Stash It - 3

The first thing you are going to need to do is to disconnect the compressor unit. You are either going to have the freon removed or be very careful working with the unit. A number of years ago, I had a freon line rupture while I was working on it and happened to breathe in some of the fumes. I thought I was going to die. Until a couple of years ago it was legal to just drain the freon out yourself. Now it is illegal, you need to get someone who has a unit to recapture the freon. I will leave it up to you as to, if or how you are going to get the freon removed. those that choose not to get the freon removed will need to disconnect all of the electric lines going to the compressor. Save the plug-in cord as you are going to need it. Yes, it will be plugged in just like a working refrigerator. You will also want to leave the cooling coils on the back of the unit to keep it authentic looking. So, if you have removed the compressor, just cut the line to the coils and leave the coils in place. You can take it off for working on the unit but you should replace it. The electric cord will be used to power a ten watt light. This is to keep the humidity down in the unit and deep anything from rusting. If you are using a freezer that does not have a socket in it for a light bulb, you should install one. You can put a switch inside the unit to turn it off and on, if you do not think you need it all of the time. The only other thing that you need to do, is to drill some holes to ventilate the inside. Otherwise you will wind up with that musty, closed refrigerator smell in it. You need to drill about for or six holes across the top of the back wall and the same amount across the bottom of the back wall. I normally use about a three-eighths inch drill bit and drill four holes each, top and bottom. I like to drill my holes from the inside and deep them so that the coils hide them from the outside. You can see why I suggest getting rid of the freon. It is easy for the drill to poke a hole in a coil. Then you get rid of the freon in a way that is not pleasant or legal. You can cut some one inch squares of old aluminum screen and super glue one over each hole to deep insects and small rodents out of the unit.

Now you are ready to build the inside of the unit to hold whatever you are going to keep there. For rifles, I just glue a one by two to the back of the unit. I notch it to accept several gun barrels before gluing it in. If you want to deep a lot of guns in one unit, you can notch and glue a short one by two on each side also. This will usually add about four guns to the capacity. The one by two will have to be glued by the edge, so that it sticks out the two inch way. You might not trust the glue. In that case screw a couple of small angle brackets to the back of the unit, just under the one by two. You can also pad the slots with felt or tape. All you need to finish the inside is to glue a piece of carpet to the bottom of the inside to keep the guns from sliding. Now you will need to install some locks. I prefer using the small cylinder locks. This is the type used by companies when they install locks on their freezers. Yours may already have one on it. If not, you can usually go to a junk dealer that deals in junk appliances and pick them up for almost nothing. That is a good idea, if you can find any with keys. New ones are only a couple of bucks each, so you just might want to go that route. I like to but two locks on the large doors, one near the top and one near the bottom. On a two door refrigerator, I put a third one on the freezer door. Before installing these locks, I take them apart and change the pins around so that one key will open all of the locks. These locks are fairly simple and anyone with a little mechanical knowledge should not have any trouble with it. One unit that I helped on, the owner put two padlocks on the main door and a cylinder lock on the freezer door. We screwed one of the hinged tongues to the center of the inside top of the door. We put it in such a position that the tongue stuck into the freezer. The other one was screwed to the bottom center of the door, so the tongue would go under the unit, into the area where the drain pan should be. We put catches in the freezer and under the unit. We then installed a cylinder lock in the freezer door. To open the main door you had to unlock the freezer door and remove the kick plate from the bottom. To my way of thinking, this made it to inconvenient. You also needed two keys, one for the upper door and one for the two padlocks. However, it is a feasible and safe solution. I gave this example to show that solutions are only limited by your creativity.

Until next time "SURVIVE"

http://www.therealamericanpolitics.blogspot.com

http://www.realenvironmentalism.blogspot.com

 

Stash It - 2

Tools are another thing that many crooks look for. For these, they usually hit the garage first, then any other area where there might be a shop or work room. Tools are a very valuable item to some crooks, so you should make every effort to make them as inconspicuous as possible. You may want to consider splitting up your tools and secreting a portion of them. In this way, even if part of the tools were found, you would still have some left.

the next thing to know is that crooks like to stay on the first floor of any building they are robbing. This is due to the fact that most houses have only one stairway leading upstairs. Crooks do not like to be where there is only one way out if they are discovered. They will go to the second floor if there is nothing worthwhile on the first floor. Basements are even less liked by crooks. Unless a basement has exceptionally large windows, or an outside entrance, they have no place to go if discovered. The best basements for storage are the old style, with the small windows and having only one entrance from the inside of the house. The two places that crooks hate most are crawl spaces and attics. Here again, there is normally only one entrance and most of the time that consists of a small trap door of some type. They both also tend to have very low clearance, which means a lot of crawling around to find out what is there. The scum that would rob you find that too much like work. They would get a real job if they wanted to work that hard. 

Home Made Storage Units

One of the best things to use when making up your own safe type units are old refrigerators or freezers. There are several reasons for this. First: they are somewhat fire resistant. They are about the best insulated appliance in your home. While they will melt and get ruined if the fire gets hot enough, they are at least some protection. Second: so many people have multiple refrigerators and freezers nowadays that it does not look out of place to have more than one. Third: you can install locks in the doors without looking suspicious, as many can be purchased new with locks. This is especially true with freezers. Fourth: unless a crook is hungry or thinks you might have a lot of expensive steaks and lobster in your freezer, most of them will not even bother trying to look in a refrigerator or freezer. Here is one of these time that you might want to think kitchen. You need a large kitchen to accept a second refrigerator, but if you have room it is an excellent choice. Basements, rec rooms and utility rooms are also excellent choices. These are the places people are most likely to keep an extra refrigerator for their beverages. The garage is also an excellent place to keep an extra refrigerator or freezer. 

An upright freezer works best for guns. They are usually tall enough to take most rifles in an upright position. This is also true of the side by side double door refrigerator freezers. The double door refrigerator freezer with the freezer either on the top on on the bottom can also be utilized as a gun cabinet, it just takes a little more work. Some of the smaller sized apartment and dormitory type refrigerators and freezers can be used for handgun storage as well as ammo storage and the storage of other valuables. Large chest type freezers can be one of the safest storage units, it is just that to be done right, they are a lot of work. When done in the correct way, getting at the guns can be a little inconvenient. As you can see, just about any type of unit can be used for some type of storage, and in today's environment where you normally have to pay to have your old refrigerator or freezer hauled away, why not take advantage of its secondary uses? 

Until next week when we start building the gun safe: SURVIVE!!!

http://www.therealamericanpolitics.blogspot.com

http://www.realenvironmentalism.blogspot.com  

Stash It

Much of a survivalist's gear is valuable, plus most of us have many other things around the place that we consider valuable. I spent most of the eighties living in and near Chicago. Living fairly close to gangs, scum and other criminal types got me started think seriously about security. I started doing things to secrete anything that I felt was tempting to the low life element. At the time I was also doing some photography work for other people. I was taking pictures of their valuables for insurance purposes. I helped several of these people to set up storage for some of these. I also personally needed to secrete my own things such as: cameras, guns, survival food, ammo, etc. No storage system is totally one hundred percent foolproof. the best we can do is to make our equipment as hard to find and as difficult to abscond with as possible. This is what I hope to be able to help you with.

There is no way for me to know any other person's reason for wanting to store things in hidden locations. You my not want your neighbors to know what you own, you might have a very real fear of being robbed by some of the scum that roams the streets in today's world, you may even have a fear of government agents coming snooping. the constitution of this great country guarantees each of us the right to privacy. I do not believe that any government agency, be it the BATFE, IRS or any other alphabet agency has the right to snoop into my personal belongings. As long as the items are constitutionally legal, and I came by them legally, it is no one else's business what I own or where or how I store it. some people my call this paranoid, and if it is, so be it. All I know is that I will probably have more left after a robbery or any other type of home invasion, than the people that are laughing at me now. I do not feel that we can any longer trust anyone: neighbors, acquaintances or anyone else except our closest family and friends. After many of the horror stories that I have read, I especially do not feel that we can trust many, (if any) of our government agencies. The thins that I will be describing in the next few weeks will suffice for storage of most valuables that most of us own. I am personally using some of these ideas at this time. Others I have used in the past while still others were designed for people other than myself. Some of these Ideas you may have heard of elsewhere and some may be new to you. A couple of these ideas were published in a newsletter that I published from 1989 to 1991. All of them will definitely help the average person, without unlimited resources, to protect their valuables. Not too many people that I know can afford a safe for their small valuables, a gun safe for their firearms and possibly another large safe type unit for cameras, electronic equipment, etc. Besides, if you bought all of those large safes, where would you keep them that would not be conspicuous? I try to come up with solutions that will eliminate that problem. First, let us go through a house as a burglar, or anyone else that is trying to find out what you have, without tearing up the entire interior, would. This type of person has a pretty definite idea of where to look for certain things. It seem that most people in the world follow a pattern about where they store things. Take things like jewelry and coins; the first place one would look would be in the bedroom, followed by a den of office with dining and living rooms coming after that. If the believe that you may have a safe they may try the den or office first and then the bedrooms. Speaking of safes, behind pictures and behind books in a built-in bookcase are two of the first spots that are checked. Checking for a floor safe comes next. Cameras and certain other valuables follow about the same path as do firearms. With electronic equipment it depends on what they are looking for. Living rooms, dens, family rooms, then dining rooms with bedrooms coming in last is the rule. However, if they are aware someone has ham radio equipment or some such other valuable electronic equipment, they may look to the den or office first. You will notice that nowhere in this list is the kitchen mentioned. That is because people rarely store any valuable items in the kitchen. Keep this in mind when planning your storage. One of my methods is to store things in unexpected places.

Until next time: SURVIVE!!

http://www.therealamericanpolitics.blogspot.com

http://www.realenvironmentalism.blogspot.com