Improvise this...

S

sonus

Joined
Apr 21, 2000
Messages
1
Over the few months that I've been reading here, I've seen a lot of ingenious ideas improvised from common ordinary things. So here's your latest challenge:

You're stuck on a deserted island and you have 12 cans of food. With you are a heavy duty, half serrated, medium sized knife, a sharpening stone, 50' paracord, and a firestarter. We all know the tools have endless uses, but what can you improvise with the cans?

What's your technique to open those cans? What else can you do with those cans? How can those cans help you get off the island?

 
Good question. First, you can use the knife and repeatedly punch through the cans to open them. Second, once the food is gone, the cans have multiple uses.
- Cooking in cans
- Water containers
- Digging in sand
- Water filtering (get some coals, put them in cans, punch a hole in the bottom of can, and run water through) - gets rid of big chunks and nasty taste
- cut them and open them up to use as a signal mirror (if their insides are shiny enough)
- use parachord and tie the can to trees. Cut a notch in trees and collect sap for glue.
- inside the hut waste pit
- fire container. put your coals inside the can when you are done, so you don't have to relight a fire every time.
 
How about pulling the fibers out of a length of the paracord for fishing lines and making lures out of pieces of shiny metal cut from a can with the knife?
 
You did not state the size of the cans. This would be a factor in thier uses. Good ideas already. If they are big enough they can also be used for fish traps/lobster pots/octopus traps. The lids could be fashoned into fishing spear tips. It is a good exercise.

Cheers,

ts

------------------
Guns are for show. Knifes are for Pros.
 
I'd recycle them
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(just kidding)
Glen
 
Here's another. You can use the edge of the metal to cut things if you don't have a knife.
 
In answer to yor last question--getting off the island--the cans, depending on their composition (tin or aluminum alloy) could be used as signal mirrors. You'd have to clean and polish them with sand or salt extracted from sea water and fashion them into a flat surface. Success would depend on your ability with signal mirrors and LUCK. Knowing some morse code would help.
 
Morse Code and Signal mirrors...

In all likelihood, you won't be able to be accurate enough with a normal mirrir, much less one fashioned from a tin can, to tap out steady more code with reflected sunlight. COunt yourself lucky if a passing ship actually sees your flashes.

Being a deserted island, if it has no natural spring, you will need to extract drinkable water from the ocean. This is difficult. You could fashion an open still out of the cans. Use one to boil water in, dangle a couple more above it at an angle filled with cool, wet sand, and arrange others to catch the condensation off the sand-cans. Periodically, you will need to empty out the sand, and refresh it with cool sand. I have no clue how much water you will actually produce with this method.

If you had some kind of hollow plant, you could make a semi-closed version. Can 1 holds boiling seawater, can two is cut open, and rolled into a funnel, to fit upside-down on can one, and tube-plants are afixed to upper end of funnel, and bend over sharply, with a long straight section angled down towards a collection pot. You could improve this by making some way to cool the tube-plant straight section, and by making that portion longer.

The open version could also be used with many dangling palm leaves, with their tips over the collection cans.

I've never tried this, if someone want to give it a shot, or has done it, let me know how it works...


Stryver
 
Stryver,

I think one of the questions was how to use the cans to get off the island.

I'm not suggesting a tin can is capable of sending a detailed message in Morse. But if you can fashion a can into an improvised mirror, and you know how to use it, you can flash an SOS, or a reasonable facsimile--anything to get someone's attention. Sometimes the attempt to communicate is more important than the message itself. As I said, you would still need a good deal of luck to attract a boat, ship, or low-flying aircraft.

Mike
 
Hey Guys...

All you need to do is empty the cans,, take the paracord,, take it all apart and tie all the pieces together.

Thread each end onto one of the cans. Then throw one can into the ocean and wait for someone to find it and pick it up.

Stretch the string tight and tell the person on the other end to call the Coast Guard!

See Simple!
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You guys are gonna have to make these excercises harder!
smile.gif


Eric...

------------------
Eric E. Noeldechen
On/Scene Tactical
http://www.mnsi.net/~nbtnoel
Custom made, High Quality
Concealex Sheaths and Tool Holsters
Canada's Only Custom Concealex Shop!

 
Depending on the size of the can, you can make a pretty snazzy stove. If you have one that is about the size of a gallon paint can, you can cut out a four by four inch square from the top, on the opposite side at the bottom, cut out a 1 by 2 inch (diminsions aren't critical here) hole for a chimney. Flip the whole thing over and you have a basic stove to cook your food on that works pretty well. Now if you want to get fancy, you can add a damper to regulate the fire. Other than a stove, I would use the cans for the afore mentioned signaling mirror, attempt to make some fishhooks from them, and make buckets to store water.
 
Normark,

If you've got enough paracord you can just let the tin can float until it reaches San Francisco, and then call the CG direct.
 
mf1:

I agree with the value of signaling via a mirror or other reflective object. But I would argue against the ability to send any message whatsoever with a mirror.

If you had an extreme itch to send morse using a tin can, try this. Make a torch that fits inside the can. Cut both ends off the can so you have a hollow tube, and attache a handle to the outside of the can (a forked branch would work). Light the torch, and then you can send morse with the light (At night) by sliding the can down and revealing the light, and back up to hide it. Make it a tall torch, and you can work it overhead, making it visible from 360 degrees.

I would say that merely being seen would be more important, and would therefore build a big ol' fire any time at night I thought I might be seen. Three fires in a row signal distress, or three in a triangle.


Stryver
 
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