This common Duct Tape Keychain tip is well known among backpackers. If wrap some duct tape around a water bottle or lighter you will always have a couple feet readily available for quick repairs.
I Went One Step Farther
In the video below I show some wrapped around a small disposable lighter, but taking the concept one step farther I took an old ink pin that was no longer serviceable and cut the ends off with a pipe cutter.
This left me a hollow tube as long as the roll of tape was wide.
I then wrapped about 4 feet of tape around the tube – in essence creating a mini-roll of black duct tape.
I then untied my monkey fist from my key-chain and threaded the tube along the length of paracord.
When I retied it, I now have a captive roll of tape that is always with me.
It takes no extra space, and adds very little weight.
I like it, and I hope it is useful to you. Until I went back to work at the prison and had to significantly alter my EDC for the correction environment I carried this ring daily for years. Having the tape on your person leads you to have need for it more than you would think.
I want to take a couple minutes to show you a redundant fire starting method that is cheap, tiny, and easy. We are going to make a DIY Keychain Ferrocerium Rod using welder striking tips.
If you are a welder, plumber, or anyone who uses torches, you are no doubt familiar with friction sparkers. They are used to light propane or acetylene torches.
What makes the sparkers work are small ferrocerium rods that are held in a small threaded brass fitting. These rods are replaceable. Normally when you buy a sparker you get 5 or 6 of them in the package.
I went to Wal-Mart and bought a new torch sparker for about $5.00. Next, I then put one of the replacement tips in my drill press and drilled it out with a small drill bit.
The fitting was brass. Drilling it out was not hard at all.
I then threaded it on my keychain.
It weights fractions of an ounce – only a couple of grains (4,000 grains to a pound) and is tiny enough not to get in the way.
But now I have a waterproof, EMP proof, never run out of gas way to get a spark under almost any condition.
As the wife and I go to the farm we will have to rough it until I get some infrastructure built. For me, natural morning tasks can be done behind a tree. However, not only is Genny more civilized, she does not have a camping background.
To be nice to her I decided to make her a camping toilet. Hopefully, that would make her feel a little more comfortable. Note, I don;t want her TOO comfortable or it would take a longer time to get her to let spend money to build.
When I was in the Marines, we has a metal folding chair that our welder cut a hole in the seat before mounting a toilet seat to. We kept on the back deck of out M88A1 and when out in the field it was easy to set up.
I don’t want to cut up my folding chairs. However, I do have some milk crates.
Milk crates, incidentally, fit over a 5 gallon bucket.
By using a bucket under the toilet it allows me to pack the waste home and dispose of in our septic system. However, in a grid down situation, I could empty it into a deep hole away from any water sources.
How I Made a Milk Crate Toilet Seat
I bought a new wooden toilet seat for $5.00.
The angle of the brackets did not allow me to mount it directly to the milk crate without modification. I unscrewed the brackets from the seat.
I screwed a 1×2 wood strip to one side of the bottom (soon to be top) of the crate. This will eventually be were the bracket is screwed to.
I placed the seat on the crate and adjusted it to where I wanted. Next, I drilled and countersunk 4 holes in the seat. Then I used my reciprocating saw to cut out a hole.
Using some large washers and the bolts, I bolted the seat to the crate.
I then reattached the bracket to the seat lid, and screwed the bracket into the wood strip I attached to the crate earlier.
The plan is to set the crate on some bricks to both raise it to a comfortable level, as well as to keep the crate from completely covering the bucket, as that would make it more difficult to remove (last thing I want is to fight with a sloshing bucket of poop)…
Hopefully this little project will make my wife’s camping experience a little easier, and that you can find a way to adapt this idea to you bug out/SHTF/Camping needs.
Several years ago I tried out Dave Canterbury’s sling bow. It was fun and I saw that it had potential, Unfortunately, arrows are expensive. The short arrows I bought just did not develop enough energy to be useful.
I decided to look into making my own arrows. Arrow-making has obviously been around a long time. So it is a pretty developed science. Feathers arraigned in a 3 feather system are the most common. However, some use 2 or 4 feathered fletching systems. Additionally plastic vanes are available commercially.
In today’s article we are going to go “mad max” and create Duct Tape Arrow Fletching.
The Prepper MacGyver’s Most Common Resource is Duct Tape.
The great thing about duct tape is that is common, cheap, is not too stiff so that it can bend as it comes in contact with the bow, but when doubled up is stiff enough to direct the arrow in flight.
To make fletching simply cut three bits of tape about six inches long.
Pick up one piece and bend it lengthwise to form a “U” with the sticky side outwards. The base of this “U” is stuck lengthwise along the shaft – in other words (and the video will help) the middle of the tape is stuck to 1/3 of the diameter of the shaft with the two ends flopping free.
Now pick up the second piece and bend it like the first one. This one will be stuck in position a third of the way around the shaft from the first one, while the first bit of tape is still bent in the “U” position to keep it out of the way. You do not want the two pieces of tape to stick together until you get everything situated. (I find that clipping the loose ends of the first piece of tape together keeps them out of the way.
Once you feel that the two pieces of tape are sitting in the right position, you can allow the two adjacent wings of tape to stick to each other, forming the first complete vane.
Mold the tape against the shaft to get it to stick well. The two bits of tape will sometimes stick without being exactly in the right position thus skewing the vane or making it lumpy.
Apply the third piece of tape is applied in a similar manner.
Tips for Duct Tape Fletching
A challenge with this tape fletching is to get three flat and evenly spaced vanes.
Another problem is to end up with the vanes where you want them in relation to your nock so that you get the conventional “cock and hen feather” configuration with the cock feather at right angles to the plane of the nock.
Once you have the tape into place, you can trim the vanes with sharp scissors.
Keep the vanes tapering down to nothing at the leading end so that they ride nicely past the bow and your bow hand.
Keep the vanes as narrow as possible and make the taper as long as possible.
You can also apply a tight wrap of soft insulation tape over the very front end of these plastic vanes to stop them catching and pulling away.
Obviously this won’t give you a good a result as using proper fletching and a jig like the one below, but it is serviceable and just the thing to use if your using a homemade PVC bow (more on that later).
As we test our 72 hour kits and bug out bags, I find that I am very good at anticipating the big stuff (like how to deal with gunshot wounds and catastrophic tornado damage), but not so good at the little stuff (like screaming kids and stressed out wives).
But since it is all important and I am constantly looking for new ideas. I want to either prevent disasters or make life better after them. So I am always finding neat things.
Today’s dice tip post came from an idea I found on a teacher’s blog. The site is called Cardigans and Curriculum. If find that homeschooling moms, teachers, arty folks all have some great ideas that readily translate to the frugal prepper’s needs.
Anyway, here’s the problem….
When testing out our kits I find that while nobody is hungry, cold, or wet, everybody is bored out of their mind. During the first test cycle I fixed that by throwing in a deck of poker or Uno cards in every kit. However that gets old pretty quick also.
On the Cardigan’s site the author showed how she put some dice is an small Tupperware container. This is used it to both keep the dice from being lost, but also as a permanent dice cup. I know when playing games like sorry with overenthusiastic kids dice seem to get thrown all over the room.
By having the dice contained in a see through plastic container they stay in one place and it really prevents tantrums and problems.
Once set of dice can be used to play many games, and takes up very little space.
Of course, if you don’t need this in your emergency kit, it would work great while traveling. Alternatively, you could put this with your board games just to keep the dice from getting lost.
Several years ago I tried out 
As we test our 72 hour kits and bug out bags, I find that I am very good at anticipating the big stuff (like how to deal with gunshot wounds and catastrophic tornado damage), but not so good at the little stuff (like screaming kids and stressed out wives).