One of our regular readers and commenters, Exile, sent me an email and asked me to share these reviews with all of you. I want to make two things clear - the first is that I will happily do this for any regular reader, and the second is that I don't *necessarily* endorse any of the products reviewed. Direct any questions or comments to Exile.
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I’d like to take a moment to review a couple of products I’ve recently tried out.
 
The first one is a ear wax remover.
 
I recently picked one up on ebay for 99 cents including shipping. Once a week the wife and me clean all the wax out of all the kids ears. Given how dirty there ears where and the difficulties it was to get them to hold there heads at the right angle to see inside I decided to try one of these out. It is fairly light construction, but has held up well for the last two months in our house. The back end opens to hold three tools; a small and large scoop and a small set of tweezers. All the tools are of a clear plastic. The tools insert into the front end and when the light is turned on it shines through the plastic to illuminate right inside the ear.
 
The first thing I noticed when using it was that it makes removing wax easier, rather than have the qtip pushing a chunk further in it is no possible to reach behind the chunk and pull it out on the scoop. The kids occasionally complain that it feels less soft than the cotton qtip but it is plastic and it isn’t scratching them just feeling funny. We have not had to use the tweezers attachment yet.
 
I think these will a great long term addition to our kit, first there is the savings in qtips, they have reduced our usage by nearly 50% (it would be more if the wife and me did each others ears with the unit too). Second it is cleanable and a lot smaller than trying to carry boxes of qtips or storing them. Lastly eventually a kid will stick something in an ear and this should make it easier to get it out.
 
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The second item I want to review is a dynamo flashlight.
 
Last year we had several power outages and of course we broke out the candles and flashlights. Only two of my four are school age and only the oldest could work the hand crank flashlight or lantern. The others either turned so slow that it didn’t charge or just turned back and forth and never managed a full revolution. So I decided to get a group of four of these flashlights. The have a handle on the side that the kids can squeeze to turn a dynamo that then generates the electricity that it needs to charge the internal battery. These have two LED bulbs and when fully charged they can run for 3-4 hours. The worked great initially. Unfortunately they broke very quickly. The first one broke in less than a day of the kids having it. The switch that locks the handle in broke meaning the charging handle/lever stayed extended. It still worked but it didn’t bode well for the quality. The spring on the charge handle broke on a another one a few days later. The spring pushes the handle back out after a squeeze so no spring means you need to pull it back out on your own which slows charging down to the point it is more or less useless. Another one the charge handle plastic broke right at the hinge and that unit became non functioning less that a week after the kids got them. So now 5 months later we have one left and it’s the one that broke first but it still charges and shines. I purchased the four units from different vendors to see if there was a difference in quality and there wasn’t.
 
I would stay away from these. While the idea of having light for the kids that they could use and charge themselves was a good one the quality of these was poor.  If a better quality one could be found it would be a great addition as then the kids could be responsible for there own lights without the need for batteries.
 
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The last one is the Piteba Oil press
 
The press works on the idea of using a simple hand crank to turn a screw that crushes and extracts the oil from various seeds the oil runs out a port on the bottom and the seed cake comes out the far end.  A heater in the middle greatly increases oil production by heating the barrel of the machine so the oil flows faster out the port.  CD will hate the fact that only a petroleum based lamp fuel will work well enough to heat the unit to the correct temperature. It uses less than a cup of fuel per day of use.
 
I’ve used my press three times now. The first time was using almonds and not having the heater on. This meant that I wasn’t extracting any oil but the seed cake was the consistency of peanut butter. Which is what I was going for. I took my almond butter added a bit of sugar and a tablespoon of olive oil (I wanted it a bit thinner) and presto had fresh preservative free almond butter for a kid allergic to peanut butter.
 
The second and third time I made oil from flax and pumpkin seeds respectively. Once I worked out all the kinks the production went smoothly. You need to not just use the manual but also the information from the website on the various seeds and when they say a certain humidity level of seed they mean it. Given how dry it is here I had to put the seed in a ziploc with water to rehydrate the seed. If your seed is too dry you don’t get oil. Secondly the revolution they tell you to turn it at is really important to good oil production. Lastly they talk about amount of oil per day you can produce in a 6 hour shift. Ok there is no way I could turn that crank at those revolutions for 6 hours straight. If I had to do it I’d rig up a bike and peddle for 6 hours.
 
There was a few minor faults I found with it. The first was that the powder coating had partly plugged the oil port so once that was cleaned up it worked better. Secondly the heater has a wick and it has a aluminum cover the wick goes through. The hole in the cover was too small for the wick. So at first I tried some narrower wick I had at home but that resulted in too small of a flame. So I drilled out the whole slightly and the original which fit then and worked like a charm. Thirdly the unit comes without a hopper or a oil collection cup; the idea is you supply them to keep costs down and the unit easier to ship. The recommend that you take the top half of a 2 litre pop bottle to make the funnel/hopper and the top of the machine is designed to accept snuggly the pop bottle. Unfortunately they changed North American pop bottles to a slightly smaller diameter a few years ago so you need to add a few layers of duct tape to make it fit snuggly and not fall out. Lastly the oil collection bottle you need to supply; I had no glasses or containers in the house that where small enough to fit in the spot it needed to go and had an opening large enough to collect the oil. In the end I drink one of those activia yogurt drinks and that bottle was the perfect size to fit in there. So you need to get something smallish with a wide mouth on one top for oil collection.
 
Now the question of is it worth buying? Unlike the two previous reviews this one I have to spend more time on criteria. If you want to do it for fun then yes go ahead and buy one, if your looking at one because you want to be more self reliant, then no the time you’d spend on this is not worth it. Unless canola oil goes way up you will spend more in time than the value of the oil.  Are you looking at one because you think things are going south shortly? Then the answer is yes get one. The reason I say that is that if you are planning a long term food plan and are concerned about a SHTF situation then having one means you can store seed for years while oil stocks last 3-6 months before they start to turn, even if kept cold. So this would allow you to make oil as needed or even turn neighbours seed into oil in a way that doesn’t require electricity.  If you do purchase one they are 107 euros' with shipping to Canada, if you purchase two or more the price is less. Also if you do get one make sure to try it out.