Today I offer you an improvised knife sharpening tip. Improvised means it is not as good as a normal method of using a whetstone or other sharpener, but that it will work in a pinch.
If you take a ceramic coffee mug or bowl and flip it upside down you will notice a ring where there is no glaze.
It is possible to use this ring to sharpen your knife blade just as you would use a ceramic sharpening rod.
I have tried this, and it does leave residue on the ceramic ring, and it does sharpen the blade.
I would not use this for one of my high quality knives, but when out camping and I have to sharpen my knife “Right Now”, then this is a good idea to keep in the back of your mind.
The ability to break down a need into its component parts and see resources by potential function will allow you to always be able to improvise. Since the unglazed bottom ring of the mug can slowly act as sandpaper to wear metal it works to sharpen a knife.
Again improvised solutions are rarely efficient, but they do work in a pinch.
Hopefully this can help you in the future. If you have time, a purpose made knife sharpener does work much better.
This post on how to fireform 410 brass shells from .303 British cases is pretty neat.
I don’t know how timely this article is now that you can buy your own brass .410 hulls from midway. However, it is a project I have wanted to do for a long time. I even had some new unfired .303 brass. So I felt it was time to experiment with my old cases.
If you have reloaded shotshells, then you probably know that when using a brass case and normal powder loads the case will last “forever”. Which makes up for the added skill and effort in loading them.
What we will be doing today is to show how we made .410 brass from a .303 British case.
.444 marlin and 9.3x74R brass can also be used.
I will admit, I got this idea from the End Times Report. This was not the easiest project I have attempted. It was harder than it seemed when I read it.
They did briefly mention that while the dies used to form the cases were the same, the heads are a different size.
The .303 brass did fit in the chamber. However, the chamber did not close properly (without slamming it shut). Additionally, the brass did not extract properly.
I did find another resource at Surplusfrearm.com that explained what I needed to do to remedy that problem. Later, I will cut the heads down before I go shoot these shotshells.
But the endtimes report system did work, and it really wasn’t that hard.
First Your Should Take a .303 British Case and Anneal it.
Annealing brass is different than annealing steel. Brass gets work hardened. The more it is used the harder it gets. Annealing it by heating it makes it soft and easy to work. This is the opposite of steel,
To anneal I took a drill and using a screw and a socket I made a small fixture to hold the head of the cartridge. As the drill turned the case I heated the neck of the case using a torch. I heated the case up but took care not to heat the case head (for safety purpose you do not want to anneal the head). Once the case was annealed, I simply thumped it into a container of water.
Next I primed the cases.
At the range I used 11 grains of shotshell powder (blue dot, but I should have used red dot).
Then I added yellow grits (most use cream of wheat, but I had grits on hand.
I added a little bit of toilet paper to keep the grits from falling out (but I did not pack it).
After firing the cases were fire formed to the shotgun chamber and are ready to be cleaned and loaded as shot-shells.
It could have went better, and the video shows that not all the cases formed equally well.
Personally, I like knowing that this can work, but I think I will stick with the actual .410 brass cases.
The Parmesan cheese lid article was so popular I figured I would show you a similar tip for wide mouth jars. I present to you the mason jar salt lid tip.
The top of a 26 ounce salt container just happens to be the same size as a wide mouth mason jar.
The top and the bottom are formed, with the body being wound around them.
If you feel the container, you will feel a “lip”. If you carefully cut the top along this lip – you can press it down over the top of a wide mouth mason jar and screw the ring over it.
This isn’t as easy as some of the other lid tips I have shared with you, but it is a good way to store opened salt.
As I said in the video, I only use this mason jar salt lid for containers I have already opened – but it does make it easier to store salt without it getting moist and hardening.
I used this the other day after a snow storm – I used some stored salt in these containers to try to remove some stubborn ice spots since I took all my shovels to the land. I know that table salt is not the same as road salt, but the work similarly (just more expensively) – it worked though and I could get to work.
its cool, but the commenter had a filter, and therefore had no need.
Those are both valid concerns, but – at least in my situation (and probably many of yours) they aren’t accurate.
I know $279 seems expensive, but when looking at durable goods you have to balance cost with benefits. The price of the still is very competitive with filter systems like Berkeys – but unlike filters – they never clog, break, or need maintenance.
As a firearm instructor – I see students try to skimp on quality – and when they come to class with cheap guns trying to save a few dollars on guns and end up with malfunctions and problems – until they end up buying quality the second time.
I would not expect anyone to only have one piece of equipment for such a vital need. At my house we have stored water, multiple chemical purification means, filters, and the materials to make filters. But each has its own pros and cons.
Distillation takes energy, but it its 100% effective. Filters can clog, chemicals don’t work on toxins, and sodis doesn’t work on chemicals.
In the video below we purify salt water- filters won’t work on chemicals in solution – so salt water will be a problem if filters are your only means of water purification.
The 
