Terry said:
On 24 Jun 2005 13:01:09 -0700, "Too_Many_Tools"
=>....what kinds of electronic and mechanical "trash" is WORTH
disassembling and keeping for parts to build other projects?
"Trash?" Never. "Stuffe" and "Junque," maybe, but never the "T" word!
I think I have managed to save about every single bit and piece of
anything I have ever owned (I'm 71 now) and have actually used one or
two items in other projects. My wife and I built rows of heavy shelves
in our basement so we could store treasures for possible use in the
future (I had three shelves and she the rest--she's as bad as I). I
was lucky to have worked for an electronics company for 20 years and
managed to squirrel away mounds of valuable goodies. On several
occasions, several cartons of obsolete components would appear in the
hallway near the stockroom with a sign reading, "Take all you want,
but have it out of the building by 5PM." Oh, the good-ol' days.
I have stripped boards for valuable, i.e., hard-to-find parts, tossing
them when they are down to vanilla R and C components. Always save
large electrolytics, power transistors, heat sinks, high-wattage
resistors, easily removed connectors (bless he who invented the
thodderthukker!). Wire is always saved, whatever its configuration, as
well as cases, plugs, sockets, relays, etc... ALWAYS save screws!
As for disposing of stuffe and junque, it can be traumatic as most of
you know. Tossing that rusty 4-inch encabulator will defintely prompt
a project several months from now that requires a 4-inch encabulator.
Right?
In this vein, allow me to share a (maybe not so) humorous story. Not
too long after getting my ham license, I was fatally bitten by the
Teletype bug when a fellow ham and co-worker sold me all his TTY gear,
which included spare parts, manuals, and other good stuffe. Wow! The
smell of hot oil, the thunderous din, dodging gear teeth as they
ricocheted out of the case! Ecstacy! From then on I was hooked, and
collected, cataloged, and stored every bit and piece that even vaguely
could be used in a TTY application.
Over several years I acquired several more TTY machines, in the end
managing to have five running simultaneously on HF and VHF radio
circuits! The sound was deafening! But what fun it was to keep them
all running. A local radio station surplussed all their paper and tape
when they converted from mechanical to glass terminals, and of course
I was there with my little LUV truck to help them out!
Moving time came finally and I decided that it was time to cut back a
bit. (Actualy, the new house didn't have room for a tenth of our
stuffe, let alone all the TTY equipment.) A local ham and I had been
conversing for months about TTY and he said he would take all the TTY
gear I didn't want. He came over, looked at it, and came back a week
or so later with a mid-size U-Haul truck. We loaded it all in and I
watched him slowly roll away, the sides of the box bulging as he
disappeared arround the corner.
I heard a few months later that he was in divorce procedings! I guess
she just couldn't take it!
Moral: Be careful what you toss out. Better yet, build more shelves!
Cheers--
Terry--WB4FXD
Edenton, NC
While I may not have as much as some, I may have more than others. Certainly
more than "I" thought I'd ever have and desire at the moment to keep.
However, there is I believe - a saying which - even if not well known and
perhaps not verbatum, "I" live by - "you won't need it until you've thrown
it away." Sure enough, often it happens. Ya toss an item in the trash today.
A day or so after it's gone, you are in need and you kick yourself for
having tossed it.
As for screws, I have about 6 - 3 lb coffee cans full of them. I strip them
from ANYTHING I cannibalize - be it electronics, furniture or anything in
between. I save all parts I can get off PC boards or out of chassis - in
decent condition. The rest - well.... someone else has to have some fun
going through the dump!
Way before E-Bay and the internet, I had about 1000 tubes of all sorts that
an old TV/Radio repair shop gone out of business - threw away.
It took me about 2 weeks of a few hours of sorting. I kept some of the more
popular ones then - such as for Tube set TVs which some folks still used,
the then still current Tube AM/FM Radios/CBs/Ham. NOW I see people needing
many of those I destroyed - for the older tube "Car" radios and such. Yes, I
"destroyed" the others by smashing them. My theory is, if "I" can't prosper
from it - no one will. About the only thing one "can" prosper from where I
don't play, is the scrap metal from any chassis I throw out.
There was "an" occasion or two where I sold some containers of surplus parts
and "pulled" parts. I got my price for them. In one instance, I sold about
12 bigger electroylitics at a hamfest. They were pretty hefty but I had no
use for them. A woman apparently sent her boy over to buy them from me, to
resell (unbeknownst to me). Someone told me about it once they were bought.
I said simply - "I" made my profit, who cares???? I got from them what I
wanted. God bless her if she got hers. A big part of my collection now, is
I've bought out a few businesses, computer shops, etc. I've got boxes of
unused parts still not even catagorized. I've got some RS stuff bought in
bulk, some of which isn't even sold by them anymore.
I'm working on a web site as I speak, I hope to offer much of it there. I
won't do E-Bay as I don't want much for a lot of it and the selling/listing
fees wouldn't make it worth my while. I'd have to add it in just to make it
work and I don't want to do that. My purpose is to get the parts out as
cheap as I can to those in need. Shipping, I can't do much about, except
hope they order enough to make it worth "their" while.
Collecting can be fun and meaningful, but as others have witnessed, it can
"over take" you.
L.
