Trench Tested · Field Manual · Ray Launch promo ends in --:--:--
An Ohio garage · Edition 2026 · No. 1

The Trench Tested
Field Manual

Ninety-one fixes the military teaches, written for a man with a garage, a shed and a limited afternoon.

91Fixes
13Sections
$47Pay once
7-dayRefund
Section 01

The Manual

One book. Ninety-one fixes. Every one of them had to work the first time.

The military does not get to call a repairman. When a lock freezes, a hinge seizes, a battery dies or a crate of steel has to come out of storage in working condition ten years later, somebody has to have solved it in advance — and written down exactly how, with the materials listed and the failure modes named.

They did write it down. Most of it is public. Field manuals, technical manuals, published specifications. It is dry, it is badly formatted, it assumes you already know six things you do not, and almost nobody outside a supply room has ever opened one.

This book is that knowledge pulled out, tested in an ordinary garage, and written the way a man actually talks. Thirteen sections: rust, cold, heat, water, power, tools, vehicle, kit, surplus, field repair, storage, cordage and the house itself. Every fix lists what to buy, what it costs at 2026 prices, how long it takes, and — the part nobody else gives you — where it stops working.

$47 $77 Ends Sunday

Illustrated ebook · 600+ pages · First Edition

  • The Trench Tested Field Manual600+ page illustrated ebook. 91 fixes, materials lists, 2026 pricing, step by step, with the limits of each method stated plainly.
  • The First-Saturday Work OrderThree fixes to do this weekend, in order, with a shopping list under $30.
  • The 20-Point Shop AuditPrintable walk-through of your own garage. You mark what is at risk before it is gone.
  • The Surplus Buying SheetWhat is worth buying surplus, what is repackaged junk, and what to pay for it.
  • Lifetime updatesEvery future revision of the manual, free, forever.
Total value · $120 You pay today · $47
Get the Manual · $47
Instant access · Pay once · Yours forever
Section 02

The Math

Not what you spend. What you replace, because nobody told you how to keep it.

Rust, cold and neglect do not send you a bill. They take a socket set here, a chainsaw there, a lock, a battery, a bar of steel your father owned. Then one Saturday a man comes out to your house for ninety minutes and charges you $150 for something the manual answers in a page.

Typical household · per year

Service calls (3 × $150)$450
Tools & blades lost to rust$340
Gear bought twice — cheap first$260
Winter damage: bibs, locks, lines$310
Replaced instead of repaired$220
Consumables bought wrong$180
Total$1,760

Same household · after the manual

Service calls$150
Tools & blades lost to rust$40
Gear bought once$80
Winter damage$60
Repaired instead of replaced$35
Consumables$95
Total$460
Net kept, first year$1,100 – $1,400

Example household at 2026 retail prices. Your baseline depends on your climate, your shop and what you already own.

Section 03

What's Inside

Exactly what you get for $47.

Rust

9 fixes

Keeping steel you already own, instead of buying it again.

  • The four levels of rust protection — weeks, months, a year, decades
  • The $9 can sitting one foot from the one you always grab
  • Vapor inhibitors: protecting the surfaces a rag never touches
  • Cosmoline and the military storage spec, in plain English
  • Why concrete floors and old blankets destroy cast iron
  • Bringing a pitted tool back without ruining the temper

Cold

8 fixes

What freezes, what cracks, and what the manuals say to do first.

  • Freeing a frozen lock without breaking the key off in it
  • The layering rule that has nothing to do with buying a better coat
  • Hose bibs, fuel lines and the two-dollar failure that splits a wall
  • Starting cold equipment without wrecking the starter
  • Keeping batteries alive through an unheated winter

Heat

6 fixes

Working in a space that is trying to cook you.

  • Cooling a metal building without adding a single amp
  • Ventilation the field manuals specify, and why direction matters
  • Heat injury: the early signs, in the order they actually arrive
  • Storing fuel, adhesives and batteries through a hot summer

Water

7 fixes

Storing it, moving it, and making it safe to drink.

  • Disinfection by the numbers — dose, contact time, temperature
  • What actually rotates and what stores indefinitely
  • Container choice: the plastics that fail and the ones that do not
  • Moving water without power, and the siphon nobody sets up right

Power

6 fixes

Light, communication and a charged phone when the pole goes down.

  • The battery chemistry chart: what to stock, what to never store charged
  • Running a house circuit off a small generator without back-feeding
  • Field-expedient charging, and why a solar panel alone is not a plan
  • Fuel storage that is still good next season

Tools

8 fixes

Sharp, tight, and still here in thirty years.

  • Sharpening by angle instead of by feel — knives, chisels, axes, mower blades
  • Restoring a rusted hand plane in one afternoon
  • The torque habit that stops you rounding off another bolt
  • Handle replacement, wedge and all
  • What to oil, what to grease, and what to leave dry on purpose

Vehicle

7 fixes

The truck kit, and the repairs that get you the last twenty miles.

  • The kit list, item by item, with what each one is actually for
  • Recovery without wrecking the frame or the man behind you
  • Tire, hose and belt repairs that hold long enough to matter
  • Jump starting in the correct order, and the order that kills alternators

Kit

6 fixes

What to carry, where to put it, and what to leave home.

  • Layered kit: pockets, bag, truck, shop — nothing duplicated by accident
  • The packing method that means you can find it in the dark
  • Weight discipline: the honest reason most kits never leave the closet
  • Inspection intervals so it works the day you need it

Surplus

7 fixes

Forty years of buying it. Here is what is worth the money.

  • The eleven items that are genuinely better than the civilian version
  • The six that are repackaged junk with a stencil on the side
  • Reading a contract stamp and a date of manufacture
  • What to pay, and the prices that mean somebody is guessing
  • Cleaning and de-preserving a surplus item without ruining it

Field Repair

9 fixes

Fixing it where it broke, with what is on the truck.

  • The tape the Army issues, the seventeen jobs it was issued for
  • Epoxy putty, safety wire and the repairs that outlive the part
  • Stripped threads, cracked housings, split hoses
  • Field-expedient clamps, splints and braces that hold under load
  • Knowing when a repair is temporary and marking it so you remember

Storage

8 fixes

Putting something away for ten years and finding it working.

  • The sealed container method — desiccant, inhibitor and a dated label
  • Ammo cans: the gasket check nobody does
  • Fuel, batteries and adhesives — real shelf life versus printed shelf life
  • Long-term food storage without buying a pallet of buckets
  • The inventory card that means you never buy a third one

Cordage

5 fixes

Rope, strap and the six knots that cover a lifetime.

  • The six knots, when each one is correct, and how each one fails
  • Working load versus breaking strength — the number that hurts people
  • Ratchet straps, chain and the anchor point you should not trust
  • Whipping, splicing and getting another decade out of good rope

The House

5 fixes

Moisture, air and the slow damage nobody photographs.

  • Finding where the water is actually coming in
  • Sealing a shed or garage so the tools inside stop rusting
  • The monthly walk-around that catches the $4,000 repair at $40
  • Weatherproofing that lasts more than one season
Get the Manual · $47
91 fixes · 13 sections · One payment
Section 04

Reader Results

What men did with the manual in the first month.

★★★★★

Went through the rust section on a Saturday. Cleaned and treated everything in the unheated shed, put the hand tools in a tote that closes, dropped the inhibitor in with them. First spring in nine years I opened that shed and nothing had orange on it. The chisels alone were worth more than the book.

David L. · Akron, OH
★★★★★

I am sixty-eight and I have been doing this a long time, so I bought it expecting to know most of it. I did know most of it. The part I did not know was the storage section, and it explained why my generator would not start every second spring. Fixed for eleven dollars.

Thomas G. · Lynchburg, VA
★★★★★

The shop audit is the thing. You walk your own garage with the printout and it makes you look at stuff you stopped seeing years ago. I found a slow leak behind the water heater doing it. That was going to be an expensive Christmas.

Margaret S. · Topeka, KS
Section 05

About the Author

Ray. Sixty-four. An Ohio garage.

Ray, author of the Trench Tested Field Manual
Ray · Ohio · 2026

Thirty-one years as a maintenance mechanic in the same plant. The job was simple to describe and hard to do: keep equipment running that somebody else had already decided was too old to replace. You learn to read a specification before you spend money, because being wrong means doing it twice on a Sunday.

I was never in the military. I have been buying surplus since I was nineteen — a shelter half, a wool blanket, an ammo can I still keep drill bits in. At some point I stopped just buying the stuff and started reading why it was built that way. That turned out to be the whole education. The specifications are public. The field manuals are public. Nobody hides them; nobody reads them either.

What I do here is take that material, run it in an ordinary garage with ordinary money, and tell you what held and what did not.

This is not a book about the military. It is a book about what the military figured out, because for them failing was not an option — and about the fact that you can just go and read it.

The channel is where most of this started. The manual is that material organized, corrected, and put in the order you would actually do it.

Watch the channel
Section 06

Order the Manual

$47 once. No subscription. Yours forever.

It arrives by email in about sixty seconds. Read it on a phone, a tablet, a computer, or print the sections you want out on the bench where the work is. No app, no login, no expiry. Seven-day refund, no questions.

Illustrated ebook · 600+ pages · First Edition

The Trench Tested Field Manual

$47 $77 Ends Sunday
  • The Trench Tested Field Manual600+ page illustrated ebook, 91 fixes across 13 sections.
  • The First-Saturday Work OrderThree fixes, in order, under $30 of materials.
  • The 20-Point Shop AuditPrintable. Walk your own garage and mark what is at risk.
  • The Surplus Buying SheetWhat is worth it, what is junk, what to pay.
  • Lifetime updatesEvery revision, free, forever.
Total value · $120 You pay today · $47
Get the Manual · $47
🔒 Secure checkout · Pay once · Yours forever
VisaMastercardPayPalApple Pay7-day refund
Section 07

FAQ

What men ask before they click.

Were you in the military?

No. Everything in this manual comes from published field manuals and technical specifications, from talking to people who used the equipment, and from forty years of buying surplus and putting it to work. I am not going to tell you a story I did not live. The material stands on the documents, and the documents are cited so you can go read them yourself.

I'm not especially handy. Is this still for me?

Most of the manual is decision, not skill — knowing which can, which oil, which order, which container. Roughly two thirds of the fixes need no tool beyond a rag, a brush and a wrench. Where a job genuinely needs a trade, the manual says so and tells you what to ask for so you are not sold something else.

Will this work where I live?

Yes, and climate is handled directly. Rust behaves differently in a Gulf Coast summer than in a Montana winter, and the manual gives you the version for humid, dry and freezing. The military solved these problems in every climate on earth, which is exactly why the material travels.

I don't have a garage. I'm in an apartment.

About half of it still applies — tools, kit, water, power, cordage, storage, field repair. The house and shed sections will not do much for you. If your whole interest is home structure, wait for the next volume instead.

How long before I see anything?

The first Saturday. The work order is three fixes with materials under thirty dollars, and one of them protects the tools you already own that same afternoon. The longer-payback items — storage, weatherproofing, the shop audit — show up over a season.

Do I have to buy surplus gear to use it?

No. The surplus section tells you what is worth buying and, just as often, what to skip because the civilian version is better or cheaper. Most of the manual runs on things sold at any hardware store.

What format is it?

PDF, delivered instantly by email. Phone, tablet, computer, or printed. No DRM, no account, no expiry. It is yours, including every future revision.

Are there more volumes coming?

Yes. This one covers the shop, the house and the truck. The next goes deeper into cold weather and long-term storage. Anyone who owns this edition gets it at a reduced price, and the lifetime updates on this volume are free regardless.

What if it isn't for me?

Seven days, no questions, full refund. Keep the files. If it did not earn its money, it should not keep it.

Section 08

Last Call

Stop replacing what you could have kept.

$47 once. Instant access. Ninety-one fixes across thirteen sections, every one with the materials, the cost and the limits stated. Seven-day refund. Lifetime updates. Most men earn the price back with the first section, on the first Saturday, on the tools already hanging in the shed.

Get the Manual · $47
Instant access · Pay once · Yours forever
Before you go

Wait — one thing

Earn the $47 back before winter.

The rust section alone protects every steel tool in an unheated shed for about nine dollars and one afternoon. If you own a decent set of chisels, a chainsaw or a cast iron top, that is the whole price of the book in the first weekend.

Get the Manual · $47 or see what's inside →