Sardine Can Survival Kits - Coghlan's and Whistle Creek

hi everybody and welcome to kit bashed survival you know in a few weeks i'm going to be reviewing what will be the most expensive survival kit i've reviewed to date on this channel and that is the se advanced survival kit which has a price tag of just over five hundred dollars it's a very high quality well-equipped kit but of course not everybody can afford to spend five hundred dollars on a survival kit and obviously you don't have to spend that much to have a well-equipped survival kit and so in between now and then i thought i would do something that a lot of you guys have been asking for anyway and that is to review some cheap entry-level survival kits and i can think of no better way to kick that off than by reviewing a couple of sardine canned survival kits so that's exactly what we're going to do today on kit bash survival now of course any time you review a cheap entry level survival kit lots of people are going to jump right in and start bad mouthing the kid and saying oh it's junk it's worthless why would you waste your money on that i would never get that in a million years and to be sure some cheap survival kits are junk but in general my policy is that i don't instantly hate an entry-level cheap survival kit and i feel that way for two reasons number one you know in the survival knife community there's an old saying that says the best survival knife is the one you have on you and i think that can be extended to survival kits as well and while i would not recommend you staking your survival on an entry level kit like this and i certainly wouldn't take a kit like this by itself out into the field i will say that any survival kit even something like one of these is better than nothing and given a choice between nothing and one of these i'll take these any day number two which is kind of an extension of number one is that a cheap off-the-shelf kit does not have to stay that way it can serve as the jumping off point to making a really good kit and that's often what i do on this channel that's why the channel is called kit bashed survival kit bashing is a term used in the modeling world i do model railroading and when you kit bash something you take components of various modeling kits and you combine them to make a unique structure and that's what i like to do on this channel sometimes as i'll take an off-the-shelf survival kit and i take it apart and repack it and add more components and make a much better kit and that's what you can do with something like this you buy a cheap off the shelf kit you open it up you repack it you add components and in the end what started off as a cheap off the shelf kit ends up being a very high quality kit that you have a lot of confidence in anyway what i've got here is two sardine can survival kits one made by coglins and one made by whistle creek we're going to open up both of these and do a side-by-side comparison and see which one is the better of the two and then after that we're going to take one or both of these and repack them into a much better survival kit so let's start off with the coughlin survival kit in a can contains 32 items for signaling and creating warmth and shelter and then on the back the following 32 survival products along with training and common sense can save your life factory seal this can assures both the usability and the completeness of the list of contents after the can is opened it can be used as a cup cooking pot or baler and they've got a list of the contents here you can pause and read that list if you want and what's interesting is down here they've got a guide to where each item is made so it's a mixture of items made in china japan canada the us mexico thailand great britain and malaysia coglins is a canadian company all right so there it is and here's my hand so you can see about how big this thing is it's literally a sardine can that they've made into a survival kit and they've got a list of all the contents on the lid as well you can pause and read it if you want all right so let's crack it open and take a look at what's inside okay so first up we've got some duct tape i believe there's about a foot of it yep and we've got a match here here's a straight edge razor [Music] and then we've got a bag looks like a little ziploc bag not bad i like that you could use this to store water or once the kit is open you could put all the gear in here and use this as either a cup or boil water or cook food or what have you so i've got another match there's another match looks like these are strike anywhere matches believe there's four matches total yeah here's the fourth one then we've got a book in matches so there's some nice redundancy in terms of the fire making abilities then we've got three feet of reflective cord not bad and then we've got 9.8 feet or three meters of multi-use cord here and it does have a wire twist tie around that then we've got three feet of multi-use wire that you could use for a snare or for repairs stuff like that then we've got a spool of thread which is 101 inches or 31 meters of fishing line slash sewing thread we've got a tea light candle can never go wrong with one of these got a compass and let's see if it's accurate and it is then we've got a couple nails i'm not the biggest fan of nails in survival kit but they're not bad either you could use it to make a spear if you had to or to help build a shelter or something like that let's see then we've got a couple of fire starting cubes right here and these are just chopped up little pieces of those larger fire starting sticks that you can buy in grocery stores so not bad then we've got a large safety pin and a smaller safety pin here's a fish hook i think there's another one in there then we've got a pin it's got a little clip on the end of it then we've got a whistle just a very basic whistle oh it's very loud though it's actually a very good whistle oh here's the other fishing hook then we've got some paper makes sense that if you have a pen or a pencil you should have some paper let's see if the pen works yeah works just fine actually this is not a pen it's a little pencil that's a lead i thought it was a little ballpoint pen but it's actually a pencil that's even better because a pin can always dry up or run out of ink then we've got this little survival tool here and you've seen these before and a lot of other survival kits so according to the guide we've got a can opener a knife edge a screwdriver a ruler a bottle opener a four position wrench a butterfly wrench saw blade a sundial a two position wrench and a lanyard hole so you know this is very basic you see these in a lot of inexpensive survival kits but it's not horrible then we've got two more twisty ties to go with the one that was around the cordage then we've got the outdoor survival tips guide it's got the same basic information that you see on a lot of these guides that you find in survival kits and then we've got our signal mirror very basic very cheap you know it's basically a piece of paper with a reflective coat on one side and you can peel off the back and stick it on something if you have to but you know it's better than nothing and then lastly we've got the tin itself which again you could use this to boil water or cook food or use it as a cup or what have you so here's all the stuff from the coglin survival kit in a can you know obviously this kit doesn't have every component you would need in a survival situation it's not the best survival kit in the world but for what it is and for its size i actually don't think it's that bad and it would certainly make a good starting point for building a better kit all right next we'll check out the whistle creek survival kit in a sardine can emergency medical supplies nourishment navigational aids and more for your car boat rv purse backpack bike or motorcycle for hikers campers climbers boaters skiers sledders fishermen off-roaders travelers cyclists and you and then on the back they've got a list of what's in the kit for all terrain mountain jungle arctic sea water tight crush proof drink out of it now the whistle creek kit is packed in the usa but obviously the components are going to be sourced from various locations now on the back of the kit they've got a picture of the contents and right off the bat i can tell that this is different from the coglins kit because the coglins kit really didn't have any first aid items or food items and this one does so the coglins kit is more about gear whereas this one is more about items that can be used on or in your body and actually the fact that these two kits are quite different is a good thing for us because at the end of this video when i repack these kits to make a better kit it means that we can combine the two kits without a lot of overlap so let's go ahead and open up the whistle creek survival kit in a sardine can there it is you can pause that and read it if you want and there's the back okay so we've got this bundle of stuff and we'll open that up in a minute [Music] we've got a whistle multi-colored whistle sounds good sounds fine then we've got a tootsie roll for some quick sugar and a little morale boost got some sugar for some energy we've got a stick of wrigley's double mint gum we've got a pencil we've got a fire starter cube like the one in the other kit but this time it's just one instead of two we've got a spool of thread for fishing line or sewing then we've got a straight edge razor we've got a tiny tiny little compass let's see if it works yeah it does work it is accurate or that's about the smallest little button compass i've seen then we've got a single band-aid and then we've got a safety pin and a single fishing hook so now let's open up this little bag and see what's in here all right so we've got some lipton tea and you could use the sugar in the tea if you wanted to and the tea is just a good morale boost and it can warm me up inside it's always a good thing to have and we've got a book of matches we've got some salt [Music] not a bad thing to have actually got some medication we've got some acetaminophen two 325 milligram tablets acetaminophen is tylenol in case you don't know then we've got some baxitracin ointment not bad we've got an alcohol swab then we've got just a little bit of duct tape the other kit had a foot of duct tape this is maybe three or four inches now we've got a paper clip and then we've got the directions and instructions [Music] they're very brief it's just that and that so they've got a list of the items in the kit a couple tips they've got some tips for water purification the ingredients of the gum i'm not sure why that matters and then on the other side they've got some first aid tips and that's it so here's all the stuff laid out from the whistle creek kit if i had to choose between these two kits i would likely choose the coglins kit just because it has a little more equipment but the whistle creek kit does have the edge in terms of nourishment morale boost and first aid equipment so it'll actually be nice to combine these two kits and that way we'll have a little bit of everything so i've got the coglins kit over here and the whistle creek kit over on this side and i'm going to combine both kits which means i'm going to remove some items that are redundant so let's see we can keep the instructions from the coglins kit and we'll remove those from the whistle creek side i'm going to remove both of the straight edge razors for reasons that'll be obvious in just a moment i'm going to keep the pencil from the whistle creek side because this is a full-fledged pencil whereas this one is just a piece of lead in a piece of plastic so this'll last longer and i'm going to remove this multi-tool thing again for reasons that'll be obvious in just a moment we'll keep the tea light candle if possible i'll keep a book of matches and i'll remove one of them i'm going to remove both whistles because those will be replaced by something else in just a minute we'll keep the snare wire we'll keep the signal mirror piece we'll keep the duct tape from the coughlin side and we might as well keep the duct tape from this side as well because it's just a little bit i'm going to keep all the first eight items from the whistle creek side as well as this bag probably and we'll keep the tea and the sugar and the salt and i guess we'll keep the gum if we can and we'll keep the tootsie roll if possible i'm gonna keep one of these spools of thread i think i'll keep the one from the coughlin side i'll keep one or two pieces of fire starting material we'll keep both compasses because why not this one's really small and two compasses are always better than one we'll keep the sewing needle from this side and we'll keep a safety pin i'm going to get rid of two of these safety pins we'll keep the four matches if we can and the two nails if possible we'll keep the twisty ties we'll keep all three fishing hooks i might add some fishing weights if we have room and we'll keep a paper clip we'll keep the paper i might keep this ziploc bag we'll see or i might replace it with another ziploc bag or multiple ziploc bags to compartmentalize stuff i'm gonna keep the three meters of reflective paracord and this cordage here i'm gonna remove it and replace it with something better so this is what we're keeping from the two kits and now we're gonna add some stuff so on the water purification side of things i'm gonna add a melitta coffee filter i'm gonna add four water purification tablets that purify one liter per tablet and i'll add a one liter whirlpack stand up water bag on the first date side i'm gonna add two more band-aids and then this little mini med kit that has four ibuprofens and two benadryl and i'll also add two imodiums and then remember i removed those two whistles and that's because i wanted to add a ferro rod and striker and so i'm going to knock out all that with this piece this is a ferrorod striker whistle combo tool so you got the ferro rod there the striker is right here and then you've got a whistle in this end i'm going to add some light to this kit i've got a little keychain light a little led on the end so you can do a momentary action like that or you can flip the switch and keep it on for good like that [Music] i'm going to add a real knife to this kit this is a victorinox classic with the stay glow scales that glow in the dark and of course the classic has the scissors the knife the nail file the flat head screwdriver the tweezers and the toothpick to replace that cordage that i removed a moment ago i'm going to add about four meters of this neon green micro cord it's a hundred pound test i'd like to add this nicer paracord to replace this stuff but i don't know if there'll be room in the kit if there is i'll do it if not we'll just keep that on the fire side i'm going to add a piece of fat wood to help build a fire as well as a little piece of cotton tinder if we have room i'd like to keep these fire cubes but we'll see how it goes i'd like to add this 12 by 12 sheet of tin foil a wire saw if there's room and then finally i'd really like to add this space blanket so that there's a shelter element in this kit but i don't know if there'll be room alright so we've got all the stuff that we want to put in the kit so now we have to decide what we want to repack the kit into now it'd be really easy to go with something like this this is a large waterproof tin made by best glide ase and i've already used one of these on my channel in another video to make a really cool kit and if we repacked all this stuff into this tin there'd be a lot of room left over and we could add a lot more stuff and sort of throw in the kitchen sink and make a really kick-ass kit but i'd rather try to keep this as a compact kit if possible so i'm going to go with this tin i got this on amazon a while back it's a locking tin kind of like the best glide ase 10 and it also has a waterproof seal on it but it's a little bit smaller it's almost pocket size so i'm gonna try to get all this stuff into here obviously with this tin i'll have to strap the space blanket onto the bottom but we'll see if it works and if not we could always upgrade to the larger tin and then in that case we'll be able to add a whole lot more stuff to the kit so let's see what happens [Music] i'm going to add four little fishing weights to this kit to complement the three fishing hooks do all right i've got everything in the kit except for the space blanket i left out the ziploc bag that was originally in the coglins kit so now we just need to secure the space blanket to the kit so i'll do that with some rubber bands because at the moment i'm out of large ranger bands and of course adding some rubber bands to the kit never hurts [Music] all right there we go oh you know what i never did see if that nicer piece of paracord would fit into here i could open up the kit and try to make it fit but i think i'll just put it alongside this space blanket and it'll be fine it won't go anywhere [Music] and we're all set so what started off as a cheap off-the-shelf survival kit or in this case two of them ended up being a very well-equipped nice kit that i have a lot of confidence in at this point so just because something is a cheap off-the-shelf kit does not instantly mean that it's crap all it means is that it can serve as a jumping off point to making a much better kit anyway that about does it for this video i hope you enjoyed it let me know what you think in the comments below i'm eric siegel this is kit bashed survival and i'll see you next time

Channel: Kitbashed Survival

Views: 25,809

Rating: 4.942605 out of 5

Keywords: Eric Siegel, Survival Kits, Survival, Outdoors, Bushcraft, First-Aid, Preparedness, Emergency, Prepper, Sardine Can, Sardine, Kit in a can, Can Kit, Sardine Can Kit, Coghlans, Whistle Creek, USA, Canada, Kitbashed Survival, Eric's Trains

Id: y317p_55gKM

Length: 22min 7sec (1327 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 14 2020