Quotulatiousness

November 18, 2021

Make a Vintage-Style Wooden Hinge with Hand Tools

Filed under: Tools, Woodworking — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Rex Krueger
Published 17 Nov 2021

This wooden hinge will put your tools to the test & make an unexpected addition to your skill set.

All plans 50% off until Christmas! https://www.rexkrueger.com/store
Get the plans from this video! (Scroll down)

Fish-Head Marking Gauge
https://www.rexkrueger.com/store/plan…

DIY Turning Saw
https://www.rexkrueger.com/store/diy-…

Advanced Shooting Board (not yet redesigned)
https://www.rexkrueger.com/store/adva…
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Get My New Book, Everyday Woodworking: https://amzn.to/3uQtdQr

Check out my new site: https://woodworkforhumans.com
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Sign up for Fabrication First, my FREE newsletter: http://eepurl.com/gRhEVT?
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Wood Work for Humans Tool List (affiliate):
*Cutting*
Gyokucho Ryoba Saw: https://amzn.to/2Z5Wmda
Dewalt Panel Saw: https://amzn.to/2HJqGmO
Suizan Dozuki Handsaw: https://amzn.to/3abRyXB
(Winner of the affordable dovetail-saw shootout.)
Spear and Jackson Tenon Saw: https://amzn.to/2zykhs6
(Needs tune-up to work well.)
Crown Tenon Saw: https://amzn.to/3l89Dut
(Works out of the box)
Carving Knife: https://amzn.to/2DkbsnM
Narex True Imperial Chisels: https://amzn.to/2EX4xls
(My favorite affordable new chisels.)
Blue-Handled Marples Chisels: https://amzn.to/2tVJARY
(I use these to make the DIY specialty planes, but I also like them for general work.)

*Sharpening*
Honing Guide: https://amzn.to/2TaJEZM
Norton Coarse/Fine Oil Stone: https://amzn.to/36seh2m
Natural Arkansas Fine Oil Stone: https://amzn.to/3irDQmq
Green buffing compound: https://amzn.to/2XuUBE2

*Marking and Measuring*
Stockman Knife: https://amzn.to/2Pp4bWP
(For marking and the built-in awl).
Speed Square: https://amzn.to/3gSi6jK
Stanley Marking Knife: https://amzn.to/2Ewrxo3
(Excellent, inexpensive marking knife.)
Blue Kreg measuring jig: https://amzn.to/2QTnKYd
Round-head Protractor: https://amzn.to/37fJ6oz

*Drilling*
Forstner Bits: https://amzn.to/3jpBgPl
Spade Bits: https://amzn.to/2U5kvML

*Work-Holding*
Orange F Clamps: https://amzn.to/2u3tp4X
Screw Clamp: https://amzn.to/3gCa5i8

Get my woodturning book: http://www.rexkrueger.com/book

Follow me on Instagram: @rexkrueger

When artillery became powerful enough to literally destroy castles

Filed under: Britain, France, History, Military, Weapons — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In Quillette, Paul Lockhart recounts one of the early artillery successes in European siege warfare, the reduction of the English-held fortifications at Odruik:

Portrtait of Philip the Bold (Philip II, Duke of Burgundy), 1342-1404.
Unknown painter of the Flemish School via Wikimedia Commons.

Philip the Bold, duke of Burgundy, was a warrior’s warrior. Hawk-nosed, ambitious, and brash, Philip had been a soldier since childhood. He was still a smooth-faced boy of 14 when he fought alongside his father, King John II of France, in the battle of Poitiers in 1356. Like King John, he was taken prisoner by the English when Edward, the Black Prince of Wales, vanquished the French on the field at Poitiers. A decade later, the duke, always looking for an advantage over the Englishmen who had invaded his country, embraced a novel technology: gunpowder.

This mysterious Asian invention had been known in Europe for more than a century, and for nearly that long European armies had used it as a weapon of war — or, more precisely, as the substance that made another recent innovation, the cannon, work. So far, gunpowder artillery had not shown great promise. Cannon had been used as siege engines in European warfare at least as early as the 1320s. But for all the trouble and effort they demanded, they had not proven themselves to be much more effective than conventional siege weapons such as catapults and trebuchets, machines that used mechanical energy to hurl projectiles at castle walls. Certainly, the early cannon did not appear to be effective enough to justify their cost, which was substantial.

But Philip the Bold saw promise in the new weapons, especially the huge siege guns that came to be known as bombards, and in 1369 he began to invest heavily in them. France and England were then locked in the on-again, off-again series of dynastic conflicts known today as the Hundred Years’ War (1337–1453). In 1377, when Duke Philip’s brother and sovereign, King Charles V of France, ordered him to attack the English in the Calais region, the duke answered the call, bringing with him more than 100 new cannon, including one monster of a gun that fired a stone cannonball weighing some 450 livres (around 485 pounds).

One of the duke’s intended targets was the English-held castle at Odruik, built with stout masonry walls and surrounded by a thick layer of outworks. Odruik would be a tough nut to crack. Its defenders seemed to think so, too, and were confident that they could hold out against Duke Philip’s army, even as the duke’s men began to put their huge siege cannon into position in full view of the castle walls.

The first few shots from Philip’s siege-battery hammered Odruik’s outer walls into dust. Soon, the stone cannonballs were sailing through the walls as if they weren’t there; soon after that, the outer walls actually weren’t there. After Philip’s guns had fired a grand total of about 200 rounds, much of Odruik’s once-proud walls lay in ruin, and before the duke could send his men through the breach and into the castle, Odruik’s defenders capitulated.

Philip the Bold’s triumph at Odruik in 1377 was a harbinger of things to come, a revealer of unsettling truths. Gunpowder artillery had been used in sieges before, but Odruik was its first overwhelming and clear-cut victory over a castle. The siege of Odruik demonstrated that — when the guns were big enough, and when there were enough of them — cannon were more powerful than any siege engine yet invented, and could knock down castles in a matter of hours. What happened at Odruik would be repeated over and over again at castles throughout continental Europe and the British Isles through the remainder of the Middle Ages and beyond.

It was one of the accepted “rules” of war that a besieged town that surrendered before the beseiging army conducted an infantry assault would be spared from sack … the theory being that once the fortifications had been overcome, the final outcome was not in doubt and the defenders lost no honour from the surrender. You can certainly understand why the citizens of the defended town would be eager to avoid the plunder and rapine of an assaulting army once the walls were breached.

All the Guns on a T-62 Tank (with Nicholas Moran, the Chieftain)

Filed under: History, Middle East, Military, Russia, Weapons — Tags: , , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 5 Aug 2021

Try out World of Tanks with a special bonus tank using this link!

https://tanks.ly/3dqGoBL

Today Nicholas Moran (the Chieftain) and I are at Battlefield Vegas courtesy of Wargaming.net, to show you around a Soviet T-62 and all its various armaments. This particular T-62 was built in 1971 or 1972 and initially sold to Syria. It saw combat in the Valley of Tears in 1973, but survived as was eventually transferred to Lebanese ownership. From there is was captured by Israel and eventually imported into the United States via the UK. The T-62 was the last of the “simple” WW2-style Soviet tanks, and equipped with an extremely effective 115mm smoothbore main gun. In addition to that cannon, we will discuss and shoot the coaxial PKT machine gun and the loader’s antiaircraft DShKM heavy machine gun.

If you enjoy this video, check out World of Tanks – and maybe they will send Nicholas and I back again to do the same thing yet again on a third tank!

For videos on the detail of tanks like this one, check out The Chieftain:
https://www.youtube.com/user/WorldOfT…
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCp4j…

0:00:00 – Introduction
0:06:02 – Coaxial PKT
0:13:12 – Antiaircraft DShKM
0:20:25 – 115mm Main Gun
0:28:43 – Firing the main gun

Contact:
Forgotten Weapons
6281 N. Oracle 36270
Tucson, AZ 85740

QotD: Hormones, puberty, and menopause

Filed under: Health, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

… in the early twentieth century, women that made it to positions of prominence, where they became known for professional excellence, had to be GOOD at it. Amazing, in fact.

And even then, they might hit a glass ceiling, because they were the nail that stuck up. Everything conspired to bring them down.

Female liberation was played against this. People looked at these women, knew what they’d achieved against what obstacles, and dreamed that “if only women were allowed to be on an even footing with men, they’d be the best at everything. Every woman would be a leader.”

[…]

Having gone the full ride on the hormonal roller coaster, being a woman built mostly by nature to make more humans, let me tell you, it ain’t easy. The hormonal ramp up of puberty is probably worse for boys, but the monthly ride of women is … interesting. I had years of having really bad pains, which meant if I had a test on one of those days I had to work DESPITE it. How bad? well, neither of my giving-birth experiences were worse, and in fact the second was much milder, until they gave me pitosin (the second started out with pitosin) and then with the ramping up of pain of pitosin, and giving birth in one and a half hours (long story. Let’s say they believed the report on the first birth, which had been doctored (ah!) and should never have given me the d*mn thing) was about the same as I used to endure for two or three days straight. And yes, I studied and took finals under that kind of pain, with no pain killers because most of them just make me more ill and woozy.

Then there were my middle years where I’d get unreasonably angry and borderline-violent for about a week before. It took a lot of engineering my own brain and knowing “this isn’t real, it’s hormonal” to stop myself being hell to live with. And sometimes I didn’t manage it. I’d be in the back of my brain, watching the rest of me rage and go “what the heck? Why am I doing that.”

And then there were various dysfunctions. We won’t go there, because most women don’t get those. But menopause … well … it’s special. I seem to have elided most of it, because I went into it surgically and with a hammer, having everything removed and having to cope, which at least was over in a few months. But I’ve seen relatives and friends go through it: it can stretch to five years of having NO discernible mind. You forget everything, lose everything, can’t sleep, can’t keep commitments, etc. And we still haven’t come up with a replacement that has no bad effects and makes actual sense. We’re trying.

Anyway, so yeah, women are running with their feet in a sack. But most of them are about average for normal human beings. So, yeah, they can do jobs and perform well, despite all of that. What you’re never going to get is “every woman excels”. Even if you stop the hormonal side effects, most women will lack the drive, the brain or the NEED to excel.

Men’s testosterone makes them more competitive, and so in a way gives them a bit more drive, but most of them are still unfocused/not ambitious enough to SACRIFICE to be the best. Because, guess what, success always requires sacrifice. And human beings don’t like to sacrifice.

So, women entered the workforce and most of them became … average. Which of course they would.

But feminist insanity required every woman to be exceptional. And so theories to explain it came up, including seeing patriarchy and oppression in ever-smaller things, including “she’s bossy” and “boys will be boys.”

Sarah Hoyt, “Bad Crazy”, Libertarian Enterprise, 2019-01-20.

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