Letter Re: Tire Spikes for Home Retreat Defense

Hello James,
In regards to the recent post toward driveway security strips, or "spike strips" I think of another possibility to the construction in using a 2×6. I would consider fabricating the base out of treated 3/4" plywood. Not only is this already somewhat camouflage, it will take the years of abuse that weather will give it.
I envision a design in which the upper three or four layers that are glued together with construction adhesive, (preferably a polyurethane adhesive like PL Pro), and then drilled for insertion of spikes. Then, apply an additional layer with a width of approximately 18" more than the previous layers. This will serve two purposes.
1). It keeps the spikes from pushing through the bottom of the board when driven over thus helping penetration
2). Ideally the tire of the vehicle will be over the lowest layer thus stabilizing the setup without causing it to roll over with pressure. Assuming of course that you have dug a small trench to submerge the unit.
Plywood is much stronger than conventional Pine with much more resistance to breakage. More layers, and glued and screwed together will add to the strength. Keep in mind that different treatment processes require different fasteners that resist the corrosion factor of the chemical saturant of the wood/plywood.
Regards, – The Wanderer

Two Letters Re: An M1A Rifle Goes Ka-boom!

Dear Jim,
I don’t suspect a squib load as the problem for the M1A. A squib in a gas-operated semi-auto generally means no cycling of the bolt or ejection, which always indicates a problem.
While there’s a link to an analysis that shows a flawed barrel, and I agree with it from the images shown, I also suspect an ammunition problem.
Consider that from the image, the chamber split, and split fast. No bulge, no crack, just a boom. This indicates a substantial overpressure in the chamber.
There are likely several things that can cause this. Two that come to mind are decaying powder or a weak primer.
The ideal cycle for a cartridge is for the primer ignition to fire up the center of the round, and the propellant to ignite from the inside out in an even burn. This is the purpose of larger primers for larger rounds–ANY primer will ignite the propellant. The trick is to ignite it properly.
If the charge is decayed or settled badly, or the primer is weak, what can happen is a “Deflagration.” The propellant burns more slowly than it should, from either base to throat or from one side to the other, and compresses the remaining propellant, thus increasing the burn rate. Rather than 50,000 PSI or so, it is possible to exceed several hundred thousand PSI from the increasing wave–there’s solid metal on one side, an expanding pressure front on the other, and the propellant in between is increasingly compressed.
This is exactly how a FAE works, or why a grain silo can blow apart.
The case split from the front and didn’t just separate the head, which I think is further evidence of this. Also, the green around the primer on the bad round doesn’t seem to match the lacquer on the comparison case. It could be an indication of calcium buildup from decay, which was more common with ammo from the 1950s and 1960s.
It’s not a common occurrence, but certainly something to be aware of with old ammo. Check the condition before shooting. – Michael Z. Williamson

James:
Just a little information, a few years back, while I was working for a gun shop we got in some surplus ammo from a major distributor, that unbeknownst to them had been tumbled to clean the brass. By tumbling the loaded rounds the size of the powder changed and you got an explosion instead of a burn, thus a ruined firearm, just thought you might want to pass this along, it might be the reason?
Thanks for all you do – JAH

Odds ‘n Sods:

Tom at www.CometGold.com sent this link: More than half of all equities trading in the US will be done using algorithmic dealing systems by the end of 2010.

   o o o

A clever nuke blast mapping tool, posted by Kurt, by way of Rourke at the Jericho Discussion Group.

   o o o

Rich at KT Ordnance mentioned that there’s now a proposal to ban BB guns in Massachusetts. Complete with a BB gun amnesty period, and a BB gun “buyback” program. I will refrain from commenting on Taxachusetts politics. I might lapse into saying something un-Christian.

 

Jim’s Quote of the Day:

“It is constantly reiterated that education begins in the home, as indeed it does, but what is often forgotten is that morality begins in the home also.” – Louis L’Amour, “Education of a Wandering Man“

Notes from JWR:

Our thanks to “RSF”, the high bidder in the recent auction for the autographed first edition of Survival Guns, by Mel Tappan. Today we are starting a new auction, for a big batch of survival books, courtesy of Ready Made Resources.

Today we present yet another article for Round 7 of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest. The writer of the best non-fiction article will win a valuable four day “gray” transferable Front Sight course certificate. (Worth up to $1,600.) Second prize is a copy of my “Rawles Gets You Ready” preparedness course, generously donated by Jake Stafford of Arbogast Publishing. Since there have been so many great entries in this round of the contest, I will also be sending out a few complimentary copies of my novel “Patriots” as “honorable mention” awards. If you want a chance to win Round 7, start writing and e-mail us your article. Round 7 will end on November 30th. Remember that the articles that relate practical “how to” skills for survival will have an advantage in the judging.

Making Traditional Cordage in North America, by Ron

This article is about cordage, one of the most used and necessary items for day-to-day life. Other than sinew, catgut, and rawhide, early man made his rope and string from more readily available plant material. Certain plant fibers were able to stand up to water emersion and made excellent nets and fishing line. Animal fibers, such as sinew and catgut, would stretch or unravel when wet and were more difficult to procure. Plant fibers were so much more abundant and easier to process; this left sinew and catgut for sewing, bow backing, arrow making and other arts requiring a strong, longer lasting material.
Another difference between plant and animal fibers is the strength comparison of a string made of sinew and a string of plant fiber. The plant fiber string, in most cases, would have to be twice the diameter of the sinew string to be of the same strength. Thus, for certain applications where weight and mass are important (such as arrow making) the thinner sinew would be the best choice. Sinew, catgut, and rawhide were not available in all areas since it usually comes from large animals. There aren’t very many places in North America where a decent cordage fiber plant isn’t available.
Cordage can be made from bark, branches, roots, stems, and leaves. In some rare cases the seed fluff from whorled milkweed and cottonwood was wound into cordage. This would be very labor intensive and was used mostly for ceremonial objects.
Trees can supply cordage by use of the bark, roots, and in a few cases, limbs. In the North, the roots of the spruce tree are used to make good, strong cordage. In the Great Lakes area, the Indians use this root for sewing the birch bark together on their canoes. The roots of the junipers, walnut, butternut, wild cherry, and osage orange are used too. Roots that grow in fine or sandy soil are the most favored as they are usually straighter and have fewer deformities. They are split in two or more sections and sometimes the outer bark is rubbed off. This is accomplished by rubbing the root section back and forth over a limb with somewhat rough bark, as if you were sawing it. Some bark and root binding materials tend to get a little brittle as they dry, so they are often soaked in water for a while before use. From my experience, roots make the best bow drill string of all. Always try to take only a few roots from several different trees. This doesn’t kill the tree and insures a future supply of roots.
The best bark cordage comes from small limbs. The bark is thinner, and this process won’t harm the tree. The inner bark of juniper, elm, cottonwood, aspen, basswood, moosewood, maple, willow, and desert willow are the most often used. Basswood is one of the better sources of fine bark cordage. The limbs-and in the case of a freshly fallen tree, the trunk-are stripped of their bark. This bark is held submerged for a few weeks until the inner bark starts to come loose in layers. These strips are then dried and stored for future use. When some cordage is needed, they’re soaked for a while before braiding or twisting. Slippery elm and willow bark make good, strong cordage. Most barks are best gathered May thru August because the bark comes off a lot easier. Out of season, the bark can still be loosened and removed by pounding the limbs gently with a wood maul or mallet made from a branch about 3” in diameter. Another piece of thick branch should be used as an anvil. Both anvil and mallet should be made smooth as possible to deter ruining the bark. If you decide to use a rock for an anvil, the bark may be damaged beyond use. Pounding works well on such barks as pawpaw, hickory, elm, maple, willow, and poplar. I’ve used slippery elm with the outer bark removed, and it made very strong rope for a wickiup shelter I was building. Many shrubs such as sagebrush, cliffrose, and flannelbush have usable bark as well. As an aside, most of these barks are used in basketry too.
Most grass stems and leaves used for cordage, such as sweetgrass, dunegrass, and the reeds are used whole without much further processing. Cattail leaves when used whole are usually braided into a somewhat usable rope. When shredded lengthwise, they make stronger cordage after they’ve been twisted together. The leaves of agave, yucca, and iris must be processed in some way to get the fibers. Agave has a sharp point at the end of the leaf that is hard and dense. This “needle” can be carefully pulled downward towards the base of the leaf and several fibers will remain attached. This can be used as is for sewing. To get the most fibers from an agave leaf, it is usually gently pounded or “retted”-that is, soaked in water until the fleshy part of the leaf rots away. One should use caution when working with agave, as the fresh leaf contains chemicals which cause dermatitis.
I prefer working with yucca; it is a very versatile plant to work with. In Paul Campbell’s book Survival Skills of Native California, there are several photos and references to articles made from yucca cordage. It was used by Indian tribes throughout the West to make nets, bow strings, and many other items. You can use the leaves green or dry. I prefer to process the green leaves by retting. After I gather a good sized bunch, I put them in a 5 gallon bucket, fill it with water, and let it set for a few days. When I check them, I hope to find most of the fleshy material is rotted or beginning to rot (you can tell the retting process is working by the terrible smell!). If the leaves are really mushy, they have retted long enough to work the fibers free. I do this by laying the leaves a few at a time on a board and running an old wood rolling pin over them to squeeze out the plant material; then the leaf remains are swooshed around in a bucket of clean water and the fibers are fairly cleaned of plant material. I then wring the bundles of fiber out and give them another rinse. This loosens even more plant material and the shorter, unusable fibers. These hanks of fiber are hung up to dry and put away ‘till I need to make some cordage. This is the easiest way I have found to process yucca. In the wilds you could do the same by putting them in a stream or pool and weighing them down.
If you use the dry yucca leaves, you will have to pound them with the mallet and anvil technique. The pounded bundles are then rubbed between the hands to loosen any plant material. I’ve heard of some folks who use a dull knife or stone flake to scrape the leaves and expose the fibers. I have tried this, but with limited success. I once cooked some yucca leaves to see if this would make them easier to work, but found the resulting fibers were a bit too stiff and hash, unlike the smooth, soft fibers from the retting process. Iris leaves have only two usable fiber strands per leaf. The average iris leaf is only one or two feet long. These fibers were highly valued considering the amount of labor it took to get a usable amount. The leaves are split lengthwise with the thumbnail. Sometimes an artificial thumbnail is used. It’s made from a mussel shell attached to the thumb with a bit of cordage. The two leaf halves are then scraped on both sides with the mussel shell thumbnail. This exposes a silky white fiber. The iris was mostly used in the Pacific Northwest and the fibers were twisted into cordage for fishing line, netting, snares and many other items.
The stem sections of many different plants hold useful cordage fibers. Plants such as nettle, dogbane, velvet leaf, milkweed, prairie flax, thistle, and fireweed are valued for their quality fibers. I have processed many hundreds of feet of stinging nettle, dogbane, and milkweed cordage. These stems are hollow or have a pith core. They are collected in the fall after the last leaves have fallen off, usually after the first frost. The stems are left to dry in a warm place and then they are checked for brittleness. I then split them lengthwise, usually into four sections. These sections are easier to work with. Each section is carefully snapped every few inches, beginning at the bottom. As I snap each small section, I carefully peel the fiber bearing bark loose. Hopefully, I’ll end up with a section of bark the full length of the stem. Short sections of bark are still useful as the fibers can be spliced onto longer sections of cordage. As I twist the sections into cordage, the dry brittle bark falls off leaving nice silky fiber. Sometimes the cord has to be twisted back and forth several times to loosen stubborn bark fragments. Some folks use a knife to scrape the bark off the stem before sectioning it but I prefer to just let it fall off while twisting. If you’re not careful, you can scrape too deep and ruin the fiber.
Vines and branches are used as cordage. Grapevine, greenbrier, and hazelnut are just a few of the many different plants used in this fashion. Most vines are used for light weight tasks as they aren’t very strong. Hazelnut withes are used to tie bundles of fire wood, and a strong cord with tumpline is tied to the bundle for transportation. These withes can be bent double and are also used as handles on stone axes and hammers.
Knowing the plants and techniques for making rope and cordage is only a small part of the many skills needed to survive. It is important to have a working knowledge of such skills as fire making, tool making, trapping, shelter construction, and others; these complement each other in the art of primitive survival. Several of the books in the bibliography illustrate the technique of turning fiber into cordage. Also, there are several sites on the Internet that illustrate the process of twisting fiber into cordage. If you are interested, do a Google search for “cordage” and “primitive skills”.

Bibliography:
Survival Skills of Native California – Paul Campbell
Primitive Wilderness Living & Survival Skills Vol. 1 & 2 – John & Geri McPherson
Bushcraft – Mors Kochanski
Any of the Peterson Field Guides on flowering plants, trees and shrubs; these guides are well illustrated and there are different editions for the Eastern and Western United States.


CORDAGE FROM PLANTS (North American)
Abutilon abutilon=Velvet Leaf,Indian Mallow (stem)
Acer glabrum=Rocky Mountain Maple (bark) Acer macrophyllum=Bigleaf maple (bark) Acorus calamus=Sweetflag (leaves Agave americana=American Century Plant (leaves) Agave deserti=Desert Agave (leaves) Agave lechuguilla=Lechuguilla (leaves) Agave parryi= Parry Agave (leaves) Agave schottii= Schott Agave (leaves) Agave toumeyana =Toumey Agave (leaves) Agave utahensis=Century Plant (leaves) Althaea officinalis=Marsh Mallow (stem) Amelanchier alnifolia=Saskatoon Serviceberry (branchs) Apocynum androsaemifolium=Dogbane (stem) Apocynum cannabinum= Dogbane,Black Indian Hemp,Armyroot (stem) Arctium lapa= Burdock (stem) Argentina anserina=Silverweed Cinquefoil (runners) Artemisia tridentata=Sagebrush (bark) Asclepias asperula=Antelope Horns Milkweed (stem) Asclepias eriocarpa=Woolypod Milkweed (stem) Asclepias fascicularis=Mexican Whorled Milkweed (stem) Asclepias hallii=Purple Milkweed (stem) Asclepias incarnata=Swamp Milkweed (stem) Asclepias lanceolata=Narrow Leaved Purple Milkweed (stem) Asclepias ovalifolia=Milkweed (stem) Asclepias pulchra=Hairy Milkweed,White Indian Hemp (stem) Asclepias pumila=Low Milkweed (stem) Asclepias purpurascens=Purple Milkweed (stem) Asclepias quadrifolia=Fourleaf Milkweed (stem) Asclepias rubra=Red Milkweed (stem) Asclepias speciosa=Showy Milkweed (stem) Asclepias subverticillata=Whorled Milkweed (seed hair) Asclepias syriaca=Common Milkweed (stem) Asclepias tuberosa=Butterfly Weed,Pleurisy Root (stem) Asclepias viridiflora=Green Milkweed (stem) Asimina triloba=Pawpaw (bark & root)
Boehmeria cylindrica=False Nettle (stem)
Carex barbarae=Santa Barbara Sedge (root)
Carya =Hickory (bark & root)
Cedrus =Cedar (bark & root)
Cercis canadensis= California Redbud (bark)
Chamaecyparis nootkatensis=Alaska Cedar (bark)
Chamerion angustifolium=Fireweed (stem)
Chilopsis linearis=Desert Willow (bark)
Cirsium arvense=Canadian Thistle (stem)
Cirsium edule= Edible Thistle (stem)
Cirsium vulgare=Bull Thistle (stem)
Clematis ligusticifolia=Western White Clematis (stem)
Convolvulus arvensis=Field Bindweed (stem)
Cornus sericea=Redosier Dogwood (bark)
Corylus cornuta var. californica=California Hazelnut (twigs)
Corylus cornuta var. cornuta=Beaked Hazelnut (twigs)
Cowania mexicana=Cliffrose (bark)
Dirca palustris=Moosewood,Leatherwood (bark)
Elaeagnus commutata=Silverberry (bark)

Fraxinus =Ash (bark)
Fremontodendron californicum= California Flannelbush (bark)
Geranium atropurpureum=Western Purple Cranesbill (stem)
Glyceria Canadensis =Sweetgrass (stem)
Gossypium hirsutum=Upland Cotton (fuzz)
Hoita macrostachya=Large Leatherroot (root)
Iris douglasiana=Western Iris (leaves)
Iris innominata=Del Norte County Iris (leaves & root)
Iris macrosiphon=Bowltube Iris (leaves)
Iris tenax=Klamath Iris (leaves)
Juglans cinerea=Butternut (bark)
Juglans nigra =Black Walnut (bark & root)
Juncus effusus =Common Rush (stem)
Juncus tenuis =Poverty Rush (stem)
Juniperus californica =California Juniper (bark & root)
Juniperus communis =Common Juniper (bark & root)
Juniperus deppiana = Alligator Juniper (bark & root)
Juniperus horizontalis =Creeping Juniper (bark & root)
Juniperus monosperma= Oneseed Juniper (bark & root)
Juniperus occidentalis =Western Juniper (bark & root)
Juniperus osteosperma =Utah Juniper (bark & root)
Laportea canadensis=Canadian Woodnettle (stem)
Larix laricina=Tamarack (root)
Leymus mollis=American Dunegrass (leaves)
Linaria linaria=Toad Flax (stem)
Linum lewisii=Prairie Flax (root & stem)
Liriodendron tulipifera= Tulip Tree (bark)
Lonicera ciliosa=Orange Honeysuckle (stem)
Lupinus arboreus=Bush Lupine (root)
Maclura pomifera=Osage Orange (root)
Morus alba= White Mulberry (root)
Morus microphylla=Texas Mulberry (root)
Morus rubra= Red Mulberry (root)
Nereocystis luetkeana=Bull Whip Kelp (stem)
Nolina microcarpa=Sacahuista (Agavaceae) (leaves)
Oenothera biennis=Evening Primrose (stem)
Phragmites communis=Reed Grass (stem & leaves)
Picea engelmannii =Engelmann’s Spruce (root & limb)
Picea glauca=White Spruce (root)
Picea mariana=Black Spruce (root)
Picea sitchensis=Sitka Spruce (root)
Populus balsamifera=Brayshaw Black Cottonwood (bark)
Populus deltoides=Eastern Cottonwood (bark)
Populus fremontii=Fremont’s Cottonwood (bark)
Populus tremuloides= Quaking Aspen (bark)
Potamogeton diversifolius=Waterthread Pondweed (stem)
Prosopis glandulosa=Honey Mesquite (bark)
Prunus emarginata =Bitter Cherry (bark & root)
Psoralea macrostachya= (stem)
Psoralidium lanceolatum= Lemon Scurfpea (root)
Quercus =Oak (bark & root)
Ribes divaricatum=Spreading Gooseberry (root)
Ribes lacustre=Prickly Currant (root)
Ribes lobbii=Gummy Gooseberry (root)
Robinia pseudoacacia = Black Locust (root)
Salix bebbiana= Beb Willow (bark)
Salix discolor=Pussy Willow (bark)
Salix exigua= Sandbar Willow (bark)
Salix laevigata=Red Willow (bark)
Salix lasiolepis= Arroyo Willow (bark)
Salix lucida= Pacific Willow (bark)
Salix lutea=Yellow Willow (bark)
Salix melanopsis= Dusky Willow (bark)
Salix scouleriana= Scouler’s Willow (bark)
Salix sitchensis= Sitka Willow (bark)
Salvia =Sage (root)
Scirpus acutus =Beetle Hardstem Bulrush (root & stem)
Sesbania macrocarpa=Wild Hemp (stem)
Serenoa repens=Saw Palmetto (leaves)
Smilax =Greenbrier (vine)
Taxodium distichum=Baldcypress (bark)
Thuja plicata=Western Redcedar (bark & limbs)
Tilia americana =Basswood (bark)
Tillandsia usneoides=Spanish Moss (stem)
Tsuga canadensis=Eastern Hemlock(root)
Typha latifolia=Broad-leaved Cattail (leaves)
Typha angustifolia=Narrow-leaved Cattail (leaves)
Typha domingensis=Southern Cattail (leaves)
Ulmus rubra =Slippery Elm (bark & root)
Urtica dioica=Stinging Nettle (stem)
Urtica dioica ssp. holosericea=Stinging Nettle (stem)
Urtica dioica ssp. gracilis=California Nettle (stem)
Vicia americana=American Vetch (root)
Vitis aestivalis=Summer Grape (vine)
Vitis californica=California Wild Grape (vine)Yucca angustissima=Narrowleaf Yucca (leaves)
Yucca baccata=Banana Yucca (leaves)
Yucca baileyi=Navajo Yucca (leaves)
Yucca brevifolia=Joshua Tree (leaves)
Yucca elata=Soaptree Yucca (leaves)
Yucca glauca=Small Soapweed (leaves)
Yucca harrimaniae =Spanish Bayonet (leaves)
Yucca shidigera=Mojave Yucca (leaves)
Yucca schottii =Schott Yucca (leaves)
Yucca Whipplei= Chaparral Yucca (leaves)

 

Odds ‘n Sods:

Michael Z. Williamson sent us this piece: What’s the Story on Silver Coin Melts & Coin Premiums?

   o o o

Hawgtax forwarded this one from The Associated Press: Tyson Foods sees higher meat prices as cost of corn feed rises. It begins: “Tyson Foods Inc., the world’s largest meat processor, warned Monday that rising corn prices could mean U.S. consumers will have to pay more for chicken, beef and pork next year as it ended its fiscal year with a third straight quarterly loss.”

   o o o

A tip of the hat to SurvivalBlog reader “Redmist” who contributed many of the Quotes of the Day that have been posted in the past two months.

Letter Re: Emergency Shelter Air Filtration

Most of the modern home vacuum cleaners have pretty decent high efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters in them nowadays. Assuming you still have power (a big if) you could seal a room to the best of your ability and leave your vacuum cleaners running (with the air intakes off the floor). If you have a bag type, remember to put a new bag in. Presto, filtered air, McGyver style. If all you have is an older style vacuum cleaner with no filter, then put a damp rag (and keep it damp) over the air intake, but be careful not to overheat the vacuum with too thick a cloth. The point of the water is that the majority of dust won’t fly when wet. If you want to be more creative, see if you can attach the air intake to a makeshift “bong” (or buy one from a “head” shop. Just ask a local teenager). This will pull the room air though a larger quantity of water. A standard bong would not do much as the bubble size would be too large and keep the majority of the air from contacting the water, but putting an aquarium bubbler at the submerged end of the bong stem will reduce bubble size and make it more effective. You could also think about adding a surfactant to the water to decrease surface tension making the bubbles smaller again. Perhaps some soap would work.
This would be the best option as it’s the tiniest particles that are the most damaging as they can pass through your lungs directly into your bloodstream and the kind of HEPA filters on vacuums won’t stop these. Of course if power goes out, then even a pricey safe room air filtration system would be useless if it wasn’t running on battery or backup. – SF in Hawaii

JWR Replies: Thanks for that suggestion. Some household vacuums use water pipe type filtration. One example is the Rainbow brand. This is the type of vacuum that we use on a day-to-day basis here at the Rawles Ranch. These Rainbow vacuums are quite expensive if purchased new, but can sometimes be found used at reasonable prices. (You might try a “Want to Buy” ad on craigslist.com.)

One advantage of the vacuum cleaner approach is that by sourcing outside air, it provides a positive overpressure for your shelter. This will make up for any minor inadequacies in tape sealing your windows and doors. Keep in mind that in a nuke scenario (nuclear bomb, a sub-critical “dirty bomb”, or a nuclear power plant melt-down) that your filter media will gradually become occluded with fallout dust and that dust will be very “hot.” This means that the filter must be isolated with shielding from the occupied portion of your shelter. (A double thickness stack of ammo cans filled with ammunition should be adequate for this task.) A variation of the vacuum cleaner approach that requires no elctricity is a hank crank-powered or bicycle frame-powered squirrel cage fan. These fans can be salvaged from discarded house furnaces. Just ask your local heating contractors for a couple of discards. Your local welding shop can improvise a sprocket attachment for powering the fan. For general information on shelter air supply and filtration systems, see Cresson Kearney’s indispensable book “Nuclear War Survival Skills“. (Available for free download at the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine web site.)

Letter Re: Some Useful British Survival Web Sites

Mr Rawles,
Here are a few British sites that may be of interest I found while looking at a fan site for an old TV series called Survivors which was written by Terry Nation, who also created Dr. Who for the BBC. The BBC Survivors series was made back in the 1970’s and while the technology and BBC aversion to realistic weaponcraft might make many of you readers weep (myself included) the themes and storylines of a group of middle class English people who survive a plague that kills all but 1 in 10,000 people are timeless. Along with Andre Norton’s old Science Fiction book ‘Starman’s Son‘ it was one of the major reasons for my interest in survivalism when I was a kid. You can order the series through the British Amazon www.amazon.co.uk. Note: American viewers must have a “region free” DVD player to operate these DVDs!
The first site is about a book called There Falls No Shadow, together with the other novels in the series, documents the fight of the survivors of a terrorist-released global pandemic to rebuild their lives in a world stripped of all but one in ten thousand of its inhabitants. I have just ordered the book myself so can’t vouch for it but the reviews seem good. The author seems to be a Scottish/Yorkshire version of yourself.
The second site is a more generic site by the Ludlow Survival Group in the UK. In particular there is a well illustrated bug out bag designed for people living in cold/wet climates.
I hope this is useful to you and your readers. Regards, – FDz

Three Letters Re: Bullet Casting: A (Relatively) Simple Introduction, by AVL

Hi Jim,
I have two notes regarding casting your own bullets (or any other metal for that matter): First: One piece of safety equipment that you really should have on hand when casting any metal is dry sand. Make sure you have at least 25 pounds of dry sand at the ready. If there is a metal spill, dump the sand on it and it will contain the flow and cool it quickly, plus it will cut of the supply of
oxygen, preventing fire.
Second: A fire extinguisher is good to have to put out fires, but with molten metal flowing all over the place lighting things on fire, a fire extinguisher is not enough. You must never put water on molten metal, because it will cause a steam explosion. This will burn you, and send splatters of molten metal flying all over the place making your problems much worse. Choose a dry chemical fire extinguisher that is rated to be used on electrical fires.
Metal casting is fun, and can be accomplished without accidents if you are diligent about your techniques. It is a skill that will be most useful if and when the SHTF. I just read C.W. Ammen’s “The Complete Handbook of Sand Casting” and feel that it is a great start to making almost anything out of metal.
Be blessed! – Chris

 

Jim:
I drop bullets from the mould into the five gallon bucket of water in which I have placed a mesh nylon bag. When I am through casting I hang up the bag of bullets to dry. I have found that lubricant will not stay on damp bullets. Regards, – Vlad

 

Sir:
A link to a much safer and far superior method of manufacturing bullets than casting hot lead is to swage bullets: http://www.corbins.com/
I have had and used professional level swaging equipment from my first business opportunity in 1982.
While I have sold that original business many years ago I continue to manufacture my own jacketed bullets for my favorite bench-rest rifles and continue to enjoy a much safer and cleaner method to manufacture bullets.
While swaging is considerably more expensive (and I continue to cast bullets from time to time, particularly for black powder arms.) I can say from over twenty years now that I enjoy the method and results much more than I could ever enjoy casting hot lead.
Swaged bullets are world record breakers, almost every precision competition rifle event is dominated by custom swaged bullets and for good reason, the ultimate in accuracy and quality.
I have over the years collected a shop full of swage dies for rifle and pistol and have not regretted the purchase, if anything it has enhanced my enjoyment of the craft of reloading, knowing I am in total control from primer choice to jacket material and bullet weight (down to the tenth of a grain!)
I would suggest that if you are serious about swaging that you buy one of the special designed presses (the main product form Corbin pulls double duty as swage press and reloading press) as the pressures involved are too much for a standard reloading press.
Imagine the potential of manufacturing jacketed bullets when you may be the only supplier available, often using junk or scrap metals for jackets (the ability to turn .22 LR casings into jackets for center-fire .22 rifles).
I would not want to place the curse of the foul habit of bench-rest shooting and reloading on any sane person, the benefits of cold lead flow forming of lead and jacketed bullets is worth the investigation. – Wotan

 

Jim’s Quote of the Day:

"[T]he value of doing something does not lie in the ease or difficulty, the probability or improbability of its achievement, but in the vision, the plan, the determination and the perseverance, the effort and the struggle which go into the project. Life is enriched by aspiration and effort, rather than by acquisition and accumulation.- Helen and Scott Nearing, Living the Good Life

Notes from JWR:

We woke up this morning to yet another power failure. It was the third one in just a week. These are just something that you have to get used to, when living out in the hinterboonies. I look at each outage as a small shake-down exercise, in anticipation of an eventual long term grid-down whammy.

Today we present yet another article for Round 7 of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest. The writer of the best non-fiction article will win a valuable four day “gray” transferable Front Sight course certificate. (Worth up to $1,600.) Second prize is a copy of my “Rawles Gets You Ready” preparedness course, generously donated by Jake Stafford of Arbogast Publishing. Since there have been so many great entries in this round of the contest, I will also be sending out a few complimentary copies of my novel “Patriots” as “honorable mention” awards. If you want a chance to win Round 7, start writing and e-mail us your article. Round 7 will end on November 30th. Remember that the articles that relate practical “how to” skills for survival will have an advantage in the judging.