HellfireJack

I always take a deep breath before responding to this kind of nonsense WIldrose. Notice the lack of insults on my part and avoidance of outright personal attacks. I have no problem with agreeing to disagree. I do however have a problem with someone trying to tell me who I am, what I do, how I think and what I feel and then calling me names for it while avoiding and deflecting any questions they're asked but, its typical of the mentality when it comes to people who advocate violence on others to solve cultural problems. I deal with people like this on a day to day basis. I've had my life threatened over a dozen times for suggesting people not harm others because of their feelings for animals. This isn't anywhere close to that so no big deal.

That's the answer I expected really. All bark and no bite. Not a salient point to be found in any of your rants.

I notice you chose not to answer the question. How many people have you killed? How many have you beaten? How much property damage have you commited for your "cause" to end animal cruelty? I've fed people at homeless shelters and raised money and food donations. I've worked to teach people that attacking others for their cultural beliefs is wrong. What did you say you've done for animal cruelty? I don't recall? The only thing you've done that I can see is try to dehumanize people you see as wrong so other people might join in on your hate fest. I didn't say the military doesn't protect us. I straight out said that the military protects our borders and our interests elsewhere. It sure the heck doesn't protect me in my home as you suggested. I've yet to see the army marching down my street keeping me safe at home. And it's funny I don't remember tucking any civilians in while I servered my four years. All you're doing here is trying to insult someone who has no problem voicing an opinion that is contrary to yours. I've worked a dairy farm. I've castrated calves, broken horses and hunted and fished my whole life. None of that changes the fact that the only way to end animal cruelty is to educate people. Violence does nothing but turn animal rights into an us -vs them hate fest. We're all people and we have to treat people like people rather than turning them against each other. You can sit and try to make up my arguments and incorrectly tell everyone who I am and what you think I may or may not have done but I guarantee you're no where close to reality. I've already stated what I've done for animal cruelty. When you have to tell people what their argument is in order to try to win the argument you've already failed. As for your insults, you can keep them. It shows exactly how childish and immature you are. You throwing a tantrum and screaming that you're going to take your ball and leave because I'm a big dummy really hurts me. I'm devastated. What next? Are you going to tell me how I'm like Hitler? Any other personal attacks you want to get in? Feel free. Show how you're all about attacking rather than any attempt at civil discussion. As far as I can tell you're nothing but an armchair ecoterrorist wishing death and hate on people. Like the world needs another one of those. When you have an actual salient point other than "Nuh uh you're wrong!!" come see me.

So tell me how many people have you killed for your convictions? How many people have you beaten? How much destruction of property have you committed? I'm going to laugh when you say none. I've discussed and educated countless people on the wrongs of advocating violence on other and taught countless others that animal cruelty is wrong. It'll be extremely laughable for you to sit there saying advocating harm on others is the best solution and you've never actually done it when I sit here telling you that the only effective way to affect change is through education and I know this because I work at educating people and do it all the time. It's one thing to be a real animal activist working hard to affect change. It's quite another to be an arm chair ecoterrorist. The act of advocating violence on others and actually perpetrating it sets the animal rights movement and the hope to end animal cruelty back time and time again. Asking others to stop advocating hurting people because they hurt animals isn't me trying to fart sunshine and roses on you. It's me pointing out that such behavior is negative and does not help the cause one iota. All it does is foment hatred and in many occasions brings about racial tension. Violence does serve a purpose as a last ditch effort when reasonable people can not find a solution to their problems. Unfortunately sitting around on your duff calling for the harm and death of people because they treat animals differently than you do doesn't quite fit that scenario of "when it was necessary and appropriate." Our fight for independence wasn't just someone standing up one day and saying "Screw you Brittian. We don't like that you're different from us. Time for you to die." It took years of poor treatment and the murder of countless settlers and natural born Americans to bring about a desire for change. Nothing stops my fellow Americans from killing me. It's a misguided belief that the military keeps me safe in my home and is silly at best. The military protects our borders and fights outside of those borders for whatever reason the government demands. People get killed in the US every minute of every day. Either our military sucks and is entirely ineffective or you've been watching "A Few Good Men" a little too often. Not to mention that if our military truly watched over us and tucked us all into bed every night then there's no chance the harm you advocate could ever happen to others.

@TwinOaks Thanks! Yeah I do know that. It's a nostalgia thing that makes me want to use it.

It looks like construction of sandals is pretty easy. If you search "make sandals" on youtube you'll get quite a lot on basic construction in other materials that you can apply to leather construction.

The real deal from Tandy. Its been sitting in a box for 10 years. After finally being able to pry the cap off it looks like it's thickened a little. It's light yellow in color and slightly less viscous than honey. Any way to save this stuff? I put some on a piece of scrap and it covered ok apart from being hard to spread because it's so thick. What can I cut it with? Mineral spirits? Turpentine? Anything?

Yes educating people makes a difference. You don't have to deal directly with the people who kill the animals. You educate the population and if they change then the practice will eventually end. We can't sit in the US or whatever country we're from foaming at the mouth wishing harm to people because of some cultural practice that a small group of those people perform 2000 miles away and expect it to end because some person advocates harming others to get vengeance out of spite. Violence is never a solution to ending violence. As Martin Luther King III said:We all have to be concerned about terrorism, but you will never end terrorism by terrorizing others.

I had to grind down the sides of one alphabet set I bought. It didn't look like they were finished during manufacture with lots of flashing left on all sides. I used a dremel with a metal grinding stone.

Where is this noise coming from? Back of tower? CD Drive? Speakers? If from the speakers are other sounds playing normal?

You could probably easily do your own cutting with plexi from Home Depot and a Dremel router table Plexi http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc1v/R-202038049/h_d2/ProductDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=10051&catalogId=10053 Dremel Router Table http://www.amazon.com/Dremel-231-Shaper-Router-Table/dp/B0000302Y9 For the adventurous. http://www.instructables.com/id/Mini-Tablesaw-Router-Shaper-for-Dremel-rotary-/

Buy all of your neighbors MP3 players as a late Christmas gift? I do a lot of my tooling on a wooden folding tv tray using a marble slab with either a towel or a poundo board beneath it. It's small and practical and I can move to any room in the house with relative ease.

That's all good then. As a field managers I saw tons of people trying the body armour idea, just never in leather. Once I saw someone try to play in motocross gear. He was literally stripping down during his first game. I'd hate to see someone spend the money and take the time to build something that was used for 10 minutes and then wound up sitting in a closet. You have the experience though to know. I'm about the same age and I played from '87 to about '99 when I moved out of state and there simply isn't a decent field in my area. I looked at a couple and they turned out to be tiny "back yard" fields and the people running them really had no clue. Now I just don't have time (or the stamina) to go play anymore. The extra added weight from learning the joy of cheese steaks doesn't help either. I'm not sure the polyethylene glycol based "paint" would penetrate a properly sealed piece. I'd be more concerned about the balls marring the piece on impact than anything. I'm betting in the end you'll have tiny color marks all over the piece where the shells penetrated the sealer and into the leather and allow the paint to penetrate anyways. You'll probably have to spot dye the piece a lot so I'd go dark colors and try for a matte finish. You play at Skirmish up in the Jim Thorpe, PA area? I'm about an hour and a half south of you if that's the case. I had always meant to get up there for an event but just never made the drive.

I just saw this mentioned and had to comment.... From a leather working stand point the idea is awesome. But... from a paintball players perspective though not so much. Unless you're doing this for the shock and awe/look factor I would advise against hardened body armour when playing. I have years of experience both managing a paintball field/air smithing/playing and it won't help your game one bit. A good percentage of paint balls bounce off of the body and that doesn't count at most fields unless you call yourself out by mistake. Sticking a sheet of hardened leather between you and the ball almost guarantees that they'll break on you. This is why experienced paintball players wear neoprene and why pro rules allow only so much of it. The leather wrap-around headgear will only hold in moisture, fog your lenses and make it harder to breath and see. If I were to contemplate doing this for looks I would create the mask and armour and wear it off the field and then make a duplicate of any body armour in grey and black neoprene to maintain the style on the field.

You don't have to hate Chinese people to abhor and try to stop animal cruelty. I wish people wouldn't wish death on others because their culture treats animals differently. I know you're just speaking to make a strong vivid point( I hope at least) and I know it's viewed by westerners as cruel but being cruel back is no way to solve the issue. Educate and hope that that culture adopts a more humane method. This kind of talk only encourages people like this to act. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38957020/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/ Heck, the Australian's will rip a joey from it's dead mothers pouch and stomp it's head in just so we can have that good strong kangaroo leather we use. Kosher methods of killing animals in the US are pretty rough to watch as well. Chicken farming is pretty abysmal. It happens the world over and violence is not the solution. Make people aware of the problems, educate, and above all be positive towards those who agree and grow the awareness where the problem is in ways that will make people want to change and speak out when anyone advocates violence or harassment as a solution to cultural differences just the same as you would against animal cruelty. Understand I'm not saying don't have an opinion. Feel free to think and feel how you want. I'm just saying when it comes to others, don't try to kill them because of that opinion. We've had enough of that in this world.

I agree with most that you should buy what you need as you need it but if for some reason you do buy the kit I'd advise you spend 30 bucks for their wholesale membership and save 370 bucks overall.

I've considered trying to make shoes/sandals but I'm not in any rush. Vibram makes soling products. http://www.vibram.us/products/default.asp

If Firefox is your browser of choice I would uninstall it fully and then get the most up to date version. It could be an add-on having a problem or something along those lines. I use Firefox 3.6.12 with very few add-ons and have no problems with lightbox image galleries.

Sounds like your browser doesn't like the lightbox style image handling. What browser version you using? And what's your connection speed like? I know IE 8 has some issues with some lightbox 2 scripts and sometimes slow connections on large images cause problems with them opening. Left and right click do the same thing on a lightbox thumbnail - cause it to open, which is why nothing happens when you right click it as well. Perhaps update or test it out with a different browser to see.

Like the hat. Very steampunk-y. Now all you need are some goggles..