Made it Home... Safely?

Or did I?

A New Spork

I had another birthday last month, and one of my friends got me a pair of sporks for a present. I like using sporks when camping, and I've written about my titanium sporks in the past ( I still have one in my GHB), but these were a little different.

This is the Ka-Bar 9909 Spork/knife. Mine were a gift so I'm not sure what they cost, but I found them on Amazon for less than $10 apiece. The handle separates to expose a serrated plastic knife, while the traditional combination spoon/fork end provides a way to eat without getting your fingers in your food. I tossed one into my lunch box and took it to work for a week to give it an initial test and here are the pros and cons that I found.

Photo by Chaplain Tim

Pros

• Made of food-safe plastic. I'm still trying to track down information on the specific plastic (Grilamid FWA LV-50H ), but it's a fiberglass filled plastic designed for water and food applications.
• Lightweight but still fairly sturdy. Not quite as light as my titanium sporks, but still lighter than carrying a set of silverware.
• Long handled. The long handle makes stirring hot food more convenient and makes it easy to get the last few bites out of the bottom of a pouch of food.
• Rounded edges don't get caught on things. Handy for not poking holes in plastic bags and backpacks.
• Handle is properly shaped and solid enough to act as a kubotan. Since they were made by Ka-Bar, it doesn't surprise me that they can be used as weapons.

Cons

• Sharp mold lines. Sharp enough to slice into my lip when I first used it. 5 minutes with a piece of sand paper took most of the sharp lines off, but check before you use it; cut lips hurt and bleed all out of proportion to the size of the injury. They heal quickly, but are sensitive to salt and acids in your food until they seal up.
• Combo spoon/fork. Compromise isn't always a good thing. By putting fork tines on the end of a spoon, you make an implement that is less effective than either a fork or a spoon.



Photo by Chaplain Tim

• Plastic knife. The serrated knife hidden in the handle is almost worthless. Good idea, but poor execution: it's not sharp enough to cut through the plastic baggie the spork was shipped in (I tried both the tip and the edge of the knife) without a lot of force, and being plastic it isn't really something that you can make sharp. This is a gimmick that will do nothing but make the TSA confiscate your eating utensil if you try to fly with it in carry-on.
• Drain holes located just above the spoon. They're small and I didn't notice them until after I had stirred my hot chocolate, which then proceeded to dribble out of the hollow handle and make the table sticky. I can see why they are needed for the molding process, but they make a great place for food to get into that is difficult to clean. I usually try to avoid getting mold and bacteria in my food, these holes make that harder to accomplish.

My Verdict: Not Worth It
While it will work as a way to get food from a container to your mouth, the poor construction and design leave it seriously outclassed by even the disposable sporks you can get at KFC.

Prudent Prepping: A Milestone In My Preps

The dust has settled and the First 72 Hours have passed. Follow along as I build a long term plan via Prudent 
Prepping.

With some discipline in my budget (not my strongest suit) I've been able to buy my first bucket of freeze-dried, long-term storage food!

This has been a struggle, right from the start of my posts at Blue Collar Prepping. I'm pretty sure I've written about food and how to store it more than any other topic, and I'm positive whatever is in second place is way behind.

Even with saving more, I still have to be extremely careful with how I look to spend money. What did I buy? I'm glad you asked!

Mountain House "Just In Case" Classic Meal Assortment
 

https://amzn.to/2qAmATG

I'm going with what I know to be a good brand and with a good assortment of food I know and like.

From the Mountain House website:

Mountain House Just in Case... Classic Bucket is the perfect solution for those who want a reliable emergency food supply that doesn't take up a ton of space. With 29 servings of some of our most delicious options, Mountain House Classic Assortment Bucket is compact and easy to store just about anywhere – even in your car for that next camping adventure.

Mountain House Classic Assortment Bucket contains two pouches of each delicious meal:

• Beef Stroganoff with Noodles
• Chicken Teriyaki with Rice
• Beef Stew
• Lasagna with Meat Sauce
• Noodles & Chicken
• Granola with Milk & Blueberries

This is just a start in the change-out of regular grocery items in my pantry and the Buckets of Holding that I've been using to store my disaster prepping food. I'll still be using the original buckets for quite a while, since the Classic Assortment is not enough to fill all five buckets at one time; in fact, I'll be leaving the Mountain House pail as-is for the foreseeable future, since it has a good start on meals and there isn't any reason to try to squeeze a water filter in there. I have too many standard food items and other supplies (like a filter, can opener and bulky foods) that are perfectly fine right now, and I see no need to rush into swapping them out, even if I could afford it (which I can't). The Master Chief is still going to buy his own stores and I will buy mine, but both of us are looking to complement each other and duplicate as little as possible.

Food For The Holidays
It's almost time for me to go through my stored goods and weed out the short 'Sell By' dated foods. It's also the time where I add one or two extra things to my regular grocery list and put them into the Food Bank collection barrels I see in the local stores. The short dated things I drop off myself and, depending on where the donation station is, I may buy a Turkey Voucher instead of a frozen one to drop off. The economy is improving here, but the need for food is still the same as last year.

The Takeaway

• Have a plan and be honest with it and yourself. 
• I do know how to save, I'm just not very good at it. 
• Finding what is important, really important, made the difference for me.

The Recap

• One Mountain House Classic Meal Assortment: $75.71 with Prime from Amazon.

Just a reminder: if you plan on buying anything through Amazon, please consider using our referral link. When you do, a portion of the sale comes back here to help keep this site running!

If you have comments, suggestions or corrections, please post them so we all can learn. And remember, Some Is Always Better Than None!

NOTE: All items tested were purchased by me. No products have been loaned in exchange for a favorable review. Any items sent to me for T&E will be listed as such. Suck it Feds.

Electrical Repairs: Outlets

I've already shown you how to replace a light switch. The other electrical device that commonly needs replacement is the basic electrical wall outlet.




Keep your house in good repair.

Lokidude

Protein Bars? or Candy Bars?

The s**t has hit the fan. You have a bug out bag, you got out in time, and you're on your way to your bug out location. You've met up with one of the other people who bought into the bug out location and are hiking together. You decide to stop and rest on the side of the mountain you are hiking up, enjoying the crisp spring air mixed with the smell of burning cites, and you sit down to grab a protein bar from your pack. Your friend pulls out yellowed plastic-looking puck of something and bites into it with the joyful expression of someone who is eating what tastes like sawdust mixed with lard.

You pull out the packet with your snack in it, rip it open, and pour some in your mouth, crunching away cheerfully. Your friend looks over at you, an expression of deep desire on their face as they as “Is that chocolate?”

In a lot of ways, this is a sequel article to “The Argument For Chocolate”. I started looking into a post-workout snack, and as a control for the experiment I started looking at Snickers Bars to oppose my preferred brand of protein bar.

And then I started to look at most protein bars.

It turns out that for a 68 gram / 2.4  Clif Bar (I went for the oatmeal raisin walnut, since that looked like the healthiest flavor) , there are 10 grams of protein (decent), 0.5 grams of saturated fat (not great), and 43 grams of carbohydrates.

Wait, 43 grams? That's about as much as a can of Coke! For a protein bar, that is a lot of sugar. Okay, maybe it's not that big a deal if you're using this as food in a bug out bag; you're expecting to burn a lot of calories, and carbohydrates are quick energy. But fats, and especially saturated fats are much better for that situation: they're more energy dense to start out, and release that energy slower (which is part of the reason that excess fat in a non-survival situation may not be good -- you're taking in a lot of energy, and you may not be burning it.)

Protein is great if you're building muscle, but if you're just hiking around, moderate amounts of it are fine. 10 grams is a lot when you consider that, for people who aren't trying to build muscle or who have other medical problems, 1 gram of protein per 10 pounds of body weight is the RDA. So two Clif Bars are actually more protein than is needed for the majority of the population's RDA.

Well, at least Clif Bars must be a better value than candy, right?

Nope:

• Clif Bars are much more expensive, about $1.50 each if you buy a case of 12. 
• Conversely, peanut M&Ms (46 grams) are about a third of that cost for a box of 48. 
• Peanut M&Ms have 4 grams of protein, 5 grams of saturated fat and 28 grams of carbs.
• A box of 48 Snickers Bars (52 grams) cost about the same as the peanut M&Ms.
• Snickers Bars have 4 grams of Protein, 12 grams of saturated fat, and 33 grams of carbs.
• Heck, even Reeses' Peanut Butter Cups cost only a little bit more than that, and their nutrition values are similar except with more protein.

So unless your only source of protein is these trail snacks, you're probably getting enough to satisfy your RDA, and both of the candy options have better sustained energy (saturated fat) and lower carbohydrate levels (but high enough to still give an instant boost).

Given that M&M candies originated as a way to keep chocolate from spoiling in the field, they are now my "protein bar" of choice.

In conclusion, unless you cannot eat peanuts I unreservedly recommend getting some sort of chocolate with peanuts instead of a Clif Bar for your bug out bag. It is superior in every way that I can figure out. Even if you're hitting the gym, eat a couple more eggs in the morning instead of a Clif Bar and you come out ahead, both in cost and nutrition.

Dead Reckoning? or Lost in the Woods?

You've begun your trek home.. but what's the best route to take?

Part four in a series on the gear we carry and how we use it.

Remington Rifle Settlement and Recall

Many preppers have rifles, some for hunting and others for defense, and one of the most popular hunting rifles ever made was the Remington Model 700 (M700). Affordable, accurate enough for hunting, and available in a wide variety of calibers, M700s are still found in a lot of gun cabinets and safes. The military used them as a base for building their M24 and M40 sniper rifles, and there are several companies making accessories and after-market parts for them. Remington has been making these rifles since the early 1960's and there are a lot of them still out there being used to harvest game every hunting season. I see them at every gun show I go to, and my state doesn't allow rifles for deer hunting.

https://www.remington.com/rifles/bolt-action/model-700

Unfortunately, the M700 series has a flaw: The trigger mechanism isn't as secure as it should be, meaning that the rifle can fire without any motion of the trigger. This has been fought over in many gun blogs, and a lot of very knowledgeable people have agreed to disagree on the severity of the problem. I don't personally own one, but I have fired several over the years. I have never seen one malfunction in a manner that would make it unsafe, but I know that there are probably some out there that can. Nothing made by the hands of man is perfect, which is why we have the Rules of Safe Gun Handling.

After many years of lawyers and lawsuits, Remington declared bankruptcy earlier this year. Just last month, the class-action lawsuit was settled. Owners of the 7.5 million rifles covered by the lawsuit have 18 months to file a claim and get the trigger mechanism on their rifle replaced free of charge, with some exceptions. The models covered are:

• Model Seven
• Sportsman 78
• Model 600*
• Model 660*
• Model 673
• Model 700
• Model 710
• Model 715
• Model 721*
• Model 722*
• Model 725*
• Model 770
• XP-100 Pistol (based on the Model 600 action)*

The * marks the models that Remington has declared too old to be repaired, so they are not going to work on them.

There is a website set up to start the process of getting a covered rifle repaired, or you can call a toll-free number (1-800-876-5940).

If you have one or more of the rifles that is covered by the settlement and is one of the models that Remington is willing to replace the trigger mechanism on, you have a few decisions to make. 

If the rifle is a family heirloom, it is likely that there is no paper trail tying it directly to you right now. The same goes for any rifle that you may have purchased from a friend or neighbor without going through a FFL. As soon as you ship it off for repair, it will be logged into and out of records that will eventually end up in the hands of the Federal government.* I know there are some draconian States that require gun owners register their firearms, and if you haven't done so, the act of sending one in for repair may trigger local LEOs into paying you a visit to look for other “illegal” firearms. 

If there is already a paper trail on the rifle, you need to get a good idea from Remington about how long they are going to have it for repair. I have had to ship a pistol back to Ruger for a recall in the past, it took them over a month to replace one small part and ship it back to me. Are you prepared to be without that rifle for a month or two? Do you have something else that can take its place until you get it back? 

How well do you know your rifle? Have you ever taken it apart to see how everything works? If so, you may want to look into replacing the trigger group by yourself. Timney make a great line of replacement trigger groups for a variety of firearms, and the Model 700 is one that they sell through various suppliers. While not exactly cheap, you'll end up with a safer and better trigger by going this route. If you're not comfortable taking on this level of tinkering, find a gunsmith near you that can replace it for you while you wait. As long as he doesn't hold your rifle overnight, he doesn't have to log it into his FFL records. 

Do your own research on the trigger problems that have been reported. With 7.5 million rifles involved, a 1% failure rate would mean 75,000 misfires. Even scattered over the 60 years of production, that would still mean over 1,000 per year, and I haven't seen anywhere near that level of misfires reported. I'm not sure where your comfort level is, but 99% is a lot better than some of the stupid risks I've taken. Personally, I'd either replace trigger myself or just pay extra attention to the safety rules if I owned one of these rifles and avoid the hassle of getting it fixed by the factory.

*As you may have guessed, I'm not a huge fan of government paperwork. While an FFL holder keeps records of every firearm that passes through his shop, as soon as he dies or goes out of business those records get sent to the BATF for “storage”. Given that Remington has already filed for bankruptcy once, its future doesn't look very good. The thoughts of what a future government could do with those records don't make me happy, so I avoid the paperwork wherever possible.