Day: August 22, 2007

Note from JWR:

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How to Make Old Fashioned Homemade Soap (Part 3 of 3), by Grandpappy

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: How to Render (Melt) Animal Fat: Beef fat is called tallow and pig fat is called lard. Poultry fat is too soft to be used by itself, but it may be used in a ratio of about 10% with tallow or a tallow-lard combination. Bear fat may also be used but it must be melted (rendered) quickly after the bear has been killed because bear fat will quickly become rancid. You may also use the fat from farm animals such as sheep or goats, and a variety of wild animals, such as beaver, opossum, raccoon, and groundhog. If …


Letter Re: Advice on Construction a Hiding Place for Precious Metals in a Home

Jim, After being scared Schumerless by the potential US economy meltdown and reading various related posts on SurvivalBlog, I finally took the plunge and purchased some junk silver coins. Since I plan to store these at home rather than a bank safe deposit box (because of potential accessibility problems), would you please recommend a strategy for storage. I’m assuming a small, somewhat hidden, safe bolted to the floor/wall would be reasonable. Any recommendations? Thanks, – Russ S. JWR Replies: Unless you already own a large home vault–such as a gun vault–I recommend that you construct one or more secret caches …


Odds ‘n Sods:

The next WRSA shoot is in Douglas,Wyoming, this weekend (August 25-26.). Don’t miss this opportunity for some great rifle training at a very reasonable price!   o o o Frequent content contributor DAV mentioned this article: Panic in U.S. money markets! by Marty Weiss and Mike Larson.    o o o We read that Counrtywide Home Loans is having “difficulties.” I predict that lots of other home mortgage lenders will face similar “difficulties” in the near future. In a year, many of them will be history. As I’ve said before, the only folks in the real estate industry that hat …