I recently got the opportunity to review a very interesting book from Kermit Jones Jr.
This military Chaplain and father of 4 young children needed to figure out how to introduce the concept of personal preparedness to his daughters without scaring.
In this book Kermit uses the old prepper analogy of prepared ants to explore the concepts of prepping through the life of one particularly smart ant named Pete.
In Pete’s travels he and his family decide they need to prepare and in a simplistic and non-judgmental way they store food, learn skills, and prepare for a variety of unknown and known disasters.
What I like most about the Prepper Pete series is the message. Prepper Pete says “Some people prepare because they are afraid. Our family doesn’t have to be afraid… because we are prepared!”
This is a fun way to introduce kids to the work of preparedness by showing them that preparedness is based out of common sense and love rather being a crack-pot thing to hide.
I have read this book to my Son, and I look forward to discussing it with him as he gets older, but right now all he wants to talk about is “me milk” and “down please”.
I want to not only talk about what a shot timer is and why you need to use one in your firearms training program. Additionally, I wanted to review and demonstrate the Pact III Club timer.
If you are already familiar with shot timers you can skip the introductory paragraphs.
A shot timer is a chronograph that measures elapsed time
What makes it of use is that instead of having a button to start and stop a shot timer responds to the pressure wave of a gunshot. Most of them have a countdown timer attached to a buzzer. This buzzer allows for solo training. You can activate the timer and then wait until it buzzes to begin firing.
I think shot timers are invaluable to good firearm skill advancement. They give the shooter a way to measure the second half of the accuracy/speed equation.
When working with shooters that are trying to increase their defensive capabilities with a pistol I like working with a 9 inch paper plate at 7 yards. We work on being able to quickly draw and put multiple rounds in the plate without missing. If the shooter’s target shows a tight accurate group then it is time to speed them up, if they miss the plate then they need to slow down.
A Timer is Objective
Having a shot timer lets the shooter get objective and measurable times. You can then compare them with past exercise times. It allows fact based observations. Being able to say “by changing my grip I shoot an average of .06 seconds faster” is more useful to a shooter than “this feels faster”.
To get full use you need to know the difference between split and par times.
Split time is the time between shots. This is useful if your exercise involves multiple rounds in a scenario.
Par time is total time, and is similar to the par at golf. If you set the device with a par of 7 seconds (which is a very respectable time for an el president drill) the buzzer will sound to let you start. Next then buzz will sound again at 7 seconds to let you know you hit the limit.
Timers, especially the Pact III are simple to use and only have a few buttons.
On this model you have four buttons; Go, Rvw (Review), and Up & Down arrows.
To use, simply press the go button and wait to hear the buzzer to initiate your training scenario.
If you look at the picture at the top of the article you will see the face of my Pact III timer.
At the upper left is the total number of shots fired in that string. You can see I fired 5 rounds.
The 41.16 is the total time measured to the hundredth of a second.
It is also the time that I fired my 5th shot.
At the bottom left, the .82 is the delay between the beep and my first shot.
Finally, the 39.43 is the split, the time between the 4th and the 5th shot.
Using the Review function will show you when every shot was fired. It will also show the splits between them.
In this case you can see that the delay between the fourth and fifth shot was almost 40 seconds. This left me with about one second to fire the first 4 shots.
Since you can also see it took me 8 tenths of a second to fire the first shot, the second, third and fourth shots were fired extremely fast.
You can correctly deduce from this, that I was just trying to make noise and was not firing very consistently or accurately…
The review button and the arrow keys to cycle through the shots. You can see the splits between each shot to get an exact picture of what happened.
In my opinion as a firearm instructor, I think that a shot timer is a vital piece of training gear. When used to evaluate your shooting and identify trends, progress and plateaus can make you a better shooter.
At around 125 dollars at Brownells. This piece of equipment can definitely make your training dollars more effective and help you become a better shooter.
To order a timer, or see one of the thousand of other great gun related items please visit Brownells from the link below.
Since wheat is such a large part of my food storage plan, I try to sprout it occasionally to keep my family accustomed to the taste and texture of different ways to eat bulk wheat.
One of the problems I have when I sprout is not straining the wheat properly and having a white mold grow in my sprouting jar.
When I saw a $5 Mason Jar Sprouting Lid on Amazon I thought I would try it.
This lid made sprouting using mason jars much easier – I could fill and drain the jar without having to take the lid off –
It was much simpler than my old method of using a piece of cheesecloth and a rubber band.
It is also easier to clean – and I imagine that it will last as long as I will.
For those that don’t want to use a store-bought solution – I imagine you could drill a bunch of 1/8 inch holes in a plastic mayonnaise jar lid.
Sprouting is a great way to get more nutrients and use out of seeds, and seeds are generally easier to store than many other foods, so I feel that this is a win.
However, if you don’t want to buy a lid like this, I think you could probably improvise a mason jar sprouting lid using a Parmesan cheese lid.
Since oxygen is one of the primary enemies of food storage, preppers, homesteaders, and those living frugally can all benefit having the ability to vacuum seal food. The problem for preppers is that most vacuum sealing options are electrically operated. For the frugal, the problem is that most systems use proprietary bags that are expensive. Homesteaders may have issues with the availability of bags – I know I tend to have a half empty roll of bags when I start to process meat.
A few months ago, while exploring the kick-starter website, I found a innovative device that solves all of these problems. I immediately sponsored the project, and asked the inventor, Dr. Cannon, to come on my podcast and explain his machine.
Last month I finally got his thiftyvac device in the mail, and while it was smaller than I had imagined (a good thing), it was every bit as useful as I had imagined.
Basically the thiftyvac is a fixture that turns a large ziplock bag into a vacuum chamber that allows the user to vacuum seal smaller ziplock bags sealed inside. This is useful because traditional electric powered sealers can only work with their proprietary bags that have tiny ridges molded into the plastic – use something smooth like mylar and they cannot pull a vacuum.
Since the bag is placed inside a chamber, as the air is sucked out of the chamber pressure is equal inside and immediately outside the bag so that even smooth bags can be emptied of air.
All you do after the vacuum process is complete is to press the inner Ziploc bag closed.
Let me tell you, I kick myself every time I see it, as it is so simple and elegant, I wish I had thought of it myself.
Dr. Cannon stayed with many commercially available parts both to keep prices low and to ensure reliability. One integral such part is the air pump – the thriftyvac includes a small hand powered pump that allows the device to be used without electrical power. I find that not only is the thriftyvac cheaper to use than my food-saver, it is smaller, and much easier to use.
What is even more impressive is that he did not stop there, Dr. Cannon also invented a new set of mason jar lid adapters, and an adapter to use the thriftyvac with commercial vacuum sealers for those that choose not to use the hand pump.
I am planning on experimenting with it more and see if I cannot use a mylar bag clamp and my 7mil mylar bags. I also want to see if I can use his pump instead of my break bleeder pump as I like using the mason jar adaptors I bought previously.
I haven’t received anything for this article, or the 5 star review I posted on Amazon – I bought my own thriftyvac. I just believe in the product, and think that it serves to solve a need that I have had for a longtime. Namely a cheap way to vacuum seal food and ammo when the power is out…
52 Prepper Projects is a book about self-reliance and the journey toward a more self-sufficient life.
The author, David Nash, has been a “prepper” his entire life, and has always tried to learn how to do things instead of searching out where to buy things.
This book is designed to start with simple projects and progress to more complex projects. The projects get better as the reader gains more skill and confidence.
Each project in this book can be completed with simple hand tools and many projects build upon tools and skills created in earlier projects.
The 52 Prepper Projects Book is full of projects like the ones in this site. Actually some of the projects are on this site. However, in the book they are better documented and arraigned in a manner that makes sense.
The Book Is Similar in Content to This Site
This book is a companion to the tngun website. I feel like the projects in the book are worth having on paper in the even the internet is ever throttled or shut down. At one time that idea seemed like a 1984 type conspiracy, but Google and other internet giants have been working to reduce this type of information on the web.
This is more likely to happen than most American’s think. Therefore, having paper copies of things you find important is becoming more vital every day.
Since wheat is such a large part of my food storage plan, I try to sprout it occasionally to keep my family accustomed to the taste and texture of different ways to eat bulk wheat.
Since oxygen is one of the primary enemies of food storage, preppers, homesteaders, and those living frugally can all benefit having the ability to vacuum seal food. The problem for preppers is that most vacuum sealing options are electrically operated. For the frugal, the problem is that most systems use proprietary bags that are expensive. Homesteaders may have issues with the availability of bags – I know I tend to have a half empty roll of bags when I start to process meat.
52 Prepper Projects is a book about self-reliance and the journey toward a more self-sufficient life.