Poor Man Survival

Self Reliance tools for independent minded people…

ISSN 2161-5543

A Digest of Urban Survival Resources

Everyone wants to live at the expense of the state.
They forget that the state lives at the expense of everyone."
-- Frederic Bastiat

Easy, Economical, Ecological Distillation…practical knowledge for the Retro Guy

Homemade hootch, a tradition which predates governments and something every retro guy should know…

Amateur chemistry can be educational, fun and rewarding; however, it can be intimidating to begin, especially with the cost of professional laboratory equipment. Fortunately, this is amateur chemistry, and we can use amateur equipment, a process which not only saves you money but also helps you to understand what's going on! In this Instructable I'll demonstrate how I built a distillation apparatus for only a few dollars.

This device is useful for a wide range of hobbyists and makers - in addition to amateur chemists, their users include brewers, survivalists, herbalists, and more. Also, I typically make a point of using new material or retail-supplied material as little as possible and have a strong tendency to blur the line between thriftiness and cheapness. Though it can be difficult at times, this also helps me build independence from prefabricated materials and is an avenue through which I can exercise creativity in problem-solving.

Motivation

You probably already know why you want to build a distillation apparatus. If not, I can certainly give you a few:

The application common to all my fellow hobbyists and DIYers is purifying water, since we all use water numerous times daily. If you need to purify water and remove contaminants from it, you could do so by distillation. This might be done for drinking or use in a humidifier.
Most hobbyists who construct devices for distillation, however, are doing so with alcohol in mind. I don't see any reason why the apparatus I built wouldn't work for that purpose, but I didn't build it with that in mind. If you do want to distill alcohol, check whether or not it's legal where you are and be sure it won't cause your distillation tube to degrade - many companies post free solvent/plastic compatibility charts like this one online.
But why do I want to build a distillation apparatus? Amateur chemists often find commercial suppliers for reagents in everything from garden to automotive supply stores, and sometimes these finds require concentration, purification, or separation. In my case, I've been interested for a while in polymers and I'd love to make my own - I know of plastics made from borax and glue, milk (its protein casein), corn starch, agar, and gelatin Ethylene glycol is readily available as antifreeze, but other chemicals are added - I want to isolate ethylene glycol because of its dual hydroxyl groups, which I'm hoping will be useful in polymerization.
I mentioned before that herbalists might use distillation because essential oils can be distilled to concentrate them. As with brewing, I'm not involved with any of the details of essential oils, so it's your responsibility to double-check safety and legality here.

More at:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Easy-Economical-Ecological-Distillation/

Resources you can use and share…

Learn anything. Online learning used to be a novelty. Then it started becoming mainstream and comprehensive. Today, it is exploding beyond belief. Here is a site that offers 100 other sites that teach just about anything you could ever want to know. And the crazy-great Khan Academy isn’t even listed. It boggles the mind to consider that there was a time when government imagined that it could control what we learn.

Remit money cheaper. Banks and wiring companies are charging too much money for people to send money home — mainly to poor countries. But remittances are about to get a lot cheaper. Companies like TransferWise, Moni Technologies, and WorldRemit are competing, paradoxically, to keep more money in the hands of people in the developing world.

Partake in the Creative Commons. Not every government imposition on market institutions allows for a way out. But in the case of copyright — a regulatory intervention that has become a major source of mischief in the digital age — Creative Commons is the answer that freedom-lovers can embrace. FEE founder Leonard Read pioneered this approach in the late 1940s, long before people even questioned copyright. FEE in 2014 has gone all the way by putting all its content in the commons with no restrictions. Goodbye censors.

etGems. Instant messaging is still the thing, but what if it lived on a distributed network with no central control that also allowed instant currency exchanges at near-zero cost? That’s what going on at GetGems. It’s some pretty edgy stuff, but remember: these are the early days of such innovations. No one can prevent us from talking to each other -- or exchanging with each other -- in whatever way we choose. (See also other forms of crypto-texting.)

Yours for a life fulfilled

[or - is the future useless]?

Bruce ‘the Poor Man’