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I made this little knife out of a dull old file in 2015 or so. The scales are boxwood I cut down locally in 1990, stained and varnished after carving to resemble bamboo.

Got a Boker Kwaiken slim model with titanium scales. Was a bit harsh on the hand when slipping into a pocket for keys or whatever, so I took it apart and eased all the edges, then ground the main contact edge where the side of my hand would rub it and polished that smooth so it's very comfy now...

Misinformation? The ending of the second very short video shows 2 torches heating the edge of a blade to bright orange - the narration says that this 'hardens' the edge of the blade. But heating carbon steel to bright orange and allowing it to cool anneals the steel, softening it, removing any...

I made a very battered (used as a splitting tool, hit a lot of times with hammers over 30 years) Opinel picnic knife into a mushroom knife for my mycologist son. The steel holds a decent edge. Some horse hair provides a brush to clean up edible finds on hikes. Many of worn out or broken knives...

I'd never heard of this 'batoning' thing before maybe 5 years ago, when it started showing up with a few survivalist influencers. I'm guessing it might have come from some silly Bear Grylls show previously, influencing the influencers to adopt it as received wisdom from a 'real' survival expert...

... the exception being, in my opinion, when that birdshot becomes a temporary slug, capable of 12" of penetration by at least 50% of its 1oz mass as the wax comes apart in the target.

Well that's a shame. They were dirt cheap back then, and very effective. Here we are more than a century later and the military is finally waking up to the utility of these devices, even if governments still don't have a clue.

Colour me surprised. Paul did a video on 12ga wax slugs using #7.5 shot 3 years ago. Seems his results align with what I'm seeing from these things. Takes about a minute each to make them out of normal 2.75" shells, but then again, I don't intend to do all that much home defense shooting, so...

These threads should be broken up into several categories. Dense urban apartment towers, single family homes/duplexes, suburban sprawl with large yards, and rural isolated farmhouse distances. No way any of this stuff can span such a wide variety of situations as regards ranging would-be...

It sort of seems there's a bit of magical thinking going on when it comes to things like, for example, using buckshot in a 'normal suburban environment.' Paul Harrell has done some relevant video presentations on shotgun use for home defense. This one from 7 years ago seems relevant on this...

A candle burns for a while. Beeswax much more slowly than paraffin. A piece of 1/4" mild steel bent into an L shape, hung on whatever frame, with a candle burning an inch or two below the main target circle, the flame hitting the L tab, would heat the whole plate quite evenly after a few...

2 grams of beeswax heated with #7.5 shot from a low-recoil 2.75" shell, poured back in so that all the pellets are embedded in the wax. Adding wax from the front after cutting out the crimp would only get about 2 layers down before the cold lead solidifies the wax. This way I'm shooting a slug...

A friend has one. Loves the thing. He's used it on dozens of quail with a dot sight, and says it's laser accurate with birdshot or slugs. The trigger was garbage as it came from the store, but he followed some tutorials and reworked it, installed some after-market trigger group part (sorry...

I've spoken with 2 neighbours about the issue of squirrels, in terms of attic invasion, danger to old wiring, diseases they carry, havoc for practically every garden plant, and those neighbours very much appreciate my efforts, so long as I only take shots which are safe for them and their...

383 grey squirrels as of yesterday's shot just before lunch. That's over 8 years. I've used a few different airguns, depending on the distance and angle in question, ranging from 6fpe in .177" to 21fpe in .22". Good placement at the base of the brain from the side works with the lighter...

This talk about magnets causing the shotgun to hang low... I'm guessing you guys don't know about neodymium magnets and 'focusing' cups? A thin machined steel cup around a strong neodymium magnet forces the field of attraction about 90% out one face of the magnet. The cup side has minimal...

Fair enough. Up here ours are all.......... pussies.

Well I've never spent more than about 30 minutes playing whack-a-mole with rats, and usually it's between 5 and 10 minutes, doing a quiet perimeter check or two. If I don't hear any high-pitched communication between rats within the first minute outside, I know it's likely to be a failed...

I've seen one cat on my block which actively hunts rats, and saw it get a rat once. 20 years in this place and probably a dozen cats here. It's pathetic. So I'll stick to my match grade PCP pistol, adapted with a suppressor and folding stock, with 3x scope and an infrared monocular fitted behind...

Yeah, McCarthy seems to have been fairly curious in general, reading up on things to develop proper familiarity before putting technical stuff into his own work. I ran across an anecdote about Agatha Christie along similar lines. Apparently she once approached an archaeologist asking "Who is the...