At one time, I was a member of the NRA. My mentor gave me that membership. The legislative announcements we received were useful.

We submitted testimony three times, I spoke before the Maryland Senate committee that was looking at infringement bills. Every time, it was the NRA that gave us the heads-up. It was the NRA there, fighting for our rights.

In those committee hearings, there were always a dozen or more anti-gun groups and exactly one pro-Second Amendment group.

We look and see the NRA is missing in the current court battles. They were there. They still are.

Consider the name of this group, “The New York State Rifle and Pistol Association”. You might remember them from such hits as “New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. City of New York” and “New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, Superintendent of New York State Police, Et Al.”.

Let me quote you a little something from their web page: We are a not-for-profit 501(c)4 organization and the official NRA-affiliated State Association in New York..

That’s correct, that was the NRA working for many years to help get our win in Bruen

Today, the NRA is a shell of its former self. I know people who maintain their memberships because they just do. I send my money to other groups, groups who I see in court battles time and time again.

Please pray that the NRA can recover from its nose dive to become a powerhouse in the support of the Second Amendment again.

I am a “hobby” machinist. I’ve read some books, I’ve watched 1000s of YouTube videos. I’ve even been in the shop and made things. But I’m still a hobby grade machinist.

Occasionally, there are things that you just don’t know you don’t know.

The bible for machinists is the Machinery’s Handbook. It contains maths, it contains formulas, it contains specifications, it contains just about any knowledge you might need to machine something.

I’ve looked at the section on bearings, and it didn’t click.

Then one of you sent me some feedback on the Casinator. It was obvious from the outset that they knew what they were talking about. They rattled off specifications and bearing identifiers without issue. I had to spend some time looking things up.

One of the things that we deal with is attaching things to one another. You can glue things together with molten metal, but that has its issues. You can attach things with bolts and other fasteners. You can also shove something into a hole that is too small for it with enough force that it goes in and stays in place.

That last thing is called a “press fit”. Assume you have a 1/4in hole, and you want to press a 1/4in shaft into that hole and have it stick. If the hole is 0.2500 and the shaft is 0.2490, the shaft clears the hole. As long as the shaft doesn’t expand or the hole shrinks from heat, everything is fine.

But we want it to stick. We can either make the hole smaller or the shaft bigger. The Machinery’s Handbook will guide you to the correct values.

Bearings are designed to be held in place. One of the most common methods is a press fit. For the types of bearings I’m using, this means that when the bearing is pressed onto the shaft, it stays. When the bearing is pressed into the faceplate, it stays.

The amount of interference is based on many factors, some of those factors are known only to the manufacturer of the bearings.

Thus, “nominal”. With the R4ZZ bearings I am using, they are nominally 5/8 OD and 1/4 ID.

They are not 0.6250 and 0.2500. The OD is large, and the ID is smaller. The interference fit is built into the bearing design.

My job is to hit the proper sizes when I machine the pockets and shafts. That is to say, my pockets must be 0.6250 within the given tolerances, and the shaft must be 0.250 within the given tolerances.

No maths for me! Just hit my numbers.

Thank you!

Thank you, everybody who has given me feed back on the reloading series and on my dreams of building the Casinater.

The court cases are starting to ramp up, I’ll be digging into those a bit more as progress happens.

My wife told me that when she sees an article with countless words and numerous quotes, she has to put extra time aside to read them. That reading the quotes is particularly difficult.

I’ve added some new formatting capabilities. I’m going to start highlighting important parts of quotes. I need those quotes because I want context to be available to you. I want the highlighting so that it is easier for you to follow what I consider to be significant.

The comments are open, please let us know what we are doing right and what we need to improve.

Thanks again.

I have all the raw materials in hand, as well as the motor and power supply. The 5 mm drive belt material is somewhere in the reloading supplies. It is the material I used to make a replacement belt for the wet tumbler when the original, 20-year-old belt broke.

Is this a commercial design? No. The front drive belt is there to provide a built-in safety. It will slip if there is too much drag on the system. In a finished product, I would be mounting the motor differently, behind the front plate.

In the same way, the idler shoulder bolt would be a blind hole instead of a through hole.

Finally, it is likely that a better design would use belts for driving everything instead of gears and belts.

Here’s a peek at the rear.

As soon as I get working drawings out of FreeCAD, I’ll go into the shop and make the faceplate and mount up the motor.

The next step will be to press the bearings into the faceplate. Then I’ll make the drive pulley, the cutter/driven pulley, and the three toolholders.

The last step is making the gears. I’ll be cutting a longish piece of Delrin with 22 tooth gears. That long gear will then be cut into 4 actual gears to use. The final task will be the 14 tooth idler gear and the shoulder bolt.

Exciting times.

The Seventh Circuit court ignored the Supreme Court’s ruling in Bruen and decided that Illinois did nothing wrong when they held their Bruen tantrum to bass PICA.

The case got dumped back in Judge McGlynn’s lap. The plaintiffs filed motions for things to help The People.

Judge McGlynn denied them, but in writing that denial he took issue with the Seventh Circuit court. This is the same as publicly stating, “The boss told me to fill your home with concrete. I have to do it. They are wrong for all these reasons …”.

But in the meantime, the state has continued their quest to deny Second Amendment protected rights to The People of Illinois.

On December 22, 2023, the state told the court: Our attorney is super-duper busy. She’s scheduled herself out of the office from December 26 through January 9. And she’s so busy, she has other cases with deadlines, there are three holidays, she just can’t do it.

Yesterday, Judge McGlynn said, “NO. You WILL have the scheduled reply by the 19th of January.”

From following these cases, I believe that the normal scheduling is about a month, with replies due 3 weeks after and responses do a week after the reply. It feels like Judge McGlynn is going to keep the state on a short leash.

There was a time when I had the luxury of going shopping for movies and music every Friday. The family would get in the car, and we would drive over to Circuit City and look through the new movie releases.

As we were looking through the movies, I heard a nice five string quartet on the store speakers. I asked what the group was, found the disk and went to purchase it.

My eldest daughter, a freshman in high school, took one look at the cover and accused me of buying the album because the cover art showed some fine ladies.

If this is a repeat, sorry.

Welcome to the beginning of another year of crisis.

One and a half years after the Supreme Court issued their opinion in the Bruen case, not a single Second Amendment challenge has been resolved. Every state that had Draconian infringements now has worse infringements.

After Bruen I was hoping to get a permit to carry in MA. That is not happening anytime soon.

The economy is the worse I’ve ever seen it. For the first time in my life, I’m stressing about bringing in enough money for the family.

We are already into the campaign process. I’m watching Biden hide in the basement, not bothering to campaign at all. Meanwhile, the media is attacking each of the Republican candidates in turn. It will only get worse.

I’ve decided on my next project, I just do a reasonable job of it.

It turns out that there are multiple different companies that sell trimmers for cutting cases to length. The issue is setting the distance to trim. Both Lee and Lyman have a system where a probe goes through the flash hole to bottom out on the case holder.

Those probes fit all the standard cutters.

The cutters have standard threads.

My project is a geared motor driving the trimmer. The connection will be via rubber pulley. The shaft will feed through the face and where a gear will be mounted. That will drive a distribution gear to drive three other shafts. Feeding back to the front where they will be drilled and tapped to take the standard case prep tools.

So, when setup and running, you will be able to trim a case to length, chamfer the outside, chamfer the inside and then mount the next case for processing. When doing the pockets, you can have up to four tools spinning. I figure a reamer, a normalizer, and a pocket hole cleaner.

It is all fun, I’ve got some Delrin rods to make gears from, looking forward to making this monster.

Happy New Years to you all.

Stay ready, stay prepared, have fun.