Just for reference, gamma rays are capable of passing through material as dense as lead.

The most likely damage you'll receive from gamma radiation is in your body's rapidly dividing cells.

The area in the body where this occurs the most is your gut.

Absorbing Gamma radiation is likely to cause stomach cancer, colon cancer, liver or kidney cancer, digestive problems, or worse.

The accepted dose for radiation by the NRC is 2MR (millirem) per hour.

Where you will exceed this is airports, areas with high elevation, and of course background radiation from industrial products we are told pass "safety".

Damage from gamma radiation is never really healed. Your DNA can be damaged permanently. It is important to be aware of emergency safety protocols for radioactive contamination if you live in a place like Phoenix which has nuclear power.

Ensure your gas mask NBC NATO filters are functional and aren't expired.

Ingesting an alpha particle will kill you quickly and if you don't die you'll wish you were dead.

Wear hats, avoid going out into the sun during the brightest hours of the day especially if you live in high elevation.

A lot of people have died from skin cancer. Avoid using industrial petroleum based skincare products.

So let's talk briefly about 3D Printing. It's very easy to get into with no experience and with a little patience you can really do some incredible things. Two things you'll need:

1. 3D Printer ( I use an Ender 3D Printer). Mine was around $300 when I got mine and you can do A LOT with it. I had to assemble mine but unless you're more than 80% autistic you won't have a problem with it. Follow the directions, use an adjustable wrench, and before long youre set. Once you've got it put it in a place where there's not a lot of draft because that could cause warps. With PLA its not so much an issue but with ABS its PARAMOUNT but I hate that filament with a fervent passion. More on that later.

Thingiverse is your friend in the beggining. You essentially download models from that site and plug them into whats called your slicer, the Ender comes with one. You take the file then upload that into creality, enders slicer, that then makes a model you plug into your printer so it knows what to print. Those are called G-Codes.

The first thing you'll want to do is level the bed. Without that your prints will fail more often than not. Again, its very easy and online videos are your friend. Thingiverse has a lot of good ones.

2: Filament
Now there are A LOT of people with way more experience than me but until you get guud with PLA dont attempt ABS. PLA is way easier to print with and you dont even need your bed to be heated most of the time if not at all. ABS is way more finicky with temps and unless you build an enclosure for the ender, gonna do one for mine soon, its a pain in the anis to get it to print right without warps. Again I'm still an amateur.

Failure is your friend. Ive learned so much from failed prints tbh and the spools of filament are cheap enough to where it doesn't hurt the pocket book. Start off with making models and then build your way up to the fun stuff. Ive only made some peripheral gun stuff like BAD levers and mag accessories but its fun to use.

If you've got the money to spare its a GREAT tool to have. I miss reloading ammo but printing reminds me of it. Dammed components not being in stock...

I learned two things today... the Daly 16s 250 Smart BMS can be powered up by putting a push button switch between pins 1 and 3 on the "light board" plug. You can ID pins 1,2,3 by measuing voltage 1=ground, 2=3.3v,3=batery voltage (48v). Touch the 48v pin to the ground pin. You see the BMS can be booted initially by touching P- to the negative terminal on your battery, but if it goes to sleep with a full tummy (lol...), you can't wake it back up. So the PROPER way is to use the switch on that light port.

The connector is an 8 pin female JST PH 2.0mm pin spacing. YOu can find them on amazon and ebay with 8" wires already attached.

Now my bad news... I have a chargery BMS on one of the batteries that is running my house and decided to break the battery in 1/2 by removing a buss bar in the middle of the battery. That way if my wrench touched the main positive and main negative there would be no sparks. All went well until I actually did accidentally touch the positive to the negative with my wrench while the BMS was still connected to the 16 sensing wires. Apparently this lets the magic smoke out of the balancing mosfets. So if you need to work on a big battery:1) power down the BMS and disconnect the balance wires, 2)wrap all wrenches in electric tape, 3)break the battery in 1/2 by removing a bussbar. You see, I only did ONE of those three things. And now I get to wait for another BMS from chyyyyynaaahhhh....

Neat little harvesting tool. Personally, I've always been a fan of the twist and pull method. Not sure this quite reaches 'revolutionary' status. Let me know what you think in the comments

You may recognize this man from the show Alone, where people are challenged to spend 30 days in the bush. Television always has some sort of hidden fakery, but a cool show nonetheless. I much prefer the mans youtube channel, he has tons of creative and informative content, well worth supporting


https://youtu.be/oxyXg2Hq9y0

Lithium Battery conversion for a 48v golf cart.

I know this isn’t exactly a gun group, but sometimes we can delve into weapons. This weekend I had two new toys to play with.

One of my toys is PSA brand trigger group for an AR. Highly recommended. Not as good as a Geissel $280 trigger which has a spring loaded trigger vs most trigger groups that the trigger connects directly to the sear. I tend to take very careful shots at longer ranges and really hate the standard trigger on most AR’s. I can feel them creep as I squeeze. The PSA trigger is https://palmettostatearmory.com/psa-custom-ar-3-5-lbs-match-grade-drop-in-trigger-flat-116055.html

The other toy is a crimson trace 56mm 24x scope. First focal plane reticle, adjustments in 1/10mil. Great features, but it wouldn’t focus. At full zoom, I couldn’t quite make out 1” high numbers 100m away. I have a 50mm 24x Leupold scope and I can easily read those letters. When I back off the zoom on the crimson trace to 3x, only things about 25 yards away can be made to be in focus by messing with the parallax knob. Shouldn’t be that way. So it’s a big NO for an $800 crimson trace scope.

For the uninitiated, a 2nd focal plane vs 1st focal plane scope means the reticle stays the same size while the image zooms OR the crosshairs zoom with the image. First focal plane scopes have a reticle that zooms in sync with the image. Second focal plane scopes have a reticle that always stays the same size to your eye while the image in the scope zooms in and out. Why is this important? Because with a mil-dot scope you can measure distance to distant objects or easily establish a holdover to targets beyond your zeroed range. A mil-dot is 10cm at 100meters (3.9” at 100yards).

So if you use a 2nd focal plane scope there is ONLY one zoom power that the mil dots are calibrated. This is why I have 1” high numbers on my target backboard... I made a mark every 10cm and use those marks to figure out what zoom power my 2nd focal plane scopes calibrate at.

With first focal plane scopes, the mil-dots alway match the image size at any zoom level. The one disadvantage of the FFP scope is that when you zoom out the reticle gets so small it may be difficult to see.

Here’s an example of measuring distance with a mil dot scope. A car license plate is 12” wide. That’s 30cm. If you see a license plate on a car that is two mil dots wide, you use this formula : (30cm / 2 mil dots) x 10 = 150meters. In English units the formula is a little more difficult in your head. 12” / 2 mil dots x 27.77= 166yards. Metic is just so much easier which is why I zero all my stuff at 100meters (109 yards).

Food for thought

Basic tools for mechanical work everyone should have:

-Full socket set with ratchet both SAE and metric.

Don't buy a "kit" that claims to have everything as sizes will be skipped. Get a no skip sizing socket set, preferably impact.

Find a size that fits whatever you'll be working on, if it's big stuff get a bunch of half inch. I recommend 3/8 as a good all-rounder but you should have 1/4 drive as well.

Cheap brand sockets are actually okay but you'll want to get a somewhat decent ratchet from a brand with a good reputation with the extensions to match. Flex head ratchets are handy but revolving ratchets are by far the best.

- impact gun / power ratchet

This can be air power or electric depending on whether you have air supply or not. The advantage of air power is that you don't have to mess with batteries and the tools are usually a lot cheaper and have significant power if you crank it up. The advantages of cordless battery tools are obvious, but the grade of these depends on your intended usage. Cheap stuff works, but make sure you have extra batteries on hand as the generally suck in budget models. By far the best is big red, but it's an expensive investment.

- ratcheting wrenches

I personally would just make the investment in some decent ratcheting wrenches. These of course can be used as regular wrenches as well. You don't have to go out and buy tool truck brands, but this will be an item you'll regret buying cheap or a kit that says "complete" but skips sizes. Theyre also really nice for saving time in tight spaces.

- hammers

You're not gonna wanna cheap out on this. Chinese hammers can break and cause a safety issue, not only that but they're heavy, have a lot of shock to your hand and wrist, and suck to use. You're gonna want an engineers hammer, ball peen, and dead blow. They'll be used a lot in mechanical work so get good ones.

- torque wrench

Absolutely essential for things like ensuring proper tightness on brake calipers and suspension components. Your car will be shit and unsafe to drive without this. Another item not to cheap out on as I've personally had one break bolts because it never clicked properly.

- basic multimeter

Doesn't have to be incredibly fancy, just make sure it can test both AC and DC as well as resistance and continuity reliably

- Basic shop supplies to make life easier

Pb blaster or equivalent penetrating oil, brake cleaner, electronics part cleaner, white lithium grease, and spare top off fluids such as motor oil, brake fluid, trans fluid and power steering fluid

By no means is this a full list, but simply some basic advice to get started.

Container home. The devil is in the details. 2x3 walls inside that do NOT touch the exterior walls. You do not want thermal bridging in a metal box. https://youtu.be/tg-3dOfTeb4