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Jantz Knife Supply: Providing Everything Required To Make Knives

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Jantz Knife Supply: Providing Everything Required To Make Knives
Based in Davis, Oklahoma, Jantz has been in the knifemaking supply business for 58 years.

Jantz is a crucial source for many who fashion knives.

For 58 years Jantz Knife Supply has met the needs of cutlery craftsmen of all stripes, from green behind the ears to on up in years, with everything needed to make knives. This includes specialty steels, handle components, sheath materials, hand tools and sanding supplies, as well as the heavy equipment for knifemaking.

What started as a small mom-and-pop gun supply outfit founded by Ken and Venice Jantz in 1966 is no less than a U.S.-based juggernaut in today’s cutlery industry. The Jantzes haven’t left their humble beginnings behind, though, so no customer job is too small for the venerable knifemaking supply company in the heartland of America, Davis, Oklahoma.

Ken Jantz
Company co-founder Ken Jantz works on a prototype for a new hollow-grinding fixture at the company facility.

Shanna Kemp oversees the marketing, financial and human resources for Jantz. She probably knows as well as anyone about the many specialty and other items available to the company’s legion of customers.
“Our goal is to provide everything knifemakers could need for their project,” she begins, “whether you’re a beginner looking for a new hobby or a custom knifemaker stocking your shop to get ready for the BLADE Show. One thing we really love is creating fixtures and tools to make knifemaking more accessible for every skill level.”

One of the company’s most popular new fixtures is the PDJ Knife Vise. “It’s handy for all levels of knifemakers as it allows you to drill perfectly perpendicular holes through your handle material” regardless of the material’s texture or unevenness, Shanna explains.
Jantz stocks an abundance of parts for assembling and enhancing knives of all types. “Our most popular products are our Corby rivets, Loveless bolts and metal round and bar stock,” Shanna enumerates. “Our customers love the quality of our materials as we source directly from reputable mills with consistent quality and do our cutting and machining in house. One of our other popular products is our handcrafted mosaic pins. Each pin design is meticulously hand assembled right here in Davis, Oklahoma.”

Jantz Steel Stock

JS750 perpendicular vise with drill press
Jantz offers a range of knifemaking equipment. An example is the JS750 perpendicular vise with drill press.

An outstanding blade is the heart of any knife and Jantz offers all kinds of stainless and high carbon steels. “We carry a variety of knifemaking steels to suit both forging and stock removal,” she states. “1095 and 80CrV2 are very popular carbon steels and CPM 154 is our most popular stainless steel.” She added that the damascus forged by Brad Vice’s Alabama Damascus is very popular because of the quality and solid price point for the company’s patterned-welded steel.

“For Jantz, steel and other metals have always had a long lead time since we source from a variety of mills in the U.S., Germany, Sweden, Brazil and others,” Shanna observes. “We have strong relationships with our suppliers, and they have worked with us to keep material moving forward even when lead times began to exceed a year.”

Jantz Knife Supply warehouse
No matter the material, component or tool for knifemaking, Jantz probably has it somewhere in one of its well-stocked aisles.

Fixed blades will never go out of style, Shanna opines, and the Jantz business model caters to the mindset that drives the knives’ popularity. “We find that fixed-blade makers tend to use both stock removal and forging in their blade design and development,” she states. “The television series Forged in Fire certainly increased the popularity of forging, but we still see about the same divide between stock removal and forging. Fixed blades designed for hunting and survival are top sellers for our custom knifemakers as well as our hobbyists. There’s something special about using a knife in the field during hunting season that you made yourself that really resonates with the knifemaking crowd.”

When it comes to heat-treating ovens, Jantz recommends Paragon kilns above all others. “Not only do they make a quality oven,” Shanna assesses, “but they have a variety of ovens designed for beginners to pros. Their customer service is top notch and Burt Flanagan, who represents Paragon’s knifemaking ovens, is a custom knifemaker, so he truly understands what knifemakers need.”

Jantz-Made Blades

Knife assembly kit
Knife assembly kits such as the Caballero are a great way to learn the ins-and-outs of folding knives. Jantz offers over a dozen knife genres, from traditional slip joints to modern tactical fare.

For those wanting to get their feet wet in the cutlery world, Jantz offers a cornucopia of pre-made blades for virtually any niche of the market, including household cutlery. According to Shanna, many custom makers order beautiful stainless damascus in various patterns from Damasteel for their kitchen knives. “Our Jantz-made line of household cutlery is especially popular with customers,” she adds. “Our santoku, cook’s and paring blades are favorites of makers using pre-shaped blades for project knifemaking. All the Jantz-made blades are manufactured in our facility.”

Jantz offers an abundance of both knife blades and knife kits. These are designed not only for the novice and hobbyist, but for those who want to tailor special knives for sale. The Jantz website offers links aplenty to a wide range of genres in both folders and fixed blades. Need a fixed-blade hunter in damascus? No problem. Like a kit to learn the ins-and-outs of folding knives? There are over a dozen styles available, from traditional slip joints to modern tactical fare.

JS500 for slip joints
Providing fixtures such as the JS500 for slip joints that make knifemaking more accessible to hobbyists and makers of all levels is a specialty at Jantz Supply.

If there is an innovation on the horizon, Jantz Supply will be on top of it. “One of the many things we love about the knifemaking community is how open and sharing makers are with each other,” Shanna observes. “Want to learn something [another knifemaker] is doing? Just ask. You will rarely find someone not willing to share.”

That spirit and willingness to help is what has made Jantz an important part of the cutlery industry for going on six decades now.

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Doing DNS and DHCP for your LAN the old way—the way that works

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All shall tremble before your fully functional forward and reverse lookups!

Enlarge / All shall tremble before your fully functional forward and reverse lookups!

Aurich Lawson | Getty Images

Here’s a short summary of the next 7,000-ish words for folks who hate the thing recipe sites do where the authors babble about their personal lives for pages and pages before getting to the cooking: This article is about how to install bind and dhcpd and tie them together into a functional dynamic DNS setup for your LAN so that DHCP clients self-register with DNS, and you always have working forward and reverse DNS lookups. This article is intended to be part one of a two-part series, and in part two, we’ll combine our bind DNS instance with an ACME-enabled LAN certificate authority and set up LetsEncrypt-style auto-renewing certificates for LAN services.

If that sounds like a fun couple of weekend projects, you’re in the right place! If you want to fast-forward to where we start installing stuff, skip down a couple of subheds to the tutorial-y bits. Now, excuse me while I babble about my personal life.

My name is Lee, and I have a problem

(Hi, Lee.)

I am a tinkering homelab sysadmin forever chasing the enterprise dragon. My understanding of what "normal" means, in terms of the things I should be able to do in any minimally functioning networking environment, was formed in the days just before and just after 9/11, when I was a fledgling admin fresh out of college, working at an enormous company that made planes starting with the number "7." I tutored at the knees of a whole bunch of different mentor sysadmins, who ranged on the graybeard scale from "fairly normal, just writes his own custom GURPS campaigns" to "lives in a Unabomber cabin in the woods and will only communicate via GPG." If there was one consistent refrain throughout my formative years marinating in that enterprise IT soup, it was that forward and reverse DNS should always work. Why? Because just like a clean bathroom is generally a sign of a nice restaurant, having good, functional DNS (forward and reverse) is a sign that your IT team knows what it’s doing.

Just look at what the masses have to contend with outside of the datacenter, where madness reigns. Look at the state of the average user’s LAN—is there even a search domain configured? Do reverse queries on dynamic hosts work? Do forward queries on dynamic hosts even work? How can anyone live like this?!

I decided long ago that I didn’t have to, so I’ve maintained a linked bind and dhcpd setup on my LAN for more than ten years. Also, I have control issues, and I like my home LAN to function like the well-run enterprise LANs I used to spend my days administering. It’s kind of like how car people think: If you’re not driving a stick shift, you’re not really driving. I have the same kind of dumb hang-up, but for network services.

Honestly, though, running your LAN with bind and dhcpd isn’t even that much work—those two applications underpin a huge part of the modern Internet. The packaged versions that come with most modern Linux distros are ready to go out of the box. They certainly beat the pants off of the minimal DNS/DHCP services offered by most SOHO NAT routers. Once you have bind and dhcpd configured, they’re bulletproof. The only time I interact with my setup is if I need to add a new static DHCP mapping for a host I want to always grab the same IP address.

So, hey, if the idea of having perfect forward and reverse DNS lookups on your LAN sounds exciting—and, come on, who doesn’t want that?!—then pull up your terminal and strap in because we’re going make it happen.

(Note that I’m relying a bit on Past Lee and this old blog entry for some of the explanations in this piece, so if any of the three people who read my blog notice any similarities in some of the text, it’s because Past Lee wrote it first and I am absolutely stealing from him.)

But wait, there’s more!

This piece is intended to be part one of two. If the idea of having one’s own bind and dhcpd servers sounds a little silly (and it’s not—it’s awesome), it’s actually a prerequisite for an additional future project with serious practical implications: our own fully functioning local ACME-enabled certificate authority capable of answering DNS-01 challenges so we can issue our own certificates to LAN services and not have to deal with TLS warnings like plebes.

("But Lee," you say, "why not just use actual-for-real LetsEncrypt with a real domain on my LAN?" Because that’s considerably more complicated to implement if one does it the right way, and it means potentially dealing with split-horizon DNS and hairpinning if you also need to use that domain for any Internet-accessible stuff. Split-horizon DNS is handy and useful if you have requirements that demand it, but if you’re a home user, you probably don’t. We’ll keep this as simple as possible and use LAN-specific DNS zones rather than real public domain names.)

We’ll tackle all the certificate stuff in part two—because we have a ways to go before we can get there.

Ars Technica – All content

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Your Nonstick Pan Deserves Better. Stop Making These Mistakes

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Treat your non-stick pans with respect and they’ll continue to work wonders in the kitchen.

fried eggs are fried in a black skilletPhoto by Maryna Terletska

Like cast-iron pans, non-stick pans come with their own set of rules to ensure long-lasting longevity. If you want to keep getting those perfectly rolled French omelets and smooth, unblemished pancakes, then you’re going to have to make sure your non-stick pans stay in perfect, working condition.

Sadly, that means a little more work than just washing them between uses. As you might have noticed, your nonstick pans probably came with a user manual. Well, it turns out the info inside is actually pretty important. But don’t worry if you tossed it out with the packaging, even if you didn’t read it at all, because we’ve got you covered. Make sure you’re not making any of these following 10 mistakes and you’ll ensure your non-stick pans last for as long as possible.

Even metal tongs can scratch the surface of your pans when using them to pick up food. Opt for a silicon option instead, as seen on the left.
Photo by Sean Tirman

Using Metal Utensils

Arguably the most important, immediate rule to remember is to not use metal utensils on your non-stick pan. The last thing you want to do is to scrape off the non-stick coating that keeps everything, well, non-stick. And unfortunately, metal is very hard and abrasive to surfaces, especially those with a coating (like nonstick). Instead, opt for wooden utensils or those made out of silicone or nylon.

Preheating While Empty

When you heat an empty non-stick pan, the only thing getting heated is the non-stick coating. And that is not good. The non-stick coating will start to deteriorate and release harmful toxins in the air and could even release them into your food, which is definitely something you do not want to be breathing in or eating. Instead, you should put your oil (not cooking spray [more on that later]) into the pan, warm it up and add your ingredients as soon as it’s warm.

Don’t be tempted by the flame — high heat can cause irreparable damage to your nonstick pans.
Photo by Sean Tirman

Taking Things Too Hot

Even after you start cooking, avoid cooking on extra-high heat. Despite having food in the pan, the hotter temperature can still degrade the non-stick coating. Stick with medium-to-low temperatures — while they might not seem hot enough, the pans will heat up plenty. Furthermore, cooking with too-high heat could end up burning your pan — which you might think is staining from your food, until you try to scrub it off (it’s very difficult or even impossible without also scraping off the nonstick coating). It’s also why you shouldn’t expect to get amazing sears from your non-stick pan — that’s what cast iron is for!

Stacking Your Cookware

That precious non-stick material is very delicate. You may feel the urge to stack your cookware to save some space, but the bottom of other cookware will likely scratch your non-stick pan — much in the same way metal utensils would. Do your best to find ways to store your non-stick pans without stacking, but if it’s absolutely necessary to stack because of storage restrictions, keep something soft — like some sort of fabric (some major cookware brands even make pot protectors, like these from All-Clad) — between the cookware to avoid rubbing and abrasion.

Using It After the Coating Tears

We told you all the ways to avoid scratching your non-stick pan, but now it’s happened: the non-stick coating has started to tear away. Once you can see the non-stick coating lifting away, it’s time to throw away the pan. Parts of the pan will start to end up in your food, and you do not want to eat whatever it is that coats your non-stick pan. While it might not make you sick, per se, it’s definitely not going to be good for you (as Delish points out) — especially if its an older pan and/or made outside the USA (this may increase the likelihood of dangerous chemicals making it into your food).

Spending Too Much

Unfortunately, non-stick pans won’t last forever. After all, once it gets even a tiny scratch, the pan is practically done for. However, you don’t have to dump your bank account every time you need a new pan. You can find a great non-stick pan for around $20 (T-fal makes a pretty excellent one), so no need to shell out a few bills for something with a short shelf life.

Stick with Oil and Butter (and Never Cooking Spray)

After you realize you shouldn’t be heating up a non-stick pan without anything in it, it’s important to realize that non-stick still needs a little help being non-stick. Add some fat —whether it’s oil or butter — to your pan so things slide right out once they’re done cooking. Just don’t use cooking sprays, which are notoriously hard to clean off and will start to accumulate on your pan’s surface, creating a nasty, sticky residue and potentially ruining it in the process.

a pan being washed in a sink with a running faucet
Wait for your pans to cool before washing them off, and dry them with a cloth right after you’re done washing.
Photo by Sean Tirman

Throwing a Hot Pan Under Cool Water

This applies to pretty much all cookware, but the quick transition from hot to cold can warp a pan rendering it close to useless. Worse, with enough of a temperature shock, the pan could even chip or crack entirely, rendering it completely broken. Let that hot pan cool before washing it to avoid ruining it for good. And dry it off with a towel or other fabric once you’re done washing — you don’t want water sitting on/in it for too long.

You Use the Dishwasher

Dishwashers feel like a godsend, but they’re the exact opposite when it comes to non-stick pans. From the cleaning solutions to the stark temperature fluctuations, a dishwasher can easily warp and distort your non-stick pan. And even though some non-stick pans say they’re safe to put in the dishwasher, it’s really not that hard to hand wash. After all, that non-stick coating should come in handy or swiping out all the leftover grime in the pan.

Putting in Too Much Elbow Grease

Since you’re (hopefully) hand-washing your non-stick pan now, it’s a good time to tell you to take it easy with the scrubbing. Definitely don’t scrub your pan with an abrasive cleaner — including both gritty soaps and tools, like steel wool — and avoid scrubbing so hard that the coating rubs off. Some nonstick pans come with a microabrasion scrubber, which should be fine when used properly — just make sure to check that user manual for proper instructions.

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DuckDuckGo’s Browser Adds Encrypted, Privacy-Minded Syncing and Backup

DuckDuckGo keeps adding new features to its browser; and while these features are common in other browsers, DuckDuckGo is giving them a privacy-minded twist. The latest is a private, end-to-end encrypted syncing service. There’s no account needed, no sign-in, and the company says it never sees what you’re syncing. From a report: Using QR codes and shortcodes, and a lengthy backup code you store somewhere safe, DuckDuckGo’s browser can keep your bookmarks, passwords, "favorites" (i.e., new tab page shortcuts), and settings for its email protection service synced between devices and browsers. DuckDuckGo points to Google’s privacy policy for using its signed-in sync service on Chrome, which uses "aggregated and anonymized synchronized browsing data to improve other Google products and services." DuckDuckGo states that the encryption key for browser sync is stored only locally on your devices and that it lacks any access to your passwords or other data.


Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot

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Conditional query in Laravel Eloquent

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Laravel Eloquent is very powerful and we can use it in many cases to get or filer data. One very common situation is to build query according to some statements and conditionals. The most common way to achieve that is to build id step by step: 

$onlyUnread = $request->only_unread ?? null;

$query = Article::query()->where('active', true);
if ($onlyUnread) {
    $query->where('unread', true);
}

$articles = $query->get();

Last time I checked some old documentation and found different method – when. It allows us to simplify that process a lot and include are conditionals and additional query steps in just one command: 

$articles = Article::query()->where('active', true)
    ->when($onlyUnread, function (Builder $query): Builder {
        return $query->where('unread', true);
    })
    ->get();

It’s much cleaner than build step by step, and because we still use Builder object, we can do exactly the same things like on higher level. Of course, it may be necessary to use some additional params – of course it is not a problem, we only must send them to function inside:

$articles = Article::query()->where('active', true)
    ->when($myCondition, function (Builder $query) use ($param1, $param2): Builder {
        return $query->where('unread', true)
            ->orWhere('param1', $param1)
            ->orWhere('param2', $param2);
    })
    ->get();

It is also possible to use when more than once – if you need set some steps with separate conditions, no problem. I do not know, why this is not present in current documentation, but when method is available in current Laravel version and can be used without additional steps.  

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A Green Beret Shows You How to Shoot a Pistol…in 8 Minutes

Learn how to shoot a pistol…fast. In this video, James Reeves trains with experienced Green Beret, Jimmy Cannon alongside @daniellevalkyrie in Austria. This video offers a unique opportunity to learn fundamental skills in pistol handling, all presented in a concise, easy-to-follow format. Whether you’re a beginner seeking a strong foundation or a seasoned enthusiast looking […]

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The post A Green Beret Shows You How to Shoot a Pistol…in 8 Minutes appeared first on The Firearm Blog.

The Firearm Blog

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Agent Orange damages the brain like Alzheimer’s

https://www.futurity.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/agent-orange-brain-damage-alzheimers-disease-1600.jpgAn orange cloud in front of trees in the background.

Exposure to Agent Orange damages brain tissue in ways similar to Alzheimer’s disease, according to a new study.

Agent Orange, an herbicide used during the Vietnam War, is a known toxin with wide-ranging health effects.

Even though it has not been used for decades, there is increasing interest in its effects on the brain health of aging veterans.

The new study reveals the mechanisms by which Agent Orange affects the brain and how those processes can lead to neurodegenerative diseases.

“These chemicals don’t just affect veterans; they affect our entire population.”

The research shows that exposures to Agent Orange herbicidal chemicals damage frontal lobe brain tissue of laboratory rats with molecular and biochemical abnormalities that are similar to those found in early-stage Alzheimer’s disease.

The findings, published in in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, could have important implications for military veterans who were exposed to Agent Orange during the Vietnam War, says study author Suzanne M. De La Monte, a professor of pathology and laboratory medicine and neurosurgery at Brown University’s Warren Alpert Medical School.

“If we can show that prior exposure to Agent Orange leads to subsequent neurodegenerative disease, then that gives veterans a chance to get help,” De La Monte says.

But the study’s findings have much broader significance, she adds, because the toxins in Agent Orange are also present in lawn fertilizers.

“These chemicals don’t just affect veterans; they affect our entire population,” De La Monte says.

Agent Orange and Alzheimer’s

Agent Orange is a synthetic defoliating herbicide that was widely used between 1965 and 1970 during the Vietnam War. Members of the US military were exposed to the chemical when stationed close to enemy territory that had been sprayed by aircraft.

Government reports show that exposure to Agent Orange also caused birth defects and developmental disabilities in babies born to Vietnamese women residing in the affected areas. Over time, studies showed that exposure to Agent Orange was associated with an increased risk of some cancers as well as cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

Research also revealed associations between Agent Orange exposures and later development of nervous system degenerative diseases, and significantly higher rates and earlier onsets of dementia. However, in the absence of a proven causal link between Agent Orange and aging-associated diseases, there has been a need for studies that improve understanding of the process by which the herbicide affects the brain.

“Scientists realized that Agent Orange was a neurotoxin with potential long-term effects, but those weren’t shown in a clear way,” De La Monte says. “That’s what we were able to show with this study.”

The analysis was conducted by De La Monte and Ming Tong, a research associate in medicine at Brown; both are also associated with Rhode Island Hospital, an affiliate of the Warren Alpert Medical School. The research builds upon their recent studies of exposure to Agent Orange chemicals on immature human cells from the central nervous system showing that short-term exposure to Agent Orange has neurotoxic and early degenerative effects related to Alzheimer’s.

The researchers investigated the effects of the two main constituents of Agent Orange (2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid and 2,4,5-trichlorophenoxyacetic acid) on markers of Alzheimer’s neurodegeneration using the samples from the frontal lobes of laboratory rats. The mature, intact brain tissue samples included a full complex array of cell types and tissue structures.

The scientists treated the samples to cumulative exposure to Agent Orange, as well as to its separate chemical constituents, and observed the underlying mechanisms and molecular changes.

They found that treatment with Agent Orange and its constituents caused changes in the brain tissue corresponding to brain cell degeneration, and molecular and biochemical abnormalities indicative of cytotoxic injury, DNA damage, and other issues.

These chemicals are ‘everywhere’

The approach used by the researchers helped them better characterize the neuropathological, neurotoxic and neurodegenerative consequences of Agent Orange toxin exposures in young, otherwise healthy brains, as would have been the case for Vietnam War-era military personnel and many local residents in Vietnam.

“Looking for the early effects tells us that there is a problem that is going to cause trouble later on and also gives us a grip on the mechanism by which the agent is causing trouble,” De La Monte says. “So if you were going to intervene, you would know to focus on that early effect, monitor it, and try to reverse it.”

Del La Monte hopes to be involved in additional research on human brain tissue to evaluate the long-term effects of Agent Orange exposures in relation to aging and progressive neurodegeneration in Vietnam War veterans.

The use of Agent Orange was prohibited by the US government in 1971. However, the chemicals remain in the environment for decades, De La Monte says. According to the study authors, the widespread, uncontrolled use of Agent Orange in herbicide and pesticide products is such that one in three Americans has biomarker evidence of prior exposure.

Despite growing recognition of the broad toxic and carcinogenic effects of 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid, the researchers note that concern has not achieved a level sufficient for federal agencies to ban its use.

The researchers conclude that the results of this study and another recent publication support the notion that Agent Orange as well as its independent constituents (2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid and 2,4,5-trichlorophenoxyacetic acid) exert alarming adverse effects on the mature brain and central nervous system.

“That’s why it’s so important to look into the effects of these chemicals,” De La Monte says. “They are in the water; they are everywhere. We’ve all been exposed.”

The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism at the National Institutes of Health supported the work.

Source: Brown University

The post Agent Orange damages the brain like Alzheimer’s appeared first on Futurity.

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Superman & Batman vs. Darth Vader

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Superman & Batman vs. Darth Vader

Link

The Dark Knight takes on the Dark Lord of the Sith in a quest to release his Justice League teammate from an Imperial prison cell. Batinthesun’s live-action fan film pulls out all the stops as Batman dons a lightsaber and other Wayne Enterprises gadgets on a quest to take down Darth Vader.

The Awesomer