Iran, Shop Work

This blog reviews the Thursday/Friday attacks on Iran. Then we look at shop work, specifically colors and the first parts of what will become the Treasure Chests.

Ongoing

As I write this up on Friday morning June 13, 2025, the US/Israel attack against Iran is ongoing. The USA is providing refueling to get Israeli planes to bombing targets in Iran. Iran looks to be shooting back with various missiles.

Details of what is going on are still hitting the news. Some of this story may become more clear over the following weeks. What follows is what we know so far. My particular focus is on the prophetic stories behind this attack, which are not likely to change.

Timing

As this started to unfold on Thursday it wasn't clear what the prophetic story should be for this attack. We are in a replay of Tola, see Judges 10:2, and there is essentially no story for that Judge.

So this story is on some other timeline, or it is on some sort of mercy delay from an earlier story on this timeline. So I wasn't watching it closely. It wasn't obvious to me where the mercy delay would be coming from, even in this current series.

I have been in the shop nearly the entire week, and let this headline unfold on its own. The 3d printers are busy and need a watchful eye. Ryan and I have also been in long conversation about conceptual implications of his recent work on the table of 400. More on that below.

Thursday night, a friend who follows our headline work pretty closely, wanted to talk about events in Iran. I explained my position, this is likely a prophetic story, but it must be sitting either on a mercy delay or on some other timeline that we're not following.

He then commented to me that there was a time reference in the Thursday news coverage of events in Iran. He told me this was at the end of 60 days that had been called out by Trump himself. This was enough of a clue to track this down. This had indeed started about 60 days before.

60 Days Remain

The link here is to an Iranian news source dated April 8, 2025, that says Trump gave Iran 60 days to complete negotiations. This was the start point for that 60 days, and it gives us the prophetic story that this may sit within. As long, of course, as there is some sort of reference within that prophetic story that implies a time offset or other delay. There is, which I will get to below.

US Iran Negotiations

The link here is to the Wikipedia article dealing with these same negotiations and it starts the 60 day clock on April 12, 2025. So there is a few days of play, but we can see the more precise timing landing on these events in Iran.

So the attack on Iran has presumably been in the planning phase for 60 days. The various travels and talks and so on have been a ruse to give time for the prophetic story for that April 12, 2025 date to actually unfold now.

Sisera, Deborah's Song

The link here is to Judges 4 in the BRB. This is the story of 20 years of oppression that replayed as 20 days on the current timeline. That prophetic window includes Sisera's night time defeat by Jael using a tent peg through the forehead. The same prophetic passage includes the problem of Barak being unwilling to go to war and Deborah's song of celebration at the end.

Matches

The videos and reports out of Iran indicate that Israel attacked nuclear weapons related targets and they also attacked a long list of individuals. The people targeted were mostly military leaders and nuclear scientists. The attack took place at night and targeted the personal residences of those people.

So the death of Sisera, a military leader, in a tent, at night, using a tent peg, Judges 4:17-22, is a strong prophetic match to what we are seeing in Iran. In our modern case the tent peg was larger, so rockets, instead of actual tent pegs.

Those modern pegs there used to target a bunch of high rise buildings which either collapsed, or frequently ended up with blown out sections where the Israelis and Americans targeted individual units in those building.

Those tall buildings are modern versions of Jael's tent. It was impressive targeting, indeed, even to the floor. It was also a very close prophetic match.

With the prophetic story now identified, and a strong match found to tie events on the ground to that story, we can now look at a few other details that may be interesting here.

Chariots Of Iron

The base prophetic story also references 900 chariots of iron. See Judges 4:3. Iran has been supplying overland delivery of weapons especially to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Modern trucks are iron chariots, another match. So presumably that supply route is now gone. This is seen again in Judges 5:27+ where the chariots no longer travel.

There is a detail in Judges 4:17 where Sisera enters the tent of Heber the blacksmith thinking he is safe because Heber is at peace with Hazor. Essentially Sisera is killed because Jael, Heber's wife, double crosses him.

We are seeing this throughout the reporting. The USA was playing a trusted negotiating partner, with Witkoff mediating. But instead, this was just a ruse, a double cross. Hal Turner's reporting covers this point in detail. Nothing the American government ever says can be trusted in the future. This has many serious implications over Ukraine. (As if the Russian's don't already know this.)

Bowl of Milk

We currently do not expect Deborah's song to end up as an inspired story. The details for the matches I've covered so far do not demand that song to be inspired.

But, there is a curious reference in that song that is still interesting to note. At Judges 5:25 is a reference to a bowl of milk. It may have been used as bait for the death of Sisera.

In the modern world we have many technical items with unclear ancient vocabulary. Milk, as used here, may be referencing the heavy water related to Iran's nuclear program. If so, other references to milk used prophetically against headlines in the modern world may thus also become nuclear. We'll see.

Naphtali References

The modern nation of Iran changed its name from Persia in 1935. Not normally written about in main stream history, the Shah of Iran at the time was influenced by the Aryan beliefs in vogue in Berlin at the time. Iran is just Aryan with a vowel shift for the transliteration change from German.

Persia ultimately changed their national name because there was a racial linkage between Iran and Germany. You can see that relationship in the videos out of Iran. Iranians are often white skinned in ways that match central Europeans.

If you are familiar with the Bible Tribes work, you know how I generally map colonies of European countries back to the colonizing European nations because this is following the outward flow of the lost tribes from Abraham to the entire world.

Germany does not have any such colonies. But there is textual support for Iran being something like a German colony. Though in Iran's case the time order is reversed. Even the change in name to Iran supports this linkage. I should perhaps update bibletribes.org with this point.

There is interesting textual support for an Iran/Naphtali pairing that came into the text when we brought Tobit into the BRB. Tobit 1:1-2 indicates that Tobit was from a family line descended from Naphtali. His line was hauled away as part of the Assyrian Deportation towards the lands that are now Iran. That reference in Tobit generally supports the idea that the text wants us to know that Naphtali, by name, was taken to that part of the world in ancient times.

Only much later did Naphtali reappear in Europe according to the seal dates of Revelation 7. The Germans of 1935 may have known this. So too the Iranians.

This week's headline with Iran includes curious support for this. Judges 4:6 and Judges 4:10, both within this prophetic story, mention the tribe of Naphtali. So this prophetic story is always bounded in some way, either to Germany, or to Iran. So this is yet another interesting match for headlines this week.

Preparing For Temple

If we are to see Israel rebuild a temple in Jerusalem, that work should still begin early in 2026. Timing there is related to Netanyahu's recent time in office, and Netanyahu would thus become the prophetic Solomon for those stories.

In order for that temple story to fulfill, leaders in Israel are going to need to feel safe from attacks by their neighbors. Defeating Iran in some meaningful way appears to be a necessary precondition for that headline.

In nearly all other countries around Israel, the leaders of those countries are under the effective control of Israel. This is what is needed for Israel to feel safe. Something like that should also happen in Iran. The return of the Shah, or something similar, may still happen in Iran.

This is still very much speculative until we see that temple building construction has begun, but it does appear to be the backdrop for prophetic stories that stretch out for several more years.

Table of 400

Last week I mentioned that the apps were deployed Thursday night so Ryan could dive in early to changes in the Table of 400.

This work is adding the ability to study various diagonal chiasm patterns in the Table of 400. We spent most of Thursday this week trying to reach the theoretical limits of chiasm in that table. It gets very difficult once off of the central diagonals.

In particular, what happens when short diagonals reach the edges of the table? Do they fold? Or do they Wrap? Should they be considered to start at the top? Or on the left?

There are also issues with the exact formulas that should be used when calculating the chiastic pairs. Possible different formulas caused us to see the need for a more robust fundamental labeling of the stories. That relabeling only started yesterday and impacts all the apps in various ways.

There are enough open issues with this change, that we are holding off with scripture updates for this week. More details when we have something to show.

Shop Work

This past week I received a large box of sample size spools of filament from Proto Pasta. The colors involved covered wood tones, gray tones, various off whites, metal colors and then variations on all the colors of the rainbow.

This was not complete coverage of their catalog. Another order came today with better coverage of reds, greens, grays and teal. I did not order their complete catalog at the start because I did not understand the lessons involved. Thus the need for a second order to completely cover their catalog. More on those lessons below.

At first I was not sure what do to with so many colors. I started out 3d printing sample parts from the Treasure Chest exhibits with variations on expected colors for those parts.

I quickly saw that a better strategy was to 3d print the equivalent of hardware store paint chips like you normally use when planning paint for a room. Such chips become generally useful for as long as the plastics involved remain available for purchase.

Since so many of the exhibits involve color on a white substrate, I setup a sample chip, where the top 3 layers are in the sample color, and then the bottom of the part is in white. I have previously seen that a white backing tends to brighten the front plastic, so this setup matches most normal uses I anticipate in most of the exhibits.

I also carefully labeled the back of each chip with exactly what type and color of plastic was used on the front. So in the end I had a box of paint chips large enough that I can play with them and pick best colors, and combinations of colors, for use across the exhibits.

It took about 2 days for the farm to print a complete set of chips. This included all the newly arrived samples and a few Proto Pasta colors already in the shop.

This was a serious education. I want to recount here what I have learned so far, just for the record. This seriously improves my understanding of the use of color across all of the exhibits. Picking ideal colors will be very much easier going forward.

All of the new plastics that I ran this week are fabricated in HT-PLA. Some of the matte finish samples that we picked up a few months back are in an older formula. I ran those older samples too, but would probably never use them in real models for reasons related to the HT-PLA plastic formula. Let me start by more formally introducing HT-PLA as a material.

HT-PLA Filament

In previous blogs I have discussed our general problem of wanting to use plastic that can withstand the heat of parked cars in summer in Texas. We drive around the country, and can easily imagine taking at least some of the exhibits with us. We would prefer starting with plastic that is less likely to melt in the heat.

The video linked above is by a different manufacturer who has recently decided to add HT-PLA into their catalog. In this video they melt some plastic in a small counter top oven. HT-PLA remains standing, while the others melt away. The video itself is fun to watch. You actually can see the problem we are concerned about.

HT-PLA has better heat resistance than even good old standard ABS. This great heat performance is done while still using standard PLA settings during the 3d printing process. PLA is by far the easiest to print and it abuses 3d printers less than any other plastic.

HT-PLA can also be annealed, which improves heat resistance even better. The video above gives the recipe for how to anneal their particular brand of HT-PLA plastic. They also demonstrate in their oven how annealing further improves performance in the heat.

The Proto Pasta folks have their recommended recipe for how to anneal their plastics on their website. Basically the annealing process is like baking cookies in an oven on a cookie sheet. A certain amount of time, at a certain temperature, after normal 3d printing, will make the parts even stronger in heat.

I am still learning, but I suspect I need to add a similar oven to the shop. Some sort of toaster oven, or similar. Something large enough for the branches on the various large trees. Use of the kitchen oven probably isn't clean enough. We don't want parts smelling like last night's pizza. A regular oven probably does not have technically precise temperature control. The video above adds a scientific digital thermometer to a stock oven.

Given the size of most of our exhibits, the 3d printed parts probably need to be annealed before final assembly. So as a work flow, they would come off the 3d printers and then go directly into the oven for annealing.

The Vine item that I have shown in the past on Telegram has a problem with wanting to go limp. It is slowly bending over. If it did not lean against the wall, it would eventually fall over and break. (I should let it do that and see what happens...) In any case I suspect that annealed versions of the same parts are going to be less likely to slowly bend. They should perform more like real wood.

Giving Up on PLA

So the first lesson here is to give up on PLA, at least for parts intended to be final finished parts.

I am reminded of a line from a book, "The Mythical Man Month," by Frederick Brooks, Jr. He was the lead software designer responsible for the first major mainframe operating system. He wrote that his main lesson about software projects was to "Build one to throw away, because you will, whether you plan to or not."

The principle these days is called quick iteration. But in his days, especially, it implied not putting a lot of cost into finishing touches when working on early drafts. Those touches take time and money and are a waste of resources especially if the project is going to be revamped or tossed out.

Brooks was the first to explain that all serious systems get revamped, and should, by plan, have their first drafts tossed out. Quality always gets better when this is done. This is especially true if you are building something never seen before, where you are not copying an existing project or product. In Brooks' day, nobody had ever seen a general purpose Operating System. Nobody knew ahead of time what it should do, Windows is still figuring this out, even 50+ years later.

I am becoming more convinced of the need for a personal discipline to intentionally build first drafts of each design. Then planning on throwing those early drafts away, in order to force an iterative cycle on the design work.

So building PLA first drafts, that cannot withstand the heat, force that cycle. It also means to not worry as much about color on the first round, but on geometry. Color selection is another problem all by itself.

Color Selection

Most of the plastics available on Amazon are made in China, and are available only in 1 kg spools. They are nearly all trying to be close to cartoon colors. Either they are intentionally variations on the color wheel, or intentionally diverged from standard colors in some way. But they are never very precise, and want buyers locked in.

So as a buyer of these plastics there are a bunch of hurdles. The first hurdle is the entry cost. The minimum purchase for a spool is between $18 and $25. So buying 50 spools of different colors is mostly out of the question.

Once you have a spool that is good enough, you stop looking for something better. You restock the same stuff because you know it.

Let me explain how everything changed this week.

First of all, Proto Pasta has more of an artistic touch to their work. Ryan and I saw that when we visited their shop. They have a wall of sample plastics and 3d printed parts that is impressive. They have a broad selection of plastics that vary by finish as well as color.

Nearly everything is available in $5 sample spools. So there is no real barrier to just getting a sample of everything. Our project is very large and is being done for Joshua. So doing the upfront work of trying many samples makes lots of sense.

But, Proto Pasta's line of plastics does a lot more. Their product line is just not like the plastics on Amazon from China. When we were there that day I did not even properly comprehend the nature of the problem they solve.

All I could do was measure Proto Pasta's lineup by what I know from Amazon. Only one of their plastic series made sense to me. (Their opaque family of colors.) And we purchased some spools out of that family so we could switch over.

I did not understand the significance of the finishing aspect that shows up in their other various series of plastics. In addition to the normal color formulas, there are also various ingredients that they add.

This produces filaments with very different final appearance. This includes matte finish, metallic finish, glitter finish (bright) and a dark glitter finish. (Samples of the latter, arrived today.) They also have plastics infused with metal powders which allows 3d printing parts that can be finished to look like real metal. They also have glow in the dark plastics. (Think star field.)

They tend to also have more robust color selections. Not just cartoon colors. So selecting plastics to cover the rainbow is not easy because there are so many choices just within the constraint of needing red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple.

Across the colors we've looked at this week, we can also see some plastics that produce a finish like parchment. There are others that produce marbled finish like granite. There are several other off-white shades in their line up that could also be useful. Many variations on white makes sense. How many colors of white are offered at a paint store?

So only Joseph's Robe, which is called out as white like linen, should be pure white. There is a bunch of off-white choices that would make more sense on exhibits like the Tribes, or Jacob's Ladder.

I can also see that there are a bunch of possible wood tones which make sense for tree limbs, the clock, the calendar, and decorative details on the other exhibits.

The Education

The importance of trying a bunch of different samples did not sink in until I was actually printing those samples. Only now can I make intelligent design choices for the best plastics that should be used for each of the details found across the set of exhibits.

This week seriously upped my game.

We can do much better in terms of simply covering the rainbow. Do we want glitter? Metallic? Pastel?

I don't know yet. But I have a way to figure this out.

I skipped some variations when ordering this week's samples because some examples seemed to be similar. This was yet another rookie mistake. If Proto Pasta is offering different varieties on a general color, this means there is a meaningful difference between the spools. Otherwise, they would not be in their catalog. Duh.

Photos on web pages do not do justice to the impacts of glitter infused in the plastic. Those photos also do not do justice to metallic variations. Those photos also do not convey the nuance of the variations on white and similar light colors.

Metal Infused Plastics

Studying the Proto Pasta catalog also opens up another completely different strategy for the birds that spread throughout many of the exhibits. Let me explain.

Proto Pasta has a line of plastics that are metal infused. This is similar to how they add glitter for a sparkle finish. Metal infusing binds metal powder into the finished 3d printed part. This allows those parts to be finished just like if the part had been cast out of that metal.

Why would anyone want that? Another rookie question.

A common use of that plastic is to make game board pieces. It is also used to make metal-like figurines

Proto Pasta had several examples of this on display in their shop. When we visited, I wasn't interested in this, I did not see how I would use such a thing. But maybe I should not be so quick to judge. I am in a season of education. I need to learn as much as I can.

The alphabet related 3d models themselves sit on the theoretical framework of the monetary metals. So Gold, Silver, Copper and Bronze form the basis for all of the alphabet related 3d designs. Those models are collectively called the birds.

Proto Pasta's metal infused plastics include brass, stainless steal, copper and bronze. The brass can be finished to look like gold. In the ancient exhibits I would suspect brass was used as an obvious substitution for gold. Proto Pasta uses stainless as a polishable substitute for silver. This was probably not an ancient substitution, but if brass substitutes for gold, then stainless can substitute for silver. The stainless infused plastic finishes up to look like silver.

Proto Pasta also has copper infused plastic. Simple enough, copper metal to get copper color. Finally, they have bronze infused plastic for bronze.

By using vinegar, copper turns into verdigris, the color of the Statue of Liberty, and the best color for the bronze items in the exhibits.

So, why not just use these metal infused plastics to 3d print the birds?

I need to run these and see how it would work. Metal infused plastic needs different 3d printing hardware.

Equipment

First order of business is to get the correct equipment. Normal brass nozzles on most 3d printers (all of them in the shop) do not stand up to metal infused filament. Those metal bits wear out the brass nozzle.

I have already ordered a pair of hardened nozzles to try this out. That order included some other parts, 1 of which is back ordered. Expected to ship in a couple weeks.

Many of the specific bird related models must be printed with supports. I previously tried doing some of those parts with silk plastics and had enough trouble that I gave up. These metal infused plastics will also need to be tested. They may need to be printed with some other type of support material. The promise of ending up with real metal looking parts is worth the trouble to try.

Finishing these parts to look like metal will also need a polishing process that will need to be worked out. Presumably some sort of polishing disks on a hand held power tool. I doubt parts would survive in a tumbler.

Birds will need to be polished before being mounted in the bird cages. There may be issues with the support holes used by the threads if polish compound is used.

Weathering the bronze is also something to be worked out. Vinegar appears to be the normal, even ancient, chemical for that.

What's Next

I am currently running a first draft of a treasure chest in the shop. This is being run in simple Chinese white PLA. This to check the 3d design and to understand the overall part when finished.

The second order of sample filament spools from Proto Pasta arrived this morning. Those will fill in missing choices in the current collection, so it becomes possible to make wise choices about the colors to be used across the exhibits.

I can tell already the entire set of exhibits will be more visually attractive than anything done before.

More about this process as it unfolds.

More Later,

Phil