“I said grandpa what’s this picture here, it’s all black and white and aint real clear, Is that you there, he said yea I was 11, Times were tough back in ‘35 that’s me and Uncle Joe just trying to survive a cotton farm and a great depression.” –Jamey Johnson, “In Color”
The fact of the matter is we have forgotten what grandpa knew, from the great depression that fomented worldwide between 1929 and 1939, Americas, neigh, the world’s lost decade. That at some point, whatever you had, whether it was tenable or not, was of value, today’s world is filled with throw away cheap plastic stuff not meant to be repaired. All based on a finite resource known as “Oil”, black gold, Texas tea, the list of synonyms goes on and on, and the fact of the matter is had oil not been discovered in Pennsylvania when it had, we may still be powering things with steam. Potentially worse yet, people in the form of slaves, and work animals such as horses and mules.
Rather than blather on and rail against the ostensible wickedness of the industrial revolution, today I wish to examine how we get there from wherever it is we are headed, it is my ever so humble, and usually quite wrong, opinion that the world as we know it has reached an untenable crescendo, and must, as gravity dictates, fall. The question is, do you have the skills to ride the wave or are you going to drown.
This brings us to the lonely tuna can, that bastion of servitude hiding in plain sight. I will attempt to chronicle everything I manage to glean from the lonely tuna can; you see I eat a lot of tuna, packed in water, as a low calorie snack, or part of a meal. Normally like any good over consuming American I would have thrown the can away with the rest of the refuse from my daily life. Then it dawned on me that the can the tuna came in, may be useful in some other way. So far I have come up with at least 2 ideas, I’ll present the first here, and the second in another post when I get the other parts for it.
Worst case scenario we end up scrounging around for food, shelter, and basics a la “the road” or “the book of Eli” (both excellent films btw). But what if you could gather the necessary items pretty effortlessly and when coupled with a few hand tools, that everyone should already have by the way, make something that while not exactly aesthetically pleasing to start off in a survival or emergency situation function should take precedence over form.
Now to the meat of the matter, first you want to remove the lid of the tuna can, using a standard rotary can opener, manual of course(you do have a manual can opener right? If not spend the 2 bucks and get one, cheap insurance), I take the “lid” off and clean it up with a paper towel and set it aside, I have a small screen doo dad that I picked up at the store that drains the tuna wonderfully. This raises the question of what to do with the tuna water, under the auspices of waste not, want not, I pour the tuna water out onto some house plants I keep in my office to make it a bit more cheery. Trust me, no amount of miracle grow will substitute for tuna water, my plants are healthier and happier since I got tired of walking to the back door to pour out the water. Anyway, you clean off the lid, set it aside; you’ve drained the water out of the tuna, now you can make a sandwich, or if you’re like me just add some Cajun seasoning to the can and eat it that way. You can always feed it to your cat as well, that is if you have a cat, and you’re not fond of tuna. We need the can, not the contents per se.
Now, you need to gather a few other things from about the house, a hammer, a block of scrap wood, 8d to 10d nail, and a piece of string about 2 feet long, be certain its cotton string/twine, or sisal/jute. It is required that it be natural, burning the plastic based ropes will kill you if you breathe the fumes for too long.
If you do not have these things, go immediately to the local hardware store and get them, they could be the things that save your life in an emergency. I’ll make a separate posting on what I feel are the necessary tools to have around, even if you live in an apartment.
Ok, we have a hammer, nail, tuna can, and some cotton string. First we need to take a file or other rough surface to the edge of the can to dull it, wouldn’t want to cut ourselves. If you lack a file, take the lid outside, and while wearing gloves (for Pete’s sake wear gloves), rub the edge of the lid all the way round on the sidewalk or other suitable rough surface (rock, asphalt, brick, whatever’s handy).
Ok, now that there is less of a chance we’ll be removing fingers during the rest of the project, you now need your nail, hammer and your piece of scrap lumber. Place the lid on the scrap lumber, and use the nail to punch a hole in roughly the center of the lid, make it large enough to pass a doubled over string through, but no so loose the string falls through it.
Take your string, tie the two loose ends together, and hook one end around whatever is handy, a nail, coffee cup hook, chair leg etc. Pull the loop taught; insert your nail in to the loop at the other end, and twist. Twist it up until it gets to the point you can’t twist it any more than double it over and allow it to twist on itself while keeping the tension on the string.
If using jute soak the wick in ¼ cup salt to 2 cups water, then lay it out on a pan and allow to dry overnight. The salt solution will keep the wick from charring too quickly.
Feed one end of the wick through the hole in the lid about a half to three quarters inch, fill the can up 7/8ths of the way with either olive or vegetable oil, let sit for 10 minutes or so. You now have a homemade oil lamp, that will extinguish if tipped over (but with the size of the can that should not happen), the floating lid allows for the wick to always be near the oil, any further away and the oil will not “wick” up fast enough to feed the fire, the idea is that the oil will burn faster than the wick does.
Oil lamps have been around for thousands of years, and this one can be powered by whatever cooking oil you happen to have around. I plan on testing mine with various oils to see what gives the best light, and longest burn. Now you have light for when the lights go out, you can make up a bunch of these and put them in your emergency kit, you do have an emergency kit right? Just fill them when needed after the lights go out. You’ve saved the landfills from a few cans, made something useful, and taken something otherwise untenable and given it a new life.
UPDATE: I had to add 4 slices of styrofoam about 1/8 or slightly thicker, the lid now sits on these; to the oil to hold the lid up, it sinks otherwise, I suppose because veggie oil is thinner than I had anticipated. However, it burns and works well with the addition of the styrofoam, I just used some junk styrofoam I had lying around. The veggie oil does give off some black smoke, but I may have also had the wick too long as well, will shorten it and refire to see what happens.
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