Avoidance issues
I’m tryin’ like heck to stay away from the world mess. Apologies to all if you found my two small forays into the goings on, offensive. Believe me, there is so much more I could add to things, and my opinions aren’t exactly ‘nice’ towards certain groups,,, So I just shut my trap and watch as it all unfolds.
There may come a point in the future, where I just walk into the sunset and turn my back on things. I know what that point is, but currently, well, shit, NO ONE KNOWS what road we are going to trip and fall onto.
I want to talk about other things, self sufficient things, independent things, but finding the best approach without slapping you in the face with tons of information you can’t practically use in your situation. Thats not my style. I want you in a better situation than you are in, but I can’t isolate and expand on EVERY scenario. Like buiilding the rocket stove heater for homes. Every home and location is going to require different materials and designs, and I’m no expert on this stuff. For ‘experts’, you need to go to Permies and other outlets that are frequently experimenting. Dive deep and be willing to play with what you learn before you commit to it. More importantly, THINK outside the box of Regulations and Building Codes. Personally, I don’t think that much of that is going to be such an issue in the next 10 years. I could be wrong and sort of hope I am. Only sort of as I would like to see things getting a bit more relaxed, but not at the expense of the modern world collapsing.
Ok,,, follow along as you can or want. Lets talk about REALITY. There are certain things every one NEEDS. many things we desire, but the NEEDS are going to be the focus. Water, Heat, Shelter, Food. That order is not set in stone with the exception of water. That MUST be the priority in all situations, be it survival or just living a life. Clean water obviously, though if you have a steady source of clear questionable stuff, you have options. Collecting it into something where you can readily access it is your second concern Cisterns, holding tanks, water barrels, whatever, so long as you can access them, and keep them clean. Transporting the water may be buckets or plumbing, it all depends on you, your resources and TIME,,, Always that time thing,,,
Heat is more confusing,,, COMFORT might be the more apropo term here, and keeping that in mind, SHELTER takes second place with comfort drawing third. The Real point of shelter being DRY and out of the ELEMENTS. Comfort levels are going to be dependent on those two factors FIRST, heat (or staying cool) comes second. If you have a home already, look around at how its built and examine how it was made with ‘out of the elements’ FIRST, with comfort coming in second place. Look at our modern HVAC equipment that requires so much energy to maintain an internal environment. The world hasn’t shifted so much in 100 years, and people dealt with much the same conditions we deal with now, and were able to keep homes warm or cool without modern heatpumps: research those methods. And I’ll bet ya a steel penny that they are much cheaper and more reliable than that $8000 heat pump going on the fritz that requires hundreds of kilowatts to run. You might be able to incorporate them into existing structures (and likely skip the permit process so long as you keep your nose clean and mouth shut) Your milage will vary from mine in that regard. (I am already much closer to pre-industrial standards of living.)
But really, the biggest hurdle that anyone is going to face is “Lifestyle Change”. and it sounds so innocent, but believe me, if things get really strange, wyrd and sideways, that alone is going to kill more people than anything. Far too many won’t be able to get their heads around ‘that don’t work no more’ , and many many haven’t the wherewithal to adapt. Or adapt fast enough.
Probably not my readers though. I’ve had my head in the “world is on the cusp of a new dark ages” for near 20 years and thats really the touch stone of this here ‘shop’. Its why I taught myself oldskool machining skills and not CNC stuff. (besides, I didn’t have the means to buy the CNC stuff.) (and really, I have had my head in survival stuff since I was a kid, at least the really fingers in the earth type stuff, like ‘shirt on your back and a pocket knife’ survival ) Building my home using salvage materials and barebones pre-industrial level ‘climate control’ was expediant and educational. Going off-grid for power and water was just the natural evolution of the rest of it. And those of you that have been here for at least the last 10 years KNOW, I live what I preach. I don’t just quote passages from books I have read. I’ve done or I am doing. (or figuring if its worth doing.) I had my water source lined up and plumbed before I laid my foundation.
And I am always open to new or better ideas, and will admit when I have been wrong. I don’t know it all, but I know a lot, and the more I know, the more I realize, I’m still an ignorant bumpkin in the great wide world. Like Mike in Fla said in comments,(and I paraphrase here) ‘I gotta learn, I can do no other’ and the day I stop learning is likely the day they bury my carcass (but thats just the transition to even MORE learning, IMO)
But I digress,,,,
water, shelter, heat/cool,
FOOD.
This is my weak spot. I have stocks put away for if things get scarce, long storage stuff and not just MREs. But likely only enough for myself for 6 months or a month for a famliy. I have options to supplement that with foraging (knowledge base,) and hunting, but I am not the only one around here that will be taking that route. Things could get very lean if worse came to worser-er. But I have one peice of knowledge that can only be gained by experiance. FASTING. I know how long I can go without eating a bite without ill effects. I also know that with fasting, I felt better in short order than I have felt in YEARS, There really is truth to this meme.
(and I am going to take a World Stage bend for a second) Maybe the upcoming shortages are Gods Hand showing us, in a backhanded fashion, that we are NOT living right. (and those of you who read my spewings on faith know, when I say GOD, I mean Universe, not the God of the Old Testament.) Actually, much of what is going on in this world is taking on many biblical proportions and I am seeing more and more people reaching for Faiths to sort out the mess. Maybe this is part of the fourth turning,,, Dunno. (I am also seeing more and more question the old Ideologies and seeking better answers.)
What does all this mean to you, right here, right now? The quick take-away: start figuring out the old ways if you hadn’t already. That is what I meant in a recent post with “look to the past for the map to the future.” There is plenty of information out there to guide and teach you. Keep in mind, there is alot of junk information as well. Use your better judgement. Learn to THINK, then RESPOND,,, don’t just react,,, that’ll get you killed. Practice in your head worse case scenarios and plan on different responses depending on what you may or may not have with you. Do that while you have the luxury now, and when that luxury is no longer around, you will already have programmed responses into your thinking; you’ll be less likely to react badly, and respond in a positive and productive manner. Note, I said ‘less likely’ , I make no promises, but it should help .
LEARN
LIVE
LOVE
LAUGH
LOAD!!!
I don’t type those out every post for shits and giggles,,, Live them!!!
Hard sellin’ a hot idea
Talkin’ the rocket mass stoves here. I really think that this is going to be something of a feature in homes in the future. The downsides to it right now are that everything going into a new buildin , must be “approved” and Listed, as in UL listed or one of the other testing places. That is expensive and the real problem in getting RMH stoves tested being they are also rather ‘artsy’: each being built on site for the particular home they are going into. No one is going to build the stove then dismantle it to send it Underwriters laboratories for testing, to the tune of 25grand or more. Not each and every stove.
Luckily, there are states that are making exemptions to such things. (I don’t recall which ones, though I seem to remember one being New England: shocked I was!)
Permies has been doing research into different builds techniques and materials, and even does particulate testing on their stoves. Their stoves, again, not mass produced therefore untestable by a standards company, have been besting the EPA recommendations on orders of magnitude. EPA suggests .4% particulate matter on a running stove. Permies has been producing less than a 10th of that.
And they use 1/4 the fuel of a standard wood burner for the same result in house.
There are all sorts of reasons why some people want this style of stove. They may be buying into the Carbon Myth, wanting to reduce carbon and particulate emissions. They may be trying to do similar to me, going off grid and want as efficient as you can get. Or the other side of the coin, that I am on, wanting the heat, but no one makes a stove that fits my house. It either runs too hot, or won’t put out the heat I need and ends up creating soot issues and always ends up pumping more heat OUT of the house than what remains in.
And then there are those that just want to supplement what they already have in place to help reduce costs overall. IE A heat pump that works, but want to reduce its duty cycle and use less electricity.
https://youtu.be/QY4mnYc0Mgc?si=ZHUkt0GxPV6qlIjZ. (One the groups trying for a modular unit, no affiliation, but a good explanationof function.)
And the choices are growing fast thanks to the internet and curious kittehs like myself. Rocket style stoves (J-tube top feeding downdraft stoves) Batch style heaters (typical front loader like most accepted wood burners). Russian and Swedish styled ceramic tile stoves (similar concepts of re-routing hot gasses through a maze of brick to collect more heat for slow release)
The concept is simple. Capture as much heat as you can before it leaves the house. Thats the whole purpose of these stoves. The Rocket stoves produce incredible amounts of heat, running at peak efficiency reducing emissions to base components of CO2 and H2O with minimal particulates. They generate ash in the ash bin, and some fly ash that accumulates over time in the chambers (and why they have clean out ports.) Everything else is normal and IMO non-pollutants. (the CO2 was gathered by the trees, and will be again. Perfect circle!)
Imagine the actual fire pit being close to 2000F and by the time the exhaust gasses leave the building, they are around 100F and clear with no particulates (or nearly so). Thats 1900F thats been captured by the stove to release out over time. No need to run a fire in the stove 24-7 to keep a house almost warm. Radiant heat feels better than forced air heat (and yes, thats a subjective statement) that definitely lasts longer. Load the hopper once every 12 hours or so, burn hot and fast for a couple of hours and forget about it. Better than waking every couple of hours to feed a beast that only sort of does the trick.
So here I am, Not in consideration mode anymore, but active ‘I’m doin’ this’ mode. But I hit a snag, one I need to resolve. Do I cut out the floor and run the stone all the way to the ground instead of ‘pumping up my floor joists’, or just reinforce. It really doesn’t make a difference in the performance of the stove, but I am thinking longevity of the building. Were I to build again, I already know, Build the base for the stove FIRST, and sort of build the house around it. Much like they used to do hereabouts. I have found three old fallen down houses built back in the early 1900’s and ALL of them had a chimney dead center of the house that went to the ground and the house was built around that. Some had two fireplaces on opposing sides, but all went to the ground.
And despite the word on the nets, all of them were built with locally gathered sandstone and slate, and only one had any firebrick in it. That fire brick was the ‘floor’ of the fireplace, No lime mortar though,,, That I can see. They did use the refractory cement over mortar except on the outside where they went with the cheaper stuff. In one case, no mortar at all: they used Cobb, clay and sand mix. And thats cheap around here if you are willing to do a little digging or swinging a shovel. River sand is very clean after a flood and usually piled several feet deep before you hit the mud. Clay is readily found near any creek, and like in my case, my house sits on a clay formation thats almost 2 feet thick and several hundred feet wide.(and it’s only 2′ down to it.) For the record: I will be using fire brick in the main combustion chamber as the temperatures get quite a bit higher than a normal fireplace would see.
Really, not counting labor times, building one of these should be doable by even the poorest of people, and work 10 times better than a UL listed store bought EPA approved steel and brick monster.
Ah, but Dio,, that means less money flowing and the money has to flow to keep the economy together.
Yeah,, that’s true, but what happens when the economy is no longer functional, but people still need to keep warm? One summer of some hard work and little expenditure but a warm house for years after, and repairs can be done the same way it was built: locally furnished material.
By the way, this is a DEEP deep rabbit hole if you start digging. Some people building J-tube rockets that don’t feed a box, but run through tunnels under the house, venting on the opposite side. The original ‘floor heating’ arrangement. (and that idea is OLD! Korea had a system like it, as did the roman bath houses.). Seriously, if you are thinking of building, consider how you want to heat and cool the house before you ever lift hammer or push saw. That will make the rest of the build so much easier, unlike where I am, thinking about dismantling part of my floor.
Go, be creative, learn something new, and fly the birds of freedom at those that want us to buy systems that need replaced every 10 years or so. (but be advised, getting homeowners insurance might be tricky!)
LIVE
LEARN
LAUGH
LOVE
LOAD
BLoo update: Good tidings at that. took her for a run Sonday to the tune of 150 miles (152 to be exact) and did a fill up on return. 9.98 gallons. 15mpg on a 25 yo SBC? No, I ain’ta complainin’! (and roughly 40 of that was here in town the day prior so its likely closer to 13/16 town/highway. Still no complaints.
Gettin’ grubby in the rafters (unrelated addendum below ))
I promised a post for the readers with already standing structures. That would be the majority of us, I’m sure.
But I have to start with a little highschool science lessoning, or much of what I am going to tell you won’t be adaptable to your situation. I want to push a new mantra at ya too: Insulate Insulate Insulate!!! More on that shortly, first the lesson.
AIR is a great insulator, seriously crappy conductor. In the Electronic world there is a term “air gap insulator” and it takes huge power or high frequency to bridge the gaps, more so as the gap widens. Now, thats not to say air won’t conduct ‘heat’. We heat air and move it around in our ‘modern’ homes enough that it is considered a conductor. Only that isn’t correct thinking. Its a transporter, It does pick up temperature differences and can be used to relocate that difference to somewhere else, but it does not do so willingly.(in the out of doors, we call this ‘wind’: just mama nature moving things around, the same way we do indoors.) And there really is no difference between ‘hot and cold’, except in degrees, and we call those differences degrees for a reason. Hot is just an absence of cold, or to put it another way, Hot is just a higher energy level than Cold. Those ‘degrees’ of difference are what we want to capture, store, and move around, or isolate from so we don’t require mad levels of energy to remove that higher energy level. (Do you see the problem of modern homes now? That last statement says it all.)
Termperature energy moves through three methods: Conductive, Radiant, and convective. Conductive requires ‘contact’. Radiant is what you get sitting next to a fireplace, and Convective is in air movement (heat rises, cold falls, or specifically, the density of the warm/cold object changes and is effected by gravity differently.). Its why a room can be cold and hot at the same time; hot at the ceiling, cold on the floor.
Now, I don’t know how your current structure is set up, but I can make some assumptions from the last 50 years of building code. Stick frame home, some sort of sheeting on the outerwalls, rafters of 2×6 lumber (not timbers) and a sloped roof using similar lumber covered in 3/4’ sheeting (or that 13/16” particle board popular lately). Actual roofing could be asphalt shingles, tin/sheetmetal, some sort of tile etc. BUT, there is likely one constant in that factor. THE INSULATION. More than likely the ‘pink stuff’ if your home is older than 30 years. Might be blown in, or laid blankets, could possibly be the Polyurethane stuff but thats more recent and mostly in walls. Chances are, that insulation is ONLY in the ceiling joists, not up in the rafters. And thats a problem. One addressed by vents and ventilators, and my all time favorite “Ridge vents”, (yes, there is some snark in that statement.)
What this does, and you may not have thought about it, but you HAVE experienced it, is it creates a solar oven right on top of your home. Solar ovens heat or COOL by what energy differential they are exposed to. You can use a solar oven at night to make ICE from less than freezing conditions. Many people are not aware of that. This is great when you want to cool your house down on hot nights, but not so much when you are trying to KEEP a house cool on scorching days. That insulation just laying up there in the attic joists slows the heat transfer into the living areas, but it can not stop it. Recall I mentioned the term ‘Thermal Creep’ in my post on Mud castles? Same thing applies here, the dead air spaces in the insulation don’t readily move the heat around, but it DOES move through the medium. (and thats why you want thick walls in a Cobb styled home. To ‘time’ that creep for proper parts of the day.)
Vents help keep that solar oven’s effeciency low, but they don’t all work as well as you might like. RIdge Vents in particular; and this is my opinion, I am no engineer, but experiance tells me that ‘Those don’t work!”. Let me clarify why I say that, and see if it meshes with anything you may have seen. When I had my home in Sin-Sin-Nasty, we had a new roof put on, and chose to run with the Ridge Vents, thinking it would help pull the heat out of the attic better. What we found was our electric bill went up about 10% instead. Our HVAC was working even harder after the vents were installed. What happens (purely emprical thinks here, no math on my part) is that the shingles heat up, and create convection currents up the roofline. Where is that ridge vent located? Right at the top on the peak and right inline with those HOT currents of airflow. They are literally pumping hotter air into the attic space, NOT pulling it out. On.windy days, they may actually work like they were designed, that whole venturi effect thing happening, but on still days, with the laminar flow of air along the roof, BAM! More heat, and your hovel is getting COOKED.
IF you have ridge vents, don’t freak out, there is a solution to make them work, its not highly expensive, though it does require some labor (all of this stuff is labor intensive: anytime you are trying to compensate for engineering failures gets labor intensive.). You know that mylar coated bubble wrap they sell at the local brick and mortar place? Yeah, that stuff. What you will want to do is get in the attic (early spring or late fall when you aren’t cooking your brainium) and staple that to your ROOF JOISTS, not the sheeting that makes up your roof. You want that barrier between the attic and the roof as its going to be doing some work for you. Don’t put the stuff all the way down to the soffit, you want about 6” of joist exposed down there. You DO want the barrier to lap the ridge though. What this will do is reflect the heat from the roof back at the roof, and it will create a heating area that creates a pressure differential to force that hot air out that vent, When the pressure differential favors the heat outside over the inside, it creates a space between your living quarters and the roof, slowing that radiant exchange that cooks the attic. With that gap at the soffit area, any cooler air (cool air falls) has somewhere to go and its nearer the outer walls where it can be drawn off. This might only gain you a small percentage in difference, but even a few degrees difference in the living quarters will be noticeable; especially in how hard your climate controls work.
For further assist, you can do that HOT Stand pipe thing I mentioned in an earlier post. (south-southwest facing wall for maximum effect at the hottest part of the day.) This is just a metal pipe 4-8” diameter, painted ultraflat black for maximum heat absorption. This will have a duct into the house that draws off air from the interior. You can duct this to the attic, or you can duct it to the living spaces, your call, I suggest living spaces myself. FYI,, that duct work needs to be at the higher part of wherever you run it. Ceiling in living areas, peak of the attic,,, you get the idea.
BUT, that pipe doesn’t work alone. You want to draw in cooler air while you pump out the hot. This is where basements and crawl spaces come into play. You can put a floor vent in and cooler air is drawn in as the air in the pipe gets heated up and expelled out the top. I suggest putting the floor vent at the opposite end of the house so you get a draft effect. I would also suggest having some way of shuttering BOTH the vent and the ceiling draw as at night, that air flow WILL reverse direction. One scorchers, this is a plus, in winter months, bad ju-ju.
Another thought: A small 10watt solar panel powering a fan in the soffit. When the sun is shining, it will power that fan to push air INTO the attic,,, That may be enough pressure difference to force the ridge vent to do it’s job. Mostly passive (still a mechanical process of moving air, so parts can/will fail eventually)
Now,,, INSULATE, INSULATE, INSULATE! I’m gonna toot my own horn here for a minute. When I built my house, I already knew the ridge vent scam and I had an idea in mind. One, I didn’t put in an attic. My ceiling is vaulted to the roof truss. I used 2×10’s not 2×6’s for the truss. That gave me MORE room for insulation. I used the 3/4 11ply sheets for the roof, thats covered in the 80# tarred felt, and on that is where my TinRoof sits. No gap between as I didn’t want to hear my roof (its sounds romantic, but try living in a tin-roofed house during a hailstorm,,,). Inside, I ran 1/4” mylar faced styrofoam boards between the joist (small air gap made by using strips of the same) and then I ran a double layer of the pink stuff in blanket form. Slightly compressed (shoulda used 2×12’s) but alternating layers so any gaps between blankets are covered by the next layer. Then the internal sheeting, which I used was 1/4″ paneling. I wanted to use the tongue and groove stuff but the costs were already reaching past my budget.
Walls I used Rockwool: at the time, it was about the same costs for sq/ft, and I wanted the fire resistance of rock wool. Its only slightly lower R value over the pink stuff, but does not give you the itchies like the pink stuff. (don’t breath any dust though, Silicosis is real.). I did not insulate my floor joists. My reasoning was “critters”. I have access to my crawlspace that critters can get into easy enough.(and try to make a place critter proof! HA!). I decided the lack was in my benefit. Just make sure to keep the air flow under the house limited.
It was 90 outside at three this afternoon when I returned from the J.O.B. My interior was 71. NO A.C. My only consolation to air movement is a 12v ceiling fan that only gets turned off for cleaning.
And guess where I found the Cozzie? Right smack dab under that ceiling fan, looking quite comfortable on a hot day.
look at the time on each. steady state climate in the house over a 24 hr period. Insulate, insulate, insulate!
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I hope this helps some of you. I know “gotta spend money”, but hey, if it cuts your bills down enough in one season to pay for the ‘fix’, then next year, it pays for itself again, but thats money in your pocket, not the utility companies.
LIVE
LEARN
LAUGH
LOVE
LOAD!!!!
ADDENDUM: IF, like me, you are something of a music afficianado, Get over to BOM’s blog,,, jump into the conversation we have going.
The odd at odds
(written last night, and no, not AI modified,,, Follow along.)
Nothing is sitting well today: my lunch, my thoughts, my music feed even feels off. I am at odds with the world and can’t quite sort the why of it.
Looking around at the big picture (and no, this is not going to turn into a rant about current events.) and some of my liberal upbringing is trying to escape the pen I keep it in. The “every body should/could” thoughts that seem the lifeblood of liberal thoughts.
Utopia for me might be your poison. The why I keep the internal liberal under lock and key. We are all individuals with individual drives and desires. No two will ever agree, or at least not for so long as to make peace a constant. Differences WILL arise, and not all are flexible in spirit.
I don’t see a world of scarcity. I DO see a world where resources are hoarded at the expense of others. OR Restricted and regulated out of existence for the everyday Joe. OR, people being indoctrinated into “this is how it is, there is no other”.
But we know that isn’t true. Take the building code thing. There is no reason for anyone on this planet to be homeless except by personal choice. Some will choose that, I nearly did at one point. I came real close to being the wandering hermit, mostly so I could find somewhere where I ‘fit’. (I found out there are no such places,,, I’m too ‘odd’ to fit unless I make my niche. Which I have been doing). But building codes have made homeownership onerous. Mortgages and property laws have made it worse. And in some ways, yes, even Capitalism has gone awry and made it so some own much, while many own little or nothing. That isn’t due to “Free Market” enterprise, but that regulatory monster of GOVERNMENT interfering (usually funded by the few with much to keep their edge.).
Here is a truth: a person, an acre of undeveloped land and one year of solid effort on their part, CAN have a durable and comfortable year-round shelter and a revolving food source for next to no money. A few tools, a little learning, and LOTS of drive, thats all it takes. But we have others build our houses, we have others grow our food, we have others do for us, that which we can’t do for ourselves, and no, there is nothing wrong with that, except for one thing. So many forget what they are capable of and depend on others for everything. And it has evolved into a growing welfare state where people are dependent on the FORCED welfare of others for their basic living needs. Maybe I should rephrase that part: So many have been taught they are not capable and to depend on Government for everything.
I don’t find the capitalism world at odds with natural rules. If someone is capable, I don’t find it sinful that they would want compensation for that ability. Such as the fact that I have black thumbs. I would happily pay others to run my garden, or better yet, build a shop in place of said garden and provide skills They lack for the Food I can’t get to grow. I’m not alone in that either. I know people that are natural talents at tasks, but completely inept at some of the most basic functions. It was said Einstein couldn’t tie his shoes, but look at the mental experiments he did that literally changed how we view the world. (is the shoe tying thing true? No idea, probably not, but it makes a great point to my missive here.)
“self-reliance has been systematically underrated and discouraged, and that’s the real scarcity problem”. Our modern systems of education have created disability, not grown sovereign peoples such as built this country. Those that have the sovereign drive are driven out of the discussion.
Here’s the real rub: We’ve been there before. Right after the Civil War/War of Northern Aggression. The Wild Wild West times. When the territories were lawless (they weren’t, but the law tended to be more precise and abrupt.). No Building codes, no real infrastructure interference except for RR right of ways. You typically knew the asshat you were trying to vote into office as your representative. You most likely knew where they lived when they weren’t ‘at the office’ which, at that time was NOT a full time job and they were paid Per diem, not a salary with lifetime bennies.
People built their houses out of resources from their land. Sod, Stone, Wood, Cobb, all of the above. No permits, no inspections, no inspectors to bribe, no Home Owners associations to dictate what condition your yard should be in,,, Typically every home had a small ‘truck’ garden to keep food on the table, and people depended on each other, locally, when things went sideways. How many even know their neighbors these days? Not saying it doesn’t happen, but everywhere I have lived the last 30 years, it was not as common as it was back in the 80’s. Everyone knew everyone in the hood back then. You may not have liked the Curtis’s but you knew them, and they knew you. You knew if you got in trouble at the Smiths, the word would beat you back home, and your butt might get a beating then. When I owned a home in Sin-Sin-nasty, I knew one neighbor: the elder retired lady across the street. That was it. No one attempted greetings, and it felt highly discouraged to meet them. And that was one tight packed neighborhood; 1/4 to 1/3 acre lots. I had more relationships in the neighborhood of Oceanside California where I was a renter.
Is that a symptom of something else? Like our reliance on tech these days? Or that most people tend to sedentary activities after the day wraps up in ‘the real world’?(again, a tech thing for the most part). Or is it a symptom of ‘Social Programming’?
Maybe things really haven’t changed as much as I perceive them.
And somethings are coming closer to reality and showing their true colors.
Stay tuned tomorrow. Posting up something for y’uns that have existing structures and looking to alleviate some of those huge utility bills. Not as glamorous as building a Cobb house with your very own two paws, but ‘something’.
LIVE
LEARN
LAUGH
LOVE
LOAD!!!!
Side effects,,,,
Between the Carnivore diet (Lots of extra energy, clearer thinking) and BLOO-Twuck, and maybe more thinkin’ time on my hands with longer nights,,, I find my mind RACING along “CREATE” modes.
Just the last week, the desire to build another Kayak has been on my ‘resting’ mind, as well as another ‘hobby’ from even further back: BOWS.
FYI, I spend about an hour a night on the Erg, and I spend another 30 minutes or so bending bows, throwing arrows (IF the light is good, some evenings this gets left out for lighting reasons.) There are other things I do to keep my physique tuned (and they are ALL getting easier as the fat rolls off the middle and other areas,,,) but those two have the added bonus of getting creations going.
I want to build a new Greenland style boat, but not a skin on frame. I DO want to use the skin on frame as my ‘plug’, but I want a composite boat. Thinking the old design that I used on Serena as my plug to build from. Being a plug, I can cut some corners (no need of 20+ ribs) and use cheaper materials for the frame.
But the BOW,,,, That one, that is getting wilder and wilder in my head. 54″ horse bow, Hungarian Style, Composite limbs. And to break from tradition, a center cut body and molded grip. Use Beech for the Siyahs as I like the extremely fine grain of it (and its stronger than Oak in some ways, without the weight of Oak.) Thinking 45-50# draw weight at 28″ (my usual draw length) Not super-bow weights, but legal to use for hunting in all but one of the 50 states ( I Believe Alaska requires at least 50+ and depending on WHAT you are hunting, I can understand why. Wouldn’t want to piss off a Grizz by poking it with a sharp stick and NOT drive that sharp stick DEEP inside.)( I seem to remember Fred Bear took a Kodiak with one of his recurves weighted at 70# and swore he wouldn’t try again with anything less.)
Why a Horse bow? There is something about the way they look,,, Sexy and deadly at the same time. Think Cupids Bow and you have a good idea of the shape they take when strung.
When they aren’t strung, they have this crazy forward lean that defies normal tillering concepts like those used in Long bows or American Recurves. BUT more than that, I like their “Snap”. Because the way the Siyahs shorten the actual string length on release, they have a snap that compares to that of a Compound bow. really REALLY fast arrows, Faster than with a Recurve and makes the speed from a longbow seem like a slow truck. Fast arrows shoot flatter. Fast arrows can beat the “jump” that can frustrate a hunter. (Deer will jump if they hear a bow ‘snap’, and sometimes, that jump is enough to cause a full MISS.)
But Dio, why not just buy a compound and get all the bells and whistles of ‘sights’ and fast arrows, and adjustable draw weights? BECAUSE, those things can break, and leave you walking out of the woods pissed off. Sights can get thrown out of adjustment in a slip-sliding traverse of a gulley, AND, I have always been something of a traditionalist when it comes to bows. Carrying an 8# bow??? May as well be carrying a rifle, and if I am going that route, a rifle would be prefered,,, (also, I don’t stand hunt, I stalk: an 8# bow with all the other gear I carry,,, UGH!)(most compounds use metal for the main body, that metal can numb your hands with a quickness. Wood bodied (even composite made) are ‘warm’ and won’t freeze your digits off.)
But a bow, a traditional style bow (even if using modern composites and techniques) will work, everytime, leaving the ‘well that didn’t go as expected’ to my form and and release. And there is a certain satisfaction to be had when you make that 70yd shot, straight to the ribcage, with nothing but a “stick and string”. (I make my own strings too. There are a couple of posts from way back when, when I was making bows from PVC pipe and fishing string. I really like the braided strings for the serve and the monofiliment for the wrappings. Makes for one TOUGH string, AND, as survival tool, I always make two strings for a bow: one reason being, strings can get broken, but also, I have about 15-20 yards of high test fishing line in one string, if things get really desperate.)
Will I make either? Or both? Time will tell. Right now, my finances are all tied up in paying the bills, and getting BLOO-Twuck running. Then, paying off all the debt getting BLOO-Twuck running. Once that is out of the way, will see. BUT THE MIND NEVER STOPS,,,,
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Mindless ramble podcast
No intro/outro music, just me jabberin’way,,,, Enjoy,,, Mirrored on my sub stack
Life carries on,
Way back in me early years, I read Orwells 1984, and before that date. I was like 12 when I read it, and while the story gave me the willies, even then, my early years, I ‘knew’ that it was a story and that no society could go so far down the tubes as described.
Boy howdy was I frickin’ wrong.
What I didn’t understand at the time was the “Mob Rule”: That a mobs intelligence is one half of that of its dumbest member. And a society is a Mob in a very real sense.
Look around you. We joke about the Enemedia being Orwells MiniTru, but when I read articles like Doctor Malone discussing how mRNA tech history is being re-written,,, Are we really all that far from it. Constant surveillance through devices we readily carry daily,,,, Maybe the information flow is far too great to keep up with, but the point is the same. Once you become a target, getting your information becomes stoopid easy, and the way the laws are arbitrarily applied, and as numerous as they are, they will find something to stick you in a cage. Yah, we have the MiniTru, We have the Big Brother surveillance. Our ‘military’ is rapidly become the Ministry of Love with our perfumed princes of the potomac ignoring the basic premise of a military and pushing the inclusivity and diversity schtick. We have a figurehead that fully represents what the shadow government thinks of our Untied Staatz (HT to BCE for that’un).
BUT,
There was a poll recently (and while I don’t give much credence to polls, this one seemed ‘mostly honest’) saying that 28% of the population feels they may need to take up arms against our government. and 68% of the rural population feel threatened by our government in a very real way. (Personally I think the numbers a tad higher, but people will tone down in a state where they are paranoid of being targets.)
I think whats bugging me the most is how the US, while it has been at the forefront of most everything the last 100+ years, is lagging behind across the board this round. Canada had the Trucker Convoy and stalled an entire country for months. The US repeat was a popcorn fart in comparison. We have the Dutch Farmers shutting down thier country in response to government overreach, and here,,,, crickets. The Yellow Vest riots in France, that as far as I know are still off and on, and the people rising up against totalitarian overreach ’round the world, yet here,,,, The only riots we have seen are the burnlootmurderwegetpaidtodothisshit groups that have Soros fingers so far up their anal cavities,,, The only “Insurrection” event was so peaceful,,,, you know the one, the one that AOC swears she almost died in. yeah,,,,
And yet no one ever mentions the burning dumpster fires and pink pussie hats of 2017 with minimal arrests and near zero coverage (and only positive coverage of the pussiehat shit) by the enemedia,,,,
Do I want a fight? Not really, but its obvious that TPTB DO!!! They either want it here so they can ‘find reason’ to implement the ‘final solution’, or they want a world war so they can ‘rally support’. And the attempts are so farcical that even the dumbest member of my work force sees it.
They know if they really push for the gun control thing, going straight to confiscation, they will spark off the next Civil War, and I think even they know that is a game they won’t win. BUT, they so want to be “The Power” all while having this delusional game plan.
I look at the “you will own nothing and be happy” plan. And I can see how they think it will work. If you could get it in a static laboratory environment, it MIGHT work for a few years. Problem being, the world is NOT a static environment, and people are NOT widgets that Always operate perfectly. We are human, we make mistakes, and we adapt. People like owning things. Even apartment dwellers like being able to say that they OWN something, even if its just the car they drive or that superwidescreenTV with the 30000W sound system and the 64bit octocore processor gaming computer they play with. You want proof that people like owning things? Look around at all the storage rental places. If that isn’t sign that people want to own things, even if they can’t keep it with them and are willing to pay for a place to keep it,,,, Storage rental is a big business with lucrative cash flow.
Personally, I don’t want to ‘rent my life’ from others, knowing that if I were to say the wrong thing to someone, that I could be doxxed and suddenly all those things I ‘rent’ would be pulled, up to and including my means of income. That situation, which is what Soros, Schwab and the Davos peeps want for the rest of us unwashed masses, would lead to a three tiered world. You would have THEM, (S,S,&D crowd) US, those just trying to get along, and then the shadow world, blackmarket etc.
Even Orwell described that in 1984. Winston bought his notebook from one of those people in the shadow world. He ‘rented’ his hideaway crib where he had his dalliance with the girl from the same people. There were three tiers there as well.(while not a proof that the ‘new world order’ is a failure out of the gate, but it does show that others have thought this through to fruition and the fallacies are obvious.)
I don’t want to live in Winstons world. I’d rather load the Ghostboat with as much as I could carry and head out, tempting fate and the environment. At least there, the rules aren’t arbitrary and applied at whim. Mamanature may be a bitch, but she doesn’t shift the rules ‘just because’.
Not that I am worried about things going that far. The backlash is growing, and while the MINITRU doesn’t cover it, the internet is NOT silent, and the signal is still getting through. Look at Sri Lanka, look at the how certain countries are getting very little coverage (India is one that ‘isn’t playing’, China, Russia, none of them are ‘falling in line’ with the NWO plan,). The signal is there, IF you know what to look for, and that keeps this thing from rushing headlong into that ‘utopia’ they envision.
Even if things fall so far, life carries on. Look at how people lived during the seige of Stalingrad. There was still day to day taking place at the end of the German Reich, and after the firebombing of Dresden. It may not be anywhere near the levels of comfort we are used to, but people carry on, food makes it to a table, even if that table is a napkin on a lap in the basement of a burned out basement. It may not be filet mignon, more likely rat or cat or a can of cat food, but someone is going to be eating, and able to carry on the next day to do it all again. Selko was very good at describing life in Bosnia, and if things continue forward at pace as I see it, WE will see that here. At least in the cities, maybe not so much in places like where I live, but even here things will get ‘rough’.
Ok, enough with my meandering thoughts today. Part of my thinking is due to a weather shift today. I am thinking that we are in for one hella bad winter forthcoming and maybe I need to double up on my wood pile. At least I still have time and resources to do so. So, think about what we are seeing, what I discussed above, and then get your butt in gear to do some prep of your own. IF you live in a city or the burbs, and can’t get OUT, by all means prepare anyway, but think seriously about “SmellSec”. The smell of cooking food will carry for miles and when people are hungry, their noses are as good as a dogs. Its not just the means, but what you do to insure you can KEEP IT.
Dio's Workshop 