Tag Archives: gear

The little things

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It’s funny…when The Walking Dead started I said that I was more interested in how people dealt with the increasing infrastructure failure than I was with the gratuitous zombie-killing violence. I was more interested in how people coped with the loss of gasoline, electricity, communications, etc, etc. And now that TWD has hit the stage where infrastructure has failed epically I find myself not really watching the show much. But, I watched tonights episode and it reminded me of some things.

Backstory: will-they-or-wont-they couple, Carol and Daryl are walking along a trail heading back to their camp. Carol is having trouble prying open the cover on her canteen and Daryl hands her his Swiss army knife so she can use, presumably, the screwdriver blade to pry the thing open.

Later, Daryl is far from home and his motorcycle sputters to a halt. He find that the fuel hose has rotted through and torn. He scavenges some hoses from abandoned vehicles and prepares to repair his bike…and then notices he never got his Swiss army knife back. He tries to use his large fighting knives but they are too big to get into the small reaches of the bike motor. With no tools to fix his bike, he goes looking for tools until he finds a couple zombified military personnel. He dispatches them, rifles their web gear, and finds a couple Gerber multitools. With multitool in hand, he repairs his bike and can return to his camp.

The takeaways seemed to be: two is one, one is none -when he ‘lost’ his primary multitool he had nothing to back him up. Even one of those dorky keychain multitools would have helped. And although he really should have had a small basic tool kit on his bike, in a world where getting stranded can be life-or-death it might be a good idea to have spares of critical gear like multitools.

I suppose another takeaway would be that you never loan out your personal equipment to help someone else if the lack of that equipment will harm you later. Carol should have handed him back the knife after she was done with it, and he should have had presence of mind to make sure it was immediately returned to him.

I have a nice Leatherman Wave that was gifted to me about..hmmm… 15 years ago, I used to carry it around all the time but it chewed holes in my jeans at an amazing pace. But it has tremendous sentimental value so I keep it. My everyday pocket knife is one of these  which I have been extremely pleased with. But…there’s a very good reason to keep a multiool around and I need to get back into the habit of having one as an everyday carry item. Nine times out of ten, if I need a screwdriver or somerhing like that, I’d rather just grab a purpose-built tool from the tool rack and do what needs doing. But I need to remember that the whole point of survivalism is to be ready for the unexpected which often occurs at the worst time, at the worst place, under the worst conditions. Like trying to replace a fuel hose on your motorcycle as the zombies shuffle closer and closer.

Multitools have improved over the last 15 years, and they have some lighter ones that still offer a lot of useful functions without costing me a pair of new Carharts every five months. I actually have a gen1 Leatherman tool in my Bag O’Tricks. That thing really needs to be upgraded…but its better than no multitool. I suppose at some point I should go shop for new ones and see what sort of cool developments have hit the market in the last decade and a half.

But…the eipsode of TWD was thought-provoking in that it showed how a small failure…not getting the Swiss army knife back…could cascade into bigger problems in a post-apocalyptic world. So…either don’t loan out critical gear (my first choice), or make sure to get it back immediately. And, a spare isn’t a bad idea.

 

Mussete bag

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Back in the day, Ahern’s pulp-series, ‘The Survivalist’, had it’s main character carrying his spare speedloaders, binoculars, and other small items in what was called a ‘musette bag’. Basically, its one of those little buttpack bags that you see from time to time in military surplus venues.

I’ve been wanting something similar, but just s smidge bgger, and am having no luck. Don’t confuse it with a messenger bag, although they are very similar. The musette bag is a bit smaller, in some armies it was called a bread bag, or a foraging bag,  and is usually carried by a sling that clips to a couple attachment points on the bag.

Anyway, I’ve been trying to find a modern version with absolutely no luck. I’m looking for something made in the USA, has a large flap covering, a couple exterior pockets, removable sling, tactical color, and perhaps a bit of MOLLE. Tried Spec-Ops, SOE, and a couple other features. This is almost exaclty what Im looking for, but its always out of stock. And before you suggest one of the myriad of ‘active shooter bags’ out there, no, that isn’t quite right either. Those are too blocky..I want something less rigidly formed. Also be nice if it could fit an MP5k.

Open to suggestions…..and, hey, don’t just say “You should go look at X”…that’s helpful but not as helpful as actually providing a link to X.

We can haz can

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This was in the comments earlier.

Well, two is one so four must be two, right? I ordered up a four pack, w/ gasket and spout, for $241, w/ ‘free shipping’. (In quotes because, really, shipping isn’t free…they just fold it into the price.)

Anyway…ordered up this afternoon and had a FedEx tracking number four hours later. So..fingers corssed, but looks like a decent deal that is good to go.

Since I’m beating the topic of fuel cans to death with these last few posts, lets get all the fuel can related stuff done:

Spouts v. Funnels – I don’t usually bother with spouts. Unless they fit and seal perfectly 100% of the time (which they never do) they are just a bother. I use long, plastic funnels that you can usually pick up at an automotive store for five or six bucks. I buy one for every two fuel cans and paracord them onto one can so they are always there. (I am told, but have not tried it, that you can improvise a funnel in a pinch from a plastic pop bottle.) Some people prefer to use a siphon pump of some type, and they certainly have merit if you have trouble holding a 40# jug of gas at sternum height for the time required to fill your tank. I don’t have that problem (yet) so I just use a funnel.

Date tags – Anything you write on is going to fade in the sun and rain. I cut a small metal tag of soft aluminum from a pop can and use a nail to ‘engrave’ the date on the tag. Tag gets corded to the can so I know how old the gas is. Its worked quite well for me.

Can preservation – the bottom of the can comes into contact with the ground, concrete, truck bed, etc. That constant contact, impact, and friction will wear and chip the paint away after a while exposing bare metal. I bought a spray can of that rubber coating they use for ..well..whatever you normally rubber coat…and sprayed the the bottom third of the cans all around. (Didn’t have it when I originally did it, but FlexSeal would probably work well for this.)  It doesnt change the dimensions of the can enough to cause problems fitting in a gas can rack or holder, but it protects the bottom of the can from damage and moisture.

Lock and cable – Gas cans will walk away under the most benign and peaceful circumstance. In a crisis, when everyone needs fuel, they’ll fly outta your truck the minute your back is turned. I use a bike cable and a ‘Sesame’-type padlock to keep things from going away. I dislike keyed locks because the keys are a failure point. Yes, these types of locks are susceptible to picking but so is a keyed lock. When I need to grab fuel and go, go, go, I don’t want to be scrambling for keys. And don’t say “Just keep the key on the same ring as the truck key”. There are plenty of scenarios where I’d need the fuel but not the vehicle, so having the truck keys with me at that moment is not a sure thing. Or I have the keys and am elsewhere and someone needs the fuel outta the truck. And its easier to tell someone a combination in texting or over the phone than it is to arrange a key drop.

Cover – Up to you, but a cover of some type to protect things and perhaps conceal them a bit might be in order. Google “jerry can cover” and you’ll see a nice mix of ideas and products. Getting outta Dodge, in your Dodge, is a lot easier when the five jerry cans ratcheted against the tailgate in the back of your truck are obscured or hidden from view by some type of non-gas-can looking cover.

STFU – When it really comes down to a crisis where people are desperate for fuel, you really don’t want everyone in the neighborhood knowing you have some tucked away. It doesnt have to be TEOTWAWKI….even something as mundane as a blizzard or hurricane can put your neighbors on your doorstep asking (or demanding) ‘just a little bit’ of your fuel. Only you know the level of discretion and camouflage youre going to want. What you don’t want is every idiot in the area coming by because they bought a generator ‘just in case’ and completely neglected the fuel side of things.

Stabilizer – I’ve gone over this a buncha times but short version is: I use PRI-G. Stabil probably works just as well but I’ve read more good things about PRI-G than I have Stabil. Really, either one will work but I’ve used PRI-G and since I’ve never had any problems, even with six year old gas treated with the stuff, that’s good enough for me.

Inspection – You absolutely must do this. Must. MUST. I’ve had surplus military cans that were quite serviceable but had a dent or two here and there. After a couple years of expansion/contraction from being out in the heat/cold there would sometimes be a pinhole leak develop if the dent exposed the metal, it got rusty, and time went on. Inspect every can, especially the bottoms. Try to store them on a surface that lets air flow beneath them. If at all possible, store them in a manner that protects them from weather exposure and ground moisture. Heck, build a little ‘gas can coop’ or something. I built a rack out of 2×4 that is nothing more than a crib that holds five cans side-by-side a few inches off the ground. I cover them with a vinyl shower curtain and use a couple bicycle inner tubes as giant rubber bands to keep the vinyl wrapped around them,. Cover with a camo tarp and call it a day.

And although it is only tangentially related, when it comes to fuel for your vehicle, I always give a 50% margin. For example, if I have 10 gallons of gas and my vehicle gets 15 mpg, the math would say those two five-gallon cans will get me 150 miles of distance towards (or away from) whatever I need. I err on the side of extreme caution and calculate 50% of that… I figure between idling in traffic, having to backtrack, take detours, getting lost, having to ‘take the long way’, and all the other possibilities of what could go wrong ‘bugging out’, I’ll be using a lot more fuel than I would in ‘peace time’ to cover the same distance. So..I build in a 50% margin.

I’ll post about the arrival of the cans when they get here. Pretty confident these will be just what the Zero needs to continue the relentless slog towards resilience, but we’ll know for sure this weekend. (Assuming FedEx does their part.)
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Testing out the Kifaru pullover

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Kind of a medium-cold today (unless you live in the land of possums and banjoes, in which case it would be considered apocalyptically cold). It was about ten degrees this morning. (Thats -12 C. if youre in a country that never landed a man on the moon.) So, seemed like a good opportunity to try out the Kifaru pullover that I picked up a few weeks back. Verdict? Really nice. It definitely does a good job of keeping me warm and it compresses down into a reasonable size when I’m not wearing it. I got it on sale for $200 and I’d say it was quite worth it. It’s not something I’d wear everyday, I have a couple sheeps worth of Filson for that, but for packing it away in a bag for when I’m hunting or otherwise out in the elements and want to have something for an emergency…perfect.

it’s funny…years ago, spending $200 on something like this would have seemed like a much bigger deal than it does now. The cynic in me says that its not as big a deal because $200 today ain’t what $200 was a few years ago, but the real reason is that I’ve (so far) navigated my life to the point that, once in a while, I can just say “Eh, why not?”.

But, anyway… if you’re like me (and, Crom, I really hope youre not) and want a good, compressible piece of outerwear you can tuck away for those times when the bottom drops out of the thermometer unexpectedly and you’re away from home….excellent choice.

Kifaru goodness

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I swear to Crom, the mail is so slow these days I could literally walk most of it to its destination before those idiots could get it delivered….

It shouldnt take 15 days to get a parcel from Colorado to Montana, but apparently it does. But that vote by mail thing? That’ll work just fine….

Anyway….

I have a collection of Filson outer wear. About six years ago I got a Filson Double Mackinaw Cruiser, which had been on my wish list for a long time.

A year or two ago Filson ran off a  limited run of a wool anorak. I desperately wanted this limited-run and very expensive item. By the time I got the money put together…*boom* they were out of stock with no resupply date. I was bummed. But the webpage for the anorak stayed up. I checked it, literally every day, for a year until a ‘coming soon’ banner appeared on it. When they finally had them available, I ordered one. And…it was everything I hoped for. Still wildly expensive, but it’ll last forever and I really, really like it. (Yeah, it’s spendy..and other companies do make a similar wool product. But this was a case of ‘I had the money’ and, honestly, a bit of brand preference. Once in a while, I’m a brand-name junkie. Not often, but in this case….yeah.)

And while I liked the wool product a lot for its ability to repel cold, evil, and shoddy workmanship, it was a bit bulky. It doesn’t compress very well. And although I like the Filson product, and have worn it pretty much every day this winter, I wanted something that would be just as nice but more compact for packing around when I didn’t need it at that moment. Ideally, I wanted something that would crunch down into a tight little package that would sit in my scout pack when I was out in the woods. And, sadly, the Filson wouldn’t do that.

Turns out Kifaru makes the same product, basically, but using the same materials as they use in their highly-recommended Woobie and Doobie products. It was on sale back in November for $200 and I ordered one up. Finally got it today. TPIWWP, so….

This is the Filson wool anorak/pullover which I cannot say enough nice things about. If you amortize it over the rest of your life it becomes more economical than first imagined. It is not cheap, but it literally will last you a lifetime. Problem is – bulky to pack. Enter the Kifaru product:

Heavy-duty (really heavy-duty) cordura on the wear points, detachable hood, drawstring waist…pretty nice. The color, which was advertised as coyote, is more gold than coyote. But…the elk won’t notice. More importantly, how does it compress? Well, Kifaru makes some equally nice and equally expensive compression sacks but for now I’ll just pick one up at REI.

This will be one of those pieces of gear that gets tossed in a bag ‘just in case’ when I’m off in the boonies because…a lot can happen in a hurry, and none of it good, if you aren’t careful. So..new piece of gear, Zero approves.

Solo Stove

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A few years ago a very generous friend of mine gave me a Solo Stove as a gift. Its a steel woodburning stove designed for, I’d imagine, camping use. It’s basically a large steel can with a grate at the bottom and an arrangement of vent holes to allow efficient burning of twigs and sticks. The primary advantage being that you don’t need to carry fuel since you’re running around in an environment that is lousy with it….trees, bushes, deadfall, blowdown, etc.

But, I got busy with things and it just sat there on my filing cabinet collecting dust. Finally decided to try it the other day and dang if it didn’t create quite the little conflagration. The design gets plenty of air to the fire and as a result, once this thing gets a cheery little blaze going it burns hot and it burns fast. Most interestingly, it burns thorough….everything is reduced to powdery ash. It burns stuff quite completely.

I just grabbed a handful of twigs, snapped them down to about hand-width, tossed the loosely in this thing and lit it with a lifeboat match. Once it started buring I added progressively larger sticks until things were going along rather nicely.

The biggest drawback I found was bulk. This thing is bulky.  I’ts pretty light for its size, but it takes up some space. For backpacking, I’d think twice about taking it along. However, for car camping, vehicle survival gear, or that sort of thing this would be about ideal. I suppose it’s bulk, rather than it’s weight, is the biggest drawback but if you can clear the square footage in your pack to take it with you I suspect it would be immensely handy on a backpacking trip… just a matter if youre willing to give up the necessary space in your pack.

Even if you’re not sitting a canteen cup full of water on top of this thing to boil, it creates a nice little ‘campfire’ where you want without leaving a blackened pile of half-burnt debris on the ground. Never underestimate the calming and spirit-lifting effect of having a small fire in front of you when you’re sitting in the dark at night in the middle of nowhere.

I think that with the advent of ridiculously light canister stoves these days this sort of product has a very limited appeal, but I suspect that small demographic happens to be the one we survivalist-types fall into.

Anyway, it took several (three, I think) years but I finally got around to playing with this thing. Considering it was a thoughtful gift from a friend i really should have used it sooner so I wouldn’t like like an ungrateful idiot. Ah well…they know me better than that.

 

America Stone knife sharpener

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Several weeks back I got an email from a fella asking me if I’d be interested in trying out a sharpening tool he was promoting. I love free stuff, so, ‘Sure!’.

Thus far, my hands down favorite knife sharpener has been from these guys. The one that I highly recommend has been this one. And while it’s been awesome for sharpening my pointy stuff, it doesn’t quite fit in the pouch on my knife sheath.

So, I received this stone and pouch in the mail the other week. It’s a pretty unassuming stone…a ceramic-ish looking stone that is rounded on one edge and beveled to a point on the other. Here’s the website, and there is a video on YouTube to explain it’s use:


Yes, its a pretty DIY video but production values don’t really have much to do with whether information is  accurate or useful. It would have been nice to have some good close ups, but you get the gist if you watch it all the way through.

Anyway, I watched the video and decided I’d try it out on one of my hard-used knives…specifically my Glock knife that I use for hunting. Here’s what it looks like these days:

It had a small nick in the edge about 3/4 of the way down the blade and the video said that using the wedge/pointed shape of the stone would take care of that so….off we went. Three strokes each side using medium force, and repeated this a dozen or so times. Then, as the video says, I used the rounded side to sharpen things up. And…it worked. How sharp? Well, there’s always the ‘will it cut paper’ or ‘will it shave the hairs on your arm’ sort of tests which are kinda unquantifiable. Like everyone else, I test the edge with my thumb and pull the blade across my thumbnail. If the edge bites into the thumbnail , I know its really sharp and will cut. My unofficial test is to slice up some cardboard boxes…I try doing that, gauge the effort required, then sharpen and try cutting again. The subjective difference in effort required tells me what I want.

I did find that this stone did not work as effectively on thin, flexible blades. I suspect this is because as you move down the length of the blade, the force you exert cause the blade to bend away from you..throwing off the whole process. So, for a long thin-bladed slicing or fillet knife it might require you to do something to hold the blade in a rigid, unflexing manner. For my Glock knife, which has absolutely zero flex in it, not a problem. For pretty much any knife that isn’t a fillet knife, there shouldn’t be any issues.

Did an outstanding job on my Glock knife, and, interestingly, a prety admirable performance on my good kitchen Henckel knives.

What I’m most interested in is whether the stone would fit in the knife sheath I like to use. (The SpecOps sheath) As it turns out, the stone is about the size of a couple sticks of chewing gum…so not only does it fit in the pouch, you could actually fit more than one in there. So if you have a knife like the USAF ‘survival knife’ or a Randall with those pouches on the sheath, this thing should fit in it just fine.

So, what’s the final word? It seemed to do what was promised and it did something the Worksharp did not do, which is fit into the pouch on the sheath. I think, for me, the greatest use for this is for an in-the-field sharpener. Gut your elk, break a few joints, touch it up on the stone, cut some more, break it up some more, touch it up on the stone…that sort of thing. It also did a really nice job taking a nick out of the blade, which kinda surprised me

Durability? Can’t say. I did drop it once on my kitchen floor and it didnt break or shatte, but that’s strictly anecdotal. However, it’s small size and mass means that it probably would survive being dropped more than a larger, heavier stone would. .

I’d like to get a couple more of these for my other knives and kits. I can see where I might, when at the house, do my sharpening on something larger like a Lansky sharpener system or a series of Smith stones, but as a field sharpener this thing has some nice merit – it works, seems to not require much attention to angles, and fits in a tiny space – all big pluses when you don’t want to carry more weight than you have too.

 

 

Thank you for smoking

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Johnny Trochmann,, he of Militia Of Montana fame, puts in an appearance at the larger gun shows in these parts. He has about a dozen tables covered with what could best be desscribed a ‘survivalist’ gear…potassium iodide pills, surgical kits, QuickClot, books on everything, specialty ammo, and that sort of thing. At some point he must have found an in with someone in the cruise line industry or a subsidiary thereof because he always has parachute flares, hand flares, and smoke generating devices for sale that clearly came from someone’s lifeboat emergency kits. These items are usually a couple years ‘out of date’ but that doesn’t really mean much in materiel like this.

Invariably, I pick up a buncha parachute flares and smoke cans. Why not? Both can come in handy if something goes wrong in the boonies and you need to indicate your position to the ‘copter people, and, honestly, there are some tactical applications as well.

Despite having a pretty large store of these items squirreled away, I’ve never actually gotten around to trying the smoke devices. The reason was simple…I can’t very well touch one off in town without attracting a  large amount of attention (thats what the dang things are designed for, after all) and I never seem to have the time to head to anywhere remote to try them. Until today.

I was scouting out some hunting areas that I have not been to for many, many years and since they were hell-and-gone from prying eyes I figured I’d try one of those smoke cannisters. Pop the top, pull the igniter, and toss it for distance. It sputtered and then started spitting out a rather impressive cloud of smoke for a good three minutes. I didn’t take any pictures or video because YouTube has plenty of them showing this exact version, but it lived up to the expectations. Does it have, shall we say, ‘non-rescue applications’? Well, just from what I observed, you throw three of these down a stairwell or hallway and you’re pretty much going to reduce visibility to zero in a hurry. Maybe you have a use for that sort of thing, maybe not. But…like many tools, it’s a multitasker when you have the right mindset.

Johnny T. sells these at the gun shows for about $4 ea although if you buy enough he usually cuts you a deal. I’ve got a couple dozen in storage and I keep a few in the vehicle at all times ‘just in case’.

Buy them new? Man, I’d hate to have to…but, maybe I wouldn’t have to:

When I was a kid, my high school science teacher whipped up a sugar smoke bomb for a class movie project they were doing. He rather…underestimated…the amount of smoke his little device would generate and the fire department rolled up to the school thinking the roof was going up like Dresden. (Protip: instead of a coloring agent, mix in fine ground red pepper or cayenne to create an irritant effect.)

Anyway…if you’re in Montana and happen to run across Johnny Trochmann and his Tables Of Fun, be sure to grab a dozen or so of those things. And tell him Commander Zero sent you.

Burn jel

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As I mentioned previously, I ordered up some burn jel. Arrived:

The bottle and dressings will go in the big first aid kit, the smaller single use ‘ketchup packets’ will get distributed across the various small first aid kits.

This stuff is awesome for those (somewhat) minor burns. When you’ve got the kind ofburn that gives you an ache right down to the bone, this stuff really seems to put a damper on it. As I’ve mentioned, I once burned my hand so bad that the only way I could sleep was clutching a cold, wet washcloth or a bag of ice. This stuff, though, took the pain away so I could finally sleep.

Good product and I heartily recommend it. Skip a couple lattes today, spend the money at Amazon, and get some of this stuff. Next time you grab the wrong part of your Dutch oven, try to pick up a hot lawnmower by the exhaust, or parboil yourself by opening the wrong end of the lid on your pressure cooker you will be so glad you have this stuff.