Articles | Page 138 of 264

14 Jan 2016

How to Use a Survival Still Over a Campfire

Gear Review: Using Survival Still on a Campfire — Buy at Amazon

The other day we showed how to use shelf brackets to hold pots over a campfire, today we will use this technique to try to distill water over a campfire.

This is probably the most important test of the survival still, because if you ever have to actually rely on the still, you may not have any other cooking method other than the trusty campfire.

Once again, if you rub bar soap on the outside of the bottom pot BEFORE you put it on the fire, the soot will clean up much easier.

While a lot of people think the survival still is too expensive, I think it is a pretty neat product.

I find that using a survival still over a campfire is a pretty easy way to distill water.

(Edit) Now the Survival Still ships with a stainless steel water line. If you have the old silicon one, contact them and they will ship you a new one free. I got one in and it does work well, it is flared, so I find it picks up the water inside the still better, but being steel it is not flexible and I found it harder to fit on my stove with the pots I have – I had to use a bowl instead of dripping into the mason jar I normally use.

14 Jan 2016

Regal Range Construction Visit

When I found that someone was building a new training range that happened to be on my daily commute route I had to check it out. Lickily Regal Rage was pretty receptive to letting me visit during their construction.

Its pretty cool that someone decided that an old movie theatre would make a great gun range, and actually did it. I have long felt that golf courses and movie theateres were both misappropriated gun ranges.

Regal range was build for training, they decided early on that firearm instruction would be their main focus and everything else would support that. Of course they sell guns and ammo, and they have a great gunsmith, but they have one of the best firearm instructors in the area as their lead trainer.

They have a simunitions room, a private training range, a great classroom, as well as an indoor archery range (with stands), and a huge tactical range that you can shoot up to and including .50 bmg.

As a matter of fact, they have a full auto M2 .50 caliber machine gun that you can rent and shoot on their range until the cordite addiction is fulfilled.

Talking with their general manager was a pleasure, and I am excited to see if their plans pan out because if they accomplish all they plan then this will be a great addition to the firearms training community in the Middle TN area.

14 Jan 2016

The Complete Tightwad Gazette

The Complete Tightwad Gazette is along-awaited complete compendium of tightwad tips for fabulous frugal living!

In a newsletter published from May 1990 to December 1996 as well as in three enormously successful books, Amy Dacyczyn established herself as the expert of economy.

Now The Complete Tightwad Gazette brings together all of her best ideas and thriftiest thinking into one volume, along with new articles never published before in book format.

Dacyczyn describes this collection as “the book I wish I’d had when I began my adult life.” Packed with humor, creativity, and insight, The Complete Tightwad Gazette includes hundreds of tips and topics, such as:

Travel for tightwads
How to transform old blue jeans into potholders and quilts
Ten painless ways to save $100 this year
Picture-framing for pennies
A comparison of painting versus re-siding your house
Halloween costumes from scrounged materials
Thrifty window treatments
Ways to dry up dry-cleaning costs
Inexpensive gifts
Creative fundraisers for kids
Slashing your electric bill
Frugal fix-its
Cutting the cost of college
Moving for less
Saving on groceries
Gift-wrapping for tightwads
Furniture-fusion fundamentals
Cheap breakfast cereals
Avoiding credit card debt
Using items you were about to throw away (milk jugs, plastic meat trays, and more!)

The Complete Tightwad Gazette also contains recipes galore, from penny-pinching pizza to toaster pastries¸ And much much more . . .

14 Jan 2016

How to Lighting and Use a Rocket Stove

Camping: Lighting and Using a Rocket Stove — Buy at Amazon

A few weeks ago we showed how to make a small rocket stove using a recycled #10 can and a few old soup cans.

It was a cool project, but I quickly got a couple emails from people wanting to see how to actually use the darn thing.

It is pretty simple and I am going to show you how to light and set about using a rocket stove.

Its called a rocket stove because the design causes a draft much like a rocket, so it WANTS to burn.

Simple wad up some newspaper or other tinder and stick inside the top chimney,

Then insert a couple of small sticks of kindling – larger than a stalk of wheat, but smaller than a pencil – into the top of the chimney.

Light it, and when the kindling catches on fire, insert more kindling in the upper half of the fire hole.

Air will be pulled in through the bottom half of the fire hole and will totally consume the ends of the sticks.

If properly fueled and fully lit, there will be little or no smoke.

As you can see in the video below, only a few twigs heated up my cast iron skillet hot enough to burn my hotdogs.

The beauty of this type of stove is how much heat you get from a small amount of wood that otherwise would be too small to be useful – this allows you to practice your technique often.

Have fun, and try not to burn your house down as the stove gets very hot.

14 Jan 2016

eMeals

I first heard of eMeals several years ago from Dave Ramsey, and I subscribed for about a year. I found the service to be very easy, and only let it lapse because I changed banks and was too lazy to change the account.

Now that we have a baby, and I am busier with classes and night shift I wanted to find an easier way to eat better without having to put a lot of thought into it.

I was very surprised when I went back to the eMeals site and saw how many new plans they have now – my wife and I spent some time “talking” about what would be better. I wanted slow-cooker for simplicity, or the Aldi plan for frugality – but the clean eating plan won. I couldn’t even get a compromise on the slow cooker clean eating plan.

Oh well, if that’s what Genny wants, I can accommodate – after all, how many wives will let their crazy husbands grow fish in the basement or run a steam engine on the stove…

I recommend you looking at their site, even if you don’t subscribe to their service, they have a very good concept, and I think you will be well served by checking it out.

They also have a referral program, that I learned about as I went back to reactivate my service – if you have a website you can make a little from passing the word around. If you click on the link from my site, I make a small percentage of your purchase – but its okay – its going into the I want some land fund, I promise I won’t use it to pay tuition at Diamond Dave’s Ninji School.