Category: review

Hi everyone……

Work has been keeping me busy, so I haven’t even thought of posting. Now that I have a new position in the company and am no longer head of the Maintenance department and the sole Parts person I can post occasionally again. Yay!

Lately I’ve been keeping my eye out for a grain mill, one of those things that takes wheat and turns it into flour and things like that. I had been holding out for the Cadillac of grain mills, a Diamant D525. Turns out I really don’t like the thought of spending around $1000 on a mill, go figure.  So, my next pick was a Quaker City F4, with a retail of around $250 for the base raw cast iron model,  or a little more for the fancy TIN coated one that makes clean up easier. I just happened to be looking on E-bey for some blacksmithing stuff and saw a QC F4 for sale, $75 as is missing parts. The kicker was, it was the TIN coated fancy one. The ‘Buy It Now’ button was firmly smacked and it was in my mailbox a few days later.

 

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It is in great shape except the missing clamp to hold it down and a few bolts and wingnuts. I contacted Quaker City about replacement parts, clamp $75 and bolts a few bucks apiece. Nope, not going to pay that price. I have a machine shop in the garage for goodness sake, no way I’m paying $75 for a damn C-clamp with a hole in it. Off I went to OSH and picked up a 4″ C-clamp, some STAINLESS bolts and wingnuts, and a can of semi-gloss black spray paint. Total cost, $12 freaking dollars.

Score.

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Take a look, there is almost no wear on the grinding plates. And… they are metal plates. None of the stone ground, wear your teeth out eating fine rock crap for me. The light surface rust will go away with the first milling, I’ll run a small bit of wheat through it and toss the results from the first rough grind.

Ok, time to modify the C-Clamp. A little work with the hack saw, drill press, and belt sander was all it took. About 20 minutes total while listening to Pandora and this is the result.

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Fits like a glove and holds the mill tight and true. Spray Bomb love made it look good.

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Put it all together after a thorough bath in suds, bleach, and hot water and ended up with this beauty for under $90 and a little attention.

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And for those of you who know me, no, I didn’t wait more than 10 minutes to see how well it worked. I’m really happy with it. The grinding plates are like brand new and haven’t even worn in the spacing bosses yet, so I expected some course flour. Turns out even with the ‘virgin’ plates it turned out really nice wheat flour that made some really good bread. A little more than 3 cups of flour took about 15 minutes since I was playing with the settings. Figure I could do it under 10 minutes once I get a feel for the mill.

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Sorry, no pics of the bread. It and a can of Red Feather butter disappeared before I even thought about taking pics.    😉

HTI Hydropack

This weekend I went up and took a Wild Edibles class from Hammer Stryke Self-Reliance in Mariposa, Ca. (I’ll do a separate post on the class later) After the class I was talking with the instructor about water when you are out in areas not equipped with a faucet. I mentioned that I was a big fan of HTI Hydropacks, and no one else had heard of them before. I first heard about HTI products right after (or during) hurricane Katrina, there was talk of using hydropacks in the nasty water in the area, and that the technology worked well. For those that want to skip the rest of what I have to say and check out the company and product, link here.

Basically, the hydropack is a sports drink mix inside of a reverse osmosis filter pouch. The pack comes with filter/mix and a straw. Take the filter/mix and throw it into water (lake/stream/puddle) and wait while the reverse osmosis action sucks up moisture making a nice flavored drink in the pouch for you. Once you have the pouch filled, clean of a section of the pouch and punch the straw through just like a kids drink. For more detailed instructions the link above has even more links to pdf brochures.

A few personal notes on the hydropacks. They say 10-12 hours to fill a pack, but the most I’ve ever seen one of mine take is 5 hours. Granted I usually throw a couple in whatever water is nearby when I set up camp for the night and retrieve them in the morning before packing up and moving on the next morning. Also, the packs are fairly resilient. I have had them in my backpack through a couple camping trips, leaving them packed in the bag between trips, and haven’t had one fail yet. Lastly, they are LIGHT! The dry packs are barely noticeable weight, so packing a few just for backup is a no-brainer.

UV Paqlites

I was reading through some of my favorite webs the other day and came across SurvivalBlogs review of UV Paqlites . I was intrigued since I have a thing for tritium markers, and make a few things in the machine shop for personal use with them. After reading the review I went to  UV Paqlites and ordered the Scout Pack, which is kind of a Paqlite sample kit. I like light sources that don’t require batteries, don’t wear out over time, aren’t one time use, and are reusable. There have been a few times camping and hiking where I have run out batteries, snapped a chem-light that was old, or for whatever reason just didnt have any light left, and tritium has always been my backup. The problem is tritium is expensive, its not always that bright, its works on radioactive beta decay, and it dims over time. Paqlites, according to their website, are just light absorbing crystals so one advantage is no radioactive particles bombarding my nuts if I carry one in my front pocket. Yay!

I received my package from the manufacturer in a couple days and have been playing with the lights all weekend. They seem to recharge their radiance very quickly, just a few minutes in sunlight or indoor lighting will make them glow brightly for a few minutes. Initially they glow bright enough the glow can be seen easily in a well lit room. After a few minutes the glow fades to very dim but consistent level. After reading the review in SurvivalBlog, I knew not to expect them to light up bright enough to see distant objects, basically being manufactured as a marker to locate stuff in the dark. I was pleasantly surprised to find that if my eyes were adjusted to the dark, I could easily navigate around an average sized room with the small Paqlite at 3am.

I’m going to continue using the contents of my scout kit and evaluating them for future use. As it stand now I’m impressed with them enough I will be placing an order for a few more scout kits to give to family to put in their kits for times when the power is out. I’ll write more about them once they have gone on a few outings and I have more experience with them.