with the idea that I really do need to touch this thing with something other than gloved hands so started work on a few of the top parts to get things ready for stripping down.

Sorry for the brightness of the paper towel there.

This is a treated/untreated photo of the handguard over forearm, where the handguard has been treated with antique restorer and the handguard has not. While there are some tonal differences in the wood, the top now allows for the flash to shine off of the finish (done with BLO from what I understand) while the cosmoline is just... everywhere on the bottom.

Words do not describe it, really.

The effect is less pronounced on metal, but the very top of the grenade launcher and gas tube have been given a quick once-over and the bottom barrel and bayonet have not. Still it is possible to recognize that there is, finally, clean metal showing up top!
I dare you to do that with any other solvent that smells like a forest has invaded your sinuses! Just not going to happen.

Here the rear portion of the buttstock has been cleaned with a once-over and the part in front past the grip area has not.

Yesterday was the day to really begin work and the very first thing that is in the procedure is to get the cleaning kit from the buttstock...

Uh-oh.

Yesterday, after re-assembling the M-N, I had my first job on the SKS.

Clean the cleaning kit.

And I thought the butt plate on the M-N was bad!

Little did I know.

I put all the small parts into my handy-dandy ultrasonic cleaner with weapon cleaning solution, and gave them a 3 minute cycle. A couple of the smaller parts, like screws, could be taken out at that point. The rest got a repeat of that and, yes, the milky substance I found from the M-N is, indeed, cosmoline that has been cavitated with bubbles as that happened to the globules of the stuff on the parts here.

While that went on I began to apply antique blemish remover to the rest of the stock hoping that it will fight its way through the cosmoline. The wipe-on was... well... sticky and awful. The after 5 minute wipe-off wasn't much better. Today the overnight wait is done and I will be getting on with actually starting the thorough take-down and strip of everything from everything else. I couldn't see through the bore... well, I could see the lovely soft glow of light attempting to get through cosmoline...

Buy your milsurp Yugoslav SKS and get a FREE quart of cosmoline!

YMMV.

Recent Arrivals - One day

2011-07-10T11:22:00.001-04:00

It is one day later and a lot was accomplished yesterday. I started off with a few pictures today and if they are awful... well I am no photographer.

First all the metal parts got removed cleaned.

The bolt and takedown tools got an ultrasonic cleaning in the small ultrasonic machine I picked up a year ago, and I used some specially made cleaning solution mixed 11:1 of water to solution. I made sure to get the bolt thoroughly immersed so that water was all inside it and then turned it a few times during the process to get rid of any bubble build-up. That was a fascinating process to watch as the cosmoline was coming off as white strands as surface cavitation was getting bubbles into it so as to lift it up from the metal surface. I confirmed that after a five minute cleaning by feeling one of the strands and it was a greasy light mix showing its origins to be the cosmoline. The solution was milky white and since the formula is safe for disposal it went away, being all biodegradable and stuff.

I applied WD-40 to parts that would take a few minutes for me to get to while I disassembled the bolt. There were some milky white pieces to get off the interior, but they were no longer adhering to the metal, just sitting on it. The bolt was in fine shape with no pitting or other marks on it, smooth to the touch and thus needing some Militec-1. A drop or two spread around via a rag is all it takes and then another drop or two via pipe cleaners to get at the hard to reach parts, a dot of the Militec-1 grease (that I have in these lovely syringes able to get a tiny dot of grease out of the end) was put on the threads going into the bolt or any other high wear areas. A bit of struggling to get the bolt reassembled, due to the spring more than anything else, and that was that. Next was the drop of magic metal protector on each of the take-down pieces and cleaning pieces and I was ready to go after the buttplate, magazine and receiver.

Now with all of that stuff spread out before me I started using some of the all-natural, won't harm a natural finish on wood and will clean metal antique restorer sparingly on everything. By sparingly I mean a clean rag folded over four times and you slowly wipe over the surface of the wood or metal, flipping to damp clean surface as the one you are using gets junk built up on it.

The left rag is a small projects rag that started out about half-dirty, the one on the right was a clean-up rag that started out pretty clean. These have both gotten the quick one-minute hand washing with gentle dishwashing liquid then rinsing and drying. Any first application of this stuff will pick up all sorts of surface grime and generally get dirty quickly. That left rag was initial wipe down of practically everything from the inside of the stock (particularly the magazine area where cosmoline will find a way to build up and get into the chamber if you don't get it very clean) then the exterior, then across all the metal on the exterior of the receiver, screws, magazine, butt plate... if it has cosmoline on it, it gets wiped. And you don't use much of this stuff, either. I used the blemish remover on the butt plate and wood there as the cosmoline was caked in and just awful. That sucking sound getting the butt plate loose was cosmoline unwilling to release its hold.

By the time you get everything dampened its about 5 minutes and time to wipe over all the areas you just hit with a clean dry rag. That is the right hand rag and the stuff that came off with it was not nice, particularly where there was some carbon build-up in the cleaning rod channel. I actually did a re-application there as chunks of carbon came off to reveal the finish and wood underneath...

During this process the first rag, the one I wetted down a few times, was getting that lovely orange to yellow-orange color of cosmoline on it. So was the dry rag. The photos were taken before I used a dry rag on the stock today, and it was getting that light coating of cosmoline on it, too.

All of the metal got the Militec-1 wipe-down after I did the stock wipe-off.

Total time to get things where they were in the photos was about 2.5 hours, not counting camera time.

From that I got to see some areas of wear that were covered over yesterday.

One of the benefits of the antique restoring liquid is that on metal it starts to break the cosmoline down, beyond lifting it off the surface, meaning that my standard cleaner/de-greaser KG-3 can get rid of it. Normally I can't do that to cosmoline all that well with that stuff, but after one wipe of restorer, one wipe to remove it and one spray and wipe of KG-3 I am down to metal finish.

Today was stock wipe-down #2, putting all the fabric goods into a batch of liquid de-greaser and then rinsing it, and doing a cleaning of the bore starting with the antique restoring fluid, KG-3 and then Militec-1. Nice, shiny bore!

The next few days will be restorer wipe-down/wipe-on/wipe-off until there is zero cosmoline on any of the rags. As the restorer adds some oils into the wood surface to help close up the pores, it will take some days to finally get the cosmoline out, but well worth it.

Recent Arrivals

2011-07-09T12:45:00.001-04:00

Oooooo! Boxes!!

There are two of them there.

Now what does this portend?

Hey, there's a drill press on a stand next to the workbench... that wasn't there before, was it? Hmmmm....

Still there are boxes and it is time to see what sort of refugees have arrived here in those cardboard containers.

Uh-oh! Cosmoline! The dreaded nemesis returns to coat and adorn any hand, glove, or errant finger that gets close to it and then it will spread everywhere.

And look! There it is hiding just waiting to jump out at the unwary...

Most evil of materials that protects all and seeks to coat all. Including you.

I speak from experience here, trust me.

It came with its pouches bearing gifts of cosmoline... no, that just isn't something you want to hear at Christmas.

There it glistens adorning metal and wood, putting a dull sheen on it all.

Refugees from a bygone era bearing gifts after they were last looked at and packed away for a war that never came... yet...

And yet, for all that, there is beauty under there, hidden and trying to show through.

Then, of course I opened the second box....

Simple solutions for complex problems

2011-06-15T07:17:00.001-04:00

As the discussion of what the States might do during a Constitutional convention has been kicked around for a few years and is getting some traction (as seen at Instapundit), here is a quick and simple amendment to consider:

Proposed Amendment

1) All regulations shall be approved by a simple majority of Congress.

2) Any regulation may be removed by either house of Congress.

3) All legislation for all laws shall be reauthorized every ten years, to include all regulations. All prior government laws and regulations shall be reauthorized on the final number year they were first instituted.

4) All directly granted bodies mentioned specifically in the Constitution are exempt from reauthorization. All directly granted bodies are not exempt from regulatory reauthorization procedures.

This concept is known as a 'sunset' law that would sunset every provision ever passed by any Congress or regulatory body formed by Congress so that Congress must take active steps so as to re-affirm that these bodies and regulations are actually necessary.

The ability to get a simple majority in either body of Congress to strike down regulations should be enough to curb offending regulations.

Do note that this proposed Amendment is incorporated, in part, to the States so that every State gets a 'sunset' law. It is up to the States to consider which bodies they have that pass laws so that the proper ten year sunset cycle is implemented in each State for State level concerns.

This will keep the US Congress and State legislative bodies very, very busy for a decade to clear out the backlog. And anything that isn't reaffirmed goes away. The default position of any government is that it only has power on approval of proper legislation passed and reaffirmed on a frequent basis. Do note that this includes ALL government activities, and only those mandated by the US Constitution or State Constitutions must be kept, but their regulatory ability is also under scrutiny.

Sunshine is the best policy for transparency as a disinfectant.

Sunsets allow for old ideas to pass away and only those positively reaffirmed will survive any nightfall, others live like mayflies and die out very quickly, indeed.