Entries tagged with military surplus

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Tacking vs Tracking

I was working on a very tactical-looking "K9 Harness" and the sample had "Tacking Harness" tagged on it. That made sense to me, since tacking is the exact term you would use for equipment you're putting on your domesticated animal, like a saddle on a horse. EVERYONE knows that!

BUT in a rare display of usefulness, Google kept wanting to autocorrect it to "tracking harness". And it turns out, I'm now pretty sure the correct term is in fact tracking harness. If you google K9 Tracking, that is a whole thing. People are practice-tracking their dogs all over the place.

And it turns out "tacking" is actually equine-specific. Is it a horse? Tacking. Is it a donkey? Tacking. Is it a mule? Tacking. Zebra? Don't know. Dog? NOT TACKING. Even if you find a little saddle to put on your dog, turns out that's not tacking.

The more you know.

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Surplus Gas Masks

Looking on reddit, and there are a lot of experts on gas masks. And many of them on concentrated in the /gasmasks subreddit.

Common questions people are asking are pretty straight forward...how do I buy a gas mask? Is this supplier (link to a military surplus store) a reputable seller of gas masks? Can I trust this gas mask?

As far as I can tell, 99.9% of the supply of gas masks available on the internet (and 100% of the ones available at a brick-and-mortar surplus store) are surplus masks, in that they originally were purchased by some government agency, spent the entire duration of their rated lifespan in storage, were then rotated out of stock, and finally re-purchased by a third-party seller at government auction/sale.

This is a foundational concept for understanding military surplus masks: they are, by definition, expired safety equipment.

Many, many gas masks are purchased, and the number of them that get used in some sort of chemical attack or even an industrial accident isn't zero, but approaches zero,

Once they have exceeded their rated lifespan, they are essentially worthless to the agency possessing them and they go up for auction.

What is the price difference between a surplus gas mask and a brand new still-in-its-rated-lifespan mask? I have never worked for an organization (law enforcement, military) that needs brand new gas masks. I imagine there's a completely separate supply chain.

And another frustrating thing is that between surplus stores and these first-party suppliers there seems to exist a layer of overpriced gas masks being marketed as fresh masks but are probably surplus gas masks.

Mira Safety - These are probably surplus gas masks.

Parcel Safety - These are probably surplus gas masks.

MSA Safety - Some of these may be actual current gas masks, only because they are priced at hundreds of dollars ($600 or more).

Here is a link to Avon Protection, who is an actual manufacturer of gas masks. They will sell you gas masks for a similar amount ($500-700).

Ultimately, I know almost nothing about current gas masks. Everything I know is about surplus gas masks. And surplus gas masks are all expired. Maybe they are still good? But they are technically expired.

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Left Handed Zippers

A couple years ago, I went down a rabbit hole trying to figure out why a lot of military surplus shirts and jackets have zippers on the left hand side instead of the right hand side.

In the United States, there is a rigid unspoken code on zipper placement that seems to be entirely based on which gender the article of clothing is being designed for.

To go along with my previous factoid about duct tape, there are numerous factoids about this differentiation people like to post. Some people say its because of which hand you would salute with when you were a knight. Or because traditionally high-status men dressed themselves, while high-status women had assistants.

But while this gender-based design decision is almost universal in the USA, its followed much less rigidly everywhere else in the world. Googling about left-hand zippers will quickly pull up men who have purchased high-end European winter jackets who are worried they accidentally got a women's size. So there's no way this design is based on old timey stuff, unless Europeans had some sort of fashion reformation regarding zipper placement and didn't record the decision anywhere.

What is certain is that it doesn't matter much which side the zipper is on, they seem to work equally well and require the same level of hand dexterity. I am in possession of hoodies, shirts, sweaters, and jackets of both kinds and I don't even notice the difference unless I'm thinking about it.

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Caught in the wind

In Minnesota winter, the weather can be 40ºF one day, and be 10ºF the next day with windchills taking it down to below zero.

My poor brain isn't equipped for it even after many, many years of the same cycle.

After a couple days of warm weather, things get real sloppy. I inevitably leave my hat and gloves back at home. Or in the car. Or at the restaurant.

The solution seems to be to keep buying cheap new accessories and stuffing them into every nook and cranny I can for easy retrieval when the wind starts blowing again and I can feel the moisture in my eyes crystalizing.

The types of accessories that make all the difference:

Gloves, both bigger "choppers" and lightweight porous fabric ones
Hats (hopefully with a built-in way to cover your ears)
Scarves: Wow its always surprising how much difference a scarf makes when you put it on
Balaclava: You look like you're going to rob a bank, but if it keeps my cheeks/nose from getting frostbite, I'm all for it

This retail-store blogical is the perfect summary of military surplus cold weather options.

Just observations I discovered as the world moves farther into January. (and we still have February and March to go!)

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The smells of storage

In response the events of my moth vs. wool blanket research, I investigated some more with the buyer of said blankets.

He was 100% sure the smell people were experiencing was insecticide, which was my originally hypothesis I had talked my way out of.

Turns out these Blankets are at least 50 years old, packed away for some reason or another. And each one has a label saying its been treated with anti-moth agents.

Is this agent different than moth balls?

This turned the topic around into an entirely different argument.

Is the smell of moth balls a "gasoline" scent?

I've smelled a lot of moth balls in my life, from childhood games of hide n' seek at grandma's house to adding moth balls to the tarp storage bag to keep mice from chewing holes in my pool cover. I personally don't think I would characterize any of it as a gasoline smell. I would characterize it as an entirely different smell, instantly recognizable as a "moth ball" scent.

Does this mean I need to do some sort of blind-folded comparison. Do I need to cover my eyes and huff some gasoline and moth balls and see if I can tell the difference?

Bad news. I'm too old. And I have too few brain cells left to risk on such an endeavor.

The Smells of Storage

There are 3 main categories of smells when dealing with military surplus (or anything, really, that's been in storage for a very long time).

1) Moth Ball / Gasoline Smell - I don't know what to tell you, I think these are different smells. But moths don't like it, and that's the main thing.

2) Mildew smell - This is the classic "basement" smell that pervades all sleeping bags after a time. You keep them in the basement, garage, or under the stairs for a long time, there's just a little bit of moisture. Voilà, mildew smell.

3) Vomit smell - As a human being, this is my least favorite smell. And no, I'm not talking about actual vomit, but a similar acidic smell that comes from plastic off-gassing over long periods of storage away from fresh air. While mildew most often strikes soft fabrics, the unfortunate vomit smell strikes plastic materials like vinyl bags and tents.

In all cases, getting rid of these storage smells usually just involves opening the product up to fresh air, ideally outside (especially in the "vomit" category) and, for an even better experience, exposure to direct sunlight.

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The moths are supposed to be central to this story

Today at work (the military surplus store) there was a big push to sell some wool blankets. We have over a thousand of them. The designer wanted a little more juice because these blankets were getting shoved into the second position on a sales email, and that juice was to take the form of a good wool blanket story.

Unfortunately, these blankets were resisting the typical myth-making process.

They were 100% wool. That's great. They were also manufactured decades ago, then pulled out of storage recently and put up for sale by a enterprising vendor.

Customers who had already bought these blankets gave them great reviews. 5 stars for these wool blankets! Mostly because they were warm. But, many customers also noted the blankets had a strong smell of gasoline. Really warm blankets, smelled like gas.

Not as strange of a situation as you might think.

Here's my educated guess. Gasoline is a long-chain hydrocarbon. But there's something else they make out of long-chain hydrocarbons...insecticide!

!00% wool. 100% warm. 0% moths.

Then I had to go figure out how much of a thing the whole moths vs. wool dichotomy really was. First blog post I found was this harrowing tale of moth larvae infestation, which seems to indicate it really was a problem.

But then after some more searching, it turns out the smell probably isn't insecticide. Old wool, wool in long-term storage, or just slightly dirty wool, all seem to get a gasoline smell after a while. Perhaps because of the lanolin breaking down.

But regardless of the moth situation, it's been established these are fantastic, 5 star blankets. And wool is a fantastic insulator. It's nature's best insulator. Except for maybe down. I'm not going to get into a wool vs. down battle. Similar to down, wool works great in a variety of environments, and keeps its insulating power even when damp.

And the gasoline smell goes away too, as long as you give it time to air out.

Additional reading:
Apparently American wool got a bad rap during the Korean War, and most uniforms and other gear pivoted to synthetics.