Damned Mosquito's !!!

[xg393]

Re: Damned Mosquito's !!!

Hey CB just back from our fishing trip, two nights under canvas with the bugs out in full force the mosquito's were bad enough but the noseeums were worse. Normally we'd have been eaten alive, I used your stuff as did Chris 9 my youngest son, Paul who's 15 used OFF both days. To be fair we all got bit just 5 times for me, 2 bites for Chris we counted 11 bites on Paul before we left. I reckon if we hadn't used anything at all we would have been bitten more times than that per hour every hour rather than over the whole time we were there. I don't think we had a single bite from the noseeums between us just the mosquito's even though the noseeums swarmed us. Used it three times now but it does the trick far as I'm concerned. A couple of my buddies tried it while we were fishing they like it, wanted to know where I got it from, gave them your email. Now sure how long this stuff lasts still seems a lot left in the bottle when it's gone I'll buy a couple off you, what's the shelf life does it last season to season?

Matt.

 

[canada_bob]

Re: Damned Mosquito's !!!

Hello Matt, glad to hear that XL5 worked well for you, just one question, were you using the thermacell thing at the same time or not ? Other than that don't be surprised to get bitten a couple of times no matter what you use, nothing will give 100% protection from every mosquito or bug. The noseeums are actually easier to control they hate XL5 more than the mosquito's do the main reason being their sense of smell is even more acute than a mosquito !

As to the shelf life, it's YEARS, probably at least 4-5 years, I should have kept one of my original mixes to see how long it's good for. It won't go rancid but after say 5 years on of the elements may dissipate and by doing that XL5 would loose it's effectiveness. The 60mls you have should be enough to provide 30 total body applications for the average sized guy.

Drop me a PM when you have time, there's a few questions I'd like to ask, PM or email if you don't mind as I don't want to hog the thread. Thanks for the review, appreciated.

 

[coolguy147]

Re: Damned Mosquito's !!!

skin so soft.

mom always uses it and wears long sleeve shirts and jeans drenched in the stuff when working outside. with a paper towel aorund her neck with it on that too and socks over jeans.

i hate jeans and long sleeve shirts.

deet burns my skin too but only if i itched there. i just hate the smell and stickyness.

skin so soft is good.

 

[canada_bob]

Re: Damned Mosquito's !!!

I've had a lot of PM's from folks asking for samples of XL5, I'd give them away but the cost of shipping is a killer, costs me around $30 a time, I don't mind that 5 or 6 times but I can't ship anymore than I've shipped out already.
I don't sell the stuff myself, I just make up what I need and for the local folks and I'm not looking to promote XL5 in here for profit, just to give some away and share a bit of knowledge with folks.

I've even had requests from Australia, seems this Forum stretches far and wide hey, I asked UPS what the cost would be to ship to Oz and they wanted over $100, I just can't afford to be paying that sort of money out, so I did share with the guy how to make a fairly effective bug repellent from stuff he can pick up at the local store, so seeing as how I shared that with him, and there's demand in here I'll share this basic formula with you guys...

For the folks who have received samples of XL5 you'll see there are 4 basic ingredients, those being...

Soybean Oil, Coconut Oil, Argentum Metalicum and Titanium Dioxide.

The first two ingredients are relatively easy to come by, the second almost impossible for the average guy, but they only enhance XL5, improving the effectiveness from around 70/80% to 95/97%.

So if you want to make your own brew, to produce a product that will still rival DEET the ratio for the mix is, 90 parts Soybean Oil, 10 parts Coconut Oil
this stuff...

http://www.virgincoconutoil.ca/extra-virgin-coconut-oil.html

or if you can find those little bottles {the 10ml things} of coconut essence, this kind of stuff...

http://www.escentsaromatherapy.com/Coconut-Escape-Essential-Oil-Blend_p_116.html

The "essence" is easier to work with as the coconut oil is almost a solid and needs to be warmed up {place the jar in hot, not boiling water to liquefy it} then pour it into the soybean oil. NEVER put any of these oils over a naked flame or into a pan without water in it, to heat them up.

If you use the essence, you need a 10ml bottle and you pour the lot into 500mls {around a pint} of soybean oil, that's enough, remember that a mosquito's sense of smell is 1 MILLION times more acute than we can detect.

From what I posted previously you'll see why the coconut {or eucalyptus in Australia, or Neem in India, or Frankincense in the Middle East} helps, but here's one of the reasons that soybean oil isn't "just the carrier"...

The reason that soy oil repels bugs is, it's THE SMELL OF DEATH to them, in the same way that a rotting corpse would repel us it works the same with insects. When a bug dies it starts to rot, as it rots it produces oleic Acid a repugnant smell to bugs, cockroaches hate the smell of it, check the link below...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8232000/8232607.stm

Soybeans can contain as much as 75% oleic acid, I should mention that this isn't an "acid" as we would normally think of an acid, it's non caustic no corrosive, merely a Food Grade Omega 9 "fatty acid"...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oleic_acid

So if you want to run up a small batch to see how it works for you then all you need is the soybean oil and the coconut essence.

One word of caution {as mentioned on the label of XL5}, although XL5 doesn't contain peanut oil, soybean oil is produced in the same facility that produces peanut oil, so... It's possible that soybean oil could be "contaminated" with PPM {parts per million} of peanut oil, and that could be enough to give some people a problem, so I give that Cautionary note on the label of XL5. Having said that, no one else in the world shows the same regard or concern for folks who buy soybean or ANY other oil in the local grocery stores. I think they should, but that maybe reflects the 30+ years I was working as an Airworthiness Inspector, where my job was to "Protect the Innocent End Users, of the products we built", I practice the same ethic when I formulate products like XL5.

Seeing as how I mentioned my involvement in Airworthiness, thought I'd add this link for your perusal, to indicate that folks are protected from risk by the work that I do...

http://www.uow.edu.au/~bmartin/dissent/documents/Norburn.html

I hope this helps, I'd appreciate your feedback if you knock some stuff together, it won't be as effective as XL5, but it will be better than anything other than DEET @ 30%

Just don't tell too many folks about the formulation, as I do have a commercial interest in XL5.

Canada Bob.

 

[xg393]

Re: Damned Mosquito's !!!

Holy Smokes CB thats some story about what happened to you

Matt.

 

[roscoe]

Re: Damned Mosquito's !!!

The Argentum Metalicum and Titanium Dioxide are readily available at homeopathic stores, including those that sell essential oils or aroma therapy.

So how much do we add into the oils?

And what is mystery ingredient number 5?

 

[STARCRAFT16SS]

Re: Damned Mosquito's !!!

ON the subject of Deet...had a bottle of deet from work...not sure...think it was 97% Deet...had it in bag inside a larger travel bag...it broke open,,
melted parts of both bags...was melting the remote attached to the keys to
my wife's Chevy Uplander......very stong stuff!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[canada_bob]

Re: Damned Mosquito's !!!

The Argentum Metalicum and Titanium Dioxide are readily available at homeopathic stores, including those that sell essential oils or aroma therapy. So how much do we add into the oils?And what is mystery ingredient number 5?

Argentum Metalicum is just the INCI {International Nomenclature of Cosmetic Ingredients} an international "code" so that folks in different countries can understand the list of ingredients, it's a sort of bastardized Latin.

Anyway, back to AM, it's silver in layman's terms. Silver is a very effective anti bacterial, so having a very small amount on your skin sanitizes the skin, cutting down on the body odours cause by the bacteria that live on our bodies, the stench from them make us more attractive to mosquito's et-al.

TiO2 does much the same, but microscopically it looks {to a mosquito} like zillions of mirrors, this is the last line of defence for us, this is what the mosquito sees just as it is about to bite us, seems to cause them some confusion and disturbance making them less likely to bit us.

When used in XL5 these two ingredients are ground down to a specific size, that's proprietary info that I can't disclose in here Roscoe, it's taken me YEARS to formulate XL5 and I don't want the Multi Nationals jumping onto my band wagon, not without paying me for what I've done.

The 5th ingredient was touched on in earlier posts, things like Neem, Lemon Eucalyptus, Frankincense, etc. The addition of one or the other of these ingredients depends on the part of the world that a batch of XL5 is shipped to.

Hope this helps...

 

[canada_bob]

Re: Damned Mosquito's !!!

ON the subject of Deet...had a bottle of deet from work...not sure...think it was 97% Deet...had it in bag inside a larger travel bag...it broke open,, melted parts of both bags...was melting the remote attached to the keys to my wife's Chevy Uplander......very stong stuff!!!!!!!!!!!

Hello Starcraft,

Much as I don't like DEET I won't trounce it as it has saved many a person from Malaria or River Blindness etc in the last 50-60 years.

DEET will "melt" plastics, thankfully it doesn't have the same dramatic effect on us, but if I were you I wouldn't touch any DEET stronger than 30% and given an option to use an effective alternative that's the way I would go.

No matter what strength of DEET you apply 48% of it will be in your bloodstream within 6 hours, there's not a person on the planet able to tell you what it does once it's in your blood. That could vary between at best between doing nothing or at worst being a carcinogen, that's a game I'd rather not play, a risk that I don't want to take, not with my life or anyone else.

The bottom line for me is, if I had to work in Africa {as I do} and there wasn't an alternative to DEET, I'd use DEET, as the threat of Malaria is greater than the threat we presume that DEET may present.

But when I'm back home in Canada, or in the US or the UK I'd rather take my chances with the local mosquito's than use DEET, they may be a pain in the *** but it's very unlikely they are going to kill me or make me chronically sick.

Thankfully I can use XL5, if I could give it away I would, especially where folks lives are at risk, but this is the real world where there's a cost to everything.

I hope that folks will try the basic formulation of XL5, and that by using it they won't need to use DEET, especially on their children.

One last comment Starcraft, stay away from that high % DEET it doesn't give much better protection than the 30% stuff, but it does represent a bigger risk to you and yours. At the end of the day if a mosquito has "a head cold" {a mosquito with a reduced sense of smell}, as it will bite you no matter what you have on, whether that's DEET or XL5.

 

[canada_bob]

Re: Damned Mosquito's !!!

The Argentum Metalicum and Titanium Dioxide are readily available at homeopathic stores, including those that sell essential oils or aroma therapy.So how much do we add into the oils?

Near missed responding to that Roscoe, it's 0.5% of each or either one, but more importantly it's a case of "size matters" more than % in this instance.

 

[gonefishie]

Re: Damned Mosquito's !!!

Argentum is silver, that makes sense, Ag= silver. Since it's antibacterial, is that why they used to kill vampire and warewolf? .
Question for you Bob, what is it in the peel of an orange that when you burn the peel, it keeps the skeeters away? I think the smell is what keeping them away but was wondering if there a specific chemical in the peel.

 

[Lion hunter]

Re: Damned Mosquito's !!!

Much like other oils from plants citrus oil is a insect repellant. Here is the chemical makeup'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_oil

 

[canada_bob]

Re: Damned Mosquito's !!!

Argentum is silver, that makes sense, Ag= silver. Since it's antibacterial, is that why they used to kill vampire and warewolf? .
Question for you Bob, what is it in the peel of an orange that when you burn the peel, it keeps the skeeters away? I think the smell is what keeping them away but was wondering if there a specific chemical in the peel.

Hello GF, folks have long known about the antibacterial attributes of silver, thousands of years before they knew bacteria even existed, but they knew about spoilage, hence the use of silver goblets etc, etc, add to that in the days of the wagon trains {legend has it} they used to drop a silver dollar into the water barrels and that alone kept the water {maybe warm} but at least drinkable.

More recently I think it was Samsung have put little bars of silver inside their washing machines, the clothes come into contact with it, little bits {almost nano sized} get released into the water and your clothes come out not just looking clean but also sanitized.

So silver is good stuff, as long as you don't take to drinking it in vast quantities, as some folks have done, {sometimes in an effort to cure VD etc}.
The problem with drinking huge amounts is, you become photo-reactive, your skin becomes a photographic "plate" and the sunlight turns you blue
If you carry on drinking it it will become toxic and probably kill you off, mind you, shortly before that happens they say the VD clears up

As for the orange peel, Lion Hunter was spot on there as it does have a fair amount of Limonene an essence that mosquito's don't like, same way they don't like Neem or Chrysanthemums or Lemon Eucalyptus or Frankincense, but you'd need to roll about in orange peel for an hour or so to get much benefit from it.

 

[canada_bob]

Re: Damned Mosquito's !!!

Back to DEET and the concerns that it's causing in the scientific community, here's a word of two of caution that should be considered...

5.3 Dermal
DEET is absorbed quickly through intact skin; 48% of the
applied dose is totally absorbed within 6 hours. This is the
usual route of entry as DEET is normally applied to the skin
as a mosquito repellent. Accumulation in the dermis has been
demonstrated (Robins and Cherniak, 1986).


The above is an excerpt from the link below...

http://www.inchem.org/documents/pims/chemical/deet.htm

I would never tell folks not to use DEET, especially if they are traveling to places where they could contract Malaria, but if we are simply protecting ourselves from nuisance / irritation rather than a potentially deadly disease then look for something else that may work for you.

I hope that my "revelations" in here give folks that opportunity.

 

[canada_bob]

Re: Damned Mosquito's !!!

PS... a bit off topic but, what do you guys do about ants, how do you get rid of them, all of them, without having to use chemical pesticides ?

 

[rbh]

Re: Damned Mosquito's !!!

PS... a bit off topic but, what do you guys do about ants, how do you get rid of them, all of them, without having to use chemical pesticides ?

Gas and a match, or boiling water.
(Have to add, outside, away from house only)

 

[Lion hunter]

Re: Damned Mosquito's !!!

There are some recipes online that use cornmeal, borax, and honey. They work fairly well. I have used these inside the home, just put the mixture on a peice of cardboard and slide under the stove, or fridge. Outside, especially fire ants, Amdro is the only way to go.

 

[canada_bob]

Re: Damned Mosquito's !!!

There are some recipes online that use cornmeal, borax, and honey. They work fairly well. I have used these inside the home, just put the mixture on a piece of cardboard and slide under the stove, or fridge. Outside, especially fire ants, Amdro is the only way to go.

You got it in one Lion Hunter, a saturated solution of borax does for them in a couple of days. Folks think they have problems with ants over here, but if they saw how voracious they are in Africa they'd think again.

I'm told that when they drink the saturated solution of borax they lose the water and the borax starts to crystallize in their bodies, and like broken glass if cuts them to shreds. It's a bit brutal, but it beats having to resort to complex chemical pesticides especially when there's children or pets, or us around in the same environment.

Haven't heard of Amdro, I'll check it out...

 

[Lion hunter]

Re: Damned Mosquito's !!!

Amdro is chemical is a type of small pellet form. Works vey well on the mound and as a barrier. Doesn't seem to work as well on the small black **** ants we get here though. Borax is better on them.

 

[xg393]

Re: Damned Mosquito's !!!

Hey CB, that XL5 of yours, had it for a couple of weeks now it does the job for me fact is I could have sold it a few times over to my fishing buddies but its a keeper for me. Anyway we followed you recipe and made some of our own we made a quart of it put 2 little bottles of the coconut in it so we'll see if this is as good as the XL5. Showed a few folks a print up of what you said about deet about it getting into the blood didn't make them happy campers I can tell you that. It don't cost much to make a quart of your basic recipe all you need is 4fl oz in a bottle, I could sell this stuff man is that OK with you if I did? Im going to compare what we made to what you sent me but let me pay you the shipping I know what it cost you to send it.

Matt.