If you store long-term food, I’m sure you’re familiar with the Gamma Seal line of spin-on bucket lids. They seal airtight, and until today I assumed they’d last forever. Pricy, but worth it.
Noticed the line in the center of this one, didn’t realize it was an open crack until some flour got wet in a bucket that was supposed to be sealed.
Zoom in.
They say that Louis XIV had the inscription Ultima Ratio Regum cast into all the cannon of the French Army. It means “The Ultimate Argument of Kings,” and that always struck me as one of the most honest and up-front things any ruler or would-be ruler ever said. “We can dress it up prettier than this, but when it comes down to the unvarnished truth this is what it’s about: You’ll do as I say or I’ll send my goons to kill you.”
I thought about that for a long time. If there’s an ultimate argument, it seems only logical that there must be an ultimate answer. For years I thought the ultimate answer must be the bullets in my rifle, but it never seemed quite right. I’ve got bullets – he’s got frigging Cannon Balls. I mean, if there were three hundred million rifles throwing bullets at him, then maybe. But we all know that’s not going to happen. So if there’s an ultimate answer to his ultimate argument, it sure as hell ain’t bullets.
It finally came to me – and that’s when I abandoned the city and most of my stuff, and gave all that was behind me a good stiff Randian Shrug.
The ultimate answer to kings is not a bullet, but a belly laugh.
Little Bear 2009-2018
Laddie the Amazing Torso Boy 2011-2020
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I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.
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Aristippus passed Diogenes as he was washing lentils.
He said, “If you could but learn to flatter the king, you would not have to live on lentils.”
Diogenes said, “And if you could learn to live on lentils, you would not have to flatter the king.”
Sandy Hook was a Gun Free Zone. So was the Westroads Mall. And the Aurora Theater. And Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Should I go on? They were all Gun Free Zones.Â
– Reality
“Political tags — such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth — are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort.”
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If ever a man should ask you
For your business or your name
Tell him to go and fuck himself
Tell his friends to do the same.
For a man who'd trade his liberty
For a safe and dreamless sleep
Doesn't deserve the both of them
And neither shall he keep.
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We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.
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The free man will ask neither what his country can do for him nor what he can do for his country.
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There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.
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Few men desire liberty; most men wish only for a just master.
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Read, every day, something no one else is reading.
Think, every day, something no one else is thinking.
Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do.
It is bad for the mind to continually be part of unanimity.
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ESSE QUAM VIDERI –
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― Father Alfred d’Souza
That ain’t cool, those are supposed to be like the ultimate bucket lid for preppers.
It’s the first I have heard of one failing like that so leave it to your luck to find out they do break but there must a couple million of those things out there by now.
Mucho distressing. Any info on usage frequency and conditions? Was this the bottom bucket in a stack? If it contains your flour, I’m assuming you open/close it frequently, and also that it was stored away from UV. How old is the lid? I wonder if anyone here has experience repairing them.
Where it cracked isn’t much of a surprise; given the design, the 4 raised areas act as reinforced areas and vertical force applied to them would have to be concentrated in the center because the rim won’t move – it’s held in place by the support provided from the threaded ring secured to the bucket rim. Rotational force is probably not a factor, assuming it’s applied within the lid’s plane and not accompanied by vertical force.
So, once again the prepper’s maxim – “two is one and one is none” dictates maintaining a certain percentage of spare lids (I have no idea what that ratio needs to be but I’d guess about 5-8% spares, depending on usage frequency). I wonder if only the removable lids are available and cheaper than buying both parts since the bucket rim ring will probably be secure much longer.
So far anyhow, I would say that is quite repairable. If you think those cracks might continue to propagate across the lid, drill a nice smooth hole right at each crack end to stop them, and then patch by your favorite method to make the lid waterproof again.
Yeah, I’ll probably slather some Seal-All on it and demote it to the bucket with boxes of pasta or something.
I’ve got a bunch of these, and some I bought and some (including this one) I inherited so I don’t know how old this one is but it ain’t new. It has done a lot of duty.
What Ben said . . . and just because belt and suspenders, I’d finish it off with a little duct tape.
🙂
Stacked something heavy on top that had something sharp on bottom? Guess I need to look at my gamma seal buckets.
Hi Joel
After 38 years of working with things that break (electronics, rail car brakes and automotive) after looking at the zoomed in pic the cause of the crack is the sharp edges left from the injection molding process used to make the lids, if you look real close you will see all kinds of miniature spikes around the dot left by the mold at that spot when it was removed. My estimation is that temperature changes over time stretched and shrunk the plastic enough to cause a crack to start, then propagate from the dot with spiky remains which are the point of origin. If something heavy was stacked on top that would just accelerate the process as it placed more tension on the lid. Ben has the correct solution, drill small holes to stop the crack from continuing, then seal the whole thing back up with something that sticks to plastic real well. It should remain airtight after that.
Search “gamma seal lid failures” for a gazillion threads on this. Apparently it’s a common thing, and there are other problems as well.
First I’ve ever heard of a Gamma lid fail so I went and googled it just to see if there were others in similar situations. Oh boy there are a few YouTube videos on this subject. I guess given enough time, temperature changes and throw in variations on humidity any plastic will fail. I’m sorry it had to happen to you but from a personal standpoint it’s something that’s good to know.