Category: Skills
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The Weekly Feast – Bread
Bread is often called the “staff of life,” and that’s because a man can survive on bread and water. We think of this, in today’s world of Wonderbread and fake food, as a cruel punishment. In medieval times, bread and water was fairly standard fare for a person. In the 1750s, bread was 60% of…
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What comes first?
One of the most interesting things I’m currently discovering, is how to move back in time. What happens when there is no electricity? What can we do, how can we do it? One path is to learn how to live off-grid. This is part of where I am. This is why I spent the time…
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Prepping for What?
I posted about prepping a bit back on GFZ. I think it’s a topic that needs to be covered on a regular basis, and even if you have been doing it for a dog’s age, the reminders help get you in the right head space. Now, I don’t do the whole “deep state bunker prep”…
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The Weekly Feast – Alloes of Beef
Back in May, I decided to attempt a new recipe while out in the field, cooking over a fire at a Renaissance Faire. I do this a couple of times a year, when I know I have time to play with new things. Not all fairs allow me the time to pay attention to details,…
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Learning A New Skill
I like to learn new things. My goal is to be able to fix anything at The Fort At #4. A large part of that is learning how to turn wood. This is not as difficult as it could be because I have experience with a metal lathe. The concepts are similar, but very different.…
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For Want of a Nail…
The Fort has been trying to recover from the lack of visitors during covid. It is also working with volunteers that know much about their area of interest, but not so much about other parts. Consider power transmission. We have been working with power transmission since ancient Roman times. What is power transmission? It is…
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It followed me home! Can I keep it?
I am attempting to learn a new skill. Wood turning. This is a Craigslist find. The cost was good enough. The motor and lathe chuck are worth more than I paid for it. So I wasn’t concerned about it working. The lovely people we bought if from were ready when we arrived, s Tuesday, I…
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Prepping – Useful Skills
There are a BILLION skills to learn when you’re talking about reenactment or prepping for TEOTWAWKI. I’m going to touch on the top five today, but if there’s a specific skill set you’d like me to write about, drop me a note in the comments below. Fire Knowing how to make a fire is probably…
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Shop Improvements
The goal is to make my shop a usable space again. I used to have around 8 square feet of workbench, of which 2+ were taken up with the bench vise. The wielding table is outside. The hydrologic press is outside. The blast cabinet is outside. Normally, they are under tarps, but that isn’t a…
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“Prepping” vs. “Resilience.”
A great many moons ago, when responsibility for “Disaster Preparedness” landed on my desk, I lobbied for “Business Continuity” instead – how do we keep the business functioning, meet customer demand, protect and pay employees, support our suppliers and contractors, etc.? Not a simple task and in our extremely complex manufacturing business, more than a…