Adi007
05-04-2004, 19:37
It can be tricky to store stuff in a survival kit. Take potassium permanganate crystals or cotton wool balls coated in Vaseline. How do you carry these items in your kit? Pots and containers can be bulky or leak while glass is a non-starter. Here's an idea - a straw container. Here's how you make them...
Take some clean drinking straws (preferably new - this is where McD and BK come in handy!).
Cut them into handy lengths, say 8 - 10 cms.
Plug one end with cotton wool. Add a drop of hot glue or silicone sealant if you want to make the job watertight.
Now fill the straw to within about 1 cm of the top with whatever you want to carry. If it is tinder, cotton wool soaked in Vaseline can be stuffed into the straw a bit at a time. It's a messy job but you can get quite a lot into there (enough for a couple of fires) with patience and using a bit of wire to poke it in.
Seal off the top with a dry bit on cotton wool and clean it up. Add some more glue or sealant if you want to make a tidy job of it.
Remember to label them so in a survival situation you don't have to go ripping them all open. A good idea is to make them different lengths so you can tell them apart in the dark (large ones for cotton wool, small ones for potassium permanganate).
There you have it - a straw container. A variation on this theme is to use heat and pliers to crimp the ends of the straw but remember, potassium permanganate is a powerful oxidizing agent (helps stuff burn) and cotton wool, well, burns well. I've had whole batches go up in flames :bu: doing this until I realized there was another way! :-) :-D
Take some clean drinking straws (preferably new - this is where McD and BK come in handy!).
Cut them into handy lengths, say 8 - 10 cms.
Plug one end with cotton wool. Add a drop of hot glue or silicone sealant if you want to make the job watertight.
Now fill the straw to within about 1 cm of the top with whatever you want to carry. If it is tinder, cotton wool soaked in Vaseline can be stuffed into the straw a bit at a time. It's a messy job but you can get quite a lot into there (enough for a couple of fires) with patience and using a bit of wire to poke it in.
Seal off the top with a dry bit on cotton wool and clean it up. Add some more glue or sealant if you want to make a tidy job of it.
Remember to label them so in a survival situation you don't have to go ripping them all open. A good idea is to make them different lengths so you can tell them apart in the dark (large ones for cotton wool, small ones for potassium permanganate).
There you have it - a straw container. A variation on this theme is to use heat and pliers to crimp the ends of the straw but remember, potassium permanganate is a powerful oxidizing agent (helps stuff burn) and cotton wool, well, burns well. I've had whole batches go up in flames :bu: doing this until I realized there was another way! :-) :-D