But how about a nice way to build a simple, portable stove? Because we all know that when winter really hits around here, simple ways to heat and good are of utmost importance. And I wanted something that was an actual stove (with chimney) that was nicer than the truly survival ones you make from #10 cans. Behold, the ammo-can stove:

Click here to view the embedded video.

What Is It (and what’s in the box):

This Work Sharp basically amounts to a hand held belt sander.  For the Alton Brown fans among us, this device is definitely a Multi-Tasker.  The package comes with several angle guides and some different grits of sanding belts.  The coarsest grit is for sharpening tools like shovels, axes or lawn mower blades.  The medium grit is for fixing up damaged or really dull blades.  The fine grit is for putting on a razor sharp polish.

Also included in the package are some angle guides.  There is a 40 degree guide mainly used for kitchen knives.  There is an outdoor guide that puts on a 50 degree edge.  The outdoor guide also includes a slot for sharpening serrated edges and for scissors/shears.

The kit also comes with an instruction guide and DVD.  I haven’t watched the DVD yet.  (So far the operation has been fairly straight forward)

How To Use It:

In the 10 months or so that I’ve had the Work Sharp I’ve sharpened probably 30-40 knives as well as a shovel, axe and lawn mower blade.  The basic operation for any of these surfaces is this:

1. Pick the desired grit of sanding belt.  The belt is put on the Work Sharp by locking one of the guide pulleys out of the way and sliding on/off the belt, then resetting the pulley.
2. Pick the desired sharpening angle.  Picking the correct angle is probably an entire article itself.  The basics are this:  The narrower the angle, the sharper you can get, but you loose strength (think razor blade.  It’s super sharp, but can’t take much abuse).  The wider the angle the less potential sharpness, but the blade will be more durable (think axe).  The 40 degree guide will be good for kitchen knives.  You want them to be sharper, but you are often pretty careful what you are cutting with them.  The 50 degree angle is better for pocket knives where you will face a variety of cutting tasks, and you want the blade to last as long as possible.  If what you are trying to sharpen has a common angle, then you can just use on of the preset guides.  Or if you have a steady hand you can skip the guide.  If using one of the preset guides then slide it over the belt.
3. Using smooth even pulls, drag the blade through the guide.  You don’t want to go to slowly because you can burn the blade or cause uneven spots.
4. The number of passes over the belt will just depend on the condition of your blade.  The manual gives some good guidelines for how many times you’ll need to run the blade through the sharpener.
5. Wipe the silly grin off your face when you realize how sharp your tool is and how fast it was.

Observations:

After sharpening quite a few blades I’ve noticed a few things.  First of all the edge that is created with the Work Sharp is very durable.  I used to have to sharpen my kitchen knives on a fairly regular basis.  Now I just use my honing steel, and the edges will keep for months and months.  Also the edges that are produced with the Work Sharp are extremely sharp.

When I made my initial purchase I got an extra set of sanding belts.  I’m still on my original set of belts, and they aren’t really even showing any signs of needing to be replaced.  I imagine, depending on your usage, you could go for several years just on the set of belts that are included in the box.  Throw in some backups and you’ll be set for quite a while.

After the break you’ll find a complete unboxing and review of the 7 liter Saratoga Jacks Thermal Cooker as well as an introduction to thermal cookers and why they matter to preppers.

Unboxing

First things first, here are some pictures documenting the unboxing process.

This is what is shipped to you, a fairly plain cardboard box with the shipping label, etc. attached.

Opening the box reveals a well packaged inner box cushioned by some foam peanuts.

Here is the inner box removed. It has a handle built into the box to facilitate removing the box from the packaging. It also makes a nice storage box for the cooker later on.

Saratoga Jacks has done a nice job in branding the box.

The full logo is on the side of the box.

Once the box is opened, there is an instruction sheet with some bad English translations. We’ve been told that a new set of instructions and a recipe book will be included in any cookers purchased in time for Christmas. The cooker is cradled by an upper and lower piece of Styrofoam to protect it while in the box.

Further protecting the finish on the cooker is a plastic bag.

Finally, the cooker is revealed. What you can’t see in these pictures is a sturdy fold down handle for carrying the cooker.

With the lid open, there is an pot lid and some foldable handles in evidence.

Removing the lid reveals a small pot inside a larger pot.

The small pot has been removed.

The thermal cooker with all the internal pots and lids removed.

What is a Thermal Cooker?

So, if you are like me you are wondering what a thermal cooker is and how does this fit into being a prepper? A thermal cooker is essentially a crock pot that does not use any electricty or fuel source to cook food. Given that cryptic explanation you might be asking yourself how this works. To illustrate this, let me explain how we recently cooked a nice dinner in our cooker. You might also want to review a post Jayce did several years ago on cooking oatmeal and cereals in a Thermos.

We started off by putting some rice in the small pot with some water. Next we put some chicken, chopped vegetables, potatoes and some stock and spices into the larger pot. Both pots were put on our gas stove and brought to a hard boil. After boiling for about 4 solid minutes we pulled both pots off the stove and placed them in the thermal cooker, sealing the lid.

Six hours later we opened up the cooker and had a nice, piping hot meal from straight from the cooker. The cooker is a highly insulated container which due to its insulation efficiency loses very little heat over time. When you place a partially cooked but hot meal into the cooker then seal it, the heat is contained in the cooker and the contents continue to cook due using the thermal mass of the meal itself.

Prepper Usage

From a prepper perspective this allows for a very efficient use of fuel. Rather than simmer something on the stove for hours you can instead minimize the amount of fuel consumed by putting the pots into the thermal cooker after a few minutes of heating. Your camping stove for example would be on for 5 minutes rather than for 40 minutes. We’ve also found that this is a great way to prepare food in advance to take along with us.

If we know we will be traveling for several hours we can prepare a meal in the thermal cooker and bring it along with us. After several hours, when it is time to eat, the meal has fully cooked without the need for continuous fuel use. This also removes the worry of leaving a crock pot on during the day while you are away. I don’t like to do this as it presents a possible fire hazard. A thermal cooker eliminates this concern for my family.

I don’t have direct experience with some other competing thermal cookers, but I do know that this product is made well from quality components. There are currently two sizes available, a 5.5 liter and a 7 liter model. In order to reduce heat loss to the air, you want to be sure to use the correct sized model for your needs. A partially filled cooker will not maintain heat with the same efficiency as a full cooker due to heat loss into the air gap above a partially full cooker.

The Thermal Cooker also makes for a nice cooler. In the same way that the cooker’s insulation seals in the heat, it can be used as a cooler to keep things cold for reasonably long periods of time. This provides a secondary usage for this tool and helps us to limit uni-tasker devices in our preps.

Critiques

The 5.5 liter model will cook a meal for 3-5 people while a 7 liter will hold a meal for 6-10 people. You’ll want to use the model that fits the size of the meal you are cooking. Sometimes it isn’t convenient to cook a larger meal just to fill a cooker, and I don’t want to have to buy two cookers to handle both small and large meals. To that end I hope that Saratoga Jacks comes up with an add on to the 7 liter model perhaps consisting of an insulated sleeve and a small pot that would allow you to efficiently cook a smaller meal in the larger cooker without needing to purchase a complete cooker.

Word of Caution

One additional note that perhaps doesn’t need to be said. The thermal cooker is NOT meant to be heated directly. You heat the inner pots OUTSIDE the cooker, then place the hot pots into the cooker. The cooker has plastic components which will melt should you attempt to put the cooker over a flame or other heat source. Heat the pots, not the cooker! :)

Conclusion

Overall my wife and I have both enjoyed using this new tool. It has the potential to save us money on gas and electric bills and can reduce fuel consumption in an emergency. If you are interested in this, give them a call. If there is enough interest we may try running a group buy as well to save our readers some cash on these cookers.. Please post a comment below and we can answer any questions you might have about this review.

Several of the stoves getting setup

Last weekend several of the UtahPreppers got together with some friends to begin doing some hands on tests to start preparing for winter. Recently several of us have acquired new stoves and we wanted to give a conduct some tests to compare how well they worked. For our first meet up we wanted to test a few stoves and other devices with the group. While we learned a lot we realized that we’ve got some more comprehensive tests to run through before we can highlight each of them adequately. But before we move along with the individual tests, we wanted to thank some of the people that helped make this first stove test so much fun and informative.

Volcano Grills

In terms of stoves, Volcano Grills is nothing new to longtime readers here. We’re all big fans of this product and it keeps getting better. Mark with Volcano Grills showed us a few changes that they’ve made to the stoves to improve them and gave us a few new ideas about things to try. We’ll be reporting some of the results and showing off a few things you will want to have for your stove.

EcoZoom Rocket Stoves

The principle of a rocket stove has become quite popular recently with various build it yourself plans and kits available online. While you can make various types yourself you may want a more well-made product to depend on for long term usage. EcoZoom Stoves let us use one of theirs and we’ll be letting you know how that worked.

FireBox Folding Stove

A local newcomer, we first met the creator of the FireBox Folding Stove at the self-reliance expo in Salt Lake City. It was great to see a local with a well-made product. We knew we’d have to put this thing through some tough tests to see if it lived up to the demo.

QuickStove

Another local the QuickStove is a Stove-in-a-Can concept that seemed right up our alley. It is a self-contained kit that allows for emergency cooking and storage in your 72-hour kit

Saratoga Jacks

One town over from our test site, the Saratoga Jacks folks didn’t have far to travel. They came with their thermal cookers that we’d been researching and let us have a little hands-on time.

They also provided us with a unit to run through its paces and conduct some longer term tests. For more info see Mike’s review of Saratoga Jack’s Thermal Cookers

Eden Valley Foods

Newcomers to the food storage market, Eden Valley Foods brought over a few samples and some great information regarding various food manufacturing and storage methods as well as information on how freeze fried food are manufactured, shipped and stored.

FoodStorageMadeEasy

Along with the UtahPreppers authors that made it to our event we also had Jodi from FoodStorageMadeEasy.net, some of our best local friends. Their site is a great resource for people overwhelmed with the idea of food storage and looking on how to get an easy entry into our world.

Coming Soon:

As we get review posts about each of these products ready we’ll update this page with links. You can also follow our RSS feed to get updates when they come out.

We’ll hopefully be having more group events soon, so don’t forget to let us know (contact us, or here in the comments) if you’re interested in coming out, or if you have something you’d like to see tested!

As handy as the device is, there were some shortcomings.  First off, the device I most wanted to use on it is extremely finicky with what it allows to charge (yeah, it’s an iPhone), and the variability of solar electricity meant that the iPhone didn’t like accepting the charge.  Secondly, some of my devices simply take AA or AAA batteries, and I didn’t have a good charger that would run off the USB adaptor that the 7m provides.

Thankfully there is a relatively new product that addresses these shortcomings, their Goal0 Guide 10.  In short, it’s a battery charger, that doubles as a combined power pack for those devices you would most likely charge from the panel.

Key Features

The Guide 10 is a very simple device, that makes lightweight solar usage possible for a backpacker. It starts as a simple AA or AAA charger. It just plugs in to your 7m (or other panel) through their simple adaptor, and you can lay it out in the sun. If you are hiking, the 7m already has loops to tie on to your pack, and the Guide 10 has a nice metal cable so you can attach with a carabiner. The Guide 10 is operated via simple three way switch. On allows you to charge devices from the rechargeable batteries, Off allows you to stop providing power to external devices to stop phantom power drains and recharge the batteries at a faster rate through your solar panel. The third position turns on an integrated LED light. Simple and handy, this proved quite functional when using my kit. Charging may also come via a standard USB Mini-B adaptor, which plugs into a standard usb in case you wanted to charge from a computer or other device.  Using the device means simply either taking out the batteries to use them, or plugging into the full-size USB port and flipping the switch to run in ‘power pack’ mode.

Inline Charging

For devices like my phone that don’t like the variables associated with solar charging, the Guide 10 really helps provide a clean power source.  If I simply plug in the phone to the pack, and the pack to the panel, I get the correct amount of power to my phone even if a cloud decides to get in the way. Even if your electronics are too finicky, it’s a lot easier on them to be treated this way!

Storing For Later

Sure, a power pack of four AA batteries isn’t going to power my laptop, but I have a lot of devices that work quite well on that much electricity. While I could provide a lot of light with one of Goal0′s Light-a-Life’s, they are rather large and too bright for backpacking.

Using a small USB powered light stick though works extremely well.  During my last campout I would plug in one of the Luna Lights into a battery pack, and have just an amazing flood of light for our group. Best of all it barely sipped the power even from these AA batteries.  Using the light for several hours during the night, I still only needed a small charge during the day to get back to full power. I could have easily still gone to charge a phone or other devices along with my lights, which I think is the critical test I needed to prove this was the right size for my needs.

According to the product site, the 7m panel takes approximately 3 hours to charge the Guide 10 while a 3.5 watt panel takes approximately 6 hours.

What’s Missing

When looking online, I noticed them using AA and AAA batteries. However in the package, it doesn’t have the plastic insert you need if you want to charge the AAA batteries, unless you buy that specific model.  This was my one strike against the product.  You get the insert supposedly by purchasing a pack of their Goal0 branded rechargeable batteries (you can use any NiMH rechargeable though). Personally I’d suggest just getting the one pack of their batteries for the adaptor, and then using your preferred brand. Nothing wrong with theirs, which are a nice modern battery, but there are plenty of options in that space.

Apparently though, James bought the full Adventure kit, and that did come with the AAA piece. It seems it doesn’t come with just the standalone Guide 10 (in the two that I purchased).

 Conclusion

To me, the Guide 10 pack is what really makes the Adventure Kit worthwhile. While the set with the speakers and panel is nifty, the real usefulness exists only when you add this into the mix. If you haven’t already bought one, they now sell it with the batteries and charger instead of the speaker as the Goal0 Guide 10 Adventure Kit.  If you are building any kind of Get Home Bag, BOB, or similar emergency kit where you want to be able to maintain a charge on some small communications or light devices, this is the best product on the market for lightweight solar charging. It’s extremely simple to use, doesn’t have unnecessary pieces, and will easily attach to your pack.

I’m not a doctor and I don’t consider myself skilled enough to teach someone else how to do this.  This post is not intended to teach you how to suture or to make you think you learned here.  You need to get real training from a real doctor.  Once you’ve learned how to suture, this post takes you through the process, as I understand it, of suturing a scalp.

My brother recently had a piece of construction equipment fall on his head and asked my friend, Kelly, and I to sew it up for him.  Always anxious for something besides pig feet and chicken to practice on, we excitedly told him to get over to my house!  Here’s what he looked like when he showed up:

The first thing we needed to do was to get rid of all that hair.  So, I got a hair trimmer and shaved his head, being very careful to keep hair out of the wound, without any attachments on the trimmer.  Next, I took a razor and very carefully shaved every hair within about an inch of the wound site, again being very careful to not get any hair in the wound.

Once that was completed, I carefully but rigorously cleaned out the wound with alcohol using cotton swabs and gauze.  I also irrigated the wound to make sure nothing was hiding down inside it.

Once the wound was clean, it was time to numb it.  We shot him with several small injections of lidocaine to numb it, testing for numbness after a few minutes by gently poking inside the wound with the needle.

Once it was numb, we were ready to start stitching.  Using a needle puller, we sewed 3 stitches into his head.

We used a “simple surgeon’s knot” (that’s what I remember it being called) to tie each stitch off.

Once we were done, we trimmed the excess thread and cleaned up.  My brother later had a doctor friend look at it and he commented that he couldn’t/wouldn’t have done any better!  It has since healed up and the stitches have been removed.  The scarring is extremely minimal – especially compared to what it otherwise would have been.

For a simple procedure, to do it right (as Kelly and I have been taught) requires a fair amount of equipment and materials.  All this gear came straight out of my medical prep kits.

Are You Ready?

That’s when my car Preps came to the rescue!

I grabbed my puncture repair kit from the truck, pulled out the rasper tool and shoved it in the nail hole while twisting it left to right and up and down.  When I extracted it, the tire verified I’d done a good job by beginning to leak at a much faster rate!  I quickly grabbed the needle tool and pulled a patch strip from the patch card and threaded it through the eye of the tool.  Then I applied the rubber cement to the patch strip and shoved the needle tool deep into the tire.  Once there were just a half inch or so of the patch sticking out, I extracted the tool by quickly pulling straight back on the needle tool.  The split in the eye of the tool gave way and left the patch in the hole while letting the tool come free.

The rubber cement needed to set for a minute and I needed to refill the tire with air.  So, I grabbed my 12V mini air-compressor from the truck and plugged it into one of my cigarette lighters and turned it on so it could start building up air.  By now the rubber cement should have set up well enough so I grabbed my leatherman and cut the hanging ends off of the patch.

Finally, I hooked the compressor up to the valve stem and filled it back up with air.

In less than 5 minutes I was able to plug the puncture, refill the tire and get back on the road.

Being a Prepper is awesome!

My Blued Hawken

Gun ownership is a long-term investment which requires proper maintenance and cleaning in order to keep your guns working at their peak performance. A primary concern with long term storage of any gun — especially those stored in humid climates — is corrosion. Preventing corrosion is a multi-step process, starting with proper care of your firearm in the field, and followed with proper storage.  However, even if you take all the necessary precautions and care possible with your firearm, and even in the best of situations, if you use it corrosion or wearing will probably happen. How you deal with the results of such wear is the purpose of this article.

Most people when they imagine a gun will of course picture one that is “black” to most people. But of course my fashion-sense (my wife) would be quick to point out that it is actually a dark navy blue color when closely inspected. This color comes from a controlled corrosion called “blueing” in order to treat the metal so that bad corrosion doesn’t happen.  Alternative treatments such as parkerizing or Tenifer exist, but are more expensive. Also many people will opt for other metals and alloys such as stainless steel for increased protection.

This works due to the difference between normal corrosion (Rust) and this controlled corrosion. Normal oxidization (as seen here) comes from the chemical recipe of Fe₂O₃, which produces the familiar flaky, red remains of iron. Alternatively people discovered that you can create a very thin black oxide of iron that turns out to a similar, but different enough Fe₃O₄. The purpose to this is to create a layer of something between the oxygen and water that can bond with iron to create rust. This alternative oxide does just that.

Obviously the process works sufficiently in that it is the most common way to get a firearm, but it is definitely not perfect. Several methods of blueing exist nowadays, and can be performed inexpensively. But it is not perfect, no matter what method of application.

The thin layer of oxidization will over time wear off leaving bare metal open to attack. Beyond just allowing rust to happen, do you really want something you’ve invested so much money in looking worn? Thankfully the process is easy enough that it is something you can, and should attempt at home.

For my purposes, I currently had two firearms that I needed to take care of. One is from World War II, an old Russian Mosin. It saw use long before even my dad was born and thusly need to be cleaned up a lot. In order to practice though, I decided to start with another gun, a Hawken Rifle built from a kit (oh yeah, I need to post about that adventure). This was a clean(ugh, it already had some rust spots), new barrel that had never been treated. Of course, if your firearm bears any resemblance to the pistol pictured above, do not attempt to reblue and shoot. If you have that deep of damage your metal is probably brittle, and unsafe.  Reblueing is for restoring surface damage and wear, it is not a magic fix-all.

Now, before continuing I will say that if I wanted to be truly historically correct I would attempt to “brown” the Hawken rifle. Browning (not the brand) is a process of heat oxidizing that was more commonly used in the mountain man era the gun is from. However this kit rifle isn’t going to be perfectly accurate, and blueing is a slightly better, and much easier process.

To begin with, I needed a way to treat.  The first blueing on your firearm was probably done by some nice machine, and if a bit nicer might even have used a heat, or acid bath treatment to create a deeper, more even coat on your gun. This would be a bit difficult process to do at home of course, especially if you were simply trying to maintain a firearm in a less than optimal situation. Alternatively you can get very simple kits that include the basic chemicals you will need, and they can be applied with cotton swabs. This of course is the solution I was looking for.

After taking the time to read a few howto’s online, and then actually going over the simple instructions, I set out to blue my first gun. I did this knowing full well that my first attempt might not turn out very nicely, and I might be setting myself up for a lot of work undoing what I’d done, so I can retry. The steps though, are really quite easy. Before you begin remember that you will be working with caustic chemicals, so wear old clothes that you don’t care about, use gloves, and eye protection.

1. Take your gun all the way apart. If you dont’ know how, take the time to learn. You should know that already if you have any interest in blueing a gun.
2. Clean! Get the metal as clean as possible with normal cleaning materials.
3. Strip it clean – You need a blue/rust remover. Wear gloves, and scrub deeply
• If the gun is already blued, get rid of what’s already there. Anything left will cause spots or uneven colors
• If you are doing spot treatment make sure the area around the scuffs or rust are also stripped.
• Remove the rust. You are just wasting time if you leave any rust on the metal. If some is under your blueing, it’ll just grow like cancer. Or more aptly like the rust in any old car after dealing with Utah winters.
4. Clean Again! This time, your kit should have come with a deeper cleaning solvent, and probably some steel wool. You want shiny metal and nothing else (yes fingerprints matter)
5. If there is *anything* besides shiny metal, repeat the previous steps
6. Blue. Yeah, this step is actually quite easy. My kit had a tube of gel and a swab, and I’d just apply to the metal for 60-90 seconds, then rinse.
• Don’t do too much at once. You have to rinse with soapy water, and you don’t want it on too long so just do a small chunk at a time.
• Try to have clean cutoffs between sections. You are striving for even colors so make it easy to not double cover areas
• Coat evenly, try to keep it smooth.  The gel doesn’t always like to go smoothly, so use the swab so spread it.
7. Let Dry
8. Polish with finishing grade steel wool
9. Polish with a gun oil

Following those steps gives you one “protected” piece of metal. Depending on how closely you look at my picture there you might note that I do have some uneven bits in the color.  After a few minutes it actually became hard to tell unless you were looking closely.  It’s a job I’m satisfied with for my first time, but I know I can do better later.  I’m glad I played around a little, and I know that it’s much easier than I had originally thought. I’m looking forward to cleaning up the mosin now. I’m thoroughly convinced that blueing is an easy skill to learn, and a necessary part of any prepper’s skillset if they wants to keep their firearms in the best condition possible.

Birchwood Casey Perma Blue Liquid Gun Blue Kit Md: 13801.

New Birchwood Laboratories Inc Bc Barricade 6oz Aerosol Contains Fpr Wipe Off Corrosive Fingerprints

My Sherpa gear

Recently, Mike published an article introducing a local company named Goal0 (article link). They develop solar products to fit a wider variety of needs than your average solar pack, and so we were very intrigued as to their application to a prepper mindset.

Elite/Sherpa Products

In reviewing the different models, I decided to purchase some of the Sherpa series of products to try out.  One of the ideal solutions when buying gear is to get one of the pre-defined kits, in my case I specifically picked up the Sherpa 120 kit.  This kit is made up of the following items, which in the bundle came at a good discount:

• Sherpa 120 Power Pack
• Nomad 27M Solar Panel
• Sherpa Universal Inverter

This set differentiates itself from the Escape and Extreme kits by targeting a much more mobile user.  The power pack is a Li-Ion battery kit like a laptop, so compared to other devices it is extremely lightweight.  The pack’s themselves are very ruggedly built, obviously for mobility.  The cases are also designed in such a way that they can be stacked together, and fit much like a lego tower, which you can then strap together to fully secure.  Now why would you want to stack these? Because they are designed to daisy chain together to provide more power if you need it. With normal solar kits and batteries, chaining batteries for usage can always be a pain, trying to remember how to wire it for parallel, or serial usage which will determine how much voltage your batteries are putting out. Do it wrong and you can fry your equipment. With the Goal0 packs, this isn’t’ a problem, you just have one wire that comes out the back, and plugs into the next device. This was a nice feature for me, as I could only afford one power pack for now, but I know I’d like to expand things later on.

Usage

Elite pack powering a Light-a-Life

For me, I already owned a Sunforce Solar Kit that I could use to give a charge to a car battery, then power other devices from there.  For this product I wanted something a little bit different.  I was really looking for something that I could easily move around with me. If I wanted to, I needed to be able to add this to a backpack to power my laptop and camera, or other mobile devices.  Obviously that’s not something I want to be doing with a car battery. The alternative option available is the Escape 150 product, which is “portable” in that it has a handle, and provides a bit more power. However the escape series uses a lead-acid battery, and is quite heavy. Not the ideal for my usage.

In the promotional videos for the Sherpa series (embedded below) you can see the design of the Sherpa products lends itself well to a bug-out, or mobile situation.  Note they are carrying these batteries in a situation where space and weight are major concerns, using them to recharge multiple types of electronics in the night.

Click here to view the embedded video.

If I’m simply camping to camp, I’m not going to bring this along, it still does have a bit of weight, and bulk that I don’t’ need. But If I was in a situation that I needed to power multiple devices, say during a CERT exercise, or with a search and rescue group, then this is an ideal setup. In a non-emergency type of situation, they are excellent for photography (as shown), as well as powering of recharging laptops and for powering their available Light-a-Life LED lights. After trying those out I’m sold, they are amazing; bright and very efficient.

Charging

I really like that the power pack allows you to easily charge from your AC wall connection, quite rapidly at that, before heading out.  It allows you to have a no-fuss charge when going somewhere, and not wanting to deal with the solar kit. Once out though, the 27-watt Nomad panel is great. It folds down into a bundle only slightly larger than the size of the battery pack itself. Unfolded you can actually wear it over your backpack to charge while hiking. With a peak of 27-watts you could theoretically charge one Sherpa-120 in a few hours, but Goal0 is honest in their advertising, and tell you to expect 8 hours due to always changing conditions. They’ve paired the panels with packs in a manner as to always completely charge the battery in an average day, under sub-ideal conditions. That’s great forethought when comparing to other solar kits which tend to advertise based on ideal situations, which never really happen.

Powering Devices

What good is a battery if you can’t use it? The Sherpa series makes this extremely easy to do.  First of all, most small devices nowadays have the ability, and often the preference of charging via USB cable. The packs include a USB because of this, and so I can take my iPhone and plug it straight into the pack and turn it on, no problems. Goal0 devices such as the Light-a-Life can plug straight into the battery and run via DC power causing much less loss to AC conversion. To make this simple, the Goal0 products all use a round plug interface, so you dont’ have to worry about any wiring. If you have a vehicle DC adaptor (Cigarette lighter type), the battery’s include a cable taking their standard interface to a 12v receiver, so any devices can run this way.

You can run any inverter in this manner, if you already have one. However the Sherpa kit comes with their Sherpa UI device. It is a standard inverter handling up to 100w in usage. But what makes this device shine is how it is designed to work with the rest of the Elite tools. You can attach it to your batteries using their built-in chaining cable, just attach it like another battery at the end of the chain (if you have more than one). The UI is also designed with a universal plug interface, so it can accept all forms of international cables, in case you travel a lot or have international devices. It also connects and can be strapped together with the batteries for a secure bundle.

Summary

The Elite/Sherpa series from Goal0 was by far the best product in its class that I could find. No other company had a product that provided as much power, in a rugged form, that was so mobile. Everything else was way underpowered, or just a car-battery kit, that required lots of extra work. Goal0 has taken care of all the hard work to create a very elegant solution for the backpacker. This is not, however, the single solution for everybody.  If you want an emergency power source that you can just always leave plugged in, ready to go or if you want something that only has to be portable enough to toss in the car for some car camping then you’ll probably be better served by the less expensive Escape series.  If you are trying to run quite a few laptops, or maybe mobile flash equipment for photography, then these won’t have enough juice for your higher end needs. Look at the Extreme line possibly.  But if you want enough power for several smaller devices, or a medium device such as a more power hungry laptop this is your gear.

Buying

While obviously you can go online to places like Amazon to buy the Goal0 gear, we love to support local stores. GetPreparedStuff, Emergency Essentials, and The Ready Store all keep some products in stock. As an added bonus, the owner of Get Prepared Stuff approached us and said he was more than willing to work out local pick up discounts, cash discounts, and especially group buys for notable discounts (varies per product). If you are interested in getting a better deal, contact him directly by email groupbuy ‘@’ getpreparedstuff.com.

These are new (unused) food-grade plastic bladders housed in new/used metal cages. 285 gallons! And it stores in a lot less space than you’d think. While I’m aware of others having stacked their tanks three high, due to space constraints (and a lack of a death wish) ours are stored two high. I’ve now had mine stored in the garage for three years without any incident; I rotate one tank every six months.

This is a new food grade plastic bladder housed in a metal cage. Approximate weight when empty: 130 lbs. Approximate dimensions: 4′ H x 3′ W X 4′ L. Here is my setup (click to enlarge):

The metal cages allow you to stack the tanks, if desired, and protect the hard plastic bladder. These are fantastic tanks because they have a cap on the top for easily filling them w/ your garden hose (or other source), and a spout on the bottom so that gravity is used to create water pressure. This is a far superior system to your standard 55 gallon blue water tanks, which are nearly impossible to stack well, and which require a pump to draw the water up and out.

Each tank is $295, and delivery is $30 per location (so if you order two tanks, you only pay one $30 fee). However, you must live within 15 miles of Point of the Mountain in Lehi. If you live further away and would like to participate in this order, please arrange to have your tank delivered to somebody’s home that lives within that distance.

These tanks are rarely offered for direct consumer purchasing that I’ve seen, and through many other outlets can easily cost double this price! See here for one comparable tank that is over $500! I haven’t found any cheaper than that. So this group buy is $200 off the lowest retail price.

Please email me at cboyack{at}gmail{dot}com if you would like to participate in the order. I will confirm your total price and provide you with payment instructions. The group buy is open through Sunday, June 19. Deliver should occur within three weeks of that.

Feel free to share this order with friends!