Thought Bloggles

Back in 2019, I decided to finally make some leather pauldrons (technically they're spaulders, not having the extra protection against stabs into the armpit). I succeeded, but they ended up with a fatal design flaw that I have yet to fix - see the end. These are the notes from making them.   The core leather from Leder Hofmann is about 6mm thick, which makes it hard to work with. I don't know where I can get some ~4.5mm leather. I use a Blechschere (tin snips) to cut it. Even dedicated leather scissors are having a hard time with this, but are good for trimming edges. It takes a bit of getting used to how to use it without making a lot of little notches along the edge. One trick is to bend the leather where it hits the scissors so it doesn't press the scissors at an angle. Making many small nibs with the tip seemed to work well. I made holes for rivets with a combination of a regular hand-held rivet punch and a punch tool, both 4mm. The hand riveter, with plenty of f...

They didn't seem to consider the human imagination and creativity. Just look at Leonardo da Vinci - he came up with an insane amount of things that there were no words for. And humans have been creating quite elaborate imaginary beings and stories forever. Did S&W not know of science fiction? Just because I wanted to prove a point, one morning while getting up, I came up with three different concepts that are so different from my experience and language that I should not have been able to think of them. On a phase-locked planet, whenever there is a solar eclipse, the constant hurricanes slow down for a while, allowing brave people with heavy heat shields to venture further into the hot side to gather metals. This is extremely dangerous, of course. Especially while the shield is not loaded down with metals, if it tips it can get picked up by the wind and smash into the person. There can also be invisible pools of molten material than can cause this tipping. The best gatherers ar...