Gun Free Zone

TL;DR A verbose and not especially eloquent but assuredly boring read about my iterative process to find the best pocket tool for EDC. There’s a few pics and lots of links too. 7118 words.

(Part 1: 3000 Words)

I have been on an eternal quest to find the best EDC tool(s) to supplement the typical knife, flashlight, pen, etcetera that fit my specific requirements. For our purposes here, EDC means what is carried on my person and in my pockets, on my belt, in my boot etc. Effectively, it is affixed to me in some way. Supplementing the pocket knife with crap I keep in my bag is very easy, supplementing it with only what’s in my pockets is tough! This search also must be considerate of my carry choices and methods with carry being either strong side or appendix, with speed loaders or a magazine in the pocket. So pocket space is a premium!

Requirement wise, I’m an IT guy, well THE IT guy, who works in a manufacturing company. While I do make my way into the shop when needed, I’m primarily in the office, and I don’t find myself doing as much field surgery these days in the office or shop. That said, it is quite aggravating to find myself at the furthest end of the building from my office, only to discover I need a screwdriver or Torx driver of some specific size and that no one in the machine shop I work in seems to possess such a tool but me. I also occasionally find myself doing some minor spelunking in the walls and ceilings to pull and mend cables, and there is the infrequent surface mount box or receptacle I have to open up. A screwdriver is also of course handy for rack mounted items. Considerations for this EDC outside of work are moot. If I’m doing real work on something that requires real tools, I’m not going to waste time and aggravate myself with pocket tools. I have sets of real tools for this purpose, and if it can break and fuck up my day, then I won’t leave home without the means to repair whatever “it” is. For me, the EDC that fits work requirements is sufficient for play requirements.

The conclusion is that in addition to the knife, flashlight, pen, etcetera, I would like to have a couple of other tools in my pocket with me all the time to save myself a long walk back to my office or from doing a tool scavenger hunt. The screwdriver is the most used tool after the actual knife, or maybe even before, and so my initial requirements developed as follows:

1. Must have at least a Phillips screwdriver. Multiple sizes are better.

2. Must have at least one flat head screwdriver. Multiple sizes are a bonus.

3. Must fit in my pocket, be compact, not be obstructive, and work with gun carry options.

4. Any additional tools, farkles, and greebles I can fit in the required form factor is a bonus.

These requirements in mind, I came to the following ways to meet these requirements. A bit of testing and experimenting with each category would eventually yield what I have settled on today.

• A multi-tool/Leatherman/Swiss Army Knife of some sort. One thing to do the knifing and tooling in one package.

• A custom made kit built of the tools I want/need to fit the size I want.

• A purpose built tool to meet my requirements.

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Pickleball is millennial badminton.

This is Scotland in 2024, because Europe is going back to its Jew-Hating roots.

At a rally in Edinburgh, a @PoliceScotland officer asked a Jewish bystander to hide his Star of David, to avoid “triggering” the protesters.

The police officer is clearly worried that he and his colleagues are heavily outnumbered and that these protesters could pose a threat to… pic.twitter.com/kI8As7KNCm

— Campaign Against Antisemitism (@antisemitism) February 14, 2024

Fuck that noise.

I’m an American.

If some cop told me to hide my Jewish star to keep from triggering antiseimtes, I swear to everything good and holy, I’m to strap up like Noah MacManus, put on a Magen David the size of Flavor Flav’s fucking clock, and strut around like the Homecoming game winning QB who just fucked the prom queen.

What happens happens. They can fucking try me.

It is always weird when you have something that you can’t find online anymore.

Years ago, when we owned a small hobby farm, we used to have “sausage making day”. About once per year we would, as a family, gather to make sausage. One of our lodgers owned a powered meat grinder. We would spend the day grinding meat and making sausage.

I do not remember what make or model it was. I just knew that people complained about the motor overheating and other issues.

Fast-forward, we want to make ground meat and sausage again, but we don’t have a grinder. I set my lady to looking for a manual meat grinder. She located a Weston #32.

As far as I can tell, meat grinders are sized by that number. #32 is the larger size. Today, #32 are professional sized electric grinders. The sort of thing which will grind an entire cow in a single session.

The thing is, I think that this darn manual mill could do an entire cow in a few hours also.

It is constructed of two large iron castings. The body and the augur. The body doesn’t seem to have much in the way of machining. The drive end of the augur takes a plastic bushing to center the augur, the front might have been machined round to take the grate.

The augur is drilled and tapped at both ends. The cutter end having been faced as well.

All in all, a low cost of production. Castings are generally fairly low cost. The amount of machining is low.

The one issue I have with ours is that the feet are not on the same plane. I could take it to the shop and cut the legs level, but it isn’t worth the effort.

Currently, we just clamp it to the counter top with C-Clamps.

How well does it work? Very well.

One of the first things I learned is that the retaining ring must be on tight. And you will have to tighten the ring a few times as you use the tool.

The last thing I learned is that I should remove the cutters and grate between passes, as there will be product that gets caught in the cutter.

The second thing I learned was that you don’t really want or need to fill the hopper. Just add enough so that the augur is barely covered, add more as the augur is exposed.

We did a 75% venison to 25% beef fat mix. It was still leaner than the 85% ground beef we get from the store.

It just feed through. There were no difficulties. It took us about 30 minutes to process about 10 pounds total.

We ran the entire batch through a total of three times. The first were one-inch cubes. We mixed the result manually and feed it through a second time, only for mixing purposes. Then we mixed manually a second time and feed it through for the last time.

Everything was then packaged in one-pound packages and frozen.

The only issue we’ve had is that the plastic pushing had a thrust bushing. That was broken before we got it. I will have to machine a replacement.

At this point, we are looking at making ground beef. It isn’t much more work, and I believe we will get superior results.

We are just looking for some cheap beef to come on sale.

Furthermore, We are looking at sausage making, again. We just haven’t gotten there yet.

The subsequent comments go down the road of “maybe they target certain groups for a reason” but I am going to go with a different idea. Shotspotter has been iffy at best and in some locations, downright useless. I have covered before about cities implementing and then dropping it because the promise of crime solving was never materialized.

I am thinking that the Mayor has a budgetary crisis (Open Borders?) and needs to scrounge money from somewhere fast. The Race Card was played to distract from the announcement and criticism that he was going soft on crime.

NEW: Florida deputy hears acorn hit his police car, thinks he has been shot at and then opens fire on his own patrol car with a cuffed man in the back of the car.

Unreal.

Okaloosa County deputy Jesse Hernandez convinced himself that he was not only shot at, but that he was also… pic.twitter.com/LXHx26TSMt

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) February 14, 2024

At least he had the decency to turn in his badge.

Cop resigns after mistaking falling acorn for gunshot, firing at unarmed suspect cuffed in patrol car

A Florida cop resigned after opening fire on an unarmed black man who was handcuffed in his patrol car — because he confused the sound of an acorn hitting the vehicle with a muffled gunshot.

Sgt. Beth Roberts, who also opened fire, was exonerated in an internal investigation and remained on the job, according to police.

The deputies had responded to a complaint from Jackson’s girlfriend, who alleged that the man had committed grand theft auto, threatened her and was in possession of multiple firearms and a silencer, according to police.

When Hernandez approached the right rear door to search the suspect again, he apparently mistook the sound of an acorn hitting the car for a gunshot and quickly reacted with potentially deadly force.

That dude had one too many energy drinks during his shift.

Just remember, that as an untrained civilian, you can’t be expected to keep a level head and not turn every misunderstanding into a shootout.  That’s why only cops should carry guns in public.

United States Conference of Catholic Bishops is the entity that runs the Catholic Church in the US. They are notoriously anti-gun and support as much as they can all prohibitions to carry in houses of prayer. Add to that that there are very few churches that are not attached to a Catholic school and what you have a is a vast network of Gun Free Zones waving the Vatican flag.

So, I do indeed wonder when some nutjob with the desire of getting a body count or claim justice for some faux-oppressed group or just plainly some anti-papist Kukler will decide to use Sunday Mass as target practice.

I wish I could go to Mass more than once or twice a year but fuck if I am going to risk my life because some purple cassocked assholes in Washington D.C. say I can’t carry inside a church.