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Post by CampKohler (Sacramento CA) on Apr 26, 2018 2:59:18 GMT -5
Last year I found two U.S.P.S. 4-box in-wall mail cabinets that look like they had been replaced. One frame had the 4-slot tilt out innards and the other was just the frame. Very strong for the amount of thin material due to a lot of pop rivets used. It took me two hours to reduce it to parts. It came to about 20 lbs of aluminum, which will be saved for projects. There was thin sheet, extruded frame (like a picture frame, but deeper) and extruded 1/8" thick plate. I washed it in soapy water to get all the dirt out of the nooks and crannies of the pieces due to being out in my driveway for months. Nice stuff.
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Later at my storage yard, I checked the depository, because it gets emptied tomorrow morning. There was a motorcycle lift used to work on them. Made of 1/4" thick steel plate, angle, etc., so built like a brick uh, motorcycle lift. It collapses down to 6" tall package and has wheels, so can slide under a bench, etc. Looks complete except for the jack.
Also there was an interesting bottle jack like I have never seen before. Instead of turning a valve stem to lower it, there is a button worked by a big foot pedal. There is another foot pedal that is coupled to the pump piston, but a 5/16" diam. connecting pin is missing. So you can use your foot to raise or lower the jack. Now the question is, after the pin is replaced, will it raise?
Now that I think about it, the bottle jack may be part of the motorcycle lift.
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Post by CampKohler (Sacramento CA) on Apr 29, 2018 15:37:00 GMT -5
Today I am demolishing a very old and worn LazyBoy recliner I inherited. The leather (if that was what it is) is old and cracked, and would require replacing everywhere on the chair, so not worth the effort. It was put together with Torx screws, so at least I am not fighting a bunch of mungied-up Phillips screws from the '50s. The fasteners are bare steel (and so rusty), the mechanical design plebeian, but at least the wood is all fairly hard and well-glued together. I am saving the wood, fasteners, some sheets of foam rubber (for making replacement earphone cushions), and as much of the dark blue leather covering that is still smooth. I suppose treating the back of the leather with neatsfoot oil would bring back some suppleness and prevent cracking.
I wonder if I looked at the innards of a LazyBoy today, would I see as robust construction, or would there be a lot more particle board and orange-crate wood?
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Post by CampKohler (Sacramento CA) on May 12, 2018 1:03:42 GMT -5
Along side a busy residential road, someone had put out a two-drawer horizontal file cabinet. I could tell that it had been used as a tool cabinet, which is what I do with them. This was confirmed by finding a nail set rattling around inside one of the drawers' walls. One of the full-extension ball-bearing slides was missing the balls, but I have a slide from a fridge that might supply the missing balls. The top of the cabinet was dressed up by a 1.5" thick crapical-board top that was laminated on on all six sides with wood-grained laminate, so this was a relatively high-end unit.
The first thing I did was to tear it all apart, wash out the crud of the ages with soap and water, and steel-wool and wax any light-rust spots where the drawer bottoms took heavy use, The cabinet exterior was in decent shape except for the feet gussets in the bottom corners. They had taken a beating over the years, so I had to pull them outwards and realign them with some judicious hammering. I did all this on the grass under a tree, and left it there overnight. Unfortunately this tree was very pregnant, and when big winds kicked up today, the seeds, which look like gooey raspberries, fell on the cabinet and drawers, leaving sticky, syrupy spots, requiring me to wash everything all over again. What a pain!
I got the cabinet installed in my storage unit and set the drawers inside it until I can get the slides cleaned, lubed and reinstalled. Too bad the mfr's name is missing, else I might have a chance of finding a replacement slide (vs. fixing the original).
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Post by CampKohler (Sacramento CA) on May 25, 2018 17:54:00 GMT -5
The next door neighbor got a replacement love-seat, and so dumped his old one with it's duct tape arm patches. As his back was hurting, I volunteered to discombobulate it to smithereens and put said smithereens in the trash cans. The covering appeared to be Naugahyde, but it was a cheap imitation; it's about half-thickness with a hairy plastic spider-webby coating on the inside, so not worth keeping for material. It was made with douglas fir and staples; no screws, no glue. I knocked it apart with a drilling hammer. I will get about 20 lbs of semi-clear wood out of it once I pull the 1.25"-long staples out of it. The remaining covering made the process like butchering a cow that is bones held stubbornly together with hide; in other words, it was hard work. But what are friends for? Now he has replaced a wobbly recliner, but at least it is covered in decent-looking tufted upholstery cloth, so maybe something will come out of it besides weariness. Who knows, it might even be fixable.
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Post by CampKohler (Sacramento CA) on Jun 24, 2018 18:47:05 GMT -5
The neighbor decided to attack his own recliner, but after an hour or so of difficulties, ripped it into two pieces and tossed it into his garbage can. Looking at it, I decided there wasn't any parts on it worth the time.
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At the storage yard depository, there was a nice woven basket full of household hardware bits and bobs, from nails to plated bolts. Included was a brand new brass water heater drain valve.
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Post by CampKohler (Sacramento CA) on Jun 25, 2018 21:56:07 GMT -5
By a depository was a 3-legged solid oak table; not a speck of particle board! It looked like it was half of a smallish leaf table that had seen better days. Two of the legs were attached by bodged-together bits of the table that had been sawed up and screwed together with deckscrews—Frankentable! Too bad the idiot who created this abortion didn't drill one single pilot hole for his screws, thus leading to cracked wood and screws so well stuck in the wood that heads had twisted off. Oh, well, with only three legs, I knew it was just a source of wood. After much removing broken-off screws with Vise-grips, etc. I got it all apart. The legs were 2' × 6" × 2", and the top was 2' × 3.5' × 1", so that that is a few pieces of pretty respectible wood.
At another place I found a Technics particle board hi fi cabinet that was beyond fixing, so I grabbed the casters off of it and two tempered-glass doors. The trouble with tempered glass is that whatever size it is, that is how you have to use it; it can't be cut by ordinary means, else it explodes in a shower of glass gravel like a car window. When storing it, you have to make sure you don't nick it on the edge, or let it fall, or it disappears in a puff of glory.
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Post by CampKohler (Sacramento CA) on Jun 27, 2018 20:44:47 GMT -5
Some neighbors were getting ready to take a trailer load of crapola to the transfer station, but the tires were flat. So I got elected to volunteer my little 12 V tire pump. This ran down their pickup batt, so I got volunteered to give them a jump.
While waiting for the pump to finish, I noticed a big piece of 5/8" rebar on top that was bent in a U after the first 6'. They gave me that, so I cut a 6' straight piece out of it, that, when ground to a chisel tip, will make a nice little digging bar. Also they gave me a wire-and-tubing shelf that came off of some shelf set. It is just the right shape and size (and color) to fit into a soap-and-water washing station I am building. The shelf will be for brushes and other cleaning stuff. I am sure there were some other useful things in the load, but they had some carpets and a tarp tying down the top, so I couldn't really go rifling through it all.
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A couple of days ago I got volunteered for another jump start. While waiting for his batt to come up a bit, I spied in the adjacent vacant lot a 6' length of galvanized 1/2" pipe. It had a 2" × 1/2" reducing coupler screwed on one end. I think I have a 2" threaded plug somewhere that I could screw into the end, thus making a dirt-pounding tool for compacting dirt back into dug holes, say for a mailbox, etc. The reducing coupling alone goes for about $10 new. Rediculous!
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Post by CampKohler (Sacramento CA) on Aug 7, 2018 20:34:53 GMT -5
Leaning next to a depository were two 2"-thick, probably bullet-proof, greenish glass windows about 18" × 24", probably from some teller cage or similar. They weighed at least 50 lbs. each. I couldn't think of any use for them, so I didn't bother loading them in the buggy. They were gone the next time I drove by, so somebody had an idea.
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Post by CampKohler (Sacramento CA) on Aug 30, 2018 19:41:01 GMT -5
Somehow a little Disney tent got into my back yard unremembered. It was built on the same principle as those wire-edged, fold-up auto sun shades. However the cloth was pretty much rotted out, so I pulled out the edge strips. They were about 3/32" wide × 6'-long spring steel strips with no more than a few tiny rust spots along the length. The strips were bent into loops made by crimping a connecting tube at the joints. I cut away and tossed the remaining cloth and pulled the strips out of the connector tubes (poor crimping job). I coiled the four strips and tied it up for some future project. Another source of (better) steel strips are the strips that come in windshield wiper blades that aren't entirely made of plastic. Those are shiny stainless, so I always pull them out before tossing the old blade.
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Last night at the storage yard, it was the night before garbage morning, so the depository is worth checking. The yard managre had filled it half full of his auto hobby stuff, but there was a bucket full of nuts and bolts, a big aluminum extrusion, a length of 2 × 4, some rope and a few other goodies. So yippee for me.
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Post by CampKohler (Sacramento CA) on Sept 5, 2018 20:14:22 GMT -5
In one depository, a painter—at least according to his company name printed on the the supplier's label on the side—tossed three 5-gallon buckets that held at one time dark green paint. The paint was sold only about three days ago, and the buckets were filled with water, so everything was fresh and not yet cured. After pulling out the pliable films, I spread the water around on some less-than-green, dusty worn places next to my driveway and diluted it even more with the hose; the green is invisible now. Then with nothing more that a scrub brush and clear water, I cleaned up all the buckets and lids; they are now shiny-as-new white and can be used for holding clear washing water to save having to drag out the garden hose, turning on the water, etc. just to wash up a few items, douse the potted plants, or other odd jobs.
Next to the depository out back of the vet's, there were two young ladies in a Land-Rover-looking red van. They were adding gas to their tank from two plastic gas cans, obviously in the middle of some trip. When they were done, they set one of them next to the depository and left. It was a like-new two-gallon red gasoline can with an automatically-opening spout that works by pressing the spout against whatever you are transferring the gas to (lawnmower tank, etc.). It looked fine to me, so I snagged it. By the time I got home, the heat in the car caused the gas in the can to puff out the sides, so that was proof that there were no cracks or other defects in the can. Why on earth they tosseds that, I'll never know. It was just what the doctor ordered, as my previous similar can had been left out in the sun by the former owner for so long that the plastic embrittled and finally cracked. I have been using an 2-gallon oil jug for the last month on the theory that if it wouldn't leak with oil, it shouldn't leak with gas, either. So far the theory has held, but it will be nice to have a long spout once again*, so that the gas flow will stop when my mower tank is full without really paying attention to it. Thanks, ladies, and good luck on your journey.
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At the storage yard depository, there was 7 big bundles of new yard-square absorbent pads. (How one could stuff them down one's pants, I don't know.) They will come in handy as work bench covers for oily or other messy jobs.
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*Don't go there!
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