Candle Holders

When you’ve laid in a good supply of various different candles, you will need something to hold the candles while they are burning.  Your candle holders can be as simple or as fancy as you wish.  You can melt a little wax in a metal jar lid and stick your candle in that. 

You can pour a little sand in a glass jar and stick your candle down in that.  Add a wire bail and you will have a fairly functional lantern that will not be blown out by every breeze that comes along.

I would advise against using wooden candle holders, either store-bought or home-made.  When your candle burns down to the bottom it can catch the wood on fire and then you could have real problems.  You can see by this photo from my earlier candle test that a wooden holder can definitely catch fire.

If your candles will be stationary and inside out of the wind, metal candlesticks work just fine.  I have to admit to having a little bit of a thing for antique pewter candlesticks.  If they are at all reasonably priced, I just can’t pass them up. 

We generally use oil lamps during power outages, but we have been known to break out the candlesticks on occasion.  One winter our power went out about an hour before 12 people were due to come over for dinner and a small after-Christmas party.  We already had the open face wood stove burning, so all we had to do was break out the candles and the party went off without a hitch.  Of course it helped that the attendees were all members of our mountain man club, so they thought the 19^th century ambiance was great.

We have wall sconces in our dining room that hold three candles each, and a candelabrum that sits on the table holding another three candles. 

This makes for a fairly bright dining room, but in any long term situation I would not burn this many candles.  If you have just a couple of candles burning in an average size room you will be surprised at how fast your eyes adjust and make the room seem fairly well lighted.  Not read a book or do needlepoint well lighted, but good enough for most activities.  Remember, most of the old time country folks didn’t “burn the mid-night oil” very often.  Activities that required a lot of light were preformed during the day.  When the sun went down, bedtime was not far off.

If you will be walking around the house with a candle, or especially if you are going outside; a candlestick will not work.  No matter how slow you go, or how hard you try to protect the flame with your hand, your candle will blow out.  What you need is a candle lantern.

There are many different kinds of candle lanterns, but they all have the same basic purpose.  They are made to protect the candle flame from being accidentally blown out while still allowing the flame to illuminate the immediate area.  As mentioned above you can improvise a pretty good lantern with a jar, some sand, a candle, and some wire; but there are many styles of ready made lanterns available.

The punched tin, or Paul Revere lantern is an attractive lantern; but, in my opinion, it is one of the least practical.  It just does not emit enough light, and the light that it does emit is in a very distracting pattern.  I would save this one for decoration and buy a more practical lantern for actual use.

Most stores that carry home decorator items will have a good variety of candle lanterns, and they usually don’t cost that much.  You can buy two or three of these for your home without breaking the bank.

This wooden candle lantern is one that I bought at a mountain man rendezvous. 

 I’ve used it for years, and it works quite well.  The only problem I have with it is that the actual candle holder is wood, so you have to keep an eye on it so it doesn’t catch fire.  Also, you can’t burn really tall candles in it or the flame may set the top on fire.  Sounds kind of dangerous now that I think about it, but I’ve never had any problems.

This last candle lantern is one that I made on the same basic pattern as the mountain man lantern above.  Two differences are that I made it much smaller because I will only burn tea candles and votives in it, and I made the actual candle holder out of a metal jar lid so as to avoid the catching on fire problem.

I also made a little protective box to carry it in.  The box has some storage space on the bottom where I can keep candles, matches, and a chain with hooks to hang the lantern.

 Here is a comparison photo of five different lanterns in use.  From left to right they are (1) candle in a jar improvised lantern, (2) Paul Revere lantern, (3) decorator lantern, (4) wooden mountain man lantern, and (5) small home-made wooden lantern.   

For purposes of comparison the first four lanterns are all burning standard paraffin emergency candles.  Lantern number 5 is burning one of the paraffin tea candles that it was designed for.  All except the Paul Revere lantern produce good light.  I have been known to lay in my cot at night reading by the light of my mountain man candle lantern, so the light must be pretty good.

 

Candles for Emergency Light

Many people keep candles in their emergency supplies, so I thought I would do a little experiment to see what kind of candle will burn the longest. 

 I used six different candles in my experiment as follow: 

Candle A is a bee’s wax candle.  It is six inches tall, 7/8 inches in diameter, and weighs 46 grams.  I weighed each candle so that I could more accurately compare their burn times.

Candle B is a paraffin decorative taper; the kind of candle that you stick into a candle holder when you have a fancy dinner on the table.  I cut this candle down so that it was also six inches tall.  It has a diameter of 7/8 inch and weighs 40 grams.

Candle C is a paraffin emergency candle.  These candles are sold in supermarkets and variety stores and are specifically labeled as emergency candles.  The candle I used is four inches tall, ¾ inch in diameter, and weighs 20 grams.

Candle D is a bee’s wax votive candle.  It is 1 7/8 inches tall, two inches in diameter, and weighs 35 grams.

Candle E is a paraffin votive candle.  It is 1 ¾ inches tall, two inches in diameter, and weighs 39 grams.

Candle F is a paraffin tea candle.  It is 3/8 inch tall, 1 3/8 inches in diameter, and weighs 10 grams.  The tea candle is contained in its own little aluminum foil tub, presumably to keep the melted paraffin from running off.

So, let’s get started.  All the candles were lighted at the same time.

I turned off the lights and closed the drapes to try and get an idea of how much light each candle produced.  I don’t have anything to measure the amount of lumens each candle produces, so I just had to eyeball it.  They all look to be about the same with the exception of the tea candle which is noticeably dimmer, and the emergency candle appears to be just slightly brighter than the others.

 

At the end of the first hour the emergency candle has burned down quite a bit.

By the end of the second hour the emergency candle is getting very short. 

 The two votive candles are starting to form large puddles of wax around themselves.  I don’t know for sure, but I think that this is because the votives only get hot enough to burn the wax that is right around the wick area.  The wax that is farther away from the wick doesn’t burn.  It just gets hot enough to melt and run off.

After two hours and thirty-five minutes the emergency candle is the first to go out.

By the end of the third hour the two votive candles are getting very low.

The tall bee’s wax and paraffin candles are still doing well.

After three hours and twenty-five minutes the tea candle goes out.  It has not burned the longest, but remember, at only 10 grams weight it is the smallest candle in the test.

After three hours and twenty-nine minutes the paraffin votive goes out.  You can see that it has left a large pool of melted (unburned) wax.  In fact of the original 39 grams of wax there are 23 grams that remain as unburned waste.

The bee’s wax votive lasts for a total of three hours and thirty-seven minutes; just eight minutes longer than the paraffin votive.  The bee’s wax votive leaves behind 21 grams of unburned waste.

It appears at this point that the paraffin taper will last the longest,

but for some reason it starts melting and pooling wax rather than burning it.  After four hours and fifty-eight minutes the paraffin taper goes out.

The bee’s wax taper burns for over another hour and finally goes out after six hours and four minutes.

So to summarize the burn time of each candle:

A bee’s wax taper     - 6 hrs. 4 min.

B paraffin taper         - 4 hrs. 58 min.

C emergency candle  - 2 hrs. 35 min.

D bee’s wax votive   - 3 hrs. 37 min.

E paraffin votive       - 3 hrs. 29 min.

F paraffin tea candle – 3 hrs. 25 min.

Now it would be easy to say that the bee’s wax tapers burn longer than other candles, but let’s remember that the tested candles were all different sizes and weights.  The only fair way to make an apples-to-apples comparison is to figure out how many minutes per gram of wax that each candle would burn, and here the results are a little surprising.

The big losers are the two votive candles.  The paraffin votive only burned about 5.3 minutes per gram of wax, and the bee’s wax votive only did a little better at 6.2 minutes per gram of wax.

The paraffin decorative taper burned about 7.5 minutes per gram, the paraffin emergency candle burned about 7.8 minutes per gram, and the bee’s wax taper burned about 7.9 minutes per gram.  So these were all pretty close to the same.

The run-away champion was the paraffin tea candle which burned an amazing 20.5 minutes per gram.  By the way, I had some other tea candles that were ¾ inch tall instead of 3/8”.  I burned one of them and the results held.  The ¾” tall tea candles burned for nearly 7 hours.

So there you have the great candle experiment.  Even if you have to burn two tea candles to get the same amount of light as from the other candles, you are still ahead of the game.  If you are going to lay in a supply of emergency candles I would say that tea candles look like a winner, and did I mention that they are also cheaper than any of the other candles.  Definitely a winner.

The Five Staples – Old Time Bug Out Food

There are a lot of options about what kind of food to include in a bug-out-bag, or 72 hour pack as some call it.  The kind of food you have in your pack is going to be a reflection of what your pack is intended for.  Is it to get you through a hurricane?  Is it to get you from your home in the city to a survival retreat somewhere?  Is it just the beginning rations for a long term survival situation?  Or maybe, like most of us, you don’t really know what it will end up being used for.

So, most people end up going with freeze dried back-packing meals, MRE’s, or dried and canned goods from the grocery store.  These are a safe bet, but it’s hard to carry more than a few days worth of food this way, and what if you end up needing to live off of the land for a couple of weeks or more.  Well, this is where the five staples come in.

And what, you ask, are the five staples?  Well, the five staples are a little trick that was taught to me years ago by my wilderness mentor.  We used to go on canoe trips in order to practice survival and wilderness living skills and we took very minimal supplies.  My mentor called it Daniel Boone camping.  In the food procurement and preparation department we usually took our fish spears, a frying pan, and the “five staples.”  The five staples were; (1) self-rising flour, (2) corn meal, (3) salt, (4) sugar, and (5) lard or shortening.

The main purpose of the five staples was to enhance the preparation of wild foods that we procured; but, in a pinch, the five staples could be used to prepare a couple of very basic foods that would keep us going until nature saw fit to provide us with more.

For meat we speared gar, snakes, turtles, and on one occasion a nutria.  Now all of these things can be prepared by spitting them on sticks and roasting them over a fire; but they taste about 1000% better if they’re salted, breaded with a little flour or corn meal, and fried in lard.  It takes just a miniscule amount of salt, just a couple of table spoons of cornmeal, and maybe a quarter cup of lard (save what’s left to reuse) to turn a survival situation into a picnic.  Things like wild greens and briar shoots are good, but they taste so much better with a little dash of salt on them.

Now what about the times when we weren’t so lucky at finding food?  Well how do pancakes for breakfast sound?  Take about a quarter cup of self rising flour and put about a teaspoon of sugar in it.  Add enough water to make a nice batter.  Fry it up in your skillet and you have some very good pancakes.  For syrup you can dissolve a little sugar in hot water and pour it on.  I remember on one trip we found some wild blackberries growing near the river.  I picked about a quart of berries, and while Glen was cooking pancakes, I mashed up some of the berries with sugar and a little water and we had blackberry syrup on our pancakes.  Later that evening we had a little blackberry cobbler made with nothing but berries, sugar, and a little crust of self rising flour mixed with sugar and water.

Another breakfast treat that Glen would sometimes make were his famous survival donuts.  He would mix up batter just like for pancakes, but he would cook it in little globs, about a tablespoon of batter dropped in the grease.  While the globs of fried batter were still hot, he would drop them in the sugar bag and shake them around a bit.  These little “donuts” with their crunchy sugar coating were mighty tasty.

We usually managed to come up with something to eat by dinner time, but if not we would make some hot water cornbread.  These corn cakes are really easy to make.  Just mix a little salt into about a quarter cup of cornmeal. Pour some boiling water into the mixture until it is a thick paste, about like playdough.  Pat the dough out into a cake and fry it until golden brown. You must use boiling water to make these or you will end up with a mess.  The boiling water causes the cornmeal to release its gluten and the resulting dough will stick together.  You can use this same recipe to make little cornbread dumplings to add to a pot of wild greens.  Just drop the little balls of dough into the greens for about the last tens minutes that they are on the fire.

Can you see the value of the five staples?  A pot of wild greens boiled in creek water is edible.  A pot of wild greens boiled in creek water with a little salt, a little bit of lard, and some cornbread dumplings is a real honest to goodness meal. 

If you think that you may end up needing to provide for yourself for more than 72 hours, and if you are in a position to live off of the land, you might want to think about the five staples and whether or not they might have a place in your bug out plans.

The Search for the Perfect Hatchet

 

I was reading Woodcraft by Nesmuk the other night, and I was amused to read that he had spent 12 years in search of the right hatchet to carry while hiking in the wilds.  He is a fast learner.  I’ve been looking for the right hand axe for 50 years, and I’m not sure that I’ve found it yet.  I’ve always been looking for an axe that’s light and convenient to carry; but it needs to be rugged, well balanced, and heavy enough to do camp chores.  The following is a brief, illustrated history of my quest.

I all started when this was sitting on the mantle for my 8^th Christmas. 

It was a Boy Scout hand axe, and man was I excited.  It was a good axe and I carried it on many hikes and camps.  I still have it, obviously; and I keep it for sentimental reasons; but I no longer carry it.  It’s a little on the heavy side, and I don’t really care for the balance, but it’s a pretty good axe.

I tried a light-weight, back-packers hatchet; but it was just too light. 

It was not much better than a sheath knife for cutting or splitting wood, and the poll (the hammer end) was so narrow that it was useless for things like driving tent stakes, mashing up coffee beans, or cracking hickory nuts. 

Handy for dressing a deer, but as an all around camp axe, it just wasn’t the one.

I carried a tomahawk for a while, but I it was pretty heavy and I didn’t like the balance. 

The fact that it didn’t have a flat poll to hammer with was pretty inconvenient also.  You could use the front to hammer, but it was about as likely as not to glance off what you were hitting.  I kept the tomahawk, but now I only use it for a throwing axe at mountain man events.

I bought a Fort Meggs axe, but I was splitting some light wood and broke the handle the first time I put any side-ways torque on the axe.  It was just too light. I don't have it anymore so I can't include a picture, but it is really small.  The handle is thin all over, and inside the head it is really thin, only about 3/8 inch.  So, not really up to the job.

I thought maybe I could kill two birds with one stone by carrying a knife that was big enough to serve as both knife and hatchet.  I picked up a Pakistan Bowie knife and carried it a few times. 

I’ve heard that these things are made out of what ever is laying around, and some are good steel, and some are bad.  I got lucky on this one, as it seems well tempered and will take and hold a good edge.  But it missed the mark on several fronts.  It was too big to be a good camp knife, and not heavy enough to be a good axe.  Also, it didn’t fill-the-bill as a hammer. 

I tried a machete for a while.  I figured that East Texas is kind of a jungle so maybe a machete would be appropriate.  

It was nice that it had a saw on the back, but you can't really hammer with it, and I hated the way it was always banging on my leg when I walked.  So, I only pull this one out when I'm specifically going to be hacking brush and vines.

Currently I am carrying a hatchet that may be a winner. 

I have been using it for about five years and it has held up well.  It is light, but it feels good in the hand.  It will cut down small trees (3 or 4 inches in diameter) and it will split light wood.  It has a nice big head on the front and serves well to hammer in tent stakes, mash up berries, crack nuts, and etc.  It may be the one….. or then again, it may not.

I round out my woods tools with a Russel knife that a friend gave me, and a pocket-size Leatherman multi-tool.  I find that with these three implements I can do just about anything that needs doing in the woods.

The Home First-Aid Kit

Whether you’re a prepper or not, every home needs a first aid kit.  I’m not talking about the stuff that you keep in your medicine cabinet.  When there’s an accident or injury it is not a good time to be digging through cologne bottles, out of date prescriptions, vitamins, and make-up to try and locate bandages and anti-biotic ointment.  And be honest; how many times have you ended up driving to the store because you were either out-of or couldn’t locate what you were looking for in the medicine cabinet.

If you are a prepper you probably have some medical supplies stored up.  You don’t want to be breaking open a bottle of 1000 acetaminophen tablets because one of the kids came down with a cold and you hadn’t noticed that the 50 tablet bottle in the medicine cabinet was empty.  Or maybe you’ve injured yourself when you’re working in the garden or out in the woods.  You need sit and hold direct pressure on the wound while your spouse or one of the kids goes to the house to get some tweezers, a bottle of water, an irrigating syringe, a roll of gauze, some bandage tape and some anti-biotic ointment.  Wouldn’t it be a lot easier, and save a lot of time if all you had to say was “Run to the house and get me the first-aid kit and a bottle of water.”

So, just like every home should have smoke alarms and fire extinguishers; every home should have a first-aid kit.  The kit should be of a reasonable size so that it is portable.  If you are going on a long drive or a vacation you should be able to grab it and throw it in the car or truck.  It should stay in a readily accessible location, and everyone in the family should know where it is.

You can buy pre-packaged first-aid kits, but I have not been real impressed by the ones that I have seen.  To get a well equipped one is a costly endeavor, and most kits seem to be long on cut and abrasion care and short on a lot of other things. 

You can build your own first-kit, as I did, but I will say right up front that it was not cheap.  I probably spent about $50 on our kit, but I feel comfortable with the contents, and I feel like it will handle most common home or travel emergencies.  Of course first-aid is meant to be just that.  If you have a serious injury that requires debriding and sutures, the first-aid kit is not going to handle it.  The first-aid kit will allow you to control the bleeding and help avoid infection until you can get professional medical help.

I was very lucky in obtaining a case for my first-aid kit.  My wife brought an old first-aid box that was being replaced home from her work.  The box was in good shape, of course the few items left inside of it were either dried out, torn open, or out of date; so they went to the trash.  I cleaned the box up, and my wife used her vinyl cutter to make a new label for the front of it.

Now came the stocking with first-aid supplies.  Here is what I ended up filling the box with:

For Wound Care

            2 pair non-latex exam gloves

            large syringe for wound irrigation

            6 q-tips

            tube of triple anti-biotic ointment

            30 sterile adhesive bandages

            10 butterfly bandages

            10  2” x 3” non-stick gauze pads

            1 roll  2” guaze

            1 roll ½” adhesive tape

            1 small tube surgical adhesive (Super Glue)

            1 pair small scissors

For Disinfecting

            1  2oz. bottle of jelled alcohol hand sanitizer

            100 alcohol prep pads

For Removing Splinters

            tweezers

            plastic tube containing 3 needles

            disposable lighter to sterilize needle tips

For Removing Objects from Eye and Eye Irritation

            small mirror

            magnifying glass

            eye drops

For Pain Management

            40  500 mg acetaminophen caplets

For Digestive Problems

            3 rolls Tums anti-acid tablets

            12 generic Imodium gels for diarrhea

For Colds and Allergies

            6 eucalyptus lozenges

            24 generic Benedryl capsules

For Burns, Stings, Poison Ivy, and Skin Irritations

            1 tube 1% hydrocortisone cream

For Muscle and Joint Pain

            1 tube menthol and methyl salicylate cream (Ben-Gay)

To Help Treat Shock

            1  reflective mylar survival blanket

For Dental Emergencies

            4 tongue depressors

            1 oz. bottle of oil of clove (for toothaches)

            dental repair kit to temporarily replace lost fillings and secure loose crows and caps

For Dehydration

            1 pack of electrolyte replacement (Gatorade) to be dissolved in one quart of water

For Snake Bite

            snake bite kit (to be used only as a last resort when no professional medical care is possible)

So, here’s my finished kit.

Of course you may need to add other things to your kit.  You may need to include an emergency asthma inhaler or some epi-pens if you are allergic to bee stings.  If you have small children you may want to include some syrup of ipecac.  I personally would like to include an Ace Bandage for wrapping sprains, but they are just too bulky to fit in my box.

When you get your kit put together, be sure and put it in an easily accessible place.  I hung my kit on the inside of the coat closet door, right next to my front door.  It’s easy to get to, and it’s easy to grab on the way out the door and throw in the car.

By the way, I never claim to be the end all and know all.  If you can think of something that you think I need to add (keep in mind that this is a first-aid kit, not an EMT bag) then let me know in the comments.