What Preps are you doing this week? Part 4

[ChefSimon]

With plenty of time on my hands now and in between job hunting I've been having a really good sort out, stock take and clearance of the clutter I've accumulated over the years.

It's amazing just how much stuff I've squirrelled away! Good news is I've been able to get shot of a load of kit I've got multiples of (It's me and the wife and I had 9 different sleeping bags) so after a long hard think I've really cleared it all out and managed to get a free room now for a new man-cave to escape to when the wife wants to watch her stuff on tv.

I've also realised that ebay's fees suck... On the up-side I've now got 3 months worth of equivalent wages from selling the stuff off and after fees before I need to start on my savings.

Also been out on a bimble looking at the differences between my 1:50 & 1:25 maps and also testing the new 'digital' versions on my phone.

[Jamesey1981]

This week I've fitted my new PIR security light, pretty happy with it actually, cost 12 quid from lidl, waterproofing looks up to the job and it's pretty bright for an 8.5 watt draw, also has enough adjustment so that it will come on when it's dark but it doesn't come on and blind me when I'm out there with my normal outside light on.

Run a load of garden waste through my new (to me, not new) shredder to both get rid of the trimmings and test it out, I got one of the ones with the roller blade in it rather than the spinning food processor type blades like I've had before as I have a lot of woody hedge clippings to get rid of, works well, so for my purposes I think it was a good choice, the spinning blade ones will shred woody stuff but they make a hell of a racket and it's murder on your hands feeding it, my old one (cheapo) used to go blunt pretty quick and I eventually burned out the motor, this one (Bosch) doesn't cope with little stuff as well but the chunkier stuff just gets eaten, even shoving hardcore shrub roots through it I never got the motor to sound like it was labouring.

[shocker]

Took delivery of Swedish army Trangia set from Military Mart (link from this forum,thanks) and now building a simmer ring from scrap food tins.Re-purposing my old Camping Gaz mountain stove set to run off a beer can alcohol stove - the high pressure, half height gaz canisters are no longer available and are unsustainable anyway. The space saved in the billy can set will allow me to pack a stove, fuel bottle, some brew and food items. So it can take its place in my bug-out waist pack - just fits in one of the bottle holders...neat !

Looking into joining local shooting club with eye on FAC - thanks to the guys here, especially Jamesy and Plymtom.

Ongoing work on old Range Rover.

My missis is rebuilding old CB radios, base station and vehicular to up our comms capabilities

[Jamesey1981]

Looking into joining local shooting club with eye on FAC - thanks to the guys here

No worries at all.
Glad to hear you're joining a club, one last piece of advice, see if they'll let you come along a couple of times to see how the club operates and get a feel for the atmosphere before you drop your cash on the membership fees, my club do, that way you can decide if it's the club for you, some can be cliquey, and some just won't have anyone that you get along with, so it's important to find one (there will be one) where you feel welcome and look forward to going along, for the social aspect as well as anything else, it's supposed to be fun, if it's a chore then you won't go and will have wasted your membership fee, but find the right one and you'll still be going along in many years time.

[Plymtom]

Looking into joining local shooting club with eye on FAC - thanks to the guys here, especially Jamesy and Plymtom.

Like Jamesy said mate good luck, they probably wont charge you bugger all (except for ammo) until you qualify for membership, and you should know that actually getting yourself licensed is part of the deal, a member of a gun club needs them, needs to clean them, load for them (unless you can afford to buy factory all the time) it's the whole experience of the sport ( and every other thing which shoots fires or throws something in our case) and the community in most cases.

[junmist]

Noticed that the Alder catkins are starting to show round my way http://forager101.blogspot.co.uk/2013/0 ... dible.html and the buds are starting to fatten up in the hedge rows

[Brambles]

Noticed that the Alder catkins are starting to show round my way http://forager101.blogspot.co.uk/2013/0 ... dible.html and the buds are starting to fatten up in the hedge rows

I spotted Catkins the other day and I have some Daffs poking through in the garden. Never thought of Catkins being edible.

[Wales1]

Still gardening, platned a load of fruit bushes from poundland in a 'dead' part of the garden, Gave the greenhouse a hige cleaning inside and out and started off with the propogators. It might be a bit ealry but south wales has warb-but wet weather.

With all the chatter on the board about tootypegs, picked up another emergency dental kit for my preps. Some coffee creamer went into the prebs boxes too-they have treatened snow in a Daily Express kind of way for here and if it does the locals strip the supermarket shelves of bread and milk.

[whenfires]

I have a growing collection of Butane cannisters and Coleman C250 Propane/Butane mix in storage which are currently in the loft but when the shed at the bottom of the garden gets sorted out in the spring they will be moving down there. A slight concern about the safe storage of them has made me order a mains-powered gas detector just in case one of them leaks.

[shocker]

Good reminder on the tooth repair - shopping today ! I favour coffee mate type stuff for milk in hot drinks powdered milk never seems to work for me unless I make it in a batch. And then I have to carry a pint of milk around which sort of defeats the point. On that note, has anyone seen the "Five Pints" type powdered milk around recently ? I can only find the marvel type. Which I have never liked.

So, this weeks prepping also includes buying tooth repair and milk powder! The missis has got new output transistors to fit to one of the CBs that had a TX fault. I need to find some parafin thats not stupidly expensive (discount garden centre most like) to get my old SVEA and Primus pressure stoves tested. If I can get them all working and safe it gives me 2 high power stove rings off grid when a bug in occurs.

And if I get the time...call the shooting clubs!

The kitchen cupboards are so overflowing that the missis is not happy at all so I have to try and make time to put shelves up...sheesh