A Pair of 20 inch Pocket Bellows for under $5 delivered

[alsg]

Bought a pair of 20 inch pocket bellows. Under $5 delivered (if you have Amazon Prime). https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07KJWQ7VM/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Brought them on my most recent Allagash Lake trip and gave one to my paddling partner as a gift. We were both flabbergasted at what a difference they made for starting/reviving fires.

 

[Roybrew]

I never even knew they had stuff like that. I'll have to add that to my Amazon list. Thanks for the insight.

 

[billconner]

Learned to make those from my scoutmaster 55+ years ago. Vinyl tube and brass tube pinched.

 

[Guest]

For years we used a 2’ length of ¼” dia SS pipe with a short piece of tygon tubing as a mouthpiece. Despite having no air concentrating taper it worked fine, but my pockets are not 2 feet deep.

After a recommendation on this board from Muskrat a few years ago I bought an Original Pocket Bellows, and liked it enough to buy a couple more as gifts for tripping friends.

https://www.amazon.com/Epiphany-Outd...a-439915237670

The “Original Pocket Bellows” is now close to $12, and their advertising hypes “Veteran Owned Small American Business: Proudly owned by a Father and son who believe in producing quality gear”. I will say that they are very well made, and ours has never suffered from the defects noted in some reviews of the various knock-offs.

I have no idea of the Unlumm telescoping bellows is of equal quality, but at $2.50 apiece they are inexpensive enough to give as gifts.

 

[scoutergriz]

we used to make these from old telescopic radio antennas- snip off the ball, push out the 2-3 smallest sections and you're done, now you have a "master blaster" (what one scout leader called them) that collapses down to about 6". if you were really clever and didn't have the little endcap, you'd screw an old toothpaste on the end to keep them together when collapsed.

 

[alsg]

...ours has never suffered from the defects noted in some reviews of the various knock-offs.[/COLOR]

The defects are not limited to the China-import knock offs. Check out the 1-2 star reviews on the USA-built one you linked to.

 

[Guest]

The defects are not limited to the China-import knock offs. Check out the 1-2 star reviews on the USA-built one you linked to.

I typically read the one-star reviews first, some of which can be amusing; in the antenna bellows reviews one complaint was “I don’t know how to use it”, and another complained that “It’s not a fire starter, it’s just a blow tube”. Between the two of them they might have figured it out.

I’ve had a laugh at one-star reviews for other products in which the reviewer’s difficulties were similarly their own misuse or misunderstanding. You can’t cure stupid, and it seems like a 1% of people writing reviews routinely fall in that that category.

No doubt any product can arrive with defects. At $2.50 apiece I ordered a pair of the unlumms and will compare them with the pricier “Original Pocket Bellows”, although without having a dozen of each, and using them repeatedly, that investigation lacks a sufficient quantity of samples to reveal much.

 

[alsg]

I typically read the one-star reviews first, some of which can be amusing ....
...
No doubt any product can arrive with defects.

Agree on all counts.

 

[BWCA66]

I've just been using an old aluminum tent pole that I roll up with my tent

 

[Cruiser]

On the side topic of the product reviews, the ones I like are the ones where it is negative and as you read, you realize they aren't even talking about the product they are psoting too

 

[Guest]

I like the ones that are essentially “What is this used for?”, or where the complaints are about defects or assembly difficulties already well covered in the reviews.

Seriously, you thought the swing set/sliding board combo would arrive fully assembled? Half in the bag, randomly “shopping” on Amazon and clicked Buy Now?

dang near every product I have bought via Amazon had at least a few one-star reviews. I do my homework before ordering, and haven’t received much junk yet.

“Much”. The photo print scanner I heavily researched and finally bought arrived not only broken, but used (it had 100 photos of some family in its memory), and it had a yellow-dot $10 yard sale sticker on the box.

Whatever evils you think of Amazon the ability to research and review comparable products is a boon. It can be time consuming and lead to analysis paralysis, but often worth the effort.

 

[scoutergriz]

dang near every product I have bought via Amazon had at least a few one-star reviews. I do my homework before ordering, and haven’t received much junk yet.

[“Much”. The photo print scanner I heavily researched and finally bought arrived not only broken, but used (it had 100 photos of some family in its memory), and it had a yellow-dot $10 yard sale sticker on the box.

Whatever evils you think of Amazon the ability to research and review comparable products is a boon. It can be time consuming and lead to analysis paralysis, but often worth the effort.

that sounds like a scammer trying to screw both you and Amazon because they're the ones that will have to replace it.

 

[alsg]

that sounds like a scammer trying to screw both you and Amazon because they're the ones that will have to replace it.

Fake reviews on Amazon and other retailers (both on-line retailers and brick and mortar retailers with websites) are an epidemic.

 

[Guest]

that sounds like a scammer trying to screw both you and Amazon because they're the ones that will have to replace it.

That scammed scanner must have had quite a backstory. It had 100 family photos already scanned in, so someone had acquired it and used it. It had a $10 yard sale yellow dot sticker, so at one point it had been new, then yard sale bought used, then mysteriously returned to a vendor and dumb dumb purchased by me.

E-mailed Amazon Customer Service, called (long conversation) and I was SOL on that purchase. I bought it in November as a Christmas gift “To” myself, but wrapped “From” my sons, since I planned to ask them to figure it out and use it. Didn’t notice the $10 yard sale tag before I put it away unopened, didn’t open the box ‘til Christmas.

Thirty day limit on returns. Learned an obvious lesson, and did leave a “review”

In hindsight I should have saved the family photos and posted some of them in the review “Do you know these people?”

 

[Guest]

Original Pocket Bellows vs Unluum Comparison

The pair of 2 for $5 unlumm mouth bellows arrived yesterday. Dimensionally they are identical in every way to the $11.69 each Original Pocket Bellows; same gauge tubing, 3 ¾” long when retracted, 19” long when extended, 7/16” diameter at the mouth end tapering to 3/16” at the fire end. Same 1-ish ounce weight.

They are so identical I had to mark the “Original” so I could tell them apart during inspection and comparison. The “Original” does come with a little plastic case, easy enough to DIY for the unlumms if desired.

Both expand and retract equally well; the last two wider tubing sections are the stiffest to push together on all three samples, as on the Originals I gave away. Both versions are stainless steel; zero attraction even with a powerful ceramic magnet.

The only difference I could find was that if I capped the narrow fire end of the Original Pocket Bellows with my finger, and Sactcho blew in my best Louis Armstrong, no air would escape between the expanded pieces; capping the ends of the unluum a very minor amount of air hissed out between some sections, more so on one of the unlumms than the other.

Quality control may be the cost trade off, but the leakage wasn’t enough to make any difference in oxygenating a fire (unless you need instructions “Do not cap narrow end with finger and stick hand in fire”)

Peering flashlighted inside there are some less than perfectly circular irregularities in the unlumm SS tubing joints, none in the Original Pocket bellows, which may explain the slight air leakage when capped.

I could not see the purported “rust resistant brass alloy shims to connect the tube sections together”, in the Original Pocket Bellow, but guess those would be placed between the interior wall sections, and so invisible when peering inside.

I’ll give the two unlumms away to friends; time may tell is there is any durability difference.

In any case I find those collapsible 1oz mouth bellows awesome handy at starting a recalcitrant fire, or bringing a dying bed of coals back to new life. I’m not even much of a fire guy, and want one available 100% of the time in my kit. Hmmm, I’ll give one unlumm away, the other now goes in my Spares & Repairs pseudo bail out bag. If I ever again trip with human companions I’ll have an extra along to give away.

Whatever your feelings about Chinese knock-offs they did a decent job with the unlumm copies, so ALSG won’t be receiving a “Bought cheap knock-off gear” equipment violation.

My favorite of the Chinese knocks offs was (is?) the insulated Yeti “Rambler” tumbler ($29.95) vs the Ozark Trails tumbler ($8.74). Excepting the logo those are identical in every way, down to the questionable design of the plastic sip lids.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=motXMqbCFQE