Home Front: Pot Belly Stove restoration

One of the small victories I had in my separation of assets proceedings was to gain custody of the dismantled, rusted and pieces-missing iron pot-belly stove. I lugged it back from the house in the hills where Triceratops Girl lives, and back to my place by the bay. When I first moved into the house in the hills I was delighted to find the stove in the midden-heap of a woodpile on the property, and dug around to find as many of its parts as I could in the leaf-litter, mulch and dirt. It turned out to be missing the top pot-lid cover, and the internal base, and possibly an ash catcher, as well as the chimney pipe.

The first problem with restoring it were the bolts that were to hold the "chest" the the "belly" parts. These had rusted solid, the nuts on either side all but fused to the metal of the bolts. I hit these with lots of silicone spray, and set at them with adjustable spanner and pliers, until i was able to shift them within the bolt-holes.

They wouldn't come free, hoverer, so I applied the NASA technique of percussive maintenance and hammered the bolts free of their heavily rusted nuts. This allowed the "belly" and "chest" to sit flush once again, for the first time in a long time I expect. The door moves freely and latches happily, giving a good seal, so I didn't feel the need to do any adjustments to it. The "lid" piece was missing its "pot-lid plate", which I will endeavor to replace with a close fitting disk of steel at some stage, if I can't find a more original piece of stove-lid iron. In the mean time, an old baking tray closed the hole for firing-up purposes. You can see there is a crack in the iron at the base of the stove-pipe, which leaks a little smoke. Perhaps brazing could patch that, we'll see. Using materials on hand, (baby-food tins and some coat-hanger wire) I fashioned a rude chimney,

A second round baking tray was sacrificed to close the bottom of the "belly" enabling a fire to be built within, and given the rough-fit, also acted to ventilate the stove, giving it good clean burning capability, without raining ash, embers or sparks onto the chopped wood stored below, between the "legs".

All in all I was very happy with the salvage, rebuilding and cobbled together spare parts that I used to turn a pile of rusted metal parts into a functional, cheerful and rugged wood-burning stove that can warm and cook for my family, if ever the electrical and/or natural gas grids should fail. It is also small enough (and nests) that it could conceivable be taken along for long-stay outdoors adventures.

DENIED: Wish-Lust: Gerber Kick Axe

One of my readers brought to my attention a folding axe, purported to be a Gerber product on another blog, and it seemed right up my alley so I went on over and looked it up. Fun blog, I seem some cool parallels in our coverage and interests (well done you Undead Gear guys!)

I wanted to get my hands on this cool piece of kit, but checking Gerber's website I hadn't been able to find it, and the link included in that article defaults to the Gerber Gear homepage. SO I contacted their sales reps:

I asked if they had any publicity or product information on the Kick Axe, telling them I would be delighted to hear more about this product, it looks ideal for me, my blog and my readers.

Here's the reply....

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Thank you for contacting Gerber Blades and your interest in the Kick Axe.  The Kick Axe was announced for release in 2009 and due to a number of concerns was not released.  Production of this product has been cancelled indefinitely.

We appreciate your interest in our products and invite you to view our website at www.gerbergear.com to see our current product offerings.

We apologize for any inconvenience.

Sincerely,

Donda Burnett

Consumer Services Supervisor | Gerber





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So, a sad outcome, but it goes to show, always good to get good up-to-date intel, and for the best, go to the source!

Sneak Preview: Wish Lust gratification

Oh yes. Arrived this morning to guffaws and evil chuckles.

Home Front: Vegie Garden update

Perhaps I am overly proud of my little veggie patches, but it's something I've always enjoyed doing, and for as long as I've lived in places with enough plot to plant in, I've done so. Let me be the first to admit, I'm not very good with germinating seeds and keeping them alive to "seedling" size, although I planted sunflowers for Triceratops Girl last season which grew happily.
Here's an update on our main vegetable patch (as opposed to the  more herb-filled bed).

This first shot is of the "first quadrant" and hosts three variates of tomato, two of chilli and three garlic plants.The stringy grass is pervasive and a real pest to remove, it roots deeply.


This is the second quadrant, recently weeded, and plays host to green-red kale (the big leafy thing), reclaimed leeks (the bright green on the left, which sprouted from the discarded cut rooty-ends of supermarket leeks. The two big green shoots on the center left edge are more garlic, sprouted from gloves that germinated on our shelf. The long spindly looking thing is the remains of the broccoli that went to seed. I wanted to let it go full term so we could maximize our chance of getting a second season out of it. Some potatoes can be seen poking through the top right of the shot. Need to replant those to save them from going green.

Quadrant three hosts celery (top right), which is shooting up, spring onions shoots through the middle and matured, "gone-to-seed" plants along the top of the frame, and spinach all along the right of the shot. Retired kendo shinai slats make great garden stakes. Recycled futon planks make my walkways. More potatoes throughout. They are invasive but a welcome find when they aren't stifling other crops. The pumpkin is the same way.

Here are the new additions. two punnets of sweet corn (NOT popcorn variety like the last rather unsatisfying crop we grew, accidentally). I also planted basil, in between the rows of corn.In the process I dug in a bucket of chicken poop and old nest-hay, harvested from under the chookens. Digging it all in gave me the ability to clear out a bunch of grass-toots, and other detritus, as well as find and re-home some more potatoes.

I'm really hopeful that these two will be good "companion-plants"  and I may even rish another set of beans, once the corn-stalks mature. So far we've had zero success with beans.

Review: Swiss Army Chocolate

Here is a fun one, a way to re-engergise your apocalypse. I've had a variety of Swiss Army Knives over the years, from the Classic, to the Camper and all the way up to the hefty Swiss-Champ. These were my first knives, and my first survival item. However, I was gleefully surprised to see something else on a shop counter recently:

Here is the Swiss Army Chocolate (not by Victorinox), and Here's what I think about it: Chocolate rations go back a really long way but as the record shows, they weren't designed to be yummy, but as "emergency energy bars". Well, fortunately, times have changed, and these bars are in fact delicious. I picked up a dark, and a milk chocolate version and you can see the "Nutritional Information" listed here for both. Important to note is the 1100kJand 1080kJ energy per 50g listed for both, which is just a shade under the 1116kJ per 50g in the WW2 Logan Bar or D Ration. 



These bars however are also caffeinated, with 45mg and 30mg in the dark and milk varieties.  All the better to see you through when a burst of awareness and to shake off fatigue when it starts to set in. These bars also feature crushed conrflakes, which adds a pleasing and interesting texture.

Having a long lasting energy food source like chocolate bars is an ideal emergency backup, easy to store, long lasting (these bars have a "best-before" of just about two years from date of purchase). The slim size of the bar means I can slip them into my Bullock Echo daypack without even noticing the added bulk.

Each of the bars is divided into six pieces and sealed into an easy-tear plastic pouch withing the paper wrapper. This would hopefully keep the bar water-proofed (remembering that storm and flood-water is likely contaminated, and the CDC recommend caution), I'm delighted to have come across these bars, and I think I will stock up on them, because, who knows ....

Review: EcoFuture - BioDefence Athletic Foot Shield

So a while back I showed you the alcohol free HandSan spray that I was sent samples of, and from the same folks at EcoFuture, here is an equally useful product, which may touch the heartstrings of some of you. This is the BioDefence Athletic Foot Shield, which is a food-grade organic-compound based, alcohol-free prophylactic spray for feet. As someone who wears boots all day, pretty much every day (I don't actually have any shoes that aren't boots anymore, apart from my sandals) I occasionally suffer from athletes foot which is itchy, annoying and unsightly. In its extreme stages it is debilitating.

This is NOT something you want in a survival situation, especially if you have been spending a lot of time in your boots, trudging through mud and wading through dirty water. My last big bout was following the Tough Mudder, and this product really sped up my recovery, I feel. The active ingredients are a mixture of organically derived materials including: flavonoids such as the Vitamins A, B3, C, D, D3, and K2 and Ubiquinol . More details can be found on their product data sheet including bactericidal and fungicidal testing  performed.

They key thing however, is that it a topical spray, applied before booting-up, that acts to give your beleaguered skin a fighting chance.

Home Front: Walled security?

One of the thoughts coming on from thinking about the Urban Preppers seen on National Geographic's "Doomsday Preppers" is what to do to prepare in the event of "bugging-in" to secure and if needs be, fortify one's location.This is our little house. I've shown this shot before. We have this little rendered weatherboard place, wide window frontage, white picket fence. The3re is a bolted wooden gate for access down the side of the house to the back yard, and along the street-facing side of the street, a single window with wooden shutters. The back yard has a falling apart wooden fence and a steel rolling gate set in concrete.

So, being the consummate scavenger and opportunist that I am, I have always kept my eyes open for alternate dwellings, should disaster strike, and we decide to "bug-in" locally, but not necessarily at our place. On a local street is this promising fenceline. Note the bluestone (basalt) fence abutting a red-brick type fence. Great coverage and security you may think.

The problem lies here. The edge of the solid frontage is another wood plank fence. There goes your unassailable castle-wall... Still, the height of the stone frontage, and the coverage of the treeline give you an "out-of-sight" advantage that our white picket fence does not.

Even the stone wall wont stop even the most average able bodied intruder, but it does at least present a physical barrier, and shelter from that front.

Just down the road a bit further is this gated and walled place, again, some gate is better than none, and the high stone walls gives that "out-of-sight" protection too. The gate is a bit of a problem in that regards, again, but some hastily applied scrim or boarding would solve that. 


Again, the problem is the side fence. You can just make out here, another wood-plank fence, but again, behind a dividing and obscuring tree-line.

So, what to do? well, having lived in hurricane affected Houston I have witnessed what storms like that can do to glass frontages like I have, so, for non-society breakdown triage, it will be boarding and taping of our place, and perhaps "bugging-in", to abandoned local places we are still scoping out.