Dear Mr. Rawles,
I just began reading your second novel and in some ways find it even more fun to watch the beginning of the action knowing some of what lies in store in terms of “future history.”
But the purpose of my e-mail today is to describe a simple container I’ve been making to transport a variety of items including doses of medicine and fire starters. As many of your readers know cotton balls saturated with vaseline make really good fire starters. But how to transport them and keep them fresh? This is my method: Get two plastic 20 ounce plastic sodapop bottles and save their caps. Using a bandsaw or a hacksaw cut the bottles right under the plastic lip (right below the end of the screw threads). Use a sander or sandpaper to smooth the bottom flat. Then use Gorilla Glue to glue two of these lips together. Use a vise or weight to keep them together until the glue sets. When you put the caps back on you have a container large enough for three cotton balls that is small, light-weight and water-tight. You can use PVC cement instead of Gorilla Glue but I’ve had less success making it completely water tight because of the small gaps left from sanding.
I have also used larger bottles from Gatorade to make a larger version of these mini-caches.
Respectfully, – Bruce S.