Friday was Mom’s wake. All the kids, all the grandkids, all the great-grandkids were there. Dad’s sister and cousins were there as well.

Dad had also invited many of Mom’s friends as well.

I had too many crying jags. Dad was tearing up all the time. I’m tearing up now.

I wish the liquor scattered over [her], Johnny Walker Blue.

On a more serious note:

I was wandering through the depths of the internet when a meme from Brandon Herrera popped. I expected it to be another hit piece by his political opponent. The comments seemed to be leading that way. Then I zoomed int.

The meme is something like:

When you’re taken out with a set of NERF NODS and a guy with a $300 1911.

Is there such a thing as NERF NODS?

It isn’t a real scope, the mount is shite, there are no crosshairs.

What it is, is a $30 camera that is sensitive in IR. This means you could potentially use this with said $300 1911.

What is the world coming to?

At that same gathering, my brother, his five sons and I were standing around talking.

TSA came up and we all joked about security theater.

The next topic was “Favorite knives we’ve lost to security theater.”

Turns out that all but myself have lost knives to security theater. The closest I’ve come was when I was called over because my 8 or 9 year old daughter was caught with a steak knife in her carry on.

We just tossed it. I had to explain to her that it isn’t ok to take knives through security.

This discussion lead to the “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.” stage. In front of girlfriends and wives and everything.

So 7 guys. I lost count at over 25 knives being displayed. And I know damn well that not a one of us showed all of our knives.

I felt distinctly out classed in the knife realm. Having only a Cold Steel locking folder and a Gerber to show. I don’t think the Sig would have counted.

Nobody else was carrying. Even though bro has a permit to carry.

But as we have said in the past: the difference between a winner and a loser in a knife fight is that one of them dies at the scene, the other on the way to the hospital

I had the misfortune of having to be in a household where the TV is tuned to CNN or MSNBC all the time.

Over the course of the visit I was asked to comment on the Trump trial a few times. But there was nothing on the air except how they were finally going to put Trump in jail.

I’ve watched this propaganda turn thinking people into NPCs. They seem to only be able to mouth talking points of the left, all while calling us mouth breathers or worst.

On a side note, it is always a pleasure to listen to some ignorant person mouthing off about how deadly and dangerous guns are. How nobody but the government should have them. How they would never feel safe if there was a gun near them.

All while I’m carrying.

P.S. A good pocket holster does a damn fine job of holding your pistol where it is “easy” to get to but polite company don’t notice.

I hope you had a great week and I hope your weekend will be better.

Last weekend, I had a chance to speak to a couple of expert survivalists. The sort that go off into the woods for a couple of months with just a few things, no food, no water. They go out to survive on the land.

I was asking about skills. There are many skills I do have and more that I don’t have.

What skills do you think you will need if you can’t just buy it, that you would suggest learning?

Examples: Making lye. This is a precursor to soap. Brewing, filtering water, grinding wheat, preserving meat and vegetables, making cordage.

On Saturday, I made a piece of scrap metal. I did a stupid, and then could not recover.

Then I proceeded to think my way out of my issue and into an incorrect answer.

Today I did the job over again, making different mistakes.

I’ve had more crashes making this backplate than any other task I’ve done.

The safest way to cut threads to a hard shoulder is to not cut towards the hard shoulder, cut away from it.

This means that you need to run the lathe in reverse. You have to position your cutter upside down or on the back of the side of the work.

Both options require a “left hand threading tool.” Don’t worry about it. Left hand and right hand just indicate which side of a tool the cutting edge is on.

Working in reverse, cutting an internal thread from a hard shoulder is simple. You pull the tool towards you, away from the work. You move the tool to the left to a hard stop. Your tool is now in the correct position along the axis. You then dial in the cut. This is the amount of material you are going to remove.

The final step is to engage the half nut. When you do this, the cartage starts to move away from the shoulder at the pitch required. When the cutter leaves the work, you disengage the half nut, rinse, and repeat until you have cut your threads correctly.

Chances of a crash? Almost none.

With my lathe, this can be an issue. The chuck is just screwed on. This means that it will just unscrew if the cutting force is high, and you are turning the chuck in reverse. You can make light cuts, but you have to watch, and you have to be careful.

This means I don’t do it. I don’t have the right tools to do it. That has been corrected.

I will be able to cut in reverse shortly.

If you are not cutting to away from a hard shoulder, you need to have a relief groove for the threading tool to enter. Without that, there can be issues with thread form at the end of the cut.

I have external grooving tools, I didn’t have an internal grooving tool. That has been corrected.

Because I didn’t have the left hand boring bar threading tool, and I don’t have that grooving tool, I decided to just do a through hole and thread that.

Because I turned my cross slide, all of my clearances are different. Even when I checked for clearances, I still messed up. I had the cross slide touch the work, no big deal but stupid. I had the 7/8 drill touch the jaws. About the only touch that didn’t happen was the tooling.

I got the threads cut. I got the registration cut. I then went to measure and double-check the size of the registration boss for the chuck.

That is 0.53 tall and 2.26 in diameter. The 2.26 will be cut to fit the chuck. The hole was bored to 1.75. It was then threaded 8 TPI. This means it has a major diameter of 1.87 or so. The size matching hole in the chuck back is measured at 2.17 this gives me 0.29 inches. Divide that in half, and we have 0.145 wall size, instead of the 0.59 that we would have done if I had used the proper design.

Regardless, I now have a collet check on a backplate that fits my lathe. The world is better.