I've been watching a lot of videos by this dude in the Schola Gladitoria who practices HEMA (Historical European Martial Arts) and is an amateur historian/anthropologist
He answers a lot of myths about weapons and their use in a nicely informative way without sensationalizing anything
I'm not knowledgeable so he could be making this shit up but he always sites and has extremely reasoned arguments and isn't a dick
He seems pretty rad
That is always the problem! It is so hard to separate the truth from fiction online at times. I have pretty much given up on reading anything written in English about medieval Japan because of this.
The video you linked seems pretty solid though. He seems logical and well reasoned, which instantly makes him better than 99% of the discourse online about historical arms and armor. I will end up watching more of his stuff, I think. Sometimes people like him or Lindy Biege (who he mentioned in that video) make conclusions that seem logical but often we are working with incomplete or biased data pools, so it is hard. Curious to see if he has any stuff about rapiers and if it gels with stuff I have learned from other sources. Of course, the thing with HEMA too is that even previously established interpretations of the manuals are revisited, questioned, revised, etc and sometimes what people thought turned out to be totally wrong. Which is part of what makes it exciting!
Yup this guy 100% gets my seal of approval! Knows about how rapiers actually functioned, knows that modern fencing derived from small swords, not rapiers, knows his weights, time periods, knows his manuals well (Agrippa was the first rapier manual, basically) and even knew some stuff I did not! (Usually hear about rapiers for civilian defense but rarely here them in reference to battlefields, I did not know they were used so extensively as backup weapons there.)
Subscribing and looking forward to going through his backlog of videos soon.
Spin welding is nifty, but if you want to get into awesome look no further than Explosion welding
The neat thing about explosion welding is it can fuse metals that are impossible to weld in any other method, and with a load of explosives to boot! I mean, sure its not a long a seam, its basically cladding two sheets together..but still, WELDING WITH EXPLOSIONS
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#pipeCocky Stride, Musky odoursPope of Chili TownRegistered Userregular
Unlike traditional welding, which adds material, FSW just squishes the existing material together by softening it and swirling it around like you were stirring peanut butter in a jar
for some reason we had to do aluminium sand casting in my course. Who even uses that?
Could scrapped most of our practical shit and done about three more weeks on lathing, frankly. Would have come in way more handy.
Sintering? It's becoming an interesting practice for 3D printers. You can take a tray of loose aluminum or iron grains and heat them into some impossible shapes (like a fully enclosed mechanism with internal ball bearings).
What would be involved with getting a tube for a telescope made out of, say, aluminum? Something that sort of looks like this
I don't even own a telescope of my own yet, this is more of a theory thing. I have seen many posts while researching a telescope purchase about DIY scopes and I'm wondering how they do it
Talk to a metal shop or someone with the right tools. Depends on how you need it manufactured.
If you're okay with it being milled instead of forged you can find someone with a lathe or a CnC machine. If it needs a lot of strength you might be able to order tubing of the right size and length.
Oh, since we got onto "what is strength" here goes!
Properties of Metal:
Hardness - resistance to abrasion, penetration, cutting and distortion
Malleability - Ability to be hammered, rolled or pressed into shapes
Ductility - Ability to be drawn (into wire), bent or twisted without breaking
Elasticity - Ability to return to it's original shape*
Toughness - Resistance to tearing or shearing. Can be stretched/shrunk without breaking
Density - weight per unit volume
Brittleness - Ability to bend or deform without shattering or cracking. More brittle means more likely to crack.
Melting Point - Temperature at which metal becomes liquid
Coefficient of Thermal Conductivity - How fast metal transfers heat. Somewhat counter-intuitively, steel has a small coefficient which means it retains heat and is easier to weld with lower temperatures than copper which transfers heat really well and needs higher heat. Aluminum will cool faster than steel because of it's higher coefficient.
Coefficient of Thermal Expansion - How much it expands when heated
Coefficient of Electrical Conductivity - I think you get it
Color - Yeah I know, simple, but it is useful in telling metal and alloy by sight alone.
Ferrous - Does it contain iron? Also largely a factor in if it's magnetic.
Alloy - Most metals are actually combinations of different metals. "Commercially pure" usually just means that it has very little alloyed metal, not that it's 100% just that metal.
*Titanium is actually somewhat elastic and after being bent will unbend itself over many years. We call it a "memory metal" because of it's ability to return to the shape it was forged into.
Metal Strength Properties:
Strength/Weight Ratio - Ability to resist loads compared to it's weight
Tensile Strength - resistance to being pulled apart by slowly applied load
Shear Strength - resistance to a cutting action (think scissors)
Compression strength - Maximum compressive load a material can withstand
Torsional strength - Maximum twisting strength a material can withstand
Shock/Fatigue resistance - resistance to vibrational stresses
Corrosion resistance - resistance to corrosion (usually either by being passivated or being overtly cathodic)
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RankenphilePassersby were amazedby the unusually large amounts of blood.Registered User, Moderatormod
that is super fascinating
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PiptheFairFrequently not in boats.Registered Userregular
I would also love to learn more about creating basic circuits, but I am fucking awful at soldering
mainly I just want someone to pay all my bills so I can spend all of my time making an entire tiny little fantasy midieval city with windows that light up and little secret passages and an intricate series of sewer tunnels that connect to each other and link into a collapsed ancient dwarven ruin that is now filled with the restless dead
Ten very experienced ski hikers departed on a trip towards Russia's Otorten Mountain. On January 25, 1959, the group reached Ivdel and took a truck north to Vizhai. It was the last time any of them were seen alive.
On the 26th, the rescuers came across the team's abandoned campsite. It was deserted and the tent was badly damaged as if something had ripped through it. Oddly, it appeared not as if something had tried to get into the tent, but rather like someone had ripped their way out. Tracks were found leading away from the camp and, 500 meters away, the found the first two hikers next to the remains of a campfire - both of them were dead, shoeless, and in only their underwear. Between the position of the first bodies, they found three more. The positions of the corpses suggested that they were trying to return to the original camp, but succumbed along the way. It was two months later that the remaining four hikers were found further into the woods.
The four lost skiers — instructor Alexander Zolotaryov, engineer Nicolas Thibeaux-Brignollel and students Alexander Kolevatov and Ludmila Dubinina — were discovered buried beneath 12-feet of snow and ice. All had apparently succumbed to brutal internal injuries. Unlike their friends who had perished above, these victims were all fully dressed.
Thibeaux -Brignollel’s skull showed evidence of having been struck by a heavy object. Zolotarev and Dubunina’s chests had been crushed inward, shattering several ribs and causing massive internal damage. Strangely there were no indications of what may have caused this severe trauma and, even more bizarrely, the corpses showed no signs of bruising or soft tissue damage.

Doctor Boris Vozrozhdenny, who inspected the bodies, stated that the force with which these corpses were hit exceeded that capable by man and went on to claim that the damage: “…was equal to the effect of a car crash.”
The searchers were startled to observe that Dubinina’s head was tilted back; her stretched mouth wide as if emitting a silent scream. Upon closer inspection the rescuers realized that her tongue had been ripped out by the root.]
In June 1936 (or 1934 by some accounts), Max Hahn (1897-1989) and his wife Emma were hiking along Red Creek near London, Texas. It was there that they discovered an artifact which seemed completely out of place. What they found was a unique piece of wood protruding from a rock concretion.
When the rock was broken by their son in 1947, it revealed an iron hammer with a wooden handle. it was completely enclosed in limestone. Geologists are certain: The hammer must be of the same age as the rock layer. However, they estimate the age of the rock at 140 million years. Made from 96% iron, 2.6% chlorine, and 0.74% sulfur. There are no bubbles in it at all. The quality of which equals or exceeds the quality of any iron found today. But no human life existed at that time. Or did it?
Skeptics have their own possible solution: The “hammer from Texas” was lost by a mine worker in the 19th century. But nevertheless it is a mystery: How did the hammer become enclosed in sedimentary rock so quickly?
This mummified corpse of a frog was found in a hollow flint 'geode' which was cracked open in 1899 by workmen in a quarry in England. There have been many reports of frogs found inside rocks; some still living in a kind of stupor but which revived once exposed to the air. In 1910 a living toad was found when a piece of coal was broken open; another was found in 1906 six feet (2 m) underground in a solid layer of clay. The most commonly found seem to be stuck in limestone. Some frogs have been found with the impression of their bodies so tightly jammed against the rock 'pocket' that even the skin's crackles can be seen imprinted on the sides of their frog-shaped hole --meaning the rock formed around them somehow.
No one knows whom he is because he hasn't been born yet.
He said "I'm done with time traveling" and decided to die, or he was stranded in the past and the despair over not being able to return killed him.
3DS: 0232-8293-7683
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KwoaruConfident SmirkFlawless Golden PecsRegistered Userregular
Unlike traditional welding, which adds material, FSW just squishes the existing material together by softening it and swirling it around like you were stirring peanut butter in a jar
In June 1936 (or 1934 by some accounts), Max Hahn (1897-1989) and his wife Emma were hiking along Red Creek near London, Texas. It was there that they discovered an artifact which seemed completely out of place. What they found was a unique piece of wood protruding from a rock concretion.
When the rock was broken by their son in 1947, it revealed an iron hammer with a wooden handle. it was completely enclosed in limestone. Geologists are certain: The hammer must be of the same age as the rock layer. However, they estimate the age of the rock at 140 million years. Made from 96% iron, 2.6% chlorine, and 0.74% sulfur. There are no bubbles in it at all. The quality of which equals or exceeds the quality of any iron found today. But no human life existed at that time. Or did it?
Skeptics have their own possible solution: The “hammer from Texas” was lost by a mine worker in the 19th century. But nevertheless it is a mystery: How did the hammer become enclosed in sedimentary rock so quickly?
It's called "sedimentary" rock because it's made up of compacted sediment, and they can reform into a more solid rock relatively quickly (on a geologic scale) when the right sediments in play. The prevalence of the rust and limestone in the rock suggests that it's a concretion of normal sediments that formed around the hammer as it's nucleus. London, Texas, where it was found, has a mine nearby, and considering that it was found in a creek, it's probably just an slightly unusual concretion.
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MachwingIt looks like a harmless old computer, doesn't it?Left in this cave to rot ... or to flower!Registered Userregular
edited May 2014
In the spirit of dumb conversations: what would it take to drop a planet into the sun?
Let's pretend for a minute that all you need to do to stop the sun's hydrogen fusion is to contaminate it with some heavier atoms. Nevermind that they'd just sink to the core of the star, where all the helium produced by the sun sits anyway. It's fun to pretend.
Okay! So, let's say if we replace half of a percent of the sun's mass, that's enough contamination. Okay, so, that's--wait, Jupiter's only a thousandth the mass of the sun. Okay, let's combine all the planets and--wait, shit--the rest of the solar system is less than half the mass of Jupiter? What about the Oort cloud? Only five Earth masses in there? Fuck. Let's just dump Jupiter in the sun and call it even.
OKAY. So, Jupiter is orbiting the sun at 13.07 km/s. Let's just apply enough force to stop it, and it'll fall into the sun. Only, that's probably not entirely necessary. We could probably time the drop that we get a bit of a gravity assist from the inner planets as it passes by (okay, probably not). Let's just say for the sake of argument that if we drop the orbital velocity of Jupiter by half, it'll probably find its way into the sun. Eventually. It'll certainly screw with Jupiter's influence on other planets enough to probably fling all of the inner planets into the sun. Let's go for it!
Now, this is assuming we can apply this slowdown to Jupiter instantaneously; if we perform our "burn" over too long a period of time, it won't all go towards dropping Jupiter's orbit (some energy may be used to raise it's orbit!). And of course, you can't really just propogate a force through 2 hella-kilograms of matter in an instant. Jupiter's atmosphere would be blown off and continue to travel at roughly the speed it was going before. The rocky parts of the planet would definitely explode before slowing down. At best we'd knock a pretty big chunk of rock into the sun and make a new dust belt for the solar system.
Not to worry, though! Jupiter takes about 12 years to orbit the sun, so we could slow it down over a pretty long period of time without being too inefficient in our burn. Let's say we apply a maximum acceleration of 1 m/s^2, or about 2 miles an hour per second, leisurely enough that Jupiter should hold together. To drop the speed in half, we have to apply our force for 54.45 minutes continuously.
So, Jupiter is about 1.9 x 10^27 kg of matter moving at about 13.07* 10^3 m/s. We've gotta drop it down by 6.535 * 10^3 m/s. Plug those values into the formula for kinetic energy, KE = 1/2 * M * V^2, and we need to hit Jupiter with 6.21 * 10^30 joules of kinetic energy. Since we're going to be applying this over roughly an hour, let's just say we need 1.72 × 10^24 kilowatt-hours of power, since it's a commonly used measurement.
Yeesh. Where are we going to get all that energy?
A metric ton of enriched uranium supplies about 400 million kilowatt-hours of energy in modern nuclear reactors, which means we need 4.3 * 10^15 metric tons of enriched uranium. There's only 3.5 * 10^7 tons of uranium available to humanity, though.
Hm. Maybe we should wait until our reactors are more efficient.
What about sunlight? We're hit with 1.74 *10^17 joules of sunlight per second. If we eclipse the planet with a solar panel that absorbs sunlight at perfect efficiency, we'll have the power we need by the year 1,142,814. We'd need 2.02 * 10^22 of Tesla's 85 kw-hr lithium ion batteries to store all of this energy.
I don't know if there are that many Teslas on the road.
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MachwingIt looks like a harmless old computer, doesn't it?Left in this cave to rot ... or to flower!Registered Userregular
Significant figures are for bitches
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RankenphilePassersby were amazedby the unusually large amounts of blood.Registered User, Moderatormod
But you don't understand...
Life finds a way.
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RankenphilePassersby were amazedby the unusually large amounts of blood.Registered User, Moderatormod
It was Alfred Einstein that said that, I think.
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RankenphilePassersby were amazedby the unusually large amounts of blood.Registered User, Moderatormod
yeah but the existence of the heavy elements is what stops the fusion reaction, because they cant be fused by the solar furnace.
nah dog, it's running out of fuel that stops the reaction. As the star runs out of burnable hydrogen, it has to burn hotter to fuse helium and oxygen into heavier and heavier elements to keep itself running. The heavier elements are a byproduct, not a cause.
Also if you're worried about humans sending heavy elements into the sun changing its runtime, remember that any amount we shot into it would be statisically negligible. Like forget about parts per million, you'd be talking about parts per google, and seriously more rocky and metal asteroids fall into the sun every day than we could ever produce.
yeah, but humans have this amazing ability to destroy things via baby steps rationalizing.
man you could dump the whole earth into the sun and it wouldn't notice. if that, y'know, makes you sleep better at night
Never underestimate human kinds ability to fuck things up
Dude, there's Pessimism and there's Realism, but what you're doing is Getting Kind of Silly About This Stuff-ism.
I find ghost ships to be super fucking interesting. There was a recent one back in 07 where 3 blokes were sailing their catamaran around the top end of Australia. Their boat was found adrift with the motor running, all the emergency kit onboard, food ready to eat on the table and washing hanging up on the line. There was no sign of foul play at all and we really don't know what happened. Best we can work out, there was a comedy of errors that led to all 3 falling overboard and the boat sailing off without them
Posts
holy fuck I want more spare time and space
Yup this guy 100% gets my seal of approval! Knows about how rapiers actually functioned, knows that modern fencing derived from small swords, not rapiers, knows his weights, time periods, knows his manuals well (Agrippa was the first rapier manual, basically) and even knew some stuff I did not! (Usually hear about rapiers for civilian defense but rarely here them in reference to battlefields, I did not know they were used so extensively as backup weapons there.)
Subscribing and looking forward to going through his backlog of videos soon.
The neat thing about explosion welding is it can fuse metals that are impossible to weld in any other method, and with a load of explosives to boot! I mean, sure its not a long a seam, its basically cladding two sheets together..but still, WELDING WITH EXPLOSIONS
Thermal Friction Drilling is also rad
Need some stuff designed or printed? I can help with that.
Sintering? It's becoming an interesting practice for 3D printers. You can take a tray of loose aluminum or iron grains and heat them into some impossible shapes (like a fully enclosed mechanism with internal ball bearings).
Talk to a metal shop or someone with the right tools. Depends on how you need it manufactured.
If you're okay with it being milled instead of forged you can find someone with a lathe or a CnC machine. If it needs a lot of strength you might be able to order tubing of the right size and length.
Properties of Metal:
Malleability - Ability to be hammered, rolled or pressed into shapes
Ductility - Ability to be drawn (into wire), bent or twisted without breaking
Elasticity - Ability to return to it's original shape*
Toughness - Resistance to tearing or shearing. Can be stretched/shrunk without breaking
Density - weight per unit volume
Brittleness - Ability to bend or deform without shattering or cracking. More brittle means more likely to crack.
Melting Point - Temperature at which metal becomes liquid
Coefficient of Thermal Conductivity - How fast metal transfers heat. Somewhat counter-intuitively, steel has a small coefficient which means it retains heat and is easier to weld with lower temperatures than copper which transfers heat really well and needs higher heat. Aluminum will cool faster than steel because of it's higher coefficient.
Coefficient of Thermal Expansion - How much it expands when heated
Coefficient of Electrical Conductivity - I think you get it
Color - Yeah I know, simple, but it is useful in telling metal and alloy by sight alone.
Ferrous - Does it contain iron? Also largely a factor in if it's magnetic.
Alloy - Most metals are actually combinations of different metals. "Commercially pure" usually just means that it has very little alloyed metal, not that it's 100% just that metal.
*Titanium is actually somewhat elastic and after being bent will unbend itself over many years. We call it a "memory metal" because of it's ability to return to the shape it was forged into.
Metal Strength Properties:
Tensile Strength - resistance to being pulled apart by slowly applied load
Shear Strength - resistance to a cutting action (think scissors)
Compression strength - Maximum compressive load a material can withstand
Torsional strength - Maximum twisting strength a material can withstand
Shock/Fatigue resistance - resistance to vibrational stresses
Corrosion resistance - resistance to corrosion (usually either by being passivated or being overtly cathodic)
But I just did it for the first time and I am Jim Two-tits, the mutated lord of fuck. My destiny is to Re-invent all the dingleberries.
I think I won.
This video took me from solder zero to solder hero.
Pugster Lardmachine, the perfectly sober Astarte, to punch out 20 bears at once.
Also Franky Angel, the expatriate internet tough guy, to role play the FBI
You know what is interesting
Cats
Cats are pretty damn interesting
Instead it just comes charging in like a locomotive and slams it's body into the dog.
Purugly uses Tackle. It's Super Effective. Houndour flees.
You know what you are going in for
The Body on Somerton Beach
Steam // Secret Satan
You fucking tease!
I could eat that.
Weaver you sonova!
He said "I'm done with time traveling" and decided to die, or he was stranded in the past and the despair over not being able to return killed him.
3DS: 0232-8293-7683
these are the raddest things ever
It's called "sedimentary" rock because it's made up of compacted sediment, and they can reform into a more solid rock relatively quickly (on a geologic scale) when the right sediments in play. The prevalence of the rust and limestone in the rock suggests that it's a concretion of normal sediments that formed around the hammer as it's nucleus. London, Texas, where it was found, has a mine nearby, and considering that it was found in a creek, it's probably just an slightly unusual concretion.
Let's pretend for a minute that all you need to do to stop the sun's hydrogen fusion is to contaminate it with some heavier atoms. Nevermind that they'd just sink to the core of the star, where all the helium produced by the sun sits anyway. It's fun to pretend.
Okay! So, let's say if we replace half of a percent of the sun's mass, that's enough contamination. Okay, so, that's--wait, Jupiter's only a thousandth the mass of the sun. Okay, let's combine all the planets and--wait, shit--the rest of the solar system is less than half the mass of Jupiter? What about the Oort cloud? Only five Earth masses in there? Fuck. Let's just dump Jupiter in the sun and call it even.
OKAY. So, Jupiter is orbiting the sun at 13.07 km/s. Let's just apply enough force to stop it, and it'll fall into the sun. Only, that's probably not entirely necessary. We could probably time the drop that we get a bit of a gravity assist from the inner planets as it passes by (okay, probably not). Let's just say for the sake of argument that if we drop the orbital velocity of Jupiter by half, it'll probably find its way into the sun. Eventually. It'll certainly screw with Jupiter's influence on other planets enough to probably fling all of the inner planets into the sun. Let's go for it!
Now, this is assuming we can apply this slowdown to Jupiter instantaneously; if we perform our "burn" over too long a period of time, it won't all go towards dropping Jupiter's orbit (some energy may be used to raise it's orbit!). And of course, you can't really just propogate a force through 2 hella-kilograms of matter in an instant. Jupiter's atmosphere would be blown off and continue to travel at roughly the speed it was going before. The rocky parts of the planet would definitely explode before slowing down. At best we'd knock a pretty big chunk of rock into the sun and make a new dust belt for the solar system.
Not to worry, though! Jupiter takes about 12 years to orbit the sun, so we could slow it down over a pretty long period of time without being too inefficient in our burn. Let's say we apply a maximum acceleration of 1 m/s^2, or about 2 miles an hour per second, leisurely enough that Jupiter should hold together. To drop the speed in half, we have to apply our force for 54.45 minutes continuously.
So, Jupiter is about 1.9 x 10^27 kg of matter moving at about 13.07* 10^3 m/s. We've gotta drop it down by 6.535 * 10^3 m/s. Plug those values into the formula for kinetic energy, KE = 1/2 * M * V^2, and we need to hit Jupiter with 6.21 * 10^30 joules of kinetic energy. Since we're going to be applying this over roughly an hour, let's just say we need 1.72 × 10^24 kilowatt-hours of power, since it's a commonly used measurement.
Yeesh. Where are we going to get all that energy?
A metric ton of enriched uranium supplies about 400 million kilowatt-hours of energy in modern nuclear reactors, which means we need 4.3 * 10^15 metric tons of enriched uranium. There's only 3.5 * 10^7 tons of uranium available to humanity, though.
Hm. Maybe we should wait until our reactors are more efficient.
What about sunlight? We're hit with 1.74 *10^17 joules of sunlight per second. If we eclipse the planet with a solar panel that absorbs sunlight at perfect efficiency, we'll have the power we need by the year 1,142,814. We'd need 2.02 * 10^22 of Tesla's 85 kw-hr lithium ion batteries to store all of this energy.
I don't know if there are that many Teslas on the road.
Life finds a way.
He's a genius.
a HAIL HYDRA to the person who can find it
They weren't done in chalk on a blackboard.
Mark Twain
Dude, there's Pessimism and there's Realism, but what you're doing is Getting Kind of Silly About This Stuff-ism.
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better
bit.ly/2XQM1ke
why would you ever not have a ladder extending down into the water at all times
I know nothing of sailing but it seems such a stupid way to die
what are fish going to climb it
Pirates
Okay. How to destroy the sun pops in after 1:45.
EDIT: TL;DV Give it more shit to process to shorten it's life span, or give it so much shit it spreads out and shit is too far apart for fusion.
EDIT2: We are probably never ever going to have the ability to do this.