I had one of these years ago back, and used it as a cup as well as to cook in sometimes. I got one again recently, last year with the cooking unit; which I now do think is of limited usefulness really, now I have tried it out. Except maybe to possibly slow cook a cup-a-soup!!! I do though still very much like using the metal mug itself, that fits onto the old 1958 Pattern issue British Army waterbottles in their black plastic. I often still use those occasionally on my shorter distance walks. I was annoyed to see that my new bought metal mug is a modern BCB made one, that is apparently Aluminium built with a black powder-painted covering on the outer and inner surfaces! This really surprised me, as didn't the older ones of these use to be made out of steel-so that it was ok to cook in them using metal spoons etc? I thought this was the case because of the worries of developing the Altzeimers type of symptoms through cooking in aluminium type cooking pots, and indeed such metal mugs/cups? Can someone who does remember-ie someone who has not like me been cooking in an alu metal mug for years-tell me if the Crusader British Army issue cup/mug is of steel or alu made construction now please? I only read that these metal canteen cups are being made in alu the other day, on a website somewhere or other as I was surfing through...and thought, hang on there a minute...that can't be right now can it??
As Algernon says, the link between aluminium & Alzheimer's is not proven. The aluminium plaques laid down in the brain of those with Alzheimer's are a result of the disease, not the cause of it as was thought.
Personally, I prefer my old Trangia kettle and a fold up plastic cup - lighter, quicker to boil water in etc.
Yes the older pattern American armed forces mug is the better of the two really I think-and that is steel! But it is to fit over their Quart issue ALICE compatible system green plastic waerbottles, not a fit onto the black plastic British Army bottles though, sadly!
I never ever did manage to find myself a metal waterbottle, despite much trying to, and now only the French still now issue them to their armed forces at all! Everybody else issues a plastic canteen these days! The good thing of a metal bottle being that you can heat it up, especially when the water within is turned to ice!! Good then for high altitude mountain useage! Or use it to melt snow in even-to get water from snow-melt, say in an emergency situation for instance! I do really like the water bottle ALICE style covers of the US bottles now issued though, as they have the fleece lining to keep the water within much cooler in tropical use!
But is the Crusader British metal mug still now made in steel, or only in alu please can anyone tell me?
OK! That Alpkit item does seem to be out of stock at present, so I have requested they email me when they get another batch made up for their online shop. I will post the date they tell me for anyone else who wants one too! A nice looking bit of kit-that reminds me quite a lot of a similar looking Snow-Peak one, or something else maybe-but good all the same, as well as being a heck of a lot cheaper price-wise too by comparison!
Huummm!! I have heard good things about Cambrian Survival School over the years, but see with interest that there is not very much actual kit for sale there in their actual kit shop really is there! They must subscribe to the bare-bones survival school approach then-the sort of "into the primitive" idea-which is in no ways a bad thing at all I do suppose!
Certainly looks like the other site I saw that were saying the Crusader cups were now made in Alu, and not in Steel, are very wrong then! Breathes a sigh of relief............oh good then...it was a steel cup that I really wanted and so must have bought then, last year when I got a new replacement black coated Crusader cup for myself! Goody goody, thank you.
Thanks there Parky! Nice to see the full range there almost too with the plastic lid for the cup as well being sold, as not many places seem to do them at all!
I like Trueways as a training company and hold the greatest of respects for their survival training staff there, headed up by the excellent Chris "Grizzly" Caine, and now recently joined too by the man that himself trained Chris, the great John "Lofty" Wiseman as well!
Having said that, and although I often say very nice things indeed on here about them all there, I would not myself buy from their shop at all ever now! Due to my not getting on personally with the head of that company Lyndon. I am currently still serving out a very severe years ban from participating in their own online survival forum there. Having locked me out of posting, they then proceeded to change my screen name over to trevord themselves; after a great many hurtful accusations were fired at me as a massive broadside assault, from which I alone could little defend myself. Thus my name, my full personal name that is, was rubbished by them online; under what I felt to be then and still now, some very serious accusations put out publically there online against me as a specific individual. This was to do largely with the putting in of very many direct web links onto the forum there by numerous people. Unlike here they are a forum linked to a company shop you see, so you can only post ideas/recommendations things selling products for them alone, by and large! Not for anyone else at all, be it a manufacturer or a retailer.
Everybody on there when I joined their forum, almost to a man, ws posting such direct links into their posts regularly. I was the only one that actually definitely was not, preferring instead to simply tell others the web addreses, not in a direct link form at all, so people could check things out if they wished to at some later date! Instead of telling off all of the other multiple posters of the direct links-taking traffic they said maliciously away from their site-they simply chose to be, in my opinion quite dishonest in holding myself up alone as an example to take the others collective punishment instead!
No action was taken against the real other people actually regularly posting the direct links onto the Trueways Survival forum. I myself did not at that time even know how to operate their links creation button at all, as I was but a few months into the forum life there! But then it is easier I suppose to put all of the blame upon one new guy, than to have to spend the time to correctly chase down all of those many persons that were at the time posting direct internet links galore there! A quick check through all of those many posts of mine would have easily shown that I myself never once at all posted a true direct link on the Trueways Survival Forum website whatsoever! I did invite them to check, but they refused to do so to exonerate me of the charge made against me, of trying to destroy their online business last July time 2007.
So the up-shot of it is that they have lost me as a customer there for good, for ever, and they will not be getting any of my money either for kit or for courses in the future at all again! At the moment of the ban I was about to put in a hundred pound kit order, and was planning to book a week long course too. My order and my course booking thereafter went immediately elsewhere!
