Survival Uses for the Plastic Bottle Cutter (Video)
Russ Chastain 03.07.16
Wow.
When I first saw the Plastic Bottle Cutter–the one currently making a pile of money on Kickstarter–I wondered what the heck this stuff was good for.
For those who don’t know, these devices are used to literally turn a plastic bottle into ribbons. Er, one long ribbon. When you’re done, you have a long plastic ribbon.
This is the first one I saw. It’s a well-done video (this is for the Kickstarter cutter mentioned above):
The plastic ribbon is apparently quite strong, and this could be a handy thing to have in a survival situation. Need cordage? Slice up one of the millions of plastic bottle strewn along our roads, discarded by a-holes.
While poking around on YouTube, I noticed more of these cutters. Hmmm. So I started looking into it more.
In this video, we see a simple way to build one of our own.
He pulls a small car with it in the above video. I was unimpressed; I think a shoelace would have sufficed for that car.
Here’s a different design, which is more primitive and less user-friendly:
Okay, so what do you do with all these sliced-up bottles that were fun to cut for the first half-dozen or so? Well, one video, possibly the original, is in Russian with English subtitles, and illustrates how this can be used to lash poles together. The neat part is that the ribbons will shrink when heat is applied, creating a nice, strong joint–sweet!
How about wrapping the handle of your sledge hammer, axe, or splitting maul to protect it from getting clobbered when you miss the mark? Wrapping the handles of pliers and other tools to insulate them? You get the picture.
Heck, these videos show folks making brooms from old plastic bottles:
Whatever you decide to do with it, you’ll either have to make one or buy it. If you’re not one to make it yourself, you can drop by the Kickstarter page to make a pledge. Early birds could order one for about $17…
