The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning
Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.
I’ve been doing a lot of fiddly gluing lately and, despite my best efforts, some adhesive collects in the lid’s screw threads. The gummy residue makes it really hard to unscrew the lid without a strap wrench after a few days.
Wrapping two turns of silicone tape around the cap helps tremendously:
It’s obvious in retrospect, is all I can say…
According to Wikipedia, Polylactic acid, a.k.a. PLA “is soluble in chlorinated solvents, hot benzene, tetrahydrofuran, and dioxane” and is not soluble in acetone, alcohol, or water.
Just to see what happens, I dunked a pair of those 3D printed dummy bullets in Shooter’s Choice Gun Solvent (which has since gone obsolete) and Hoppe’s No. 9 Gun Bore Cleaner (which seems to have been reformulated several times), then let them air-dry in those background puddles:
Nothing much happened: they’re not soft or gummy, haven’t slumped, and seem undaunted.
That’s in contrast to ABS plastic, which is readily soluble in acetone and the aromatic hydrocarbons commonly found in solvents used around firearms. Apart from that, ABS would be a slightly better choice on mechanical grounds. I’m not sure the difference really matters for most purposes, given the very wide tolerances on 3D printed objects.
I AM NOT A LAWYER.
To review, PL 265.00 Section 23 as amended defines a large capacity magazine (a.k.a. “ammunition feeding device”):
23. “Large capacity ammunition feeding device” means a magazine, belt, drum, feed strip, or similar device, that
(a) has a capacity of, or that can be readily restored or converted to accept, more than ten rounds of ammunition, or
PL 265.36, defines unlawful possession:
§ 265.36 Unlawful possession of a large capacity ammunition feeding device.
It shall be unlawful for a person to knowingly possess a large capacity ammunition feeding device manufactured before September thirteenth, nineteen hundred ninety-four, and if such person lawfully possessed such large capacity feeding device before the effective date of the chapter of the laws of two thousand thirteen which added this section, that has a capacity of, or that can be readily restored or converted to accept, more than ten rounds of ammunition.
Despite the period at the end, that’s not actually a complete sentence.
Taken together, both sections assert that a magazine with “a capacity of, or that can be readily restored or converted to accept, more than ten rounds of ammunition” is (or will be, as of one year from the effective date of the legislation:15 January 2014) illegal.
The wording implies that an existing, formerly legal “large capacity” magazine can be brought into compliance by a modification that limits its capacity to ten rounds, with the caveat that actually inserting more than seven rounds may be illegal, depending on the situation and the effect of various amendments to PL 265.00, as discussed previously.
The legislation requires such a modified magazine must not be “readily restored or converted” to hold more than ten rounds. I cannot find the legislative definition of “readily”, despite some diligent searching. As mentioned earlier, the NY State Police guidelines use the word “permanently”, a much stronger word than “readily”, seemingly without basis in the law.
Merriam-Webster defines it thusly (slightly reformatted):
read·i·ly
adverb \ˈre-də-lē\
: quickly and easily
: in a way that shows you are willing to do something
: without hesitation or complaint
Full Definition of READILY
: in a ready manner: as
a : without hesitating : willingly <readily accepted advice>
b : without much difficulty : easily <for reasons that anyone could readily understand>
The full definition suggests that, in order to be “readily restored or converted”, the process must be both temporally short (“without hesitating”) and easy to accomplish (“without much difficulty”).
I realize that the legislature sometimes uses words in a special way, but it’s been two weeks since I asked my legislators for clarification and haven’t heard anything substantive, so I’m doing the best I can with what I have.
It also seems reasonable to assume “readily” includes the notion of something an ordinary person could do, without special tools. An experienced machinist in a well-equipped shop can readily accomplish tasks that seem impossible, right up through building a complete magazine (or, heck, a firearm) from scratch; permanently has no real meaning.
On that scale, I’m much closer to an ordinary person than an experienced machinist, but perhaps I can come up with a magazine modification that isn’t readily un-do-able.
I also assume any magazine modification should meet some practical requirements, even though they’re not spelled out in the legislation:
In short, the smaller and fewer the changes required to reduce the magazine capacity, the better.
Picked up a new Jaton PX610GT-EX video card, just like that one, for the new desktop box that’s slowly taking shape. Dropped it into the slot, fired it up, and …
Well, that doesn’t look quite right. In real life, the pattern sparkled and the horizontal bar slid slowly down the screen; this is a photo, because the UI was completely hosed.
In truth, that’s what happened when I swapped it into the current desktop box to figure out whether the fault lay in the card, the PC, or the OS. In the new PC, the card flat-out didn’t work at all, so the fact that it booted and got the OS GUI up, before getting wedged, counted for something.
Given that the two cards are identical, the new one is on its way back for an exchange.
The full desktop picture is over there.
The cracker recipe I’m using produces eight sets of crackers, so this time I added a variety of toppings to see what would work out best:
Garlic wins over everything else, hands-down, no contest, but the mixture of all the toppings in the bottom of the cooling bowl was wonderful.
The crackers went into a large pot with a bag of desiccant:
It pulled out 30 grams of water while reducing the humidity to 20% overnight; the crackers started out crisp and became really snappy. Definitely the right way to get the job done.
These vaguely resemble the Processor Crackers recipe in Flatbreads & Flavors (Alford & Duguid):
I’m using coarse-ground red wheat that doesn’t soak up the water like fine-ground flour. The original recipe called for 1-½ C water, which produced a sticky ball.
Finely chopped toppings work best; the nuts were too coarse.
For each piece of dough:
Toss the crackers into a big bowl to cool, sampling as needed.
When crackers cool:
Wonderful!
Memo to Self: Shredded Parmesan cheese would be pretty good…
Seeing as how both my NY Senator and Assemblymember voted in favor of the NY Safe Act, I sent each one an email asking for a pointer to the actual wording of the current law.
They both use autoresponders, of course.
From Senator Gipson:
Thank you for taking the time to e-mail me. Your comments and suggestions are very important to me and an integral part of the legislative process.
From Assemblymember Barrett:
Thank you for contacting my office. I greatly appreciate hearing from you as it helps guide my work in Albany as well as here at home.
I apologize for this automated response, but given the volume of e-mails and letters that my office receives each day, we do not always have the resources to answer each one immediately. I want to assure you that I read every letter and email that comes in and take your views into consideration.
If you live in my Assembly district, and have an urgent matter, please call my office at 845-454-1703. Again, thank you for your correspondence; it is a privilege to serve you.
Sincerely,
Didi Barrett
Assemblymember
106th Assembly District
I eventually got an email from Gipson’s office and a call from Barrett’s office with pointers to more information. It’ll take a while for all that to settle down, though.
I AM NOT A LAWYER.
Some concerted rummaging reveals the source of the enigmatic reference “ch 1/2013 § 58” in the previous post to be part of Senate Bill S2670D-2013 and Assembly Bill A3007D-2013:
This legislation (seems to) change the definition of a large capacity ammunition feeding device by making sections (b) and (c) “not effective”:
S 4. Subdivision b of section 58 of chapter 1 of the laws of 2013 amending the criminal procedure law and other laws relating to suspension and revocation of firearms licenses, is amended to read as follows:
b. The amendments to subdivision 23 of section 265.00 of the penal law made by section thirty-eight of this act shall take effect on the ninetieth day after this act shall have become a law, except that the amendments [
made to] DESIGNATING paragraph (a) of subdivision 23 shall take effect immediately; AND PROVIDED FURTHER THAT THE EFFECTIVE DATE OF THE AMENDMENTS ADDING PARAGRAPHS (B) AND (C) TO SUCH SUBDIVISION SHALL BE SUSPENDED AND NOT EFFECTIVE;
Note that the asterisk leading to that footnote in the previous post seemed to apply to only section (b), not (c).
I cannot find the text defining the amendments to section (a), but if that part stands as written, then the definition of a “large capacity ammunition feeding device” reduces to:
23. “Large capacity ammunition feeding device” means a magazine, belt, drum, feed strip, or similar device, that
(a) has a capacity of, or that can be readily restored or converted to accept, more than ten rounds of ammunition
S2670D-2013 / A3007D-2013 redefined unlawful possession based on the actual number of rounds in the ammunition feeding device, rather than its maximum capacity:
S 2. Section 265.37 of the penal law, as added by chapter 1 of the laws of 2013, is amended to read as follows:
S 265.37 Unlawful possession of certain ammunition feeding devices.
It shall be unlawful for a person to knowingly possess an ammunition feeding device [
that such person lawfully possessed before the effective date of the chapter of the laws of two thousand thirteen which added this section, that has a capacity of, or that can be readily restored or converted to accept more than seven but less than ten rounds of ammunition,] where such device contains more than seven rounds of ammunition.If such device containing more than seven rounds of ammunition is possessed within the home of the possessor, the person so possessing the device shall, for a first offense, be guilty of a violation and subject to a fine of two hundred dollars, and for
[a second] EACH SUBSEQUENT offense, be guilty of a class B misdemeanor and subject to a fine of two hundred dollars and a term of up to three months imprisonment. If such device containing more than seven rounds of ammunition is possessed in any location other than the home of the possessor, the person so possessing the device shall, for a first offense, be guilty of a class B misdemeanor and subject to a fine of two hundred dollars and a term of up to six months imprisonment, and for [a second] EACH SUBSEQUENT offense, be guilty of a class A misdemeanor.
S2670D-2013 / A3007D-2013 does not, however, amend NY PL 265.36, so the penalty for possession of a large capacity ammunition feeding device, as defined in PL 265.00 Section 23, remains intact.
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 