Having to stop in the middle of a project to go to the hardware store for something is extremely annoying to me. For one it wastes time; two it is an insulting indication that I have a hole in my preps. Post-TEOTWAWKI, going to the hardware store, or any other store for something you forgot will probably not be an option. Having stuff on hand in my stores for any project is important to me as a gauge for my level of preparedness. Recently, while building stalls and pens inside my barn, I was enlightened to another annoying lesson, that quality is sometimes much better than quantity.
I’m no stranger to prepping, nor am I a stranger to the value of a quality item. I’m well aware of the sayings “buy once, cry once” and “one is none and two is one”. When making prepper purchases, there is almost always a compromise between quality and price. For example, say you wanted to put away 200 cans of soup. Progresso soup, which might taste better than your local store brand will cost more but your local store brand is may not taste as good as Progresso but is probably cheaper, thus the comprise on quality allows you to get quantity and stay within your budget. We all do this, it might be subconsciously, but we do it, unless you are making a seven-figure income.
There are probably things we all won’t consider compromising on, such as firearms and knives or other items that our lives may depend on. But what about common consumable items such as sandpaper, paintbrushes, blue tarps, wire brushes, and driver bits? Over the years, I’ve come accustomed to buying many of my consumables at Harbor Freight. Do I really need to spend $10 on a paint brush to slap paint on a storage shed? So, buying items at stores like Harbor Freight allows me to buy quantities of items at a reasonable price. That theory works with paint brushes but perhaps not everything.
Around the homestead, I use Black and Decker 20-volt cordless tools. Until I was building pens and stalls in the barn these Back and Decker tools and the off-brand accessories, I have such as, drill bits, driver bits, a saw blade did the job just fine. So, the Amish crew who rehabilitated our barn put up 2x4s as temporary bracing and left it up when they were done. I went to take it down and the Black and Decker just didn’t have the torque to move the T30 screw. Off to the neighbor’s to borrow his DeWalt 60volt cordless. That situation has me thinking, even though my Black and Decker cordless tools meet my needs today, will they meet my needs post-TEOTWAWKI? The jury is still out on that one.
Then I started to drive 3-1/2” construction screws and I was stripping driver bits and actually broke one in half. After about 4 trips to the workshop to get a new bit, I had had enough, stopped what I was doing and went down to the hardware store and bought a dozen DeWalt driver bits in the style I needed. Those cheap bit drivers that normally did the job were a dismal failure. But my disappointments didn’t end with bit drivers. I snapped off several drill bits as well. A good thing I bought a dozen of them, since they break so easily. My next disappointment was a shock. I was putting in several lag screws and I ended up snapping off 4 heads of the lag screws. Those lag screws weren’t from harbor freight but were Hillman. Lucky for me I was able to move the bracket I was trying to install using the lag screws to another location.
During a non-disaster time period, these happenings were just annoying lessons. If these lessons had happened post-TEOTWAWKI, the 24 #2 Phillips head bit drivers that break with ease could have put me in a real bind. So how do we make sure we are not compromising too much to the point that we are unknowingly putting our post-TEOTWAWKI life at risk?
What good is a rifle that you buy if you never take it out of the box and shoot it? It will probably go bang but will it hit where you are aiming? How fast can you change a magazine or clear a jam? You will never know if you don’t take it out of the box and use it. Years back my wife bought me a set of Craftsman cordless tools, and recently the batteries had failed to maintain a good charge. I had already bought some Black and Decker cordless tools but I didn’t have a Black and Decker reciprocating saw. To standardize my batteries, it just made more sense to buy a Black and Decker cordless reciprocating saw than to buy new batteries for the craftsman tools. I knew I was going to need the saw for cutting the legs of the old heating oil tank that were cemented into the basement floor. I ordered the new saw on-line and it was delivered.
Since our Summers are short, I don’t like to do indoor projects in the Summer unless it is raining. So, I didn’t use the new saw right away. On a rainy weekend, I got one of my brothers to come over to help me wrestle the tank out of the basement. I got my brand-new saw and went to work cutting the first leg flush to the cement floor. I stopped to reposition and pressed the trigger and all I heard was what sounded like a makeshift Maraca. The saw worked for about 45 seconds. What if I bought that saw for purely post-TEOTWAWKI use and just put it up on the shelf when I bought it? I know many people who buy their prepping gear and never take it out of the packaging. To each their own, but I would not be able to get a new saw if I had waited until the end of the world to use it for the first time. So, the point of this little story is to make sure your stuff works, test your stuff under real-world conditions. This is one of the only true ways to determine if what you are buying is of the needed quality for survival post-TEOTWAWKI.
Just because a brand has a good reputation doesn’t mean that their products are immune to problems. If you are buying a box of screws, take a few out of each pack to make sure they are of the quality you are expecting out of them. More than likely you will find out they perform as expected but if they don’t, you can return them and pick another brand to stockpile. This may sound trivial but last spring I bought 3 rolls of black plastic sheeting for the garden. As I was cutting holes in the plastic for my plants, I got about halfway into the roll and the plastic was cut right down the middle. I unroll the rest to make sure it wasn’t just a temporary flaw in the plastic. The cut was through the rest of the roll. After a few choice words I opened the next roll and it had the same defect. Off to the hardware store with all the plastic including the unopened roll. I got my money back and went and bought another brand but what if I had bought that to just put in my stockpile?
I know someone who loves to stock up on canned goods from Aldi’s grocery store. The problem is they didn’t always try it before they bought 50 to 100 cans of something. My rule is: Buy one can, if we like it then go back and stock up. Unless we try or spot check our new preps how are we to know they are quality we perceive? Consider the Military with its vast stores of everything, they have a program to spot check various items to ensure they are maintaining their quality in storage. This is a process that Preppers should establish for their stored goods and equipment.
With so many options for various tools and supplies available to us and slick marketing campaigns where does one start when wanting to make good purchases? I found a YouTube channel called Project Farm. It has a little over 2 million subscribers and hundreds of videos pitting various brands of tools and shop supplies against one another to see which of the tested items is the “best” for the money. Classics, such as which duct tape is the “best” or which penetrating oil is the “best” are ones that come to mind. Project Farm comes up with some very interesting ways to test the performance and durability of the tested items. The Project Farm even has an engine with a see-through cylinder head that is used for many of the torture test.
As far as I know. the Project Farm does not receive any free products for test, but instead they buy all their samples. Videos are done according to suggestions from the viewers. They even have a video on which Star (torx) bit is the best. The brands tested run the gamut from Harbor Freight to Milwaukee. What I like best about the video compassions is that you get to see the cost and performance and can decide for yourself the level of quality/price that will suit your needs and wallet. The “Name” brands are not always the “best”. I would suggest, that before you buy tools or shop supplies, you look at the Project Farm video list first to see if they have product comparisons for item(s) that you may be interested in. At the very least it may narrow down the brands you want to test for yourself.
I would caution everyone to check items that you have in storage or that you put in storage in the future. If you don’t know the real quality of the item, what you may be storing is a false sense of security.