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Progenitor of the Weird Knife Wednesday feature column. Is “column” the right word? Anyway, apparently I also coined the Very Specific Object nomenclature now sporadically used in the 3D printing community. Yeah, that was me. This must be how Cory Doctorow feels all the time these days.

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Cake day: July 20th, 2023

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  • The point is you can theoretically assemble a functional Glock this way without leaving a paper trail. The lower (or frame, really) is the serial numbered part that carries all the Federal paperwork. You can mail order the rest of the parts without raising any eyebrows, do a bunch of assembly and fitting and tuning and fettling, and then wind up with a functional gun.

    I will point out that this is actually legal to do on a Federal basis, although some states have since individually passed laws against it.

    But just wait until I tell you that any moron can walk into a Bass Pro shops and buy a perfectly functional and lethal black powder cap-and-ball revolver in pretty much any state in the union with no paperwork. According to the ATF, they are not interested in classifying arms that do not used “fixed cartridge ammunition” a firearms at all (although most states do).


  • cheaply made 3D Printed gun

    You could, if you were so inclined, make a rather nice 3D printed gun. Just saying.

    that leaves no special marking on the bullet

    No firearm on Earth actually does this, not even commercially made ones. The fantasy of “microstamping” has been just that, purest fantasy, ever since it was dreamed up by (I believe) some California legislators that were equally out of touch with reality. Forensic ballistic analysis does not work that way. In almost all cases, you cannot identify a gun by a recovered bullet or casing. You can, however, potentially match a casing or recovered bullet to a gun you already have in your possession.

    and can only really be used once.

    This is patently false, unless you suck at printing and assembling your gun.

    They are made to be used for crimes and discarded quickly

    Tons of people design and print their own guns purely as a hobby. Furthermore, before the advent of 3D printers plenty of people manufactured their own firearms without the aid of any such device – again, largely as a hobby or to have complete control over the manufacturing tolerances of their gun. Making highly tuned 1911 “race guns” for competition shooting is and was very popular, for instance.




  • The rigidity of a bookshelf is almost completely a function of how firmly its backboard is attached. The usual flat-pack kind just has a backboard made out of a thin piece of particle board, and over time the little brad nails they give you with it waller out the holes they’re in and/or back out slightly, and the entire thing gets progressively more wiggly. You can either add more nails or just replace them with short wood screws.

    My contributory general advice to anyone living in their first home/apartment/whatever is to get a cordless drill and a set of bits for it. Not just drill bits for making holes, but also screwdriver tips. It is amazing the number of things you can find to use it on, and how much less annoyed you will be when some piece of furniture, fixture, or other gizmo requires removing or installing approximately 127,000 screws and you don’t have to do it by hand anymore.




























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