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The Electrical Secrets of Kenneth Strickfaden: or as Harry Goldman’s book calls him -“Dr Frankenstein’s Electrician”

19 Monday Oct 2015

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I’ve blogged a lot of firearms, grappling and self defense related topics of late and fear my love of crazy props has been underrepresented. This post from the Last Drive In should fix that in spades!

The Last Drive In

Kenneth Strickfaden-(1896–1984)

I saw—with shut eyes, but acute mental vision—I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life and stir with an uneasy, half-vital motion. Frightful must it be, for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavor to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world.

— Mary Shelley

Colin Clive -Frankenstein 1930

When I think of Kenneth Strickfaden I visualize the mad scientist grabbing the master switch in his clandestine laboratory. Suddenly the machinery hums and glows, glass tubes boil with liquids, electrical currents charge through the coiled tubes and conductance. Lighting leaps across the sky and finds its way into the diving spot in the lab. The crackle, snapping hiss and sparks of ozone. The well…

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Jits Notes – 10/15 Skipped class. Work sucks.

16 Friday Oct 2015

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Dog sick, wife sick, work sucks, so I opted to stay home and work. I do feel some interesting sore spots from Uchi Mata – who knew hopping around on 1 foot with most of a 240 lb dude’s weight supported on your body could make for a good workout, eh?

I get trapped under side mount quite a bit. An Upa might help with that, and I usually try to roll into the top guy and try to get back to base. This is an interesting way to slip out by rolling in the opposite direction. Stephan Kesting comes through again.

Friday Fundamentals (Segment 4) Shooting with a flashlight

16 Friday Oct 2015

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Claude’s thoughts on shooting practice and performance are always worth studying.

tacticalprofessor

Several Negative Outcomes were brought to my attention this week. One was yet another incident of someone shooting their spouse, thinking it was a burglar. She died as a result of one shot to the chest.

The husband told police it was an accident. He told officers he woke up around 4:15 Saturday morning and heard noises in his house … He told investigators he grabbed his gun and when he saw a light on and someone standing in the distance, he took a shot. He said the person he ended up hitting once in the chest was his wife.

This sad situation bolsters my contention that when we pick up a pistol at home, we have to pick up a flashlight at the same time. That’s why I made flashlight shooting an integral part of The Tactical Professor’s Pistol Practice Program. To get some repetitions in…

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Booze, Glorious Booze: Apple Cider

14 Wednesday Oct 2015

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Tis the season!

Friday Fundamentals (Segment 3) Properly gripping an autoloading pistol

10 Saturday Oct 2015

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Fantastic stuff from my friend and instructor Claude Werner. I wish I had such clear instructions when I began shooting.

tacticalprofessor

As my colleague Wayne Dobbs of Hardwired Tactical Shooting says, there are three fundamentals of handgun shooting that can make you or break you in a defensive situation; grip, sights, and trigger [manipulation]. I would also add followthrough, as a student who came back today from the elite Rogers Shooting School called to mention to me.

For this segment, let’s look at the autoloading pistol grip discussion contained in The Tactical Professor’s Pistol Practice Program.

0 Cover gripThe proper grip for any handgun should accomplish several objectives:

  1. Maximize our hand friction on the handgun. The way we prevent the handgun from moving around in our hand(s) is simply via friction. Therefore, the more hand surface we have in contact with the gun, the more friction we can achieve.
  2. Minimize the gun’s motion during recoil by stabilizing the supporting joints, principally the wrists, when the gun fires.
  3. Reduce the distance between the…

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Improving Crummy Factory Sights For Pennies

02 Friday Oct 2015

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Again, its not just for firearms. If you’re looking into the whole “parlor shooting” thing like I am, you’ll want good sights to work with.

As an aside, numerous folks have wondered if a lot of the reason point shooting was so well-received was because of the really bad sights found on older semiautomatic pistols. They were “low profile” and the front sight frequently occludes the entire rear notch when you try to aim. I’m not saying that some kind of “point shooting” technique isn’t of potential value at extremely close ranges, just that, with the sights on those pistols, you frequently wouldn’t have had another option!

Growing Up Guns

The factory sights that come on most pistols (especially little guns) are pretty difficult to see. They’re usually small and black and acquiring the front sight during the presentation can be difficult. You also might be vetting a new pistol purchase, and before dropping $70-$150 on a set of new sights you can cheaply get easier to see sights.

$6 gets you fluorescent hobby paint and tiny brushes at a hobby store. I also purchased some white Nail polish at the dollar store.

This can also be accomplished with florescent tape with clear coat nail polish on the edges to keep it from peeling.

Reapply as needed.

$6 for enough supplies to paint all of your guns, all your friend’s guns, and your future grandchildren’s guns..

Put down a few layers of white nail polish.

Dab some hobby paint on the front sight. It took two or three coats.

The…

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Friday Fundamentals (Segment 2)

02 Friday Oct 2015

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Reblogging this, and many of these drills aren’t just for firearms but will work with airsoft or pellet guns as well.

The basement & garage are getting cleaned this weekend and we’ll see if we can bring “parlor shooting” back here at Obsession Engine HQ!

tacticalprofessor

We’re continuing on with the series of ‘Friday Fundamentals’. I’ve written about Sight misalignment, speed, and accuracy  before. It’s a key fundamental to increasing your speed while still maintaining an acceptable degree of accuracy. This drill is part of the second session of my Pistol Practice Program.

Required equipment:

  • Any silhouette target; B-27, B-21, Q, IDPA, IPSC, etc. Put a 2-3 inch aiming point on the silhouette in about the center of the target.
  • Masking tape (preferred) or magic marker to mark the target.
  • Pistol, 24 rounds of ammunition
  • Eye and ear protection

Overview

This drill consists of three (3) Sequences of 8 shots each. You are going to deliberately misalign your sights so you can see the effect of this at increasing distances. The drill is to fire the pistol with the front sight on a spot on the target but with the rear notch deliberately misaligned…

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Jits Class Notes, Tuesday 9/29 – Focus on Survival

30 Wednesday Sep 2015

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Today’s focus for rolling was “survive”, meaning tap out less often by attempting to keep on side, elbows in, recover guard if possible.

Takedown class – small group. Sprawl warmups, snatch double legs, snatch single legs, penetration step doubles, penetration step singles, pummeling drill with overhook/underhook, pummel exercise + bodylock takedown into mount( underhook and move to t position, bump the close knee, pull in, dump while maintaining grips, swing leg over into mount), 2 minute pummel drill seeking double underhooks and hold grip for 1 second.

Jits ground class – standard warmup plus some movement drills and cardio. Shrimping, penetration step (rear leg should be angled behind me, not straight. Thanks for the tip, Larry!), back rolls (made me dizzy. Still need work), forward rolls, shrimp toward feet (which I still can’t do worth a damn).

Technique – sweep series similar to last lesson. Started with the same sweep as the first in the series last time with a minor technique adjustment – I need to angle hips when I shove the arm out with the instep. Its a stronger movement and helps clear the way for the other foot to cross to the opposite hip of the top man. Kick through as if kicking the opponent in the lat to make the sweep more than an empty gesture.

2nd variant – opponent posts leg when rocking him back from the first kick sweep attempt. Slip same side leg under the posted leg, hook his thigh with the instep. Grab the same side ankle as the hooked leg. Pull forward, then push out. Roll to knee on belly or side control.

3rd variant – Kicking leg slips somehow but you still have grip on the sleeve. Roll up and elbow top in the chest while retaining sleeve grip. Hook elbow into armpit and trap top man’s arm against your torso. Very similar to fireman’s carry takedown from last week’s takedown class.

Rolling – First roll against white belt. He passed guard but I’m not sure he ever tapped me. I just kept trying to turn into him and keep my elbows in and at least one leg bent. He commented that my “defense was good”.

2nd roll vs. brown belt (Larry). Flopped and flailed and got my gi wrapped around my arm at least once. Having a hard time breaking grips against a cross collar grab.

3rd roll and 4th roll vs. advanced white belt. Slowed down and he gave me some tips. When I release closed guard I’m not trapping a leg or keeping good pressure up, for one. I did get him in a cross collar choke but didn’t have a deep enough grip to finish properly. The cross grip and same side sleeve seems to work fairly well.

Then we swapped so I got top position. Tried to keep posture but he kept pulling me down. Once I was out of posture, that was that. Got caught in half guard with my head on the wrong side a couple of times, too…I need a better answer for that, as, once I’m flattened, I can’t seem to get out or recover guard. My nonexistent cardio is more than a minor factor, too. After the 4th roll, I was done.

Ancient vs modern ethics: a comparison

28 Monday Sep 2015

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I’ll reblog this as Stoicism is one of the schools that allows people to “soldier on” amidst life’s chaos.

How to Be a Stoic

ethicsEthics — as a branch of philosophy — means a very different thing today than it did once. And that, perhaps, is a mistake. There is an excellent article over at the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, by John-Stewart Gordon, discussing the topic, that is very much worth checking out. Here are the highlights.

The first, and arguably most important, thing to understand about how the Greco-Romans conceived of ethics is that they regarded it as the study of how to live a happy life, not (as in the modern sense) the study of which actions are right or wrong. Gordon mentions the example of “justice,” which the ancients saw as a character trait (a virtue), not as the idea of people having rights.

Accordingly, it is interesting to note that the words “ethics” and “morality” have revealing roots: the first one comes from the Greek êthos, a word related to our idea of character…

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More on Flashlights

27 Sunday Sep 2015

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I’ve got a couple of pepper spray posts that I’m working on and a “Jits Notes” post from Thursday’s class that I’m overdue on as well. I’ll get at least one of those up by tomorrow.

Until then, check out this video from Aaron Little, a very talented instructor in Lexington, KY, on the usefulness of the humble flashlight. He’s an interdisciplinary instructor with a good grasp of the realities of self defense, both armed and unarmed.

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