You can't do that!"

Discussion in 'Firearms' started by hot diggity, Jun 10, 2018.


  1. Zimmy

    Zimmy Wait, I'm not ready!

    I've known several knuckleheads who regularly fire 30/30 ammo in .303 rifles because that ammo is scarce.

    I'm not going to try it but I did eat the venison.
     
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  2. Seawolf1090

    Seawolf1090 Retired Curmudgeonly IT Monkey Founding Member

    I saw a buddy once accidentally fire .270Win from an M1 Garand. Sounded odd and hit target a bit low. Blew the case mouth out to .30-06. :D

    As a kid, I wanted low energy ammo to hunt mice in the barn. Didn't want riccochets either. I'd pull the bullets from .22LR, dump half the powder and press on a .22 lead pellet. Very inconsistent, not very accurate, made a lead smear on concrete. Pretty much a fail. Decades later I discovered .22 Colibri. Much better!
     
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  3. hot diggity

    hot diggity Monkey+++ Site Supporter+++

    The burning brick gasoline test: KIMG2493. :)Okay, I didn't put old gas in the car and get stranded somewhere, and I didn't forget about the old treated gasoline. I'm going to use the too hot/rainy/tired defense. I did finally drag a couple cans out of the barn. First one was a youngster, put up in April 2014 and treated with Stabil. I left it out to compare some test results. The oldest stuff I found was 5 gallons treated with treated with 5.5 oz of BG CF5. (BG products are usually only available at car dealerships) This gas was put away on May 26 2012 and has not been disturbed since then. "OH NO! You can't put six year old gas in your car!"

    Before Y2K if you'd told me you had some six year old gasoline I'd imagine that old sweet boat gas smell and wonder if the stuff would even pour out of the can. That's when I discovered fuel stabilizers.

    I did some really high tech testing tonight to see if the fuel was still okay. This included a visual test with a flashlight, a sniff test, and a vapor test. (The burning brick test)

    WHOOF! Both samples had all the pop I'd expect from fresh gasoline, and I didn't even bother with the filter funnel or mower test, since I'd never had an issue with water in the past. Five gallons straight into the car, and took it out for a 15 mile test drive. Not a single issue.

    The cans are up off the floor of the barn, they just sit there. My intent has always been to rotate them, but then a tractor gets parked in front of them, and stuff gets piled around them and they get forgotten. It doesn't seem to matter much, and it is certainly a pleasant surprise. Forty two months was my last test, and that was sweet. This one at over six years is just amazing. :)
     
    Last edited: Jun 19, 2018
  4. Cruisin Sloth

    Cruisin Sloth Special & Slow

  5. hot diggity

    hot diggity Monkey+++ Site Supporter+++

    Argh! I did the double picture post thing again with the silly phone. I was having old rabbit ear TV antenna flashbacks, because I had to walk around and flail my arms to get that picture to load at all with this wimpy connection.

    That's the burning brick test. It's a little more high tech than it looks. By pouring a small sample of gas onto a fire brick I can see how it smells, observe how it evaporates, and by holding a match below the side of the brick after allowing 30 seconds or so of evaporation I can test the flammability of the vapors. This stuff had plenty of POP left!

    SIX YEAR OLD GASOLINE! "You can't do that...can you?" ;-)
     
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  6. hot diggity

    hot diggity Monkey+++ Site Supporter+++

    BG CF5® | BG Products, Inc.

    Thanks for the BG link @Cruisin Sloth.

    The line near the bottom that says "is an excellent fuel stabilizer" was what caught my eye. I'd say they've lived up to that description.
     
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  7. ghrit

    ghrit Bad company Administrator Founding Member

    The fix didn't go well, lost both the attachments instead of just one. No can recover, please repost the pic.
     
  8. hot diggity

    hot diggity Monkey+++ Site Supporter+++

    You make it sound so easy.

    Imagine a middle age man, standing in the middle of his mother's kitchen waving his phone around trying to get another 37% of the picture to download. :LOL:
     
  9. ghrit

    ghrit Bad company Administrator Founding Member

    [roflmao] Well, there's a message there. Let your mom have the kitchen ---
     
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  10. hot diggity

    hot diggity Monkey+++ Site Supporter+++

    Wow! The little .308" bullet must've just wandered down the bore of a .303 British. Standard bullet diameter for them is .312", but I've seen guys shooting cast bullets as large as .316" to get them to shoot well. It'll get the job done though. :)
     
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  11. Motomom34

    Motomom34 Monkey+++

    Is this how you would recommend testing fuel? I have some that I think may be too old. Before dumping it in the kids car, I was hoping to test a bit.
     
  12. hot diggity

    hot diggity Monkey+++ Site Supporter+++

    It's not a very scientific analysis, but when it's all you have, it will at least give you an idea if its still got flammable vapors.

    I was pretty confident that this gas was okay once I smelled it. If you get the sweet old gas smell it's probably too late.
     
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  13. oldawg

    oldawg Monkey+++

    That's one way but the sniff test is safer. Tool over to a small engine or marine shop. This early in the year a mechanic probably has a carb or tank around for you to get a whiff of bad gas. It's a smell that imprints.
     
  14. hot diggity

    hot diggity Monkey+++ Site Supporter+++

    Some things in life you never forget. The smell of old gas is one that really sticks with you.

    Another one for me was a "shaker present" that I got one Christmas. It was a family tradition that I got to shake this one wrapped gift and try to guess its contents. I had no idea. On Christmas morning, probably around 1976, I peeled off the wrapping paper and found an old Christmas card box with a clear plastic lid. Inside was what Mom said was a years worth of dried out orange peels, apple cores and apple stems that I left laying around. It was a life altering moment. It was then that I started eating orange peels, and apple cores, and thoughtfully disposing of apple stems. "You can't eat those apple seeds, they have arsenic in them."

    The looks I get when people see me eating whole fruit are priceless. "Ewwww! What are you doing? You can't eat the peel!" There's nutrition and roughage in the orange peel and apple core that are good for digestion. The arsenic, which I'm tested for every year during my physical, doesn't seem to have changed my numbers over time at all.
     
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  15. BTPost

    BTPost Stumpy Old Fart,Deadman Walking, Snow Monkey Moderator

    Seeds are Natures Trick to get the plants reproduction system distributed far and wide... Most fruit seeds do NOT break down going thru a animals digestive tract, and when they deposit The output on the ground, the next spring the seed germinates in a very fertile location, and grows a new plant......
     
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  16. arleigh

    arleigh Goophy monkey

    You cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear .
    Well fail as I might, I try any way.
     
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  17. hot diggity

    hot diggity Monkey+++ Site Supporter+++

    I get projects like that all the time. People expect things restored to like new condition. Alas, it is what it is. Sometimes the best that can be expected is a bit more service life.

    I did make a dandy possibles bag for my muzzle loaders out of a whole possum skin with the fur on and the face intact. Was stolen with all my other black powder stuff in the early 80's. Possums around here don't get that nice winter coat. Maybe a fat trash panda hide would work. :)
     
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  18. hot diggity

    hot diggity Monkey+++ Site Supporter+++

    KIMG2039. Speaking of restorations...especially on old cars, there are loads of things I've been told were "not repairable. No serviceable components. Solid state." "You can't do that!"

    In the old car business lots of good faith and loyal customers are made by being able to fix the un-fixable. It probably took a quarter million miles to wear down that horn contact. Most of the wear happened after all the grease wore off the contact ring.

    This isn't rocket science. Your horn has to have a connection through the steering column, and you have to be able to turn the wheel. The little spring loaded contact on the back of the turn signal switch probably wore off a total of 1/16" over its lifetime and now the folks need a $300 part to fix their $200 car.

    A new cancelling cam is $18, and comes with a shiny new contact ring. On these old cars I take the old brass contact ring off, put it under the shiny new one, grease it up and put it all back together. It makes up most of the missing 1/16" of the contact plunger, and with plenty of grease will last far longer than the vehicle.

    Same on "solid state" wiper modules. It may have a high tech name and a high dollar price, but I'll bet I can fix most of them by just bending the contact arms down onto the motor slip-rings and smearing the old grease back into their path.

    Old auto technicians that understand how to fix things will be in great demand as long as folks keep driving older cars.

    Post SHTF, an old, running car will be a valuable commodity.
     
    Last edited: Jun 21, 2018
  19. hot diggity

    hot diggity Monkey+++ Site Supporter+++

    I've covered most of the list I had scribbled down when I started this thread. Yes, you can make a weapon out of an old lace up boot, and improve on it with a broom handle. (Bishop, if you haven't done it already you'll have to try now.) I've even watched a very old and talented body man add lead filler to a lead panel repair. This is serious old-school stuff, but I grew up hearing that it "Couldn't be done."

    I used to watch Nick, who was in his mid 90's then, do this miracle almost every weekend. Last I heard, he was still caring for his mother, so he definitely comes from a line of long-lived people.

    My thread title "You can't do that!" taken in a Survival Monkey context wouldn't be complete if I didn't mention the simple fact that you may not be able to do lots of things. Skills, strengths, knowledge, we can't know it all, and with the uncertainties of life, we can't possibly plan to do it all ourselves. That's where the power of people and community become incredibly important to our survival planning.

    "Community organizing, extreme vetting, merit-based immigration." These terms are all the rage nowadays on the news, but they're things that we need to use on a daily basis in our own locality. Have the neighbors over for a seafood boil, get to know everybody. Learn who's retired from what, who can make an awesome fish stew, who has pigs, cattle, chickens, rabbits and comm.
    How was the peach harvest? Squirrels got too many? I like squirrel stew! How about venison? How many tags did you fill last year? "Man, we need to get out to the range some time!" Questions and conversations like this will lead to more quiet ones about how to isolate the community if necessary. Choke points of roads into the area, natural features that provide over-watch of the neighborhood, and neighbors who may become troublesome when the grocery/liquor store shelves are empty.
    We saw what happened here over the last few big storms. We can only speculate about what will happen if society collapses.

    "You can't do that!" No, but in our little community, with the resources and networking that we are doing now....WE CAN!
     
    Last edited: Jun 22, 2018
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  20. arleigh

    arleigh Goophy monkey

    One of the very first things I fixed as a kid was a door latch for one of dads cars , I simply welded material to the worn out latch and vola new again. The automotive light switches in those days was easy to rebuild , bend the tabs strait and clean the contacts and reassemble being careful about all the springs .
    In school , shop class to be precise some moron shoved a piece of metal in a padlock. the teacher said it was junk ,but just to prove it repairable I fixed it . ground the rivets off enough to disassemble and removed the piece of steel and reassembled and peened the rivets . handed it back to him the next day. He did not seem impressed.
    It seems that there are a few that don't appreciate the fact you can fix things ,it seems that they intended to replace any way .
    In the air compressor industry amongst smaller units ,if there are more than 2-3 components in trouble it generally will cost more to fix than replace EONOMICALLY. Labor aside, manufacturers make a killing on parts .
    As a fledgling business we made a living on working on some pretty antiquated equipment, no one else would touch, the lack of special tooling it took to get into them ,I was able to make .Repairs I was willing to perform .
    I had 2 teachers primarily .my dad ,that learned on the farm and worked on cars for a living while growing up before the war, and my brother whom was a machinist and motorcycle mechanic and racer in his youth . plus the coaching of other small engine shops and companies I worked for through the years.
    One thing remained important in my life was that I was not being afraid of learning new things, and taking on new jobs I was unfamiliar with . My last job ( before retirement ) was working in manufacturing and building cardiac and corotated artery stents, something completely different than any thing I had ever done, possibly the best job I had ever had especially just before retirement. Even there managed to contribute some accepted ideas for improving the manufacture .It was rewarding work.
    The old phrase ,"if it ain't broke don't fix it." some folks don't know when something is broke.
     
  1. T. Riley
  2. 3M-TA3
  3. duane
  4. 3M-TA3
  5. hot diggity
  6. Matei
  7. OldDude49
  8. oil pan 4
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  13. Oddcaliber
  14. Dont
  15. oil pan 4
  16. Oddcaliber
  17. Yard Dart
  18. Marvin L. Steinhagen
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  20. Ura-Ki
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