Affinity
Art, Fun, & Nonsense.
Today is the day when we should remind ourselves that young people are the future and more often than not, they are at the forefront of progressive movements. 83 years ago today, eight students and one professor were executed without trial after they protested the fascist Nazi regime that annexed Czechia after the Munich Betrayal. 33 years ago today, hundreds of students were beaten to a pulp with truncheons after they protested the totalitarian communist regime that made our country essentially a puppet state of the USSR.
I wish today this year something similarly remarkable has happened, or perhaps nothing at all. Unfortunately, today was a demonstration in Prague. It was comprised mostly of older and middle-aged people (definitively not students) and they were pro-Russian, and therefore pro-totalitarian and pro-fascist. Some were even wearing transparent that alluded to the “good old days” before 1989. I despair at the state of the world.
First, have some Ramen
©Giliell, all rights reserved
I’m sorry for dropping dead on you once again. Work is very stressful atm and on top of it my health is not up to the task either, mainly my stupid spinal prolapses. The one thing that gives me serious troubles is sitting down. The recent round of fuck this hurts was triggered by having to sit for 2 hours on hard wooden chairs and it took me 4 weeks to get back on my feet. Literally. But that’s also what I need for both my job and for writing a blog, but of course one of those is optional so I have to safe my strength for work. Sorry.
Now, I’m not fishing for sympathy, just letting you know that no, I haven’t lost interest in all of you. Just temporarily (hopefully) the ability to sit at my desk and read and write.
1918: End of WWI
1919: Bermondt gets his ass beat
2022: Kherson. Oh, Kherson.
Press close to me if you wish to be free
Freedom is slavery even if it cannot be
Help me in unfreedom to liberate freedom
To colour the world without knowing any colours.
Better listen to advice not to speak
Look at me closely with closed eyes
You can still hope without having hope
To experience a bright day in the night
Press close to me if you wish to be free
Freedom is slavery even if it cannot be.
Today we all got our Covid-Omicron booster and while we were at it, we got our flu shots too. I am a bit apprehensive about tonight and tomorrow. I did not have a particularly pleasant reaction to either of the Covid shots but at least I had only one shoulder that ached – this time, both my shoulders are beginning to ache and by evening I will probably be knackered. Oh well, still better than full-blown flu or covid with months-long aftereffects.
One of the resident Russofascists has derided the above-mentioned phrase as militant nationalism and thus inherently baddy bad bad. Which baffled me immensely.
I am not fond of nationalism in any shape or form, militant or otherwise. However, we live in a world where most people have some national identity, usually centered around culture – language, art, history, and, sometimes, military power. That is an undeniable fact and nations, despite being social constructs, are undeniably also real entities. And trying to deny a nation a right to exist and engaging in behaviors toward ending its existence is internationally recognized as genocide. Which is arguably doubly baddy bad bad.
Pointing to the usage of the phrase in history and finding some unsavory groups that have used it is historically interesting, but I would argue that it is not particularly relevant to the actual context in which the phrase is being used. There are many phrases throughout history that were used by unsavory groups and it is silly to try and discredit a word or a phrase because it was used at some point in history by for example fascists. For example it is daft beyond measure when Republicans try to discredit the word socialism because Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei contains it, and it is equally daft to try and discredit the phrase Слава Україні! because Bandera was using it.
When it comes to words, context always matters. So lets look at the context in which the phrase Слава Україні! is currently used and how much sense opposing its use because “militant nationalism bad” makes.
One of the given reasons for the current Russian invasion of Ukraine is that the Ukrainian nation does not exist, Ukrainians are just misguided Russians. Unlike other given reasons, this one is probably honestly believed by Putin and his closest circle, possibly even by a lot of Russians at large. And since Ukrainians are really Russians they need either to accept this or to be killed
In other words, the goal of the invasion is the annexation of the Ukrainian state and either assimilation or genocide of the Ukrainian people. Thus the war did not start as opposition to Ukrainian militant nationalism – Ukraine never posed any militant threat to Russia and Russia (Putin) knows it – it started as a result of Russian aggressive militant nationalism. And that is the context in which the phrase is currently used – to bolster and acknowledge the resolve and bravery of the Ukrainian people when faced with genocide.
Opposing the phrase because “militant nationalism bad” thus makes no sense, definitively not without opposing the Russian aggression too. Without Russian meddling in Ukrainian affairs and without the centuries-long history of Russian genocides (yes, plural, Russians did perform multiple genocides in a few centuries, some more successful than others) there would be no need for militant Ukrainian nationalism. Without Russia constantly threatening Ukraine, the most aggressive demonstration of Ukrainian nationalism would probably be shouting at sports stadiums, like with most nationalisms in current Europe. It is Russia who inserted the need for militancy. It is Russia who unilaterally started the conflict, and it is also Russia who can unilaterally stop it.
Thus I, although I deeply dislike nationalism, say Слава Україні! and I will keep saying it until Russia stops the genocide and lets the Ukrainian people live in peace, choose their allies and decide their own affairs.
I had a very busy October and only now it seems like I will be able to do some work in my workshoppe again. I was able to do some, but not much. Mostly I was working around the garden, harvesting nuts and fruit etceeraaaa. In the end, there was probably over 50 kg of walnuts and I had to spend a few days working with the nutkraken because my father was tired. Long lever or not, it was just too much.
I put 16 kg of shelled nuts aside for oil making and I will probably need to build a better solution for cracking the buggers in future years. We already have two more walnut trees in the garden, so there will only be more work. Although they are probably still quite a few years from fruiting. One is a seedling, now circa 10 years old, and another is a grafted red walnut, two years old.
Over three weeks I have spent two to three days a week taking my mother to and from rehabilitation. It seems to have been worth it. This Wednesday she was finally able to straighten her right leg at the knee to over 75%, which was a huge step up since it was barely 50% two weeks ago. That was indeed a happy moment.
So let’s take a break now and show you the last of my wood collection.
Sweet and Sour Cherry (Prunus avium & Prunus cerassus)
You may remember how I was forced to fell a huge cherry tree in my garden. That tree has warmed us in the winter for over a month and of course, I have also put a lot of wood aside for crafting. This is just the tip of the iceberg. It is highly improbable that more than 10% of this will ever be made into some kind of product. Maybe if I manage to get together some viable process for making cutting boards. And of course, to sell what I already have made, I am getting a bit cluttered.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size
Unfortunately, I did not put aside very many long pieces of this wood. There were not many opportunities. But when I was processing all the wood that I have set aside over the years, I have found several long logs of sour cherry and almost miraculously they did not develop very many cracks and neither got they invested with wood borers. So I have also several nice and long-ish prisms of sour cherry wood, two or three bundles like this one. I think those would make very pretty knife blocs and if used as veneer, I could make quite a lot of big ones at that.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size
And surprisingly, some of the logs shed the bark quite easily and it too was uninfested and undamaged by bugs in many cases. Thus I have put aside the bark too. I could make it into layered handles (I do not know anyone who has done that with cherry bark). If I do not use it in the end, my inheritors can always burn it for heat.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size
Willow (Salix sp.)
One of the pollarded willows in my garden looked kinda sickly so I have decided to fell it. And because the pollarded head was full of knots and twists, almost like burlwood, I put it aside and cut it into prisms. I have also “obtained” probably a willow rootball from the garden of a nearby abandoned former sanatorium, where several trees were cut/uprooted during conservation works and most of the wood was left there to rot. I hit a stone in the rootball blunting my table saw a bit but the wood is at least pretty. The upper and left wood in the picture is the pollarded willow head, and the lower right wood is from the rootball.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size
That is all as far as wood goes. I do have some other crafting materials that are intended for use in knives, I will possibly make posts about those later.
I spend several hours daily now picking walnuts and laying them out in a designated room to dry. Some days “just” one bucket, other days more. And since we did not eat all walnuts from last year yet, I have been thinking about how to process them in a useful way. And I have decided to try to make walnut oil. I have wasted two kg of low-grade walnuts and one kilo of moderately good ones trying to devise a process that works and I did come up with one in the end.
The first try cost me three hours of work, 700 ml of acetone, and resulted in barely 50 ml of oil from 1 kg of shelled walnuts. Not good.
The second try cost me five hours of work, 1400 ml of acetone, and resulted in roughly 150 ml of oil from 1 kg of shelled walnuts. Better, but still not good at all. This second try also resulted in me having a still now. I might make separate posts about that after I test its newest iteration – the first iteration was not very good at recovering the acetone from the solution (acetone is just too volatile) and after I modified it, I found out I don’t necessarily need it anymore.
Because the third try resulted in roughly 500 ml of oil from 1300 g of shelled walnuts after three hours of work and without the use of any chemicals and with minimum use of elektrimcity. And with walnut oil costing around 40€ per liter, that is financially viable since the next batch should be finished faster – I have a functioning process now and there won’t be any fumbling next time.
So, here goes the process:
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size
I was not particularly careful about Hi Jean this time. The first 1000 ml of walnut oil (including oil from the first three experimental runs) will be refined and boiled for use as a food-safe wood finish and not for direct consumption. I do not have personal experience with walnut oil yet but allegedly it has advantages over linseed oil. It has a lower viscosity and thus seeps easier into the wood. It dries quicker. And it does not yellow with age as much as linseed oil does so it should not discolor the wood as much as linseed oil does, making it useful for lighter woods as well as dark ones. I intend to make several end-grain cutting boards at some point in the future.
However, I have cleaned all the appliances thoroughly now and next time I am making the oil, I will also make 1 l of cold-pressed oil – or maybe even more – for consumption. Walnut oil is a bit of a luxury foodstuff so we have no experience with its culinary use either but I am sure we will find some use for it in our kitchen should we have it. And an advantage of 1 l of oil is that it takes a lot less storage space than 5 kg of unshelled walnuts or 3 kg of shelled ones. Making it does not cost nearly as much as even cheap cooking oils do in financial terms, picking and drying the walnuts has to be done anyway, so there is only some work on top of that. And whilst it is not easy or quick work, I do have more time than money and I need the exercise anyway.
There is a looooong Russian history of ethnic cleansing. They are a bit subler about it, perhaps, than the USA used to be and certainly subtler than Hitler was. It is a Russian thing to displace by force people from somewhere to somewhere else far of, where some of them might survive and eventually some of their descendants might come back a generation later. In the meantime, the land acquires a significant Russian population. That is one of the reasons why Crimea is “Russian”, and why there are significant Russian minorities in the Baltic states. And Putin now hones this old fine Russian art to its most finest.
It was so even before the “partial” mobilization and even more so now – the people who are most likely to be drafted into the military and sent into the meat grinder are ethnic minorities from Russian colonies.
Yes, you read that right. I wrote colonies. People seem not to realize that while Spain and Portugal were busy colonizing South America, the USA were genociding Indians and everybody else was busy dividing among themselves Africa, the Middle East, the Pacific, and southern Asia, Russia has quietly run their conquest, and colonization in Siberia. Siberia is not Russian territory occupied by Russians. It is a vast landmass occupied by dozens of different nations, both large-ish and small. Some of the smaller nations (some are counting just a few thousand people by now) are supposed to be exempted from military drafts, but the “partial” mobilization is trying to sweep them up even so (there is no such thing as a rule of law in a totalitarian regime ruled by an autocratic despot).
In a sense, Russia and the USA are the only empires that kept hold of most of their ill-gotten territories. In part maybe because their colonies cover a continuous surface of most of a continent, which makes it easier to kill off, displace or keep a hold on the local population – an uprising next door is easier to quell than an uprising half a globe away.
Putin is now not only attempting to expand the empire and to genocide Ukrainians – who are luckily giving him a hard time with it – but he also is doing his best to weaken the other nations in the Russian Federation whilst doing so. It might be just a coincidence, he might just be trying to avoid sending people from around Moscow and St. Petersburg, whom he needs to hold onto power and whose support might be shaken if their relatives start returning home in bags or not at all. But it might be deliberate too. Either way, he is really trying to be efficacious at this genocide stuff, what a chap!
I still don’t get how anyone who thinks of themselves being a leftist can support him though. I thought that leftists are supposed to be for the unlucky, the poor, the dispossessed etc. Supporting an autocrat juggling genocides for fun seems at odds with that.
Three weeks ago one of the idler wheels on my belt grinder gave up the ghost with a screech and a puff of smoke. I was wondering why everything was overheating lately – the belts, the platens, the hweels, teh hwole heveryting. As it turns out, one of the ball bearings on one of the idler wheels was probably a bit off and when a ball bearing starts to go bad, it gets only worse from there. I have impromptu repaired the wheel but I have decided to take this opportunity to rebuild and improve my belt grinder.
The first step on that path was buying a bunch of precision-cut aluminum tubing.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size
The only downside was that the ball bearings fit too well into these tubes, they could be inserted without any effort whatsoever. And I do not have a lathe to cut grooves for internal snap rings. So I have used stainless steel foil strips as shims for one ball bearing to press it firmly into the tubing with the other ball bearing only inserted and held in place with the nut in the assembly.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size
Here you see one of the new wheels before it was assembled on the belt grinder. Aluminum tube with one firmly pressed in ball bearing, steel spacer with a piece of cork to hold it somewhat centered (I have drilled the center of the cork a lot more later on so that the spacer is really loose. The cork is there only so the spacer does not wander too far off center when assembling/disassembling), and the second ball bearing.
I have made three such wheels, and over one I have pressed another aluminum tube to increase its diameter. That one I later fixed in my drill and with the help of my impromptu repaired belt grinder I gave that wheel a barrel-like profile. Because my old tracking wheel was too getting worn and I decided to completely rebuild the spanning arm.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size
Here you can see the right side of the spanning arm with the new spaning wheel. I won’t go into technimicical details. Here you have a second picture of the left side, it should be worth a thowsand words.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size
This is in part made from new materials. The downside of this assembly is that I had to weld a 30 mm M10 nut onto the arm. Which was not easy. To say that I suck at welding would be to grossly and immodestly overstate my abilities. When I die, the average welding ability of humanity will probably go ever so slightly up. But after a few botched attempts, I have managed to make welds that at least hold in place, even when they look completely craparooni.
The tracking wheel is on an M10 thread rod and thus can be moved left-right with the help of the upper handle. That is necessary to at least somewhat center the belt on the tracking wheel to avoid asymmetric wear of its surface, My previous assembly did not allow for this and as a result, the wheel got really worn on the left side only.
The second screw under that allows for slightly tilting the spanning arm left-right. That moves the belt slightly from left to right, allowing it to center on the platen. This was starting to be difficult with my previous arm, in part because the assembly was a bit too sensitive (short pivot point) and in part due to the asymmetrical wear on the tracking wheel.
I have used the improved belt grinder for a few hours and it seems to work well. When the current batch of knives is in the tumbler, I will coat the wheels with PVC plastic and perhaps start making some other attachments for the belt grinder.
Imagine that your neighbor takes a gun, starts shooting at your house, and moves the fence between your gardens onto your land, eventually taking your children in the treehouse hostage. Then he points the gun at your children and tells them “You want to live with me now, don’t you?” and after one of them says yes, fearful for their lives, he declares that they all said yes and their wishes have to be respected and thus they, together with the piece of the garden he fenced off, are now properly his.
No analogy is perfect of course but this is roughly what Vladimir Putin has done with regard to Zaporozhnia, Donetsk, Luhansk, and Kherson oblasts. There were no true referenda, there was just a publicity stunt theater with maybe some people saying “yes” on their own, some were (or felt to be, which is effectively the same) coerced and some said nothing but were recorded as saying “yes” anyway. The only surprising thing about the results is how predictably absurd they are.
I do not for a minute think that Putin or his toadies like Lavrov actually believe what they are saying. They do not believe that the referenda were fair and representative or that they are not waging a genocidal war of conquest against Ukraine but merely an intervention against Nazis. They just lie through their teeth and want to use force to make everyone else behave as if the lies were true. And that sums up the whole of Russian foreign policy over the last hundred years or so, and it only got worse under Putin.
I expect some of the local FtB tankies still think that “the West” and Ukraine should negotiate peace with Putin. For the life of me, I cannot wrap my head around that stance. Putin has lied so many times over the time of his reign with regard to Ukraine that he is on record saying mutually exclusive things (the same goes for Lavrov). Anything he says today, any promises he makes, any guarantees he gives, any oaths he swears, none of that can be believed. And how on earth is one supposed to negotiate in good faith with someone who gives them absolutely no reason to have any good faith whatsoever? How are we supposed to believe the promises he gives today when he broke literally every promise he gave in the past?
I do not like war. I am a pacifist at heart. I do not like to hurt living beings of any kind, especially not humans. But I am also a realist. I destroy weeds and kill pests in my garden. And I also know that I am capable of hurting others in self-defense. I know that it is not possible to negotiate with someone who does not respect any moral rules and laws except their own power. In the analogy that has started this article, it would be the police who would be tasked with restraining your violent neighbor. Without the existence of the police, it would be up to you to get your kids and garden back and teach him a lesson to not try and hurt you again, perhaps with the help of your other, sensible, neighbors.
Putin has put the whole world in danger and he will keep doing it until he is stopped. If we give him 15% of Ukraine today, he will demand more tomorrow, killing or deposing millions of Ukrainians in the process anyway. There are clear historical precedents for how these things go, WW2 being the most obvious one. Dictators of this type have never enough.
As much as I do not like war, giving Ukrainians the arms to defend themselves and push the invasion force back into Russia is the only way to stop their genocide. The only way that does not direct military intervention that is. Doing nothing is not a pacifist stance. Doing nothing is allowing the genocide to take place unopposed, thus effectively supporting it. If you do not oppose Putin, you support genocide.
My mother continues to get better. I have harvested over 50 kg of plums and about 10 kg of apples this year and she has been removing the pits and making marmalade, compotes, and prunes for over a week. The freezer is full of de-pitted and halved plums, we have 2 kg of prunes in the cellar and a huge amount of canned fruit product, thus we are set up for years. This is good because a harvest like this is exceptional.
My father seems to be well after the reduction of antipsychotics. He is able to move and do something again whilst not getting any psychotic fits for a few weeks by now. Today we were at the psychiatrist for a check-up and his long-term memory is apparently in good shape for his age, but he has a short-term memory problem for which he was recommended to exercise a bit with games and puzzles. Alzheimer’s or any other type of severe dementia is, for now, not an issue. If he continues to do well, the antipsychotics may be reduced again at the next check-up at the beginning of next year. At least he genuinely enjoys cracking nuts with the Nutkraken and is positively eager to do it.
I have so much work in the garden and around the house right now that I have barely time for anything else. However I still have some pretty woods to write about, so lets go to it.
Tamarisk (Tamarix)
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size
My favorite aunt used to have a big tamarisk tree in her garden but they felled it a few years ago. When I was visiting, she gave me some of the bigger pieces in case I can make something pretty out of them.
The wood has developed a lot of cracks during the drying, it will need a lot of filling with epoxy. But it has interesting color and texture – the sapwood is bright yellow and the heartwood is reddish-pink with orange-yellow streaks like flames. I think that if I will the cracks with red or orange resin, maybe with glitter, I could get genuinely interesting-looking pieces out of it.
It is one of the few kinds of wood that I can smell when I work it and it is not pleasant. It stinks to the high heavens, to be frank.
Thuja (Thuja sp.)
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size
I only got two pieces of Thuja put aside. I could put aside more from a tree that was uprooted this spring in my neighbor’s garden, but I do not think I will. It is a plain-looking softwood. I will possibly use it for contrast pieces and spacers for darker woods of similar hardness if I ever work with one but I do not think it is worth using on its own.
Yew (Taxus baccata)
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size
Interesting-looking and reasonably hard softwood. Heartwood is reddish-brown, and Sapwood is creamy-white. It is similar to juniper wood that I have shown you previously. I think it might be interesting for both kitchen and bushcraft knives, but since it is poisonous, I will have to be very careful whenever working with it, especially when sanding or filing it. A respirator is a must, people can get – and did get – poisoned from inhaling its sawdust. I have several pieces big enough to make knife bloc, especially if I economize them and use them as veneers. I did not have a piece big enough to make a longbow. Pity.
That’s it for now, but I still have some nice woods to brag about, so stay tuned.
It is the season when the walnut tree is shedding its bounty. We still haven’t eatet yet all the nuts from last year and it will probably take some time to eat them, possibly a whole another year. And this year’s harvest promises to be even bigger than last year’s. Thus I have some nefarious plans with the nuts this year.
Howevah, all plans include cracking the nuts first. We do have a small hand-held nutcracker, but that is good only if you want to crack a few nuts for a snack, not when you need to go through a bucketful every day. I have tried to make a small lever nutcracker from an old drill press. It worked, but not great. So this year we brainstormed some ideas with my father about how to proceed and this is what I came up with later in the workshope when looking for suitable materials to materialize our idea – behold the mighty Nutkraken:
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size
I made it in about 5 minutes from a piece of board, two armrests salvaged from my father’s old armchair, a 10 cm piece of 4 mm fencing wire, and a bottle cork.
The armrests are connected on one end with the fencing wire. That end not only had pre-drilled holes. The armrests have an S – curve that has a nice short curve on the connected end and a long one on the other, making a nice indentation for the walnut and more than enough space for fingers. The lower arm has attached a perpendicular piece of board to it to stabilize it and to allow for it to be fixed to the table via clamps. After some testing I have added the bottle cork so the nuts do not get totally obliterated, making it easier to separate the shells from the meal. With a bit of additional work it could even be made to look pretty, but I probably won’t bother with that. I usually don’t with tools.
My father enjoys his new toy greatly and he cracked and shelled a bucket of nuts yesterday in no time. Those were low-quality nuts, and I intend to test some things with them first either today or tomorrow before I proceed to mangle the good-quality nuts that start falling next week. I will let you know the results of my sciency experimoments promptly.
The Nutkraken works magnificently. No sprain on wrists and fingers, no over- or under-crushed nuts, no problems whatsoevah.