“There’s probably a commercially available device that would do that task. Likely doesn’t cost much.”

She stared at him for several seconds in silence before asking, “Are you serious?”

He raised his hands in defense and walked back into the kitchen.

Again, she cut a small slit at the bottom of the two-liter plastic bottle and attempted to feed it between that bottle cap and the pocket knife. She felt the man watching her and purposely held  the would-be plastic cutting device a safer distance away from her eyes. She pulled the cut strip as she had seen the man in the video do, but (unlike the man’s practiced YouTube worthy movements) the plastic bottle flew across the room and her knife hand jerked closer toward her eyes.

“Just stop,” he said returning to the dining room. “What exactly are you trying to do?”

“I want to cut this bottle into one long consistent fourth-inch strip.”

“I can rig you up something better.”

“This should work. That 3rdWorld Prepper guy had it down.”

“Is this the same guy that taught you how to make that plastic-prison-strangle-wire?”

“Cordage. Plastic bag cordage. . .”

He raises his right hand to hush her and with his left he rubs his eyes in exacerbation. “I don’t care. We don’t live in the third world. We have tools. We don’t have to risk bodily injury making plastic strips. I can make something in twenty minutes that will be much safer and efficient than that nonsense you have going on there.”

Feeling a bit of a sting in her ego, she snapped back at him, “Do it then! We’ll see.” 

***************************************

I don’t know what I’m going to do with all the fourth-inch strips of plastic bottle cordage I now have. I didn’t really have a plan for the stuff. My whole plan was to see if I could do what 3rdWorld Prepper did.

I couldn’t.

Perhaps Mr. Prepper’s knife is much sharper than mine. Perhaps his bottle was of a lower quality plastic. Perhaps I just needed to practice my technique a few more hours. I was not successful making plastic bottle cordage using his method.

Kudos to Mel who rigged up something in less than twenty minutes that does exactly what I wanted it to do . . . and in a much safer and efficient way. Now I’ll never know if I can be like 3rdWorld Prepper.

So like I said, I now have plenty of plastic bottle cordage. I’ll probably use it in my next basket weaving project.

Also made this fabulous strong and thin plastic-prison-strangle-wire. This I have plans for. . . creative, non-lethal plans.

As 3rdWorld Prepper would say, “Cause you never know when you might need cordage in a survival situation.”