You might need to dig a little more on there.. But if vinegar cuts oils pretty good, then it should also work on the oils on poison Ivy. Well, it's still cheaper than going out and buying week killer, and a sprayer.

 

There is a place in Memphis that sells restaurant supplies in quantity to anybody - sort of like Smart and Final in California. Small businesses can get wholesale prices and quantities of foods and good deals on equipment there, it's named LIT Restaurant Supply and there are sure to be similar outfits in every city.

I bet I could buy vinegar in anywhere from five to fifty gallon drums at the place. Imagine lemon juice in five gallon containers, it's like THAT.

Corned beef hash? You know those half gallon cans of tomato and V8 juice we see in Walmart or wherever? You can get soup and corned beef hash, beef stew & etc in cans that size there. "INSTITUTIONAL" sized containers, as opposed to family sized...

Got a scout troop you support? That's where you want to shop. I learned a long time ago that price breaks are out there if we get away from traditional thinking.

Restaurants make their money by getting goods at favorable prices, and for this effort I see that as a move that will pay off.


But then also we have a "Farmers CO-OP" in my area that I need to be talking to as well.

AIRPORTS also have an interest in keeping weeds down, and where their maintenance crews get supplies is another avenue of research. I hear that they have a weed killer that is devastating.


More than ever I need to "THINK OUTSIDE OF THE BOX"




Umm: But anything with a NATIONAL STOCK NUMBER I don't think I would waste my money on...
"Fine Products of the Lowest Bidder" are most often crap!

 

I have shopped at those, farmers markets, industrial supply, and other wholesale places. Then compared to walmart, it looks like you get nothing, for pretty much nothing.

One reason why sams club is a better deal than walmart, if you buy in bulk for 2 months, for the same price of only buying for 1 month. Sure you pay a membership, but the low overhead costs get transferred to you. Nearest one is about 100mi away though, so it's not really cost effective to drive there all the time. Especially living in the barracks, and limited space to keep food, wouldn't be saving any money really.

 

Barracks life is tough - especially with inspections and all of that. I did one "at sea" in the navy, and when we came back to Miramar I chucked my sea bag under my rack and told the other guys I'd be back for it later.

Three days after that I had an apartment in Escondido and a used car payment

Reminds me of a story (insert bored comment here)

NOW THIS AIN'T NO SCHLITZ:
We had a Phillipino Chief in charge of the barracks at Miramar who always hit us on the deck, no matter what we did. I can still remember him saying:

"You must, with the scotch brite, take up the old wax around the edges..."
(with his accent, "WAX" sounded like "WOX")
It was irritating...

Well we studied that, and one weekend we pulled out all the stops, dragged everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) out of the room into the lobby and scrubbed hell out of the damned edges especially - and then we committed a sin against 'Lighthouse for the Blind'

We used four layers of AEROWAX on that damned floor! PLASTIC SHINE...
*ACRYLIC, it lasts forever unless you use a special stripper

From that day on we added ARMOR ALL to the mop bucket, and spiffed it up clean as a whistle - it only took 20 minutes to do the whole room, and I guarantee you could stand a ruler up against a wall and read it all the way up to ten inches in the reflection from the floor. It never had a single drop of wax on it afterwards

The first time after that our BPO came to the room on an inspection I will never forget - the ARMOR ALL wasn't dry yet, and he slipped and fell on his ***!

From that day on we got OUTSTANDINGS on our room, and he never came in past the doorway...
* If you got an outstanding, they skipped your room for a week




Hells bells - they were paying me to be smart, weren't they?

 

Wow, see that's pretty awesome! Well NCO's don't like to do room inspections either, but with 1SG breathing down, it's an experience they want to be easy. So instead of "surprise" It's, "have your rooms GI'd by tomorrow morning."

On top of that, I know what everyone wants in the morning. A fresh cup of coffee. I used to have it timed to just finish brewing before they opened my door. And the first thing is the coffee they smell, and see. I actually had an inspection go, looks good, can I bring this cup back after I'm done checking other rooms?

If the coffee wasn't enough, the moment they went from the shared common area, to my room, they got assaulted with bleach. So bad it was like the gas chamber, you couldn't stand in it for more than a few seconds. Since I mopped the floor with just about pure bleach and left as I closed the door. If it "smelled clean and a once over, it probably was.

It's not a terrible life. I don't GI to the point where I'm moving all my stuff into the hallways to clean, I sweep, mop, and vacuum my carpet when they get dirty. We don't have wax, or a buffer in the barracks. I'm pretty sure they don't trust us to strip and wax it right.

I wonder how it will be though, work bench, tool chests, power tools, and parts getting built up in my room. I have a feeling somebody will freak out, and tell me I can't do it. Which, there is no reg saying I can't.

 

In my first year in the barracks at Miramar, I made a point of STEALING MY TOOLS BACK from my Pop in La Mesa (he figured he could just help himself to them).

I forgot that there was a wicked long knife in my box, and it was found right away on a surprise security sweep of the barracks. Seems they object to sailors having knives over 3 1/4 inches long...

"What is THIS?"

"Alternative gasket scraper number four, Chief."

They weren't buyin' it...

 

Ah wow! I pretty much had to rescue my tools from my ex. She threatened to throw all my **** on the front lawn.. Moving on.

I guess that's one thing about being a grunt. They expect you to have a big knife almost. My buddy has a knife that is on the verge of being a small machete.. I've seen crazy stuff pulled out of the barracks though.

I saw an axe pulled out one time. Like, how did that get in there?

 

Umm... Forgot to stow it back in the HUMVEE?

Serious idea here: A hummer is an offroad truck.
I wonder if we could get some cool pics of hummers and other offroad action?

I also kinda wonder what the army thinks an offroad vehicle should be equipped with to get it out of a jam

The off road fans go overboard with hi-lift jacks, winches, and you name it. I know a guy who religeously brings a chainsaw with him when he goes "MUDDIN"'

I'd be suprised if the military was behind in stuff to get out of tuff spots...



*I wonder what security would have thought if they found a chainsaw in my locker?

 

The HMMWV is pretty good at getting out of tight jams. Some have winches, some don't. Most come with tow straps and self recovery is usually the easiest option. The 88 is on standby most of the time though in case we need it.

Hard to take pictures of off-road action. Usually too busy with training to pull out your phone and shoot some video.

Well I keep my chainsaw in the truck.. You never know when you'll be driving down the road and come across a felled tree and people just looking at it, like it'll move out of the way. Lots of high winds in KS, so you drive prepared most of the time.

Now until I get the flatbed built for the truck, the welder will stay in my room. However, the argon bottles will have to stay in the bed of the truck, chained down and secured. I'm pretty sure that would be a big no-no having compressed gas cylinders in the B's!

 

3 1/4" knife would be next to useless against a 5" or 8" line, we had a max but can't recall if 4 3/8 or 4 5/8" ; big lock blade folders and a spike on the belt most of the time for us apes.

Save the vinegar for your freid taters and window cleaning, about as good as urine as an herbicide. Generic Glyphosate from the farm store is your best weed killer. Same as Roundup at 1/10 the cost. Spray when weeds are ankle high and growing fast, old weeds won't suck it up and so won't die.
If vinegar worked in life like it does on the net farmers would be using it by the train load.

Glyphosate is systemic and only affects the growing plant any residue disappears with water. No soil contamination.

2,4 D, one half of agent orange is also systemic and will kill most broad leaf plants leaving the grass. (2, 4, 5 T is no longer available; so no agent orange for you)

When you cut the saplings or vines, paint the stump with either in undiluted form.
If the stump cut is stale, you might recut low enough to get the chemicals to work. Saltpeter rots the stumps.

 

I've heard ROCK SALT will kill out a stump too, good time of the year to get it, since even dollar stores have stacks of it for sale.

There's a stuff I saw in the PARKS SEED catalog that is supposed to burn stumps out all the way to the tips of the roots, I was thinking of trying that stuff out on the thorn trees we have here (Black Locust)

Picture a tree with thorns up to five inches long! Those are the meanest SOB's I have ever had to deal with, and I have uprooted my share of cacti in southern california...

A cactus has a compact shape - a thorn tree is unpredictable. They have tangled branches that seem to come out of nowhere to stick a person...

They also have a tendency to run roots under the ground to a spot more than fifty feet away from the original stump and then sprout up a brand new troublemaker!

 

Makes some fine firewood. Heavy stuff.

 

We have literally a small forest of locust back home. We've cut em down, brushhog'd em and idk, maybe set fire to it. They keep coming back. They are more of a weed than a tree. The only exception is they have bark and grow over 8' tall.

 

Yep - that's the (S) all right...

It is the reason I had to order a brand new chain for a saw that I have already sharpened so many times I can't count (since January!). THICK DENSE wood, you can't ask for a better hardwood.


~ But I don't want any of it around my house!


You can fill your chainsaw with performance bar and chain oil, take off the side casing and clear it of any and all dust, sharp the chippers to a diamond edge, and five seconds after you begin cutting see smoke from the chain...

*This is at least true of 10" or larger trunks that have had time to dry and cure.

I hate those trees with a passion


Those portions of the Geneva convention that pertain to chemical warfare have been completely discarded at my house in regards to THOSE DAMNED THINGS!!!
*The EPA can screw itself too - the thorn trees must DIE by any means required


"Oh - have I become irrational? Sorry about that..."


Something odd though - I noticed that circular saws have no problem cutting into it. I can make a lot of cuts with a circ saw across a fallen trunk or log, and then chip out pieces with the grain that would maybe be good to use in a wood stove.

 

We had a thornless version growing near the house growing up. Has those pods with (I guess) locust beans or whatever. The guys who came out to take it down really put their saws through a workout I remember that.