This is about a week after I received the knife. So still in the early days.

First, notice that I call it a “knife”. That is because it is a knife first, a multi-tool second. This means it can replace my Cold Steel blade.

It is noticeably lighter than the Cold Steel blade. It is also a bit shorter, about a half inch shorter. Which is one of the reasons it is lighter.

The Cold Steel has metal slabs. This makes it stronger? It does make it heavier. The slaps have finger divots, making it easy to grip.

The Select Fire has a metal interior but a plastic exterior. It has good fitment and comfortable ergonomics. No finger grooves or divots but the shape is such that I’m not concerned that it will slip will using it.

I did something unusual and read the directions. It gave the edge bevel. This is helpful for those that sharpen their own knives. The blade arrived sharp. Kershaw offers free sharpening services for their blades.

The edge is not polished nor is it hair whittling sharp. It is a good functional edge.

The pocket clip is my only issue, so far. It is so tight that I can’t get it to clip to my pockets, in all cases.

The other issue is that because of the design, I can not carry it point up. I adjusted my Cold Steel to clip point up. This means that as the knife comes out of my pocket, it is in the correct orientation to deploy.

The Kershaw can only be carried point down. This is taking a bit of training on my part to learn how to retrieve the knife and deploy it.

So what makes the Select Fire a multi-tool? A bit socket. The shaft is 2 inches long and has a standard hex 1/4in socket at the end. It has a magnet to hold the bits in place.

The socket rod has three positive detents. One is full close, one is ninety degrees and one is 180 degrees. They are strong detents, moving close to “am I going to break something” when I first started working with it.

This give you a good 1/4 driver, which for me is a big plus as it is the standard screw head size for many items, like dishwashers, washing machines, furnaces and others.

There is onboard storage for 4 standard bits. Two per side. The holders are spring loaded to hold them closed. The bit holders are firm but not stupid tight. Bits move in and out with little effort but I don’t think they would “just slide out”.

When the carrier is closed, there is no space for the bits to slide out. They are stopped by the knife body.

It comes with a PH1, PH2, 5mm slot, and 7mm slot bits. I will be replacing the slotted with a gunsmithing version. I will replace the other slot with a Ph0. Ph0 is used for many electronics.

So far, I’m impressed and happy with the knife/tool. I might write a follow up in a 6 plus months, but for now, this is an acceptable replacement knife.

Oh, the one thing I would not use it for is processing game. It has too many places where blood and tissue could get. Since I have knives for game processing, this is not an issue, for me.

Update: After one of our commenters provided me with the correct term for this type of case, I was able to research “Stepped-cases” and found this is a thing.

As a reloader, I understand just how expensive and hard to get powder got. And how much more expensive it is today than 5 years ago. I believe that somebody spent the time and money to research reduced loads in smaller case sizes to get an answer that said it was cheaper to use more brass than it was to use more powder.

Regardless, my point remains, 100% inspection of cases is good policy and could save your firearm, hand, or even life.

Diamond K came through for me again. 2000+ cases arrived for processing.

1000+ .45 ACP and 1000+ 9 mm cases total. While they sell by count, they are actually shipping by weight.

From my quick test, 10 9 mm cases weigh around 37.3g, 250 cases are 932.5g. Counting by weight, I received about 40 extra cases in the 9 mm order, plus 2 extra in the .45 ACP. There was one .22 LR case and a single small stone holding that .22 case inside the 9 mm case.

But that isn’t the fun find.

Somebody missed a step:

That casing was not drawn out correctly. Somebody put a primer on the case, added powder and a bullet.

And it went to one of us like that.

When you are reloading, inspect every case.

Giffords has stepped in on a PA case with arguments to have the case heard en banc

Theses are some of the weakest arguments I’ve seen so far, from the infringers.

They are arguing that the panel majority applied a requirement that the regulations presented by the state “need only be ‘relevantly similar'” instead of “analogous.” They claim that it is too strict of an interpretation.

They claim that the panel required a precise historical analogue, which is too rigorous, nearly making it a “historical twin”.

The problem is that they don’t even meet that lower standard of “relevantly similar”.

One part of the argument is that the Supreme Court has stated that time-place limitations are constitutional. Thus, a ban on 18-20 year-olds carrying firearms is acceptable because it is only a limit for the duration of “the emergency”.

They fail to note that “the emergency” has been ongoing for over 3 years now.

So they go to their second argument.

1791 isn’t the right time frame. You need to use 1868!

Giffords claims that the Supreme Court did not set the date. This is not true. The meaning of the constitution, was set when it was adopted. The meaning of each amendment was set at the time it was ratified.

In this case, the Second Amendment was ratified in 1791. That is the correct era.

The argument that it should be 1868, when the Fourteenth amendment was ratified is bogus. The 14th incorporated the meaning of the constitution, as it was understood when adopted and amendments 1-13 were ratified.

This is so weak, it shows that they are losing, becoming more and more desperate.

The lawsuits are moving forward across the country. It is obvious that the different plaintiffs are working together.

A few months ago, we were all waiting for the circuit courts to issue their opinions. My expectation was that we would then see everything end up back in the inferior court for another couple of years of litigation before we made progress towards the Supreme Court.

I believe that we now have 5 cases before the Supreme Court seeking cert.

If the Supreme Court decides to hear the cases, it is likely they will consolidate the cases and then address multiple questions at the same time.

This week, I’ve been working on software to allow me to more easily follow Supreme Court cases. I’m using it as another learning curve.

I’m also getting ready to do some product photography for a website, it should be fun.

I also have an interesting 9mm case that I want to share with you. A clear example of why we should inspect every case before we use it.

Here’s hoping you have a wonderful weekend. Please let us know what you are thinking about in the comments.

I first purchased my web tumbler more than 20 years ago, as a ball mill.

It has made more than a few pounds of black powder.

Today, it is used mostly for cleaning brass. I’ve been looking and looking for better ways of cleaning my brass.

There are two different times when I’m cleaning brass, before it is processed, and after it has been sized and trimmed.

For after trimming, the wet tumble does a good job of removing those sharp edges. I like using it.

Dawn and LemiShine were not doing a good job of removing the Imperial Sizing wax. The fix was to use a cycle of Purple Power.

The current method is 45 minutes with Dawn Dish soap, followed by 45 minutes with LemiShine.

After trimming, it would be Dawn, Purple Power, and then LemiShine. 45,30,45.

This leaves my brass looking “like new”. Amazing. If you exclude the LemiShine, it doesn’t stay pretty as long, nor does it get as pretty.

So what is this “little thing”? It is a freaking sieve. Yes, a sieve.

Is it perfect? No. It just works better than other things I’ve tried.

It fits in a 5 gal bucket. I just empty the tumbler into it, rinse the casings, shake a bit and then rinse again.

Most of the steel pins fall through into the bucket. I spend 3 to 5 minutes, stirring the cases and tumbling them to get most of the pins out of the casings. It isn’t perfect, by far. It is very much “good enough”.

This silly little sieve has taken a “I do not want to do job” and turned it into “no big deal”. It takes less than 10 minutes to move to the next stage.

It has improved work flow to the point where I cleaned 2000 cases in a little more than a day.

If you wet tumble, this might be worth the $10 to you.

On Wed, Feb 21, the site experienced downtime.  The cause was an infrastructure update that caused certain resources to go offline.

At no time was there a risk to the contents of the site.

The resources (ceph cluster) has been brought back online and the site, obviously, is now functioning properly.

Geek speak:

The base infrastructure is K8S. A ceph cluster provides backing storage for the RDBMS and for the assets. At around 0800, the K8S cluster was forcibly upgraded because of EOL issues.

This caused NAS volumes to become detached from the K8S ceph nodes. This is expected. Once the volumes were attached to the new K8S ceph nodes, the OSD processes had to be properly restarted.

Once this was completed, the ceph volumes became available to all the pods that needed them and the site was brought back up.