Since this is a holiday weekend, and except for go-fast cars and boozing it up a bit, and not much else going on, I thought we could spend today on Tool Slut Education.
So, people new to (pissing away ungodly amounts of money on) vintage tools will get to know some of the makers and their ancient offerings.
As with ham radio gear “of a certain age” we are ALL about safety. Sure, we have a LOT of used power tools around here, but each gets Ure’s 2-point checkup before use:
“Is the plug and wiring, OK?”
Given a yes “Let’s plug it in and see what happens….”
I have also enjoyed a lot of smoke from ham gear tested using the same method. But Pappy once told me (on entering my ham shack where a small electrical disaster had left a pall of smoke) “Well, guess that gives you a real SOLID troubleshooting starting point, huh?”
“Yessir, dad. It was bound to break anyway, so I might as well fix-it all at once.”
Buying with Brains
You can’t fix stupid. Nor can you fix a Tool Slut.
We sometimes just “get things stuck in our head” and can’t get them out. Until buying them.
But, before buying ANY tool – especially new ones – on eBay, click over to Amazon and put in the same tool name or tool model number.
In America’s desperate lurch to “make up an economy” we have people becoming Amazon affiliates who take the exact-same tool I can buy for $39-bucks on the Zon itself, and mark it up to $45.99 and I’m supposed to buy from them why, again?
On the other hand, some of the older tool companies made great products. The kind that got the country through a century and several wars along the way. Some of the modern tools simply aren’t as good.
Consider Your Shop’s Purpose
Some people want to be woodworkers. Others want to be metal workers. Still more want to throw plastic through extruders and make things from online designs they have tweaked this way and that. A few more will want to learn the basics of CNC.
That’s only one way of “gridding” your shop. Rather than do it by material class, though, there are names and project descriptions.
Fellow I know of up in the PNW – just down the road from the Major – has the total skill set of the ultimate “fine woodworker”. So his “dream project” might be an ornate, teak and ivory-inlaid desk. (To which I’d add a fur seal ottoman, just to see if the tree-huggers are paying attention.)
Someone in East Texas may have a different idea. Fellow I saw in the mirror this morning might want to take a cheap-o used car and then get after it with the cutting torch to see how close to his old (once in a lifetime) 930’s power-to-weight ratio he could cut it down to.
He may see there is a hole in vehicle inspections: I can take a Crown Vic and with patience, plasma and some shielding gas, I can get Ms. Vicky down to about half her weight. You’ll just have to do without doors truck lid, hood, and yes, the lights will be on “air support” or held up by some recycled conduit.
But you get the drift – Chuck Barris Meets Greenpeace over the objections of the NHTSA. Yes, we all have to buy gas guzzling, wildly over-priced nominally safe cars. But if the car is MINE – (not the governments) – then I should be able to chop, channel, cut, hack, axe, resuscitate, weld, filler and Bondo, then paint) the damn thing any way I see fit. (Most people are too lazy to think innovatively like this, but let’s set that aside for a minute because this is getting “windy.”)
That’s the metal shop case.
So when you go tool shopping, consider your DREAMS and come up with a purpose for your shop.
Do Not Follow Our Footsteps
Thing with tools and me? It’s like food, sailboats, Porsches, and blondes. (They’re all good, just some are better than others.)
I started off with a modest interest in woodworking. But, once the house was somewhat finished when the recording studio was done, and again when the Vegetable Growing Addition was cobbled on, I decided I wanted to have a shop for everything.
Wood, metal, 3D, crafting, light CNC, model-making. Now put in cabinet making, home blow-molding of plastics, and home foundry work in at least aluminum in green sand molds…. See how the “financial footprint” gets out of whack?
One way to keep things in line (a bit) is to really focus on purpose and hit both eBay and Craigslist. Then Offerup.com and then any local newspapers.’
Reader Ray has a number of really nifty auction sites he tracks. Since we all know government is riddled through-and-through with waste, these government surplus auctions can be the “real ticket” if you get lucky.
A Clickable Directory
I decided that newbies might benefit from a discussion of what used/vintage power tools and other useful tools may be found on eBay.
Click here for my eBay directory for Tool Sluts. STSeBayGuide.
If – by the time you’ve hit 42-eBay-look-ups, and you still haven’t spent any money, hang up and call 9-1-1. You may not have a pulse.
(Or, you may already own some Depression-era tools like those made by Wappat-Alta before Depression 1.)
Seriously? These are some of the searches that when I’m sitting around with a cup of coffee (“Let’s see what new shit I can get into next…“) lead to financial ruin.
Go ahead, give it a try. We’re all going to be suffering a Depression soon enough, so let’s at least enjoy the paper while it works.
Tomorrow, a new glass cutter and the Under $30 welder quest.
Write when you get rich, *(and be sure to count fingers before and after visiting your shop!)
George@Ure.net
I’m sure I’m not alone in desiring to see a story with photos on the recording studio.
A while ago I was considering such a “Project Studio” or “Boutique Studio” and a private CD label, to be called ‘Unheard Of Music.”
Never quite got around to it, sadly, as a facility for new artists to concentrate on the creative, and let somebody else (me) worry the details of doing a good analog recording and small-volume production process.
Still sorry I never got to do that one. Maybe others can see the value and do it.
Oh my – building a bootlegger Crown Vic for resupply runs? Think of all the loot you can get in that trunk. Sounds like it is just the thing for the trailer at the end of world (TITEW). Taking off the doors and lid sounds wrong; maybe some armor would work better.
Typo – should be (TATEW). Got more of a survivor ring to it.
I hear ya @n_____ since everything goes through google.. I hate auto correct.. I truly believe that there is someone at google in the auto correct section or a program that tosses out crazy mistakes.. like coke becomes cock.. and tatew becomes titew.. just for giggles and embarrassment sake..
Years ago before the internet.. I had a program I put on my friends work computer.. that would make crazy comments.. like is that all the faster you can type.. and then when you messed up.. it would tease you about your spelling ability.. it was hilarious.. today those joke programs would be frowned upon..
they had a nasty receptionist to that was just mean to everyone…. so the National Urine bank was born LOL LOL even the plant bosses gave her a sample LOL.. who knows if there is ever an emergency and they need a urine sample right.. LOL
Of course that was back when I was young and dumb and I was doing my bulletin board jokes.. LOL.. the favorite one was on vacation policy LOL LOL by the time you got to the end you didn’t know when you could put in for vacation… they only allowed hourly workers to take it one week of the year LOL……
Crown Vics made starting in ’08 ARE armor plated…
“Consider Your Shop’s Purpose”
Finally found a home for the laser and ultrasonic equipment..
My grandsons girlfriend was going to school for it.. didn’t know how she was going to get the tools..so I bought it for an Xmas present..they broke up.. so it’s been sitting in the box..
Last week I agreed to be a test model for a trainee with my regular hair dresser teaching the new girl..my regar hairdresser and the new girl were talking when she said she was saving up to get the tools she needed..
Needless to say I said don’t fret it I’m a tool slut and I had bought the equipmentfor my grandsons ex girlfriend.lol so yesterday I dropped it all off to her..she can expand her services..
For myself it was not a tool I would use to her it’s an additional service to offer her clients..
…(on entering my ham shack where a small electrical disaster had left a pall of smoke) “Well, guess that gives you a real SOLID troubleshooting starting point, huh?”
LOL! “Smokers” are the easy fix. Follow the ‘smoke’ rule of electronics: Every component is packed with smoke when manufactured. If the smoke escapes, the component is bad. I had an awe struck young assistant at a radio staton witness a high voltage blowup on the 20kw FM transmitter one time. With wide eyes he asked me “How do you diagnose something like THAT?”
“Easy!”, I told him, “Open it up and look for the burn marks. If there are none, it is inside the ceramic vacuum tube.” He was trembling as he opened the cabinet for me.
“If – by the time you’ve hit 42-eBay-look-ups, and you still haven’t spent any money, hang up and call 9-1-1. You may not have a pulse.”
I am absolutely an eBay slut! Great comparison shopping, comparing price, shipping, and locations. And USPS delivers it to my mailbox….. when not “MISSENT” to Pago Pago, Samoa like my stainless nuts. Yeah, I gotta watch my bank account. PayPal is way too easy to suck the money dry.
“Reader Ray has a number of really nifty auction sites he tracks. Since we all know government is riddled through-and-through with waste, these government surplus auctions can be the “real ticket” if you get lucky.”
No luck to it.
You decide what you want and how much you are willing to pay, then become a grown-up and understand if you don’t get this {whatever it is}, there’ll be another in a few months.
“Surplus” means exactly that, and quite often means “brand new stuff we bought to have on a shelf or in a garage, in case the stuff we were using, broke…”
Hence my ridiculously large stockpile of brand new, 40-70yo vacuum tubes.
BTW, I don’t buy stuff that’ll necessarily make me money. I buy stuff, mostly tools, for which I either do, or will have a use, and my thinking is always toward survivalism and leaving the tools necessary for my children to survive and if-possible, flourish, in a post-SHTF world.
” I don’t buy stuff that’ll necessarily make me money. I buy stuff, mostly tools, for which I either do, or will have a use, and my thinking is always toward survivalism and leaving the tools necessary for my children to survive and if-possible, flourish, in a post-SHTF world.”
WOW… That is exactly the way I think and how I do it…
I have a caretaker personality.. I never expect or demand.. my needs always come last..
When older folks hear “government surplus” they think about the comic book and Popular Mechanics classified ads for “$100 Jeeps.” We all know those Cosmoline-packed M38A1’s are long-since gone. There are, however, a bazillion Type-M44 (Kaiser’s iteration of the WW-II Dodge Power Wagon) 2½ ton (M35 A1, A2, or A3 “deuce-and-a-half”) and 5-ton trucks, and even occasionally the more-modern Freightliner-based trucks.
New vehicle price range on deuce-and-a-halfs ranges from $48k (1960) to about $80k (1980) and Humvees sticker at around $80k~$120k, so the discount is really similar to those old Jeeps.
With that said, I don’t normally buy from the FedGov and I don’t normally buy MVs. I got in a pinch some years back and bought a Crown Victoria Police Interceptor (CVPI) from a fire department (under 90k, fabric seats, power windows & cruise, and never pissed-in, barfed-in, or involved in a police chase) — helluva car, and literally bulletproof (armor-plating in the doors & seat backs, maybe elsewhere.) Ford put their (detuned) 4.6L quad-cam racing engine in it, which is one of the finest engines ever made (never thought I’d say that about a gasser Ford) and set it up with a unique road-racing suspension. The car cost me $2800, counting a $100 ride to the nearest Amtrak station, a cross-country choo-choo ride to Chicago, a hundred dollar taxi ride, petrol, stopping on the way home to have a brake starwheel unstuck & backed off, and tax, license, etc. I think at the time, civvie Crown Vics and Marquis of the same year were considerably on the north side of $10k.
‘Wish I still had it…
Ahem, back to topic:
With surplus, this means when you need 1-2, you’ll have to buy 5-50, so there also has to be a market for the stuff I can’t keep. (The finest tool in the world for this is eBay’s “sold items” filter. This is how you find out exactly what something’s worth, because stuff is worth what someone will pay for it, not what someone asks as a price.) No listings here = “likely paperweight.”
Every State does a “surplus dump” every day. “State” means “every public service entity and department within a State, which receives State or Federal funding” — IOW every school, office, department (including highway depts. DNR, DPW, police, fire, EMS, etc.) Many of them sell via national disposal sites (like GovDeals.) Some (like the State of Wisconsin) use the auction clearinghouse but also run their own separate auctions.
They don’t sell guns. They sometimes sell airplanes… and everything in-between.
“never pissed-in, barfed-in, or involved in a police chase) — helluva car,”
otflmao… I have a couple of cute stories for ya @Ray.. back when I was a child and in the military.. the place I worked for the commander wanted a green house.. well.. on a nearby airforce base they were building a new officers club LOL LOL LOL so one of our department heads got a work detail at night and we went to get materials.. they went to the airforce base LOL LOL LOL and started to load it up.. LOL LOL LOL along comes the MP’s and they inquire what in the heck was going on.. the man in charge of the detail.. said nothing much just off loading some scrap materials.. the MP’s said.. NOT ON OUR BASE.. pick that crap up and get it out of here.. LOL LOL the base commander got his green house LOL LOL..
Year or so later.. the base commander had a new car coming.. well the facilities air conditioner went out.. and they didn’t have funds left to acquire a new one.. SO.. they were building a new club for the E-4 through E-8… and they happened to have an extra one.. but didn’t have a car.. so there was a trade.. traded the commanders new car for the air conditioner.. but to do that they couldn’t tell the commander they gave away his new car.. so the car was detailed out and the guys at the motor pool changed the vin numbers and repainted the car etc.. the commanders driver.. told us.. the day the commander got into his NEW car he said.. god this looks’ exactly like my other car.. the driver said he said.. well you know how govt.. is.. they are all alike LOL LOL LOL LOL… not another word was said and the air conditioning was put in the building LOL..
I was visiting with a friend not that long ago said they film some of the scenes from a popular television show in that building.. I keep looking to see if I recognize parts of it.. LOL LOL
Speakin’ of smoke. I once had a 57 Studebaker golden hawk, the one with the McCullough supercharger from the factory. It had some dash wiring issues, so I took it to what I thought was a reputable electrical shops (you remember them, don’t cha? Anyhoo they called and said she was ready to roll. I climbed in as they slammed the hood, but the battery was installed backwards and the positive post hit ground when he slammed down the hood.
That wouldn’t normally had been that big of a problem, but the hood latch needed replacement and was tricky to open. So there we were, smoke pouring from under the hood (and the dash for some strange reason, guess they cross-wired something under there), and just as one of the dudes grabbed a wire extinguisher I popped the hood and that ended the major short. They dealt with whatever the under dash short was in the two extra weeks it took to fix the electrical, and I never got around to fixin’ the dimple in the hood from the damn battery post.
Nice car… and ‘WAY ahead of its time.
If you watch the restoration and mod shows on Motortrend, you’d get the idea that those ’50s cars are difficult to wire.
Not so much. If’fn you’ve a VOM and a 20 foot jumper wire (one of those old Mueller alligator clips with the insulation-piercing thorn in its jaw helps, too — easier to use than a straight pin in a pin vise), you can troubleshoot, isolate, and repair any wiring gremlin, and you can do it without trashing a, possibly irreplaceable, wiring harness.
–From someone who did troubleshooting/repair on Lucas automobile electrics for 7 years.
” I took it to what I thought was a reputable electrical shops (you remember them, don’t cha?)”
OTFLMAO.. I HEAR YA…
A little over a year ago.. I had a leaking power steering hose.. took it to a reputable shop.. ( he lost his real mechanics due to vovid shut down..seems they still had to support their families and par expenses) the shop had to hire new right out of the tech school.. seems they teach Google mechanics. The new mechanic googled the issue and it said.. it needed a new front end.. a couple grand later.. I get the buggy back but still had a leak and a new brake leak.. back to the shop..each time it was a little worse..then I was talking to them I said can someone shut the Google mechanic lead off and tell the kid that if it’s squirtting him in the eye that’s the problem..well fall came.. no brakes still leaking I asked where my coupon was.. what coupon.. the one for my free casket..huh..without brakes or steering in winter I’m a dead man..well they sort of got it halfway working but I still had the power steering leak and brake leak.. but it was slower.. then a couple months ago.. the busiest time of day at the busiest intersection…. major brake failure.. omg.. a little screaming ..panic and filled shorts I survived..took it to a shop across the street from where I filled my shorts..an old guy takes a look at it and says dam.. your one lucky bastard.. we will give you a ride home.. then he asked about the power steering.. it’s all new.. who did it.. I said some new mechanic from the tech school.. he says to me.. you know you can’t take cars to the blind school.. it’s a mess and your going to have the same problem and massive failure with your steering to.. so back to the shop that did it.. six weeks later it’s done.. they put a real mechanic on it this time.. and I didn’t have to pay more for the power steering.. I had to pay for the brakes though..
So I get it..lol
Dang! Just went to eBay for the heck of it to check used computer prices. I need to update my ancient Mac so I can do my taxes again next year. (I swear the software people are in cahoots with Apple to force you to buy a newer computer that will run the newer OS that will run your tax software! Ben Dover!)
Anyway, I found a little gem, lightly used, maybe a ‘school computer’ that was marked down half-price… with a year guarantee. Blam! I think I just overdrafted myself. Again, I lay the blame squarely on Ure shoulders!
The worst part? Not being ‘in business’ anymore, the cost is not deductble.
Good people . So good . Great stuff
What is it cows or vegetables or tools . So good