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Re: List of essentials
Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2019 1:31 am
by daylen
Jin+Guice wrote: ↑Sun Jan 13, 2019 11:43 pm
As Jacob said, we are so amazingly rich that this won't make or break you, if you were really ERE you could survive with only a hat, some lentils and precision woodworking equipment.
The hat could be used to cover private area when customers visit to purchase dresser. Lentils could be soaked overnight in the hat to be eaten in mush form. I think you are on to something!
Re: List of essentials
Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2019 2:53 am
by Quadalupe
BRUTE wrote: ↑Sun Jan 13, 2019 8:41 pm
they don't. brute never uses his can openers.
This is a good strategy to make any item BIFL!
Re: List of essentials
Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2019 12:48 pm
by prognastat
I tend to get more expensive items if they either add significant extra use to an item or if it will last so much longer that the daily use ends up being the same or lower(if it's the same it's still a better deal due to needing less effort by replacing it less frequently).
Re: List of essentials
Posted: Mon Feb 18, 2019 8:24 pm
by Clarice
Came across this one - seems to be in line with OP original topic: a list of 10 items that I high quality yet cheap. The guy is a shameless self promoter, but some of the info is interesting.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AqBqPjHl1JE&t=2s
Re: List of essentials
Posted: Tue Feb 19, 2019 4:07 am
by niemand
Why are we on page 3 of this thread and nobody has mentioned a
towel yet?
Douglas Adams wrote:
A towel is just about the most massively useful thing any of the interstellar hitchhiker can carry. Partly because it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand combat; wrap it around your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you — daft as a brush, but very very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course you can dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.
More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, washcloth, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet-weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitchhiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitchhiker might accidentally have "lost." What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the Galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through and still knows where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.
Hence a phrase which has passed into hitch hiking slang, as in "Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There's a frood who really knows where his towel is."
Re: List of essentials
Posted: Tue Feb 19, 2019 7:44 am
by Jean
Re quilts
I Never tried one, but when it's cold, having your head wraped in down makes a huge différence. Same for having no air going trough your neck or sides. In addition, it doesnt seem much smaller than a complete sleeping bag.
Re: List of essentials
Posted: Tue Jul 07, 2020 1:27 pm
by WingsOnFire
Old thread but interesting.
I'll have to say Fiskars for scissors, definitely. Never used a better pair and will not buy any other scissors. They also make high quality knives, pots and pans, gardening tools, axes, shovels and so on. They've been around from mid 1600's and it's one of the oldest western companies still around.
Generally the more I use any given item, the more I think it's worth investing in it. If I use my water kettle daily (and I do) and it sits on the stove all the time, I want it to look nice and I want it to pour without spilling.
Patagonia is good for outerwear and bags.
(Ps.I sew and knit a lot of our clothes and don't find it strange at all
What I buy needs to be practical, comfortable, durable and good-looking. Ditto for shoes. Alas, I have also made myself a pair of leather combat boots, but I don't have the tools at home to make any more, it was a course I attended
But I can sew bags etc. from leather at home. )
Re: List of essentials
Posted: Tue Jul 07, 2020 2:39 pm
by shemp
Jean wrote: ↑Tue Feb 19, 2019 7:44 am
Re quilts
I Never tried one, but when it's cold, having your head wraped in down makes a huge différence. Same for having no air going trough your neck or sides. In addition, it doesnt seem much smaller than a complete sleeping bag.
Assuming you only sleep/rest on side/back (not stomach), then there's a very simple way to make quilt with hood. Namely, fold in half and sew up head end partway. Try pinning a blanket together to see how it works. Unsewn part is breathing hole for back sleeping/resting. Can also use this hole while side sleeping/resting, but easier to just cover head and breathe under edge of quilt.
Main advantage of quilts is you don't destroy insulation by sleeping on it. Hips, especially, will grind up insulation very quickly when side sleeping on hard ground, whether down or polyester insulation. Quilts also much easier to sew and do save considerable weight/bulk plus you get rid of the zipper, which is a potential point of failure.
Most people use too little insulation in polyester quilts. 5oz/sqyd of Climashield will allow a man to sleep comfortably in subfreezing temps ASSUMING he is well-fed, not exhausted from hiking, not trying to dry wet clothes, only spends 7 hours under the quilt, etc, etc. If such a quilt is used to hibernate out a storm, it won't be comfortable at 50°F (10°C), especially if not brand new. Most people should use 7.5oz/sqyd instead. About 200g extra weight, or way less than extra food required to allow 5oz/sqyd to be comfortable. As for dimensions, most people make their quilt too narrow, with or without draft flaps. Fewer people screw up the length.
Re: List of essentials
Posted: Sun Jul 19, 2020 3:11 pm
by Aspirant
Redo wrote: ↑Tue Dec 04, 2018 8:39 pm
Shoes: Meindl, any good british leather shoes (Church's)
Clothes: Fjällräven and Sasta (Scandinavian equivalents of Patagonia). Both do great winter clothes as well.
Boots: Meindl
In the past few years I have tried to buy stuff that lasts. Barbour, fjällräven, decent leather shoes etc.
I think you need to establish an utility curve of what you use the most and what you value. That way you will always have the quality, but cost is pretty much the same over the lifetime. I can reasonably expect to have 10 year lifespan on my winter parka (Fjällräven Barents parka) and its good for arctic expeditions. And we actually have winters here. Canada Goose is an overkill for anything south from Canada. Same goes for hiking shoes. The previous pair lasted 14 years of painfully light use (and one year of military grade use). The leather was good but the rubber crumbled.
I think its up to what you do and value. Jacob had a good point about resell value. So for hobby items the " always buy classics" is pretty true. Most of my current stuff is cheap so I can't resell them. My friend always has top notch camping and fishing gear and he gets to enjoy them for less of a cost that I do.
Barbour and fjällräven have great resell values even when you have used them for 10 years. You can wax them to waterproof etc.
Re: List of essentials
Posted: Sun Jul 19, 2020 3:29 pm
by sky
I put together a synthetic quilt how to sew post:
https://www.reddit.com/r/myog/comments/ ... lt_how_to/
I have sewn Climashield Apex quilts with 7.0 osy, 5.0 osy and 3.5 osy. The 7 osy should be good down to 10F. I was comfortable to a low of 18F and don't want to try for any lower temps than that. The 7.0 osy is big, bigger than a basketball when packed. If civilization collapses, I can survive winter under the 7.0 osy quilt.
Re: List of essentials
Posted: Sun Jul 19, 2020 4:01 pm
by Aspirant
Fiskars for sure. It's a Finnish brand. This week I encountered a pair that my grandma was using and they were perfectly fine scissors (50+ years of use). I am thinking of buying their stock. The products seem overpriced but I haven't ever been dissappointed with them. Scissors are the best, axes great and gardening tools good. Never broke any of those.
Re: List of essentials
Posted: Mon Jul 20, 2020 5:35 pm
by ertyu
I found this video very interesting. Dude disassembles the same shoe produced at different levels of quality / at different price levels--in this case, birkenstocks and knock-offs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8f8tvGYRjsg
Suonds like the sort of video that is probably a genre in and of itself. Looking forward to exploring.
Re: List of essentials
Posted: Tue Jul 21, 2020 7:43 am
by ThriftyRob
Referring to the OP, in the UK, Church's are less favoured now since the company was bought by Prada and some of their products are now made in Italy. For traditional British shoes (Goodyear welted), look at Edward Green (high end), Crockett and Jones (mid range) and Tricker's (country boots and shoes). All have factory shops in Northampton where huge savings can be achieved.
For electrical goods, I follow what I call 'the Miele principle' – choosing their better-designed and built electrical appliances which work better and last longer, so they work out costing less than the cheaper brands which fail after a couple of years.
Re: List of essentials
Posted: Tue Jul 21, 2020 7:49 am
by tonyedgecombe
I used to think that but I'm starting to wonder if you get most of the benefits by just avoiding the cheapest segment in any market. We are 15 years in on our mid-range washing machine. If you take jeans for example the difference between a £10 pair and £20 pair is huge in terms of quality, between the £20 and £100 pair it's just branding.
Re: List of essentials
Posted: Tue Jul 21, 2020 8:08 am
by Alphaville
my porlex tall coffee grinder with a ceramic burr has been excellent for the last couple of years and i don’t see why it wouldn’t last indefinitely. i guess parts could wear out eventually.
it’s a widely imitated model (a steel tube with a removable crank on the outside) but the internal components are not cheap crap like the imitations (i first bought the imitations and had to return to seller because they were craptastic).
$100 (shipping/tax included) at first seemed like an extravagance, but this beats any electric grinder we’ve tried. and sure there are superpricey electric grinders for a proper coffee bar, but i’m not interested in those. after decades of experimentation, i just drink pourover.