Category: Review

Scot’s Product Review: Malkoff

Thanks to all of the folks who are writing me about products to review. It really helps. One common thread in several letters is to test affordable stuff, and that’s going to be a priority. Please keep the ideas coming! They really help. Malkoff might be another word for light. It is all thanks to Gene Malkoff going out one night to protect his chickens and realizing he needed a better flashlight. The Enterprise, Alabama man tried an LED light but just wasn’t happy with it. He decided he could come up with something better. After some hard work, he …


Scot’s Product Review: Magazine Loaders

I have long sneered at magazine loaders. I’m lucky to be strong enough to load magazines myself, and frankly, most of the loaders I’ve tried haven’t worked well enough to make me feel they offered any benefits. I have a nine-year-old son, though, and he simply doesn’t have the strength or dexterity I have and has problems getting magazines loaded. I was getting tired of loading them for him and felt that my doing his work for him was a bad example. I, therefore, became receptive to the concept but had no idea if there are any magazine loaders that …


Letter Re: Harvest Right Freeze Dryer

Dear Mr. Latimer, Thank you for your in-depth review of the Harvest Right Freeze Dryer. You mentioned in Part 3, Operation, Section 6 “Working with Trays”, first sentence that you “used both the aluminum trays and the stainless steel ones”. I checked the Harvest Right website and found no stainless trays available for purchase and I have only the aluminum trays. My question is: Where did you get the Stainless Steel Trays? I have the Harvest Right unit prior to your review and would like to purchase the stainless tray for my unit as well. I don’t like aluminum for …


Scot’s Product Review: JM Custom Kydex

I have probably mentioned more than once how much I like leather holsters. I know I have mentioned how much I sweat in the summer in my hot, muggy climate. All that sweat does bad things to leather holsters, and then it soaks through and does bad things to pistols. I finally decided it was time to reconsider my prejudices against synthetics for something immune to sweat to use during the summer. These days, that pretty much means Kydex. My preferred carry, by the way, is a strong side, inside the waistband (IWB) holster, and I usually carry a 1911 …


Scot’s Product Review: Laser Ammo Shooting Practice System

I have mixed feelings about electronics and prepping. There is always that sense of dread that someday I might not be able to get electricity to run electronics, plus there is the chance of an event that will disrupt them. On the other hand, electronics are extremely useful. I wouldn’t be able to get this article to you without them, for example. My compromise has been to try to avoid buying electronics that don’t fulfill some real purpose on the road to building a self-sufficient life for my family. One of the electronics items I’ve been wanting to try has …


Book Review: Journal Of A Deserter

Author: Jacob Maccabee Copyright Date: 2014 Publisher: Xlibris LLC ISBN: 978-1-4931-5760-0 Amazon Link: Journal of a Deserter Audio, e-book or foreign translation available: No Suitable for children: No This is more a story of recovery than one of preparedness, but it does spend a bit of time on wilderness survival skills, and I expect many in the SurvivalBlog audience will appreciate the struggle. Besides that, depending on how the SHTF and what any given individual may experience, the recovery may need to be part of one’s life in the aftermath. It should also be noted that while not an autobiography, …


Scot’s Product Review: G-Code Holsters

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A friend told me about G-Code Holsters, when I was looking for a holster to use in “the bump in the night” kit I was putting together. I had settled on a belt, after trying several other setups, and I needed a holster for it. This is not for normal, concealed, everyday carry but rather something that I could quickly don in an emergency that would work with either my soft or hard body armor. One key element was to be able to get it on quickly, regardless of how I’m dressed. My normal carry is an inside the waist …


Three Letters Re: Ching and Rhodesian Slings

Scot, I wanted to thank you for your review of the Ching Sling on Survival Blog. Eric and I attended some classes together at Gunsite, and became friends. I was much saddened at his unexpected passing at WAY too young an age. Your comments brought back some fine memories and for that I thank you! I have a Ching sling on my hunting rifle and really like it. o o o Hello, The book mentioned, M/SGT James R. Owens’ book Leather Sling and Shooting Positions is also available in an updated PDF version on CD-rom from Mister Owens’ website : …


Scot’s product Review: Ching and Rhodesian Slings

I’m going to have to explain a few things before I can properly review today’s product, so please bear with me; I will get there! I’ve heard slings called the rifle’s equivalent of the pistol’s holster. It’s not a bad analogy, but that only speaks to carrying the rifle. The right type of sling can also improve one’s ability to get hits with the rifle. What most shooters use to carry the rifle is a simple strap that allows them to carry it over their shoulder. There are also the so-called tactical slings that also allow you to carry the …


Product Review: Harvest Right Freeze Dryer, by HJL – Part 3

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Note from the Manufacture Harvest Right has been very responsive to their customers feedback and, in fact, responded to the first two parts of this article with the following letter: Thank you for using the freeze dryer, and thank you for your article. Because of your thoughts, we have made the following modifications to our unit: We have changed the riveting of the tray holder assembly. It is now quite stable. We extended the length of the drain tube. We are also using shrink-wrapped solder connections instead of electrical tape. It is much faster and looks better. (We don’t know …


Scot’s Product Review: Officer Survival Initiative First Aid Materials

Officer Survival Initiative (OSI) says they are “a bunch of current and reformed medics, law enforcement, military, and general trigger puller types who want to help you come home at the end of the day.” That’s a great goal and one they are clearly advancing to. They have put a lot of energy into the law enforcement field, as the name implies, but they also make first aid stuff for outdoors folks and the prepping market. They were kind enough to let me look at some of their kits and modules. The Advantage II Personal Vehicle Aid Kit The first …


Letter Re: Grain Mills

Hugh, The author expressed little concern for his WonderMill’s tendency to heat the flour it milled, on the grounds that the flour was about to go into an oven anyway. This logic certainly makes sense; however, heated flour can be a problem in some cases. We once had a mill, whose brand I’ve forgotten, that heated its flour quite a bit. We make a fair bit of sourdough, and our starter quite noticeably failed to thrive when fed flour from this mill. Of course we let the flour cool before feeding, so latent heat wouldn’t kill the starter outright, but …


Scot’s Product Review: Grain Mills

Some call bread the staff of life. To make it you need flour, and that usually comes from wheat. Wheat is nutritious and can be turned into many tasty foods. Some argue that wheat made the original Old Testament cities in the Mideast possible, since it could be transported and stored so easily. Storage is of special import to a prepper, and many of us keep wheat as a key item in our long-term preparations. The part that we use is called the wheat berry. That’s the kernel. Most of the time, it is milled into flour. Keeping the kernels …


Product Review: Harvest Right Freeze Dryer – Part 1, by HJL

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I have to admit, I was excited when I was first contacted by Harvest Right. A freeze dryer in my own home? What a thought! This has been a dream of my family for a number of years. I have even played around with the idea of creating my own freeze dryer several times, but in the end, the work involved and the daily grind always won out. The Dream Our food preps have always had issues, with the solutions seeming just out of reach. When we first started, the preps simply meant two things– remodeling the pantry to hold …


Scot’s Product Review: Milt Sparks Holsters

In a way, I am reluctant to write about Milt Sparks as it will probably just make it harder the next time I need a holster, but my readers deserve to know, so here goes. Milt Sparks Holsters is named for its founder, Milt Sparks. Sparks began making holsters in the early days of competitive combat shooting in the 1960’s and 70’s. Magazine writer and founder of the International Practical Shooting Confederation, Lt. Colonel Jeff Cooper, among others, helped popularize Sparks’ work. What really made Sparks’ products so popular, though, is the quality of design and production. The only problem …