• Image of man kneeling and starting a fire with farro rod

    There are a BILLION skills to learn when you’re talking about reenactment or prepping for TEOTWAWKI. I’m going to touch on the top five today, but if there’s a specific skill set you’d like me to write about, drop me a note in the comments below.

    Fire

    Knowing how to make a fire is probably the single most important skill you can have when in a primitive environment. Fire is how you sterilize first aid instruments, sanitize your water, clean your wounds, clean your body, cook your food, and keep yourself warm. Heck, fire even keeps most animals at bay, which means you’re safer when you have it.

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  • Yesterday, I went up to the Fort at #4 to pick up Allyson and to play with the Lathe.

    This time I took my chisels and was better prepared. I also took along some grease.

    With a bit of patience, I got the lathe belted back up. About that time, Allyson arrived. She took on the task of pumping.

    Since I brought up some grease, I was prepared to liberate some wear points. But, I was so excited, I just didn’t.

    It took us a few tries, but we finally go things moving, and I was able to make chips. The squarish thing is slowly becoming round.

    I checked the drive, and it was getting warm/hot. I stopped to get some grease into place. That seemed to have made a difference.

    With that, I could try, try again. I could get it spinning. I can’t keep it spinning as I lose coordination. But for the time it is spinning, I was able to make wood chips.

    I hope you notice the 2A shirt and the Kimber 1911 on my right hip.

            


  • The goal is to make my shop a usable space again. I used to have around 8 square feet of workbench, of which 2+ were taken up with the bench vise.

    The wielding table is outside. The hydrologic press is outside. The blast cabinet is outside. Normally, they are under tarps, but that isn’t a long-term solution.

    Mind you, the cost of those three tools was about $50 in raw steel.

    The shop is really two shops in one. There is the wood shop and there is the metal shop. The wood shop consists of jointer, plainer, table saw, freestanding drill press, shaper, mortising machine, small belt sander and 12-inch disk sander, two vertical bandsaws.

    There is 8 sq foot of cabinet top for all of that, 4 square feet of which is taken up by my bench grinder.

    The other cabinet is supporting my wood machinist chest.

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  • Just what is —Chevron Usa Inc. V. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 81 L. Ed. 2d 694 (1984)? Chevron is the case where the Supreme Court found that the courts, both the Supreme and the inferior courts, should defer to “permissible” agency interpretations of statutes those agencies administer.—Slip Opinion, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, 603 U.S. (2024).

    The Chevron doctrine was another two-step framework. 1) Did Congress directly address the precise question, and was the congressional intent clear? 2) Is the statute silent or ambiguous with the specific issue at hand.

    If the answer to both questions was “yes”, then the court was required to defer to the agency administrating the statute.

    Like the two-step shuffle of pre-Bruen Second Amendment jurisprudence, the courts always found for the state. Is the puddle in my backyard navigable waters of the United States, as defined in the EPA? Congress did not precisely address puddles, and since this is a dispute, it must be ambiguous. EPA, do you think that puddles in his backyard qualify as navigable waters of the United States?

    Well, yes. You see, that water flows into that ditch, that ditch flows into that stream (which is dry 9 out of 12 months), from there it flows into that creek, from there into that river. Rivers are navigable waters and this puddle is connected to it and contributes to it. If the owner of the property were to divert that water, they are effecting the river.

    Now, that might sound like a made up example, it is not. It is a case from memory where the EPA took a homeowner to court for violating the Environmental Protection Act because they changed the contours of their backyard to eliminate a soft spot that got yucky a few times a year.

    What is Loper
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  • A great many moons ago, when responsibility for “Disaster Preparedness” landed on my desk, I lobbied for “Business Continuity” instead – how do we keep the business functioning, meet customer demand, protect and pay employees, support our suppliers and contractors, etc.?

    Not a simple task and in our extremely complex manufacturing business, more than a bit of a challenge. Which is why I embraced the concept of a good, detailed SWOT Analysis: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats, all the way down to the Department level and in some cases, a separate analysis down to critical functions within a department. A good SWOT Analysis, even for a family, won’t be done in 30 minutes, it’ll take a couple of weeks of thoughtful work, needs periodic review and updating as conditions change. It can be as detailed as one wants, which is probably the best way to proceed, weeding out the unattainable and unnecessary when the analysis is complete, or nearly so.

    I went through the same 3 hurricanes in 2004 Bob F (above) did, and other than not having whole-house AC for the 6 days we were “electricity challenged” after Charlie – some neighborhoods were dark for almost 3 weeks – it was a “campout at home” (Francis knocked out power for about 24 hours, Jean for about 18 hours) a small ultra-quiet RV generator (3K watts) kept the fridge and some fans running, powered a small window AC at night for more comfortable sleeping in one bedroom, all for about 2 – 2.5 gallons/day, a Zodi camping propane water heater provided low-flow, but warmish, showers on the back porch, the propane grill handled the cooking, etc. We didn’t lose county water, which was a really big thing, and when one lives in Hurricane Country one maintains alternatives, like an old-timey coffee percolator, kerosene lamps (the older Aladdins are great, the newer ones seem…a bit chintzy, but that’s pretty much the default for everything now). The only damage suffered was a lot of shingle tabs gone, but no roof leaks (houses in Florida, even those built to the older code are considerably different from those built elsewhere) and a couple of trees down in the neighbor’s yard; not bad for 2–3 hours of 110 MPH sustained winds (Charlie was, fortunately, a “fast mover” and didn’t sit in one place long, grinding up everything).

    Which places emphasis on the “Opportunities” part of a SWOT Analysis – when A doesn’t work, what’s Plan B, or C, or D? I had 145 feet of 10MM climbing rope, a Swiss seat and a line brake for safety while smearing cold tar patch on the missing shingle tabs, and that system and the cold tar bucket made the rounds through the neighborhood for several days after Charlie (and again after Francis, and Jean….), a couple of floodlights on poles provided light for a couple of nights of “a neighborhood cookout for everything from the freezer” after Charlie up and down the block. We all ate like kings for several days, including the older retired folks up the street who didn’t have a grill. Walkie-talkies got broken out, charged when a generator was running, and everyone shared flashlights and batteries. We had used simple railroad-style kerosene lanterns for ambient light on the patio for years, by the time Jean hit everyone had a couple.

    We understood the Threat, had a good idea of our Weaknesses, had Options, and learned our Strengths; as the Marines preach in Basic School “Adapt, Improvise, Overcome” and while Eisenhower said ”a plan is worthless, but planning is critical,” having a plan forms a “Performance Outline” to direct attention and effort to solutions.

    Regarding Planning, I’m reminded of the old, crusty senior engineer who is working at his desk when the staff runs in, crying and screaming that scientists have discovered a giant meteor that will strike Earth in 24 hours, knocking the planet out of its orbit and into the sun. Without looking up, the Old Engineer points to his bookshelves and says, “second shelf, blue binder, Section 4.”

     

            

  • Image of tornado with icons

    The Rule of Threes is pretty simple.

    • Three minutes without air.
    • Three hours without shelter.
    • Three days without water.
    • Three weeks without food.
    • Three months without hope.

    I’ve heard that this was designed by FEMA, but I have no idea. My family has been using it for close to two decades, and maybe longer. It’s not meant to be a “complete list” of what is needed to prepare for emergencies. Instead, it’s more of a mnemonic. It reminds you of what’s most important in your preps. There are lots of mnemonics you can learn.

    This is a longish one, folks, so check out what’s behind the cut…

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  • Well, we made it another week.

    The site still isn’t to where I need it. But it is functional. I have imported all of my posts from GFZ. This is a step forward.

    I am in the process of writing a Vine Of Liberty plug-in to handle theming and some other missing features. The one that irks me the most is not having a quick link to the comments section of the page.

    We’d like to hear what your thoughts are on the banner and icon. The Icon is likely to change, but Ally did an outstanding job getting the banner done. That was based on the prompt “Modern American patriot guarding a vine in a barren field”.

    I’m starting to see the state file F.A.R.P. 28(j) letter, “Citation of Supplemental Authorities”. This is the official way that a party tells a circuit court that something happened that they need to consider before issuing their opinion.

    The gist of most of them is, “the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited”. Followed by “we are the exception to the rule(s)”.

    I am slowly gaining a more in-depth understanding of how ceph works. It is an amazing file system.

    It uses replication and I found that it also has “erase coding” capabilities. The erase coding capabilities allow you to reduce the amount of disk space required to achieve full redundancy. The default redundancy is via replication, that is a 3x multiplier. The lowest erase coding is a 2x multiplier and that gets as good as 1.5, when there are enough hosts and OSDs.

    We are soliciting articles, you can send your word/LibreOffice articles to awa(at)vineofliberty.com.

    Thanks for sticking with us.

            

  • Canning jars in many colors on a shelf.

    I’m a prepper. The term “prepper” means different things to different people. For some, it evokes images of old underground bunkers filled with canned goods and wall mounted, folding beds. For others, it’s more akin to what grandma did when she put away the harvest from her kitchen garden. Still other folks consider it to be stockpiling firearms to raid the rest of us. I’m sure there are a hundred or more points in between my three, as well.

    So what exactly is prepping? It’s a short form term for “preparing for emergencies” or “preparing for the apocalypse.” There are at least as many ways to prep as there are people on the planet, and maybe more. No one way is definitively right or wrong. As an example, the Mormons are required to be always prepared for the end of times, which they are told will last just under two years. Therefore, their church insists they always have two years of food on hand, along with anything else they need to survive until the end times are over. While I may not be invested in their end times prophecies, the principle is a good one.

    I tend to prepare for 18 months of emergency. I try to be fairly flexible in my preps, because I don’t know if TEOTWAWKI will happen like Nagasaki, or more like the recent pandemic. I have a little bit of many things, designed to cover the most important bases for my family. Your preps probably are (and should be) different from mine, because your family will need different things, and more importantly, has different skills than my own.

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  • There was a reason that the DoJ wanted Rahimi before the Supreme Court. The facts in his case were bad facts. Bad facts lead to bad law.

    The first thing to note about the Rahimi opinion, is that it is an “as applied”. This means the opinion only counts for Rahimi. The decision does not directly affect anybody else.

    Rahimi claimed that §922(g)(8) was unconstitutional on its face. This requires that there are no circumstances where it could be constitutional. This is an extremely high bar to meet.

    This is where the bad facts start. Rahimi was subject to a domestic violence temporary restraining order. This requires that certain requirements be met. As stated in other articles, the law, as written, does not require that the accused receive notification, only that the notification was sent. It does not require that the accused appear at the hearing, only that they have an opportunity to attend.

    Rahimi received his notification, appeared in court. This means that the first two, of three requirements are met.

    The third requirement, is that the accused be found to be a credible threat.

    Rahimi admitted, and the court found, that he was a credible threat.

    This meets all three prongs of §922(g)(8)
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  • Header - should he be free?

    I talk with AWA a lot about some pretty esoteric topics. Lately, talk has surrounded some of the 2A cases he’s been following, Rahimi in particular. It has really gotten me to thinking.

    I believe originally (and this is opinion, as I really don’t know and I haven’t looked it up) jails were meant to be a place to stick someone when they did a bad thing. It was a punishment, a grown up version of time out. The greater the bad thing, the longer the jail time. Somewhere along the line, the goal became to rehabilitate prisoners into better people who wouldn’t be going out and committing more crimes. In general, I tend to agree with that idea, though I’m not certain it should be done while a prisoner is actually IN jail. But regardless, there are always going to be those people who simply cannot be rehabilitated. They will always pose an ongoing threat to free people. The Mansons of the world, as it were, should never be allowed out.

    When it comes to the scary “big” criminals like Dahmer, Manson, Berkowitz, etc… it’s easy to look and say, “Yep, lock ’em up and throw away the key.” It’s also very easy to prove that they will never be able to safely walk among other human beings. Rahimi isn’t a Dahmer, though. He’s an average dirtbag. There’s no question he’s guilty of the crimes he committed. He’s trash. But the crimes he’s committed will likely land him somewhere between 2 and 20 years. Reading about the cases he’s accused of, it’s looking more like the lower number than the higher one. Regardless, it means he’ll be out on the street while still relatively young and vital. Yet, looking at his record, what assurance do We the People have that Mr. Rahimi won’t go out and shoot up another Whatsaburger, or cave in the head of his next girlfriend?

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