Government Prepping Make Your Own

Making your own equipment saves time and money and while many of them are not new you can still utilise them for your benefit, the first is the basic oil lamp.

To make this you need a glass jam jar or similar, a roll of soft un galvanised wire, a short piece if 3/16th bore copper brake pipe OR ¼” outside diameter copper pipe, pipe flaring tool and a length of 1/8” round wick and liquid paraffin wax or scented lamp oil.

Take your brake pipe and put a standard single flare onto it so it looks like a funnel and cut it off at about 1” (25mm) with a tube cutter and put it to one side as the tube cutter turns the cut end under and this tightens your wick and stops it sliding through.
Take your soft wire and wind it around your brake pipe about six times and then form the next turns into a round tapered cone with each round being wider than the last and you want the final turn to just pass through the neck of your jar, bend the surplus upwards so it sticks out of your jar and wind this surplus length around your brake pipe until it is slightly lower than your jar.
Take your flared brake pipe and your wick and put the wick through the tapered end of your brake pipe and through the coil you wound and leave about 1/8” or 3mm sticking above the flare and pull the tapered coil to stretch it to around 3” (75mm) long, put the wick and copper pipe into the coil and put the liquid paraffin or lamp oil into your jar 20-25mm deep and no more.
Put the soft copper wire assembly and wick into the jam jar and ensure the wick is in the oil and leave it for a few seconds and light your wick and you have light, if it smokes you have too much wick exposed above the flare, pull it back down slightly.

Wine making is a necessity in many cases because during times of bad water and the various disease outbreaks, alcohol was drunk in several forms and not to get drunk, but to protect your health from the nasties spread in water with cholera being the worst in recent history.
Making wine is easy if you stick to the basic country wines and don’t try to emulate the popular brands of the day as having no drinking water, or a water shortage sharpens the mind to drinking other safer alternatives and fermenting something makes it much safer to drink. You can make wine from most fruits and vegetables, while some may not be nice, it will be safe to drink and the investment in wine making equipment and the knowledge of how to make wine will become invaluable as you make it in large quantities during the fruiting season when it is cheap and as wine takes months to mature after bottling you can quickly get a large stock on prior to any event.

How many people have seen the latest modern LED slimline light battens and more importantly, how many people know how they work? If you do you can modify then easily for a full brightness light as many are easily dismantled and the information about them found as many have voltage inputs of 100 – 250V AC and their internal driver provides the LED strips with 24V DC.

Many are now coming to the end of their lives and if they fail by either flickering or switching themselves on and off they you know it is the voltage control circuit which is at fault and of you unscrew the ends and take them off you will see the control circuit and if it flickers or switches on and off you plug it in and switch it on and you can measure the voltage at the LED strips. These strips merely slide out of their moulded grooves and have their numbers printed onto the strip and if you look them up you will find their specifications online and specifically their rated voltage which is usually (but not always) 24 volts, so always check before proceeding.
If you have 2 car or other 12 volt batteries then connecting the negative – terminal of the first battery to the positive + terminal of the second battery will connect them in series which turns the batteries from 2 X 12 volt batteries into a 24 volt battery; you now make a lead from the positive + terminal of your first battery and the negative – terminal of your second battery and connect them to the LED strip in your light it should illuminate that strip, if it does you know it works so you may note it has 2 LED strips so connect it to the second LED strip and if this lights you have a working light and the problem is the control circuit.
These normally come as a circuit board slid into the end plastic housing of the light and if you remove it and the mains power cable you can drill the housing and fit an automotive switch and a small grommet for the power cables to go it and you will have a full brightness light in whichever room you choose and if you fit the mounting clips to the ceiling you can install your light when you have a power outage and remove it when you don’t.

You can do something similar with the same lights and convert them to 12 volts if you have a 12 volt battery or battery pack and want to keep everything standard, in which case you proceed as above by dismantling the light, but you remove the LED strips which come on a semi rigid board and slot into the lights internal grooves. You can get these LED strips as a semi rigid boards or the stick on flexible strip and either will do and if you get the semi rigid strip it is unlikely they will be the correct length so get smaller ones and insert then into their grooves, noting which way round the electrical connections are and you solder wires between the positive + terminal of the first strip and the positive + terminal of the second strip and repeat with the negative – terminals and space the strips evenly along the groove, repeat for the second groove and strips.

If you choose to use the flexible strip then cut this only at the cut points and pull off the paper backing strip and stick into the groove, repeat for the second groove and wire them correctly and you have a modern LED light which runs from 24 volts DC.

Lithium battery chargers for the ever popular 18650 lithium cells finding favour in many things are so easily made and if you have a solar or wind turbine you will have the charge controller and many of these charge controllers, irrespective of type, have something called USB charging and while it may be predominantly for mobile phones, why not charge your 18650 cells used in many devices such as torches and lanterns and utilise this facility.
To do this you need basic soldering skills and the ability to make a back board and drill some small holes to pass wiring through and you buy TP 4056 Charging modules and a battery holder for each cell you intend charging.
TP 4065 charging modules come in a variety of configurations and fittings and you need to establish these as they come with USB fittings, but which type, as they come with standard USB fittings or USB-C and even micro USB so get a fitting which is standard and currently USB-C or USB micro is the popular choice for mobile phones; and they come as protected or unprotected types and the protected type is the type to go for. Now you need the output as they come in standard outputs of 1 or 2 amps.
You will need one TP 4065 charging module per cell you intend charging which is fine as usually they come as packs of 10 so your charger can potentially charge up to 10 cells and you need the correct amount of battery holders for 18650 cells and these can usually be bought individually or in packs. For this project we will make a 4 cell charger using 4 X TP 4056 modules, or one per cell, and four 18650 cell holders, for the purpose of clarity they were the 1 amp output as the maximum output of the basic solar charging set up was around 9-10 amps in perfect conditions.

Cut a base board from plastic or old circuit boards and scrape and sand all the copper tracks off them and the solder terminals until you have a clean board free of everything and put your TP 4056 charge controllers in a line and if they have terminals at one end you identify the ones marked BAT + and BAT – as these generally have holes on them and you mark your base board through these holes and drill small holes just large enough for your wiring to pass through. Put your battery holders in position and mark holes for the positive (red) and negative (black) wires to go through and bond your battery holder down with epoxy and push your wires through the holes and through the holes for the charge controller and solder the red wire to the BAT + terminal and repeat with the black negative wire and solder this to the BAT – terminal on the charge controller, bond the charge controller circuit down and you have charging for one cell; repeat this with the other 3 assemblies and you have a charger for up to 4 lithium cells and each with its own individual charge controller. You now need four USB wires connected to each charge controller, or do you? If you look at your TP 4056 charge controller they usually have a couple more holes with solder tabs and these are usually marked + OUT and - OUT and these are taken directly from your USB connector and are both output and inputs and again you mark the holes and drill your base board to suit and if you connect + OUT from charge controller 1 to + out on controller 2 and controller 3 and controller 4; and repeat this for the – OUT and you have all four TP 4056 charging modules connected together and you can plug your USB lead into any of the USB sockets and all four charging modules will be powered. Put four cells into the 4 cell holders, plug in and switch on and each module should light a red LED to show its charging and when the blue/green LED illuminates it shows that cell is charged.

Making bag filters is easily done and all you do is to form it into a square or rectangle by folding it in half and sewing the sides up and turning the top over and stitching this so you can pass a drawstring through it and hang it from things; these can be easily and quickly made in many sizes and from many materials and the only limitation is the size of materials you want to filter out.

Charcoal is the wonder item and in many ways it is so useful to health and in powdered form one heaped tablespoon full has the surface area of around 2 football pitches meaning it can absorb a lot of nasty toxins and a lot of heavy metals for a small amount of charcoal and you can easily get it or make it if you have a little knowledge.
You can get it from partially burned wood, the type at the side of a bonfire that never gets fully burned and all you do is scrape off the burned black bits and you have charcoal and as you collect it you store it in a sealed glass jar, if you don’t it will absorb the moisture and nasties from the surrounding ambient air and if it is damp you put it into the oven to dry it out.

To make your own you burn wood in insufficient quantities of air and you can do this in two ways; you can fill a metal drum with wood and cover the top with steel and make a fire under it and allow the heat to literally cook the wood and this may take a couple of days, or you can make and use a clamp, to make a clamp you need a metal drum and you get a piece of 4” round timber and stand it in the middle of the drum and mark around it. Inside the 4” circle you punch about half a dozen small holes to allow limited air into the clamp, cut the top out and to fill it you put your 4” diameter round in the centre, over the holes, and get lots of thin sections of wood around 1” (25mm) diameter and stack it around the 4” centre piece until the clamp is full; make a small fire and let the wood go down to embers and pull the 4” centre out and put some of the embers in the hole and allow to burn until you get flames, at that point you put a sheet of steel over the top and let it smoulder for a couple of hours and then remove the top and allow the smoke to clear and literally let it burn until it ignites and flames appear, at that point cover it up again and do this about every 2 hours until everything is charcoal.

You can buy charcoal from the most unlikely source and that is barbeque charcoal and it MUST be the 100% pure lumpwood charcoal and NOTHING ELSE as the briquettes are powdered charcoal with binding agents which are poisonous if you ingest them and the non specified is usually a mixture of odd shaped lumpwood and odd shaped briquettes which are of no use so only 100% pure lumpwood.

To date we have ordinary charcoal which is fine for emergencies and treating small quantities of water and the charcoal can actually be improved by turning it into ACTIVATED CHARCOAL as this is the daddy of all charcoal. To begin we take the charcoal and we must turn it into a fine powder and we do this by crushing it and the simplest way is putting it into a large tin or metal (non galvanised)bucket and pounding it with a hammer shaft or similar until it is a coarse powder and from there you put it into a mortar and pestle and literally grind it to a fine powder and pass it through a sieve so you only have the fine powder and put any remaining back into the mortar and pestle and regrind it down until it is nearly all powder. To activate it you add acid and as a food product a food acid is ideal so I use lemon juice as it is acid, cheap, and readily available in quantities, from this point I will deal in fluid ounces only to avoid confusion.

Take 3 fluid ounces of water and add 1 fluid ounce of lemon juice, mix and leave for a few minutes; take 8 fluid ounces of powdered charcoal and put in a glass container and add the 4 fluid ounces of acid you made and stir well and ensure all the charcoal is absorbing the activating acid and keep stirring until there are no lumps, put the lid on and leave for 24 hours or longer.

Take a coffee filter or similar and place in a jar and spoon the wet mixture into the coffee filter and let all the activating acid drain out, or use a paint strainer or similar and as long as it strains the liquid out it does what we want; take the wet but strained charcoal and put it onto a Pyrex glass lid which is flat, spread it out and put it in an oven at around 200° C until it is thoroughly dried and you put it into an airtight sealed glass jar until needed. As we are entering the barbeque season lumpwood charcoal should be readily available and cheap and lemon juice comes in large bottles.

Water filters come in many shapes and sizes and with many prices, usually high, and as many come with charcoal as their filtering medium we can make our charcoal and make a filter and if you know how and replicate the best water filters for very little money, if anything at all.

A basic water filter uses two plastic bottles and the filtering bottle neck fits inside the receiving bottle and all you need are the bottles, non activated charcoal, and pine needles as they have antiseptic qualities. Take your filtering bottle and make a small hole in the lid of around 1-2mm and cut the bottom off the bottle, screw the lid on and fill the bottom of the bottle above the lid with pine needles and these are only there to hold the charcoal so push them down a little and add your charcoal so the bottle is around ¼ full and add some more pine needles and another layer of charcoal and another layer of pine needles until the bottle is around ½ - ¾ full of filtering medium.
Take your second bottle and put the neck of your filtering bottle into it and add some water, initially the water will be black until the charcoal dust is washed out and after that it will run clear and filter and disinfect your water; the downside is speed as it is very slow and it will eventually get there.

Filter 2 is another basic water filter and uses sand and gravel to filter, you begin with a plastic bottle and cut the bottom off and remove the top, you put a piece of cotton cloth in the bottom of the bottle to cover the hole and put a layer of and over this until your bottle is around ¼ full of sand, you get your fine gravel and put a layer on top of the sand and take your coarse gravel and put this on top of your fine gravel, your bottle should be ¾ full. Put some water into the filter and it will wash the sand and come out cloudy and once this clears you have a sand filter exactly the same as the water companies use. This does not kill micro organisms so take your filtered water and boil it for 5 minutes or longer.

Filter 3 uses activated charcoal in a filter and to make the filter you cut some cotton into two round pieces and sew them together leaving a small hole unsewn and this is to fill it with activated charcoal, once filled you sew the hole up and you have your activated charcoal filter; take a food grade funnel and put your filter in the bottom ensuring it is fully in contact with the sides, pour some water in and initially it will run out black and then clear, it is ready for use and much faster filtering water so suitable for filtering larger quantities of water.

Filter 4 is a terracotta pot filter and uses a small rubbish bin from a cheap shop and a terracotta plant pot which fits nicely inside the bin and the plastic bin was chosen as it was cheap and polypropylene meaning it is BPA or bisphenol A free, so a small tap was obtained and the bottom of the container drilled to accept the tap which was fitted. A basic unglazed terracotta plant pot was chosen as it is an excellent filter and the hole was filled with a wooden bung and with the bin lid removed and discarded the pot was put in and the flange sat on top of the bin, I also obtained a larger terracotta watering base and the pot was filled with water and the base put over the plant put and the water was strained through the terracotta pot and filtered it and with the pot installed we had 7 litres of filtered water. This bin held 15 litres up to the filtering plant pot and gave 4 people nearly 4 litres of filtered water each and in the evening the plant pot was filled with water and left to strain, it was refilled again and left overnight to fill it fully for the next day.

Filter 5 is the daddy of filters and utilises larger components to produce larger quantities of water and it can accept water from almost any source and the main components are:

2 large food grade buckets.
Bag of small (10mm) pebbles and ideally rock.
Sand, ordinary building and or children’s play sand will do.
Plant material which should be pine needles, basil, rosemary, or willow bark.
Activated charcoal.
Plain cotton cloth, ideally undyed.
Spigot to connect your top and bottom buckets together.
Plastic food grade tap.
Take both buckets and wash them thoroughly with a dilute bleach solution and locate your bottom tap so it isn’t too low it hits the table or surface it sits on, drill a hole and fit your tap ensuring it has seals on either side, then tighten the nut up and your dispensing tap is fitted.
Take the lid of your bottom bucket which is now the water collection bucket and your top bucket and put the lid over the bottom of your top filtering bucket and ensuring they are centred, drill a hole through the two to accept your spigot and put your nut and seal on the spigot and feed it through the hole in your top bucket and the lid of your bottom bucket and put the seal and nut on and tighten it up ensuring any spare thread is in the bottom bucket, put the lid and top bucket on your bottom bucket.

Prepare your filter by putting your building sand in a large pan and washing it by filling it with water and putting it through a bag filter, repeat this until the sand is clean and put it back into your pan and add clean water and boil for 10 minutes.
Repeat this with your rock pebbles, put into water and wash until the water is clean and again you boil the stones for at least 10 minutes and both your stones and sand will be sterilised and free of microbes.
Take your plant material and repeat the process again and wash this whole as this has a disinfecting quality and one your water needs as it has natural minerals and oils and these are good for us which is why we use them, finally we have the activated charcoal which we can easily make.

Take the rocks and some cotton cloth and put a layer of cotton cloth in your filtering bucket and cover this with around 3” (75mm) of rocks and put another layer of cloth in and add around 3” (75mm) of sand and add another cotton cloth and add your plant material but chop it up as you add it so it releases the natural oils and add another layer of cotton cloth. To this you add a layer of activated charcoal to around 2” (50mm) and add another cotton cloth then add another 2” (50mm) layer of sand and top off with another layer of stones straight on top of this final layer of sand.

Take your filtering bucket with its bottom bucket lid bolted to it and place somewhere sturdy where the spigot is unimpeded and pour a quantity of clean water through the filter bucket until it runs clear and put this back onto the bottom collection bucket and you have a large filter assembly; if you use the 15 litre buckets for both the filtering and collection buckets this filter is sufficient for filtering 3000 litres or 200 buckets of water before the filter needs changing and it can be dismantled and the component parts can be separated and can be washed, bleached with a weak blech solution and fully rinsed and boiled again, you will need to replace the plant elements and activated charcoal though.

To use: for cleaner water such as rainwater where it is harvested immediately it can be run straight through the filter and for anything else water I would suggest boiling it and cooling it before filtering it to remove any microbes as possible before putting it through your filter.

Simple lights can be made simply and cheaply by using the button cells found commonly in car alarm fobs which come as 1.5 volts or 3 volts and we require the 3 volt versions, and a basic pack of white LED’s with a narrow viewing angle and 10mm ones come with over 30,000 MCD brightness and are rated as 3.2 – 3.4 volts consuming 20 Ma (milliamps) of power. They generally come from 3mm, 5mm, 8mm, and 10mm diameter and as these cells come with a capacity around 150 Ma they should last for over 7 hours and provide enough light to go upstairs to the toilet or to bed, so let’s begin.
You need a small housing and an old car alarm fob or similar is ideal as this has the battery holder already in, the batteries which are cheap from the cheap shops, blanking grommets from car electrical suppliers and the battery holder if it doesn’t come with your holder. Begin with identifying your LED positive (anode) and negative (cathode) terminals and the anode or positive is longer or has a flat punched onto it, or both, and work out the location of your battery holder and drill the hole for your LED and push this in and glue it into position and fit the battery holder and solder the cathode (negative) LED terminal to the battery holder negative connection and mark your top cover and drill it and fit your rubber blanking grommet above the battery holder positive side and bend the LED positive (anode) so it just hovers above the battery and as you push the grommet it pushes the leg into contact with the battery positive side and you have light.