"There are countless horrible things happening all over the world and horrible people prospering, but we must never allow them to disturb our equanimity or deflect us from our sacred duty to sabotage and annoy them whenever possible." -Auberon Waugh
A very nice knife! The tempering certainly went well.
As for the coin -- I believe that it legal. I often see vending machines that will turn pennies into souvenirs. Since the feds haven't swooped in to save the day, that implies legality.
Nice, I wonder how hard the steel is? I would have guessed that the tempering would be more involved. The Japanese folded and pounded the hell out of their swords. But then again, I'm no metallurgist.
It depends on the bolt to start. I didn't click it, but he probably didn't heat it enough to lose the temper, so long as he quenched it and didn't let it slowly cool. Unless that's a crappy bolt, it's probably pretty tough, certainly tough enough for a tiny knife. Watch Forged in Fire, that's what they do.
There aren't many swords or knifes made like folded stuff. That takes a year+/- to do properly.
OT, but A Bridge Too Far has been on This, a broadcast network. It ticks me off nearly as much as Blackhawk Down. Montgomery is everything wrong with the Brit military. He went to the right schools and had the right accent so he became a general. His plans always had too many working parts. Schedules were tight, objectives were narrowly designed. The whole plan could be destroyed if any of the objectives weren't met.
Everywhere Monty went, his plans fell apart, but he kept getting support because of that schooling and that accent. They took materiel, American materiel, from Patton to give to that idiot to get more men killed for nothing. The more I read about WWII, the more angry I get about that a-hole and the Brits in general. No matter how often the "right" generals failed, they still were given posts of responsibility.
I agree Veeshir. I think Eisenhower saying that Monty was a 'psychopath' isn't much of an exaggeration. The 'old school' network seemed to work for the Brits in the 1800s but then may be the reason the 20th century was so bad for them - the next generations got dumber.
In my old Aussie family we were also anti-Churchill, which may surprise Americans. His 'attack the soft underbelly' strategy got a lot of Aussie killed in WW1 (Turkey invasion) and again in WW2 (Crete). AND during the war we blamed him (wrongly it turned out) for other failures such as taking our best troops to Singapore where they were surrendered as pow's by Brit generals (leaving us undefended until the 'Yanks' came into the war, God bless 'em). So yeah, don't praise Churchill in my family, but I keep quiet about it because it's too complicated in wider debates.
Can't have helped that my grandfather was court martialled and busted to Private for failing to salute Brit officers in WW1! (I think it was a misunderstanding, but he went to a lower pay grade so the effect was ongoing, enough to make him bitter about Brits after that. He also went to the rear twice 'wounded' as a machine gunner with 'superficial gunshot wounds to left hand' which we only read in his records recently - Once maybe but twice? Yeah I sympathise, the trenches were hell).
My favorite Aussie WWII story is them singing "We're off to see the Wizard, the wonderful Wizard of Oz!" while marching to battle. It happened in North Africa.
Churchill treated Australia, indeed, the whole Commonwealth, as sepoys. They were good enough to fight, but they needed Brit officers.
The guy whose fault it was that Singapore and much of the rest of the far east fell was moved to North Africa to defend Tobruk. I forget his name but I won't forget his story.
He was a Brit with the right accent, Churchill told him to prepare multiple airfields and defenses far out from Singapore with fallback positions. He didn't prepare any defenses and had only the one airfield. So planes went out and couldn't land because their airfield was destroyed. He kept sending out divisions of Indian and Aussie troops to fight. Since they didn't have fixed defenses, they were quickly surrounded and surrendered when they ran out of supplies. He kept doing that. So Churchill kept writing him and asking what was the deal with no defenses and no multiple airfields. Then Churchill told him how great he was and sent him to Tobruk. Which fell because it had no prepared defenses in depth and few airfields. Finally, Churchill sent him to Iran instead of bringing him home in disgrace. Lluckily the Germans never attacked there. They should have, they needed oil and that idiot would have lost in Iran in an afternoon. I read about that in Churchill's history of WWII. It was infuriating.
I share Veeshir's view of both Montgomery and Churchill. Montgomery was more an overachieving colonel than a general, imo; and Churchill might have been an inspirational speaker but he was no military strategist; many of his military escapades were total disasters.
Montgomery was in the right place at the right time to benefit from the massive British reinforcements of men and material(which they desperately needed after Churchill threw much of the British strength away in Greece) prior to the British victory at El Alamein. Wavell was unlucky to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and was replaced unfairly in my view. Montgomery then muddled through in Sicily and Normandy(Caen) before the Market Garden fiasco.
Churchill was responsible for the Gallipoli disaster in WW1 and the WW2 Dieppe catastrophe has his fingerprints all over it. And of course the Greek fiasco. Although, to be fair, this might have ultimately led to the defeat of Germany in Russia, as Operation Barbarossa was delayed for a couple months, resulting in the Germans later stalling, frozen before Moscow.
Churchill describing Italy as the "soft underbelly of Europe" was very misleading. The terrain in Italy is perfect for defending a push from the South, consisting of the central Apennine Range with rivers and ridges aligned East to West providing perfect defensive positions.
As a second lieutenant (lo, all those many years ago), my officer's basic course had several foreign officers as instuctors. This included a Brit and and Aussie -- both light colonels, as I recall.
The British officer discussed the defense of Singapore -- and not in a good way. As we were all engineer officers, he emphasized how the British defenders made a point of blowing up bridges before the Japanese reached them. The rivers were difficult to cross, and there were a lot of bridges. That should have slowed down the Japanese considerably.
In spite of that, the Japanese moved very quickly. No one, at the time, knew how the Japanese crossed all those rivers so quickly.
After the war, some of the Japanese officers involved with the fall of Singapore were debriefed. They were asked about the bridges.
The common story was that, as the Japanese Army reached the first of the blown bridges, the senior officers were flummoxed by the blown bridges -- this had not been anticipated in their planning. They had no quick way to cross the rivers.
Suddenly, one Japanese soldier came running up, very excited. He took the officers to a place not far away, where lay a complete replacement bridge, dissassembled. Turned out that the British had replacement bridges stockpiled at every crossing in case they they were lost during the monsoon floods. The bridge components were even numbered to facilitate re-assembly.
And the British hadn't bothered destroying any of them, even though they were right next to the bridges that were destroyed.
According to our instructor, one of the surviving British commanders from Singapore (I do not remember who, but I think he was an engineer) was asked about that.
His response?
"Well, anyone can make a mistake."
In the right context, that answer can be hilarious. But I don't recall anyone laughing in the lecture hall.
Yes that's interesting. I've learned that there's always someone with more details who will argue a particular angle and they all have good points so I just stick to things I know.
One thing I have seen is all the old Brit infrastructure in India, not always well maintained now. I even met old Indians who remembered the British days as a golden era, 'I wish they always ruled us'. What they did in the 1800s was impressive. How they went from that to the bungling in the 20th century is really a puzzle, but we can see how bad it became as you show.
Interesting details about the fall of Singapore and the bridges, thanks JeffS.
My grandfather was captured in Greece. He fought with the Australian Camel Corps in the ME in WW1. He enlisted for WW2 in his mid forties and served as a Medical Orderly. He volunteered to stay behind to look after the wounded in Greece; lucky he did as many of the ships evacuating the troops were sunk by the Luftwaffe.
He described to us watching the black-uniformed SS troops advancing through the trees before his capture. I reckon they thought they were done for. He served out the war as a POW and learned how to play the piano accordion in the camp band. One time, a big-wig German general was visiting the camp and the commandant asked the band to play something for the occasion. So the band played "Here Comes the Bride"(*for some reason this tune was unknown in Germany) and the Germans loved it :)
Or maybe they enjoyed the tune because it's the wedding match from Lohengrin which some say was Hitler's favourite opera Mike! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridal_Chorus
Anyway God bless your grandfather, what an amazing life.
Well, perhaps my grandfather and his entire band, were not rounded up and machine-gunned, because the commandant and visiting general were not aware of the origins of the tune.
As a side note, my grandfather was wounded in action(he showed us the bullet holes in his leg) When I asked him why we didn't go rabbit hunting, he was silent.
He loved fishing though. Damn, he was good at fishing.
16 comments:
A very nice knife! The tempering certainly went well.
As for the coin -- I believe that it legal. I often see vending machines that will turn pennies into souvenirs. Since the feds haven't swooped in to save the day, that implies legality.
Nice, I wonder how hard the steel is? I would have guessed that the tempering would be more involved. The Japanese folded and pounded the hell out of their swords. But then again, I'm no metallurgist.
It depends on the bolt to start.
I didn't click it, but he probably didn't heat it enough to lose the temper, so long as he quenched it and didn't let it slowly cool.
Unless that's a crappy bolt, it's probably pretty tough, certainly tough enough for a tiny knife.
Watch Forged in Fire, that's what they do.
There aren't many swords or knifes made like folded stuff. That takes a year+/- to do properly.
OT, but A Bridge Too Far has been on This, a broadcast network.
It ticks me off nearly as much as Blackhawk Down.
Montgomery is everything wrong with the Brit military.
He went to the right schools and had the right accent so he became a general.
His plans always had too many working parts.
Schedules were tight, objectives were narrowly designed.
The whole plan could be destroyed if any of the objectives weren't met.
Everywhere Monty went, his plans fell apart, but he kept getting support because of that schooling and that accent.
They took materiel, American materiel, from Patton to give to that idiot to get more men killed for nothing.
The more I read about WWII, the more angry I get about that a-hole and the Brits in general. No matter how often the "right" generals failed, they still were given posts of responsibility.
I agree Veeshir. I think Eisenhower saying that Monty was a 'psychopath' isn't much of an exaggeration. The 'old school' network seemed to work for the Brits in the 1800s but then may be the reason the 20th century was so bad for them - the next generations got dumber.
In my old Aussie family we were also anti-Churchill, which may surprise Americans. His 'attack the soft underbelly' strategy got a lot of Aussie killed in WW1 (Turkey invasion) and again in WW2 (Crete). AND during the war we blamed him (wrongly it turned out) for other failures such as taking our best troops to Singapore where they were surrendered as pow's by Brit generals (leaving us undefended until the 'Yanks' came into the war, God bless 'em). So yeah, don't praise Churchill in my family, but I keep quiet about it because it's too complicated in wider debates.
Can't have helped that my grandfather was court martialled and busted to Private for failing to salute Brit officers in WW1! (I think it was a misunderstanding, but he went to a lower pay grade so the effect was ongoing, enough to make him bitter about Brits after that. He also went to the rear twice 'wounded' as a machine gunner with 'superficial gunshot wounds to left hand' which we only read in his records recently - Once maybe but twice? Yeah I sympathise, the trenches were hell).
My favorite Aussie WWII story is them singing "We're off to see the Wizard, the wonderful Wizard of Oz!" while marching to battle.
It happened in North Africa.
Churchill treated Australia, indeed, the whole Commonwealth, as sepoys. They were good enough to fight, but they needed Brit officers.
The guy whose fault it was that Singapore and much of the rest of the far east fell was moved to North Africa to defend Tobruk. I forget his name but I won't forget his story.
He was a Brit with the right accent, Churchill told him to prepare multiple airfields and defenses far out from Singapore with fallback positions.
He didn't prepare any defenses and had only the one airfield.
So planes went out and couldn't land because their airfield was destroyed.
He kept sending out divisions of Indian and Aussie troops to fight. Since they didn't have fixed defenses, they were quickly surrounded and surrendered when they ran out of supplies.
He kept doing that.
So Churchill kept writing him and asking what was the deal with no defenses and no multiple airfields. Then Churchill told him how great he was and sent him to Tobruk.
Which fell because it had no prepared defenses in depth and few airfields.
Finally, Churchill sent him to Iran instead of bringing him home in disgrace.
Lluckily the Germans never attacked there. They should have, they needed oil and that idiot would have lost in Iran in an afternoon.
I read about that in Churchill's history of WWII. It was infuriating.
I share Veeshir's view of both Montgomery and Churchill.
Montgomery was more an overachieving colonel than a general, imo; and Churchill might have been an inspirational speaker but he was no military strategist; many of his military escapades were total disasters.
Montgomery was in the right place at the right time to benefit from the massive British reinforcements of men and material(which they desperately needed after Churchill threw much of the British strength away in Greece) prior to the British victory at El Alamein.
Wavell was unlucky to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and was replaced unfairly in my view.
Montgomery then muddled through in Sicily and Normandy(Caen) before the Market Garden fiasco.
Churchill was responsible for the Gallipoli disaster in WW1 and the WW2 Dieppe catastrophe has his fingerprints all over it.
And of course the Greek fiasco. Although, to be fair, this might have ultimately led to the defeat of Germany in Russia, as Operation Barbarossa was delayed for a couple months, resulting in the Germans later stalling, frozen before Moscow.
Churchill describing Italy as the "soft underbelly of Europe" was very misleading.
The terrain in Italy is perfect for defending a push from the South, consisting of the central Apennine Range with rivers and ridges aligned East to West providing perfect defensive positions.
As a second lieutenant (lo, all those many years ago), my officer's basic course had several foreign officers as instuctors. This included a Brit and and Aussie -- both light colonels, as I recall.
The British officer discussed the defense of Singapore -- and not in a good way. As we were all engineer officers, he emphasized how the British defenders made a point of blowing up bridges before the Japanese reached them. The rivers were difficult to cross, and there were a lot of bridges. That should have slowed down the Japanese considerably.
In spite of that, the Japanese moved very quickly. No one, at the time, knew how the Japanese crossed all those rivers so quickly.
After the war, some of the Japanese officers involved with the fall of Singapore were debriefed. They were asked about the bridges.
The common story was that, as the Japanese Army reached the first of the blown bridges, the senior officers were flummoxed by the blown bridges -- this had not been anticipated in their planning. They had no quick way to cross the rivers.
Suddenly, one Japanese soldier came running up, very excited. He took the officers to a place not far away, where lay a complete replacement bridge, dissassembled. Turned out that the British had replacement bridges stockpiled at every crossing in case they they were lost during the monsoon floods. The bridge components were even numbered to facilitate re-assembly.
And the British hadn't bothered destroying any of them, even though they were right next to the bridges that were destroyed.
According to our instructor, one of the surviving British commanders from Singapore (I do not remember who, but I think he was an engineer) was asked about that.
His response?
"Well, anyone can make a mistake."
In the right context, that answer can be hilarious. But I don't recall anyone laughing in the lecture hall.
Yes that's interesting. I've learned that there's always someone with more details who will argue a particular angle and they all have good points so I just stick to things I know.
One thing I have seen is all the old Brit infrastructure in India, not always well maintained now. I even met old Indians who remembered the British days as a golden era, 'I wish they always ruled us'. What they did in the 1800s was impressive. How they went from that to the bungling in the 20th century is really a puzzle, but we can see how bad it became as you show.
Interesting details about the fall of Singapore and the bridges, thanks JeffS.
My grandfather was captured in Greece.
He fought with the Australian Camel Corps in the ME in WW1.
He enlisted for WW2 in his mid forties and served as a Medical Orderly.
He volunteered to stay behind to look after the wounded in Greece; lucky he did as many of the ships evacuating the troops were sunk by the Luftwaffe.
He described to us watching the black-uniformed SS troops advancing through the trees before his capture. I reckon they thought they were done for.
He served out the war as a POW and learned how to play the piano accordion in the camp band.
One time, a big-wig German general was visiting the camp and the commandant asked the band to play something for the occasion.
So the band played "Here Comes the Bride"(*for some reason this tune was unknown in Germany) and the Germans loved it :)
Or maybe they enjoyed the tune because it's the wedding match from Lohengrin which some say was Hitler's favourite opera Mike!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridal_Chorus
Anyway God bless your grandfather, what an amazing life.
Here check it out in German (sung by Croatians for some reason):
https://youtu.be/3sZGXcreBFw
Well, perhaps my grandfather and his entire band, were not rounded up and machine-gunned, because the commandant and visiting general were not aware of the origins of the tune.
As a side note, my grandfather was wounded in action(he showed us the bullet holes in his leg) When I asked him why we didn't go rabbit hunting, he was silent.
He loved fishing though.
Damn, he was good at fishing.
Great stories and fascinating insights.
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