I was surprised when I did a search on the above subject over the last year and nothing came up, so....

Fun project: bought a plastic calligraphy pen (blue transparent) from the local art store and removed the ink cartridge and pen tip. Inside, I was able to comfortably fit about a 5 inch length of plastic stir straw filled with 5 strike-anywhere matches (shortened) and then sealed on the ends with melted wax, 2 small safety pins, a packet of salt, a coil of about 7 feet of 22 gauge copper snare wire, an X-acto blade (edge taped), a trick self-relighting birthday candle, a magnetized sewing needle and about 7 feet of thread, a small sheet of rolled heavy-duty aluminum foil (signalling), and a couple water purification tablets. I put the cap back on the pen and sealed the joint with a foot or so of black electrician's tape. One end of the pen barrel even makes a pretty decent signal whistle blowing across the top. The whole thing only weighs about an ounce, if that. Maybe I could have found a pen barrel with an LED at one end. <img src="images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />

i came across the same idea years ago when i read a kids survival book, i never tried the idea and to be honest i'd completely forgotten about it. i'm away for the weekend but when i get back i'll dig the book out and post the list of contents. i've got a funny feeling i'll be trying the idea out as well!!

take it easy,
stuart

There is an old post about minimal kits in pen tubes etc here, a bit of discussion about contents and utility of such small kits.

http://www.equipped.org/ubbthreads/showf...o=&vc=1

Hi Sotto,

Welcome to ETS.

What do you use to protect the water purification tablets with? They seem to have this nasty habit of destroying things when they're not contained.

Comanche7:

I put the water purification tablets in Saran wrap.

sotto,
What type of tablets are you using? I thiought that I had the problem solved a while back by placing my Potable Aqua tabs into sealed plastic straws ... alas it was not to be. Still unsure if I had a bad seal or if there were other issues. Since then, I acquired several small vials and as yet, haven't had a repeat.
Please keep an eye on your Saran wrapped tabs until you're sure that they won't allow the tabs to corrode your PSK etc. Good luck and let us know. <img src="images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Doug has already covered the issue of repackaging Potable Aqua in anything other than a glass vial of some kind, because if the tablets are exposed to air for any length of time, they will degrade to the point of being useless, in addition to probably turning half the stuff in your PSK into mush or something similar. See the discussion here: http://www.equipped.org/avsrvkit.htm#Water

Saran Wrap on Potable Aqua will be ineffective, the tablets will degrade and be useless very quickly and as Commanche and Maggot noted most likely destroy the kit contents.

All plastics...saran, straws, nalgene vials etc cannot contain iodine vapors and each of these has various abilities to slow the transfer of water vapor which also contributes to the tablet degradation.

I would leave water purification out of a kit this small as the amount of water you could treat is too limited to be of any real use in an emergency. I think you should carry a minimum of enough tablets to treat 2 gallons of water....16 potable aqua tablets, and preferrably much more. A whole bottle of Potable Aqua will only treat 25 L of water (~3 gal), which is the bare minimum I carry.

Absolutely correct & thanks for posting the link. There are also several pretty good discussion threads on ETS forums regarding this as well. Do a search using "vials", "potable aqua" etc. Be sure to set the date code to all.

I concur with Schwert's thoughts as well.

Thanks for the input on the Potable Aqua tablet situation. I've solved the problem by removing them. Wouldn't want to screw up the cool pen barrel signalling whistle!

Thanks.