I think I’ve told the story here of shopping for a carafe for the coffee machine and finding the world’s strangest review, right?
If I haven’t, older son and I are cheap coffee fiends. No, this doesn’t mean we buy cheap coffee, just that we sometimes (coff or always) buy our coffee machines at thrift stores, provided the machines are very good quality. We, of course, clean them well before first use. Anyway, I no longer remember the brand, but in son’s last years in our house, we bought a very good machine at a thrift store. And, once cleaned, it served us well.
Until the day I was too sleepy to make coffee, and therefore dropped the carafe which shattered. This of course created an emergency and I had two choices: Buy another coffee maker (but there was nothing decent in the thrift stores near us) or buy a new carafe. Failing to find a replacement carafe in the local store, I hit Amazon. The carafe was $25, aka about five times what I paid for the whole thing to begin with, but since we loved the machine (and it was originally very expensive) I decided to order it.
Before I did, though, I hit the comments. There weren’t many one stars, but I find those are important to read. So I did.
Er…. So, the most vociferous one said that the quality had gone way down. This person had used their previous carafe for years to dig in their flower beds, but this one had lost the handle after a few uses. No, it wasn’t a joke review. I checked his other reviews and they seemed…. sane. Weirdly.
So, why am I telling this story?
Today we were looking for lids for our bathroom trash cans. (Indy, okay? He digs everything out, spreads it around the bathroom and bedroom floor, and thinks that q-tips are the bestest toys.) In the reviews we found they were being used for all sorts of other things, including as rodent defense in the garden.
None of the uses were as completely nuts as using a carafe for gardening, and they all made sense in context, particularly for the price, but Dan and I started talking about how people will pick something and do a completely unexpected thing from it, and sometimes it works and eventually a specialized version is made for it.
I can’t for sure prove that Americans do this more than other people. In fact I know that in totalitarian countries (in the former USSR for sure) people have to use very strange things to survive, because the things they actually need aren’t available. And we grew up improvising very odd things out of other very odd things.
However, in America it’s done not out of necessity, but usually out of abundance and sheer inventiveness. Like, you know, seeing these woven metal trash can lids and going “Hey, they’re very cheap. These would be perfect to protect my gourds from squirrels.”
I wonder if this is why we tend to innovate more: both the benefits of the free market and of a natural culture of “doing for oneself” which has most of us growing vegetables, raising chickens, and “yes.” And often not finding exactly what we want at the price we want it for our strange arrangements.
I can’t prove Americans do it more. But to the extent we have free market, (Yes, I do know how curtailed it is. Except compared to almost everyone else) it has unleashed both prosperity and leisure which allows us to innovate more.
And it’s a wonderful thing, even above and beyond the fact it amuses me greatly.
Sure most of the time it’s a failure, just like most mutations are ultimately harmful. But in the few times they aren’t, real progress is made that couldn’t be achieved by a thousand planners in a thousand think tanks.
Just because someone sat there, staring at a listing and went “What if I do this?”
According To Hoyt 
I wonder who figured out that putting down brown paper bags or cardboard boxes was not only good mulch but stopped weeds from growing? Just curious.
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Probably an observation of a chunk of cardboard left on a lawn or side lot. And someone extrapolated from that to brown paper bags. AND someone else extrapolated from THAT to putting down opaque plastic sheeting with holes in it for the vegetable plants. No idea who figured that you could use that plastic sheeting to seal in steam or boiling water as a means of killing various molds, fungi, nematodes or other soil pests.
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Somebody with lots of cardboard/paper bags who didn’t want to send them to the landfill. I.e., abundance.
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Probably someone who was picking up trash and noticed hey, wait, under this is wonderfully clear….
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Our third cat belonged to a gaming friend before we took him in. One day I was over at his house, and we saw the cat playing with a Q-tip. So my friend took it away. A few minutes later, there was the cat with a Q-tip. After the third Q-tip he lifted up the edge of the living room rug, and there underneath were a couple of dozen Q-tips that the cat seemingly had been hoarding. . . .
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Indie does this.
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Fiona, my 6-pound feral’ish tabby does this. She learned how to open the drawer, poke open the Q-tip box, pull out three at a time, then do it again when she ran the tips under the carpet or into the corner under the shoes.
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Fortunately, Gort seems indifferent to Q-tips. Dragonflies on the other hand, are one of his favorite toys.
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Still waiting for the annual great firefly chase with ours; every year a firefly seems to get inside at some point during the summer, and of course the cat sees it as slowly flying/floating “toy:” with a light that goes on and off.
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Tj, our ginger male does this too. Had to bury the box. Also does it with zip ties if dad leaves the drawer open even just a bit. Too heavy for Tj to get drawer started opening if fully closed, but any wedge and he pulls it open. Plus golf tees. Irritating because we have to be on top of whatever Tj has drug out for him and his sisters to toss and pack about. Have to keep the dog away from everything. The cats also will pull out the dog toys from her basket, but that’s fine. Dog doesn’t think so. She’s not into sharing. It is hilarious.
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The beginning of wisdom is when your toddler stops to think ‘what will Mom do if I do this?’ and the answer is NOT ‘let’s find out!’
And it occurs to me that pine tar and q-tips might be a good substitute for tar and feathers.
And who guessed an artichoke might be edible?
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There are a number of politicians I’d like to take hot tar covered Q-tips and shove where nature never intended.
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Who can say what nature intended for Q-tips?
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Don’t you know? It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature!
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Just wait until Mother Nature discovers that butter is made by “messing with” natural milk. :twisted:
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Or that five gallon buckets make great planters and it’s so much easier on your back. Just remember to cut a hole in the middle of the bottom of the bucket so the plant can send down a tap root. Everybody puts a couple of small holes in for drainage, they often forget about the tap root. Go behind some businesses and they throw food quality buckets away every day. So yes you can get them cheaper than five bucks a pop. Don’t like dumpster diving for them, most managers will set some aside for you to pick up. You can also find some gardening shops that sell trees, those black tree buckets work as well. Now you can garden anywhere. Don’t like how they look? They now make paint that sticks to plastic, have the grand kids paint them. Kids love anything that allows them to get dirty. Plus it is a sneaky way to get them interested in gardening.
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With four cats, we buy litter by the squarish 5-gallon bucket at Sam’s. Guess what milady’s tomatoes are now planted in, what the garage small-bits are sorted into, what we have spares of JIC a sudden need for storage comes along…
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I get cat litter in a refillable 30-pound bucket. Been using the same bucket for at least 15 years.
———————————
At my house, the ‘things that go bump in the night’ are cats.
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Sam’s buckets hold 42 lbs, and Wal-Mart sometimes stocks a cardboard box of 40 lbs, for when we can’t get to Sam’s or have a surfeit of buckets.
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My dad gets 2 1/2 gallon buckets of ice cream from our local creamery, and guess what we use to store our ice melt, bird seed, bulk beans . . .
We also use five gallon buckets, but those ice cream buckets are quite handy (though they don’t have handles, so there’s that).
When Dad worked as a welder, he’d get these amazingly sturdy white plastic tubs, probably 10-20 gallon capacity, squarish. He cut ’em in half, cut out handles and deburred, and they’ve been our laundry sorting/toting system since I can remember. He also got these blue squarish buckets that he’d cut the tops off, cut out handles, and deburr, and we use them for storage for all our random crap. He also used those to make a hand-wash station for when we need it – just added a spigot to one of the uncut ones. Since it’s squarish and holds water, it works quite well for when you just need a quick rinse when you’re camping!
Dad’s got countless uses for random objects – he’s exceedingly creative that way.
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American Innovation is partially a conceptual holdover from pioneering days. As you may recall, people only brought with them what they could carry, or haul, into frontier territory. Wood was usually plentiful. Metals were not. (One of the reasons for early colonial bog iron mining and smelting ranging from New Jersey all the way up the Atlantic piedmont and into maritime Canada.) Most people brought the basic tools needed to make more tools and other items. Nothing got thrown away as long as there was a least some other use that could be made from it. Containers of all kinds were always reused, and patched repeatedly if possible.
Most hand-held (and actually quite a few modern machines) grain harvesting tools work fine for all of the various grains, and just as well for bringing in hay. The number of uses for a plain old stick probably number in the several millions; especially considering various lengths, diameters or geometry of the cross sections. How many uses are there for a tarp? Heck, just the other day I flipped the hard plastic lawn table upside down, and filled the depressions between the edges and reinforcing ribs with water to give my cat a kitty pool to splash in. (Gort loves to play in shallow water, go figure.)
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“Deader Than A Doornail” came about because the Door was a final use for a nail that might have been used many times before. Folks burned their old homes down to collect the nails because they were rather pricey or time intensive. A Smith might have his apprentice(s) make them for practice, but it was still not cheap as doing it oneself, but a houseful takes a long time too.
Use in a door entails finding nails a bit longer that the thickness of the planking, hammering them into the planks making up the door, then hammering over the points, clinching the boards together. This renders them pretty much unusable from then on. Dead. I’ve been contemplating making a front door in the old style, using cut nails after “forging” the heads a bit for looks and giving them a coat of oil to blacken them while heated. But I’ve hit the old, Time price. Currently seem to have little spare time.
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oh, and my Cole loves to splash in the drink bowls and the tub or sink if a little water is in them. So far I’ve kept him from doing it in the toilet.
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I have to keep the water bowl in the shower because of cats that want to drag it around and slop water everywhere. Now I only have to deal with the wet paw prints.
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mine recirculate, so they keep enough in them to prevent much movement. They sit on a doormat and Cole will lose a toy behind them (when no losing it in the water) and move the two and the mat a bit, but not more than a few inches at most.
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Theirs is a great big 2 quart stainless steel bowl with a rubber pad on the bottom, and I fill it over half full. They still drag it around and slop the water.
They’re determined, that’s for sure.
They get cat litter in the bowl, too, so I have to rinse it out every time I fill it.
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Artemis “drinks” by dunking her paw into the water bowl, then licking it off. Probably a habit from before I managed to get her inside, and places that rainwater accumulated, she couldn’t get her face into.
I suppose it keeps her out of trouble for a while, anyway.
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Used to have one of those large bottle to water bowl contraptions, that allowed the water bowl to stay filled for days. Just make sure when filling it cleaned it really well. Had to give it up. Two feral rescues would “clean out the drinking water”. Thought the thing had a leak until I caught one of them at it. Got rid of it and got a fountain instead. Fountain also works for the cats who insist they have to have their water fresh from water taps.
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Coffee maker? If the .jpg makes it through, here’s mine & no, it’s not safer than it looks/ ;-)
file:///home/jim/Desktop/cof.JPG
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Looks like it didn’t make it through, oh well….
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The first spinning spindles are assumed to be straight sticks. Eventually, someone realized putting a weight on the end of the stick made it rotate longer. Then came all the refinements for size, shape and material used for the weight… (For Mike, WPDE!)
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You just described my entire family. The most famous story is when Dad decided to baste the turkey with the oil suction tube he got out of the garage. It had never been used for its intended purpose, and it served quite well to baste that turkey.
The words “jerry-rig” and “kluge” are very American words, seems to me.
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Doggone Jerry gets the credit for so many things.
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I believe the original term was “jury-rig”, as in a group of people designed the thing. Keeping in mind, Heinlein’s observation about the relationship between the number of legs in a jury and its collective intelligence.
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MomRed’s father used “jury rig.” Since he’d served on two federal grand juries in Houston, I always assumed it had a slightly different meaning …
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Apparently the origin of “jury” in “jury-rigged” is not known, but was nautical. I even found a page on “jury-rigged” vs. “jerry-rigged.”
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That’s the original term, but it has a nautical origin. A ship that had been in battle would jury-rig repairs to masts and spars so they could set sail and continue to fight…or claw their way off a lee shore.
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Use the center of a pen to blow out a keyboard. Laundry pins are plant labels. Window screen as filter for aquaponics. Video cases as book cases for books that are falling apart. Old hoses for dripline.
My sister said yesterday that I’m the “Queen of repurposing” and I like that title. Anyone want to challenge me for it? :)
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Have you tried a stove top percolator? I went to one a few years ago after the death of yet another drip machine. It works nicely with a gas stove. I buy fresh roasted locally and get a very coarse grind. Wonderful coffee and no filters.
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I had it for some years. Somehow went off it.
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That’s the best coffee out there, even from bulk-shelf grounds like Folgers. But it requires minding; if you walk off or even turn your back it’s liable to burn a bit, or the gas to be turned off by one’s conscientious non-coffee-drinking wife well before it’s ready.
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Yes, you do not want to get distracted. I set the timer. Ten minutes from cold to perking, another 5 and then lowest setting on the smallest burner. My wife drinks coffee also and this seems to be just the right formula for us.
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My problem is I am the only one in the house that drinks coffee. A full pot, whether percolator, or machine, even a small 4 cup one, makes no sense.
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Do you use a Keurig? I don’t have one (given my druthers, sometimes an IV drip might be called for), but the cups are convenient. The reusable cups (various brands, including Keurig) seem like a possibility to get a single cup of the Elixir of
LifeWakefullness.The Hilton near the eye specialist’s office uses Keurigs. When I was a frequent flyer for med procedures and followups, I’d stay there and liked the coffee it made. Now my visits are semi-annual and I find the Suites place next door to be better suited. They use round pods, and I haven’t looked for a source of those. (Probably should look at the Chef’store restaurant supply.) So, right now, the first cuppa is from a pod, while the subsequent hits are instant. Caffeine is caffeine and sometimes taste doesn’t matter.
At one time, Keurig tried to quash reusables by putting an optical code on the cups and a reader in the coffeemaker. However, a web search shows that K makes compatible machines (check first, some seem odd) and multiple vendors sell reusable cups. One assumes the backlash was emphatic. (Looks it up: Wiki says it was. Consumer groups aligned with the econazis. Keurig backed down quickly. [VBEG])
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Yes. Got one from Costco. Came with the reusable pod. I generally drink the Costco Hawaiian brand. OTOH not so much a coffee connoisseur, as a “hot beverage in the AM need, now.” Even then I won’t touch it if there is no 1/2&1/2. The real stuff, not powder, not creamers, flavored or otherwise. Hubby has been known to mutter “Do you want some coffee with your cream?” It isn’t quite that bad, honest.
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Many years ago, I got hooked on mocha, which generally means some powdered mix with the first cup of coffee. (Subsequent cups are black because calories and budget.) $SPOUSE got hooked, too, and we were frequent buyers of the Swiss Miss packets from Costco.
Then they stopped getting the sugar-free variety. So much for that option. (I still recall a brief encounter with the nutrition nazis in that aisle. Some people have way too much time to worry about other’s habits.)
Alton Brown to the rescue, and we adapted his hot cocoa recipe (without the chili–$SPOUSE doesn’t do well with really spicy foods) for sugar-free and such. Every so often (yearly, roughly) I’ll get a big bag of cocoa from the supply, and we’re set.
We tried and like the Premier Roasters “Classic Roast” from Chef’store. It’s also affordable and comes in 48 ounce cans. I gave up grinding my own (expensive) beans a long time ago.
FWIW, I’ve known people from Greater New England who prefer their milk to be slightly coffee flavored. :)
RCPete, with an obligatory WPDE
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Herself takes her coffee black, with about 3 big spoonfuls of Swiss Miss per cup. (She found the #10 cans of it on sale a couple of years ago and we’ve been working through a surplus of it.) She’s also an Alton Brown fan: where does one find this legendary recipe?
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I used to exclusively drink International Coffee French Cafe. Can’t find it in stores locally. Can’t stand the French Vanilla, or other flavors. Now it is coffee with somewhere around 1/8 C 1/2&1/2. Not that I’ve ever measured it because it depends on how big the mug is (it is a color, light brown). About 4 prepackaged 1/2&1/2 at a Denny’s or Sheri’s mug, or 1/4″ in a Starbucks Grande (have not been to a Starbucks now since 2019). Despite what hubby says it is not “please add a little coffee to my cream”. I don’t like cold or ice coffee.
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Try a websearch on “alton brown hot cocoa recipe”. Either altonbrown dot com or the food network recipe have the basic one. We use a modified version; cocao*, milk powder and sucralose instead of sugar. We don’t add the cornstarch (never noticed it in the recipe) nor the salt because blood pressure. $SPOUSE rebels at cayenne in cocoa. :)
He also does a “reloaded” one that uses toasted milk powder. This is the first time I saw that one.
(*) The restaurant supply sells Hershey’s in a multi-pound bag. I think it’s about 1.5 gallons of powder.
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Dad used a glass percolator for the coffee he took to work. (I interned there after Dad passed; and understood why he brought his own coffee. Some of the guys ran a table with instant coffee and powdered creamer. It was more popular than the official options. Shudder.) The glass ones clean well and don’t trap the oils like metallic perks do.
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Scariest words an American can say in a relaxed setting with no emergency to hand:
“But what if…?”
“Hey y’all, watch this!”
“You know, if we tweak this and turn that thus and so…”
“Well, one day I really needed…”
“It was just lying around, so….”
“I thought it would look pretty.”
“I thought it would look cool.”
“Well, nothing else has worked, so….”
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“Might as well try it, what could it hurt……”
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“Hold my beer…”
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I ordered a clear dryer hose from Amazon as an outlet vent for a 3D printer.
No problem.
Then I started getting suggestions from Amazon. About ferret supplies. Food, toys, et cetera.
Turns out that clear dryer hoses are one of the most-used “toys” for ferrets…
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LOL
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Amazon is SCARY!
I had NOT been looking at above ground pools. I went in earlier this afternoon, after taking care of the litter box once again, to see about one of the automatic ones. (Still haven’t found one in my price range, alas.) On the front page, there was an ad for an 18′ by 48″ steel frame pool, just like the one we have.
ONE HOUR later, I walked out back to tell $SPOUSE$ that I was heading out to get our younger daughter from work – I said about five words, and CRACK! One of the posts had buckled. (Apparently one of the concrete blocks had managed to settle, and it got unbalanced there.) Command voice, which I rarely use, “Get out. Now.”
Sigh… Sump pump is in it right now, to empty it. I don’t have a spare post, and am unwilling to trust the others after being wrenched so hard (5,000 gallons is just about 20 tons). New one ordered, and I have yet another project for the next week, to figure out exactly what happened and get the foundation fixed again while waiting for it to come in.
$SPOUSE$ guardian angel was obviously flitting around – she did not identify the noise, and Lord only knows what could have happened without that absolutely precise “coincidental” timing. I can fix, replace, repair most things. But not her. Scared the complete crap out of me about five minutes later when the thinking part of my brain caught up.
But – HOW DID THEY KNOW???
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If it’s just gotten hot enough in your area for pools and thinking about pools, you will get targeted advertising about pools.
Of course, now you’ve just talked about pools, so….
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Presented for entertainment purposes only: (Adjusts tinfoil hat)
Amazon Agent Z85743: “Control, advertisement for new pool placed on subject’s main page.”
Control: “Z85743, wait!!!”
Field Agent B5C8U “Control, post on pool has been weakened, ready to fail in 5 minutes.”
Control: “Oh Shit! It’s out of sequence!”
Finis.
I installed an above ground pool in my San Jose back yard the summer of 1989. A bit cool in the fall, but I wasn’t going to empty the pool.
The San Andreas fault had other ideas. That quake sloshed half the water out of the pool (along with destroying all the non-reinforced chimneys in the neighborhood) and crumpled the wall. I used the pool filter and directed the output to a discharge hose from the really good hardware store (OSH was great before Sears bought it) and dumped the remaining water down the driveway.
14 years later I found that my chimney had been broken, but the stainless liner kept it from falling down, (or being noticed until we had a pre-sale inspection) and prevented any fires caused by the broken joint. Speaking of guardian angels…
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More along the lines of “what I am willing to pay for”, but same. Have had this now for a few months. Really makes it a lot easier, even with 4 boxes to clear out.
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I will be taking a look at that. Thanks. Definitely in my current price range after replacing the pool!
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Speaking of American “can do”, and partly inspired by current experience with being dependent, I’m working on a guest post. When I get to a kaputer.
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Good.
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So many things start as “I need to do X, what have I got in the shed I can I use?” and spiral out of control from there. And many of these projects seem to end up involving the buckets cat litter comes in.
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Weeding buckets.
Wash the car buckets.
What do I put the hot tub chemicals, & testing equipment, in to keep next to the hot tub, and not in the laundry room? (Marked. Only one that uses a lid.)
Lawn hose parts, like wands, sprayers, etc., storage.
Garden tool storage.
Carry firewood in.
Tinder storage.
I don’t know where to use the extra – gravel, soil, sand, yet, storage.
Leak buckets.
I know I’m missing something I’ve used them for, but I forget what.
Eventually they do deteriorate and crack
About the only thing I don’t use them for is cat litter. I now get the 42#, split into 4 bags, at Costco. I did for a bit because I had the bags on a lower shelf which the cats found and tore open. Now that it is stored on a higher shelf they leave it alone.
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Leftover metal roofing and 2X4 from a shed project used to build raised beds. Bottom lined with old carpet and cardboard. Filled partway with large limbs and chippings. Soil and critter poop mixed with peat moss and vermiculite with a cheap electric cement mixer. Used plastic milk/water jugs used to protect seedlings. Leftover wire mesh used to protect from hail and critters. Watered with rain barrels hooked to gutters.
Chain link top rail mounted on roof based tripod served as a mast for radio antennas. Fittings salvaged from old boat used tie guy line connected to fan dipole. Leftover #4 cooper ground wire used for UHF antenna experiments. Pizza pan antennas for receiving UHF on SDR dongle. Surplus copper plumbing pipe jpole antennas. Old dial-up modem used as brains for robot. Old spare computers run OpenBSD. Bamboo back scratcher used to fish wires around desks and other furniture.
Spare dog bed used as cat bed in home office since dog hangs out with Larry Spouse and the cats follow Larry around like dogs. Metal trash cans keep rodents out of dry goods like dog food.
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Hi Larry,
Your descriptions of SDR and antennas intrigue me, allow me to introduce myself as a Salt Lake City based Amateur Radio operator. I’d love to hear more about what you are using radios and antennas for.
73 — Alpha Foxtrot Seven Sierra Juliet
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Our family grew up “Making do” ….you need something but what you need is either very expensive or not quite right…so you find something that is almost right and adjust it to have it Make it DO what you want. I have done several wood working things that I had to make do with another kind of wood or screen that made the screen door or something Fixed instead of buying a new $50-100 screen door for $10-20! I Needed a coffee table that is durable—instead of paying for a glass table (breakable!) build a new coffee table with plywood, wheels, Short spindles (for rails) for the corner supports and a convenient middle H with one side for small shelves, the other side for Coffee Table books to stand up…Has lasted some 30 years now and NOT broken.
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We have been rebuilding an old house that we had to gut to the studs much to our surprise. My spousal unit is inspired by the repurposing of all things pallets. planters, outdoor garbage cans, decorative hangings, the uses are endless and the wood can be quite nice. especially with the new planer i received fro my birthday!
Come from generations of jack leg engineers as well as for real ones. Improvise also means improve!
I think is a human trait but like many things American we have participated in a grand experiment to free humans from the drudge, thus giving much freer reign to the imagination.
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Things made from PVC pipe.
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I have a nice big stock of various PVC pipe sizes and fittings. Good stuff.
…but there’s this stuff called “2020 aluminum extrusion.” Lots and lots of fun to play with.
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So I had a mini-adventure at LibertyCon, where one car was parked in the structure and basically out of gas (the panel display said there were four miles left in the tank), and I got taken to nearest gas station with one of those new government-mandated plastic gas cans. Filled it up, after taking two minutes to figure out how to uncap it, because of course a government-mandated cap can’t be intuitive. Then took it back and was forced to improvise.
Because if there is a way to turn the cap into a spout that can pour into a gas tank, I still haven’t worked it out. So a knife and an empty water bottle came together, and an improvised funnel was the result. Not pretty, got gasoline smell all over my hands, but it worked.
There is nothing government will not louse up, if given half a chance.
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There are kits for (supposedly) older ‘cans’ that can be (law? what law?) used to make the new designs less stupid. Though if buying new for oneself, saving up and getting a right proper Type 1 or Type 2 can will indeed cost more, but you’ll take less aspirin, etc.
I have a couple kit-adapted gas cans and a Right Proper kerosene can (What make it a kero can? It’s BLUE instead of RED). And the kero can is easily the best of the lot.
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Probably because I watch other videos about making modern carp work like it should, but I keep getting the ones about fixing gas cans on the tube of ewe. At least I’ll know how to do it if I ever have a need.
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I was at a Buc-ee’s a few months ago, just browsing what was available while my wife took the kids to the restroom. And I noticed some large red cans, with pour spouts, for sale. Taking a closer look, I saw that they all had a prominent label saying something like, “This is NOT a gas can and does NOT comply with federal legislation #mumblemutter.” About the only thing missing was the “wink, wink, nudge, nudge”.
Among the problems that Americans will cheerfully work around is idiotic regulations.
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I love the story of the Prohibition-era grape juice vendor who helpfully gave detailed instruction of what NOT to do, lest the Volstead Act etc. be violated….
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Technically, only the sale of alcohol was prohibited.
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As I recall, the manufacture was, with some exemptions (including personal?) was disallowed, as was importation and distribution. But… it has been a while.
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A “strange but cool stuff” catalogue has steel jerry cans that are NOT FOR GAS and DO NOT COMPLY with EU and CA and other rules and have very nice spouts and vent holes with caps and … FOR COLLECTION AND DISPLAY ONLY. wink wink, hing hint
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I had a boss-in-law who made a trailer out of airplane parts. The Feds wouldn’t allow them to be used for airplanes any more. But for a roadable trailer? Why waste them? Even better, when it got stolen, everyone on the airport recognized it when it came back, sporting a quick and dirty paint job, behind a different car.
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That follows a long tradition dating back to WWII and the postwar years. The only aluminum campers being built during the war were from “scraps” snuck out of the aviation plants. Afterwards, the trend continued, and many a worker and a few companies made the switch from wartime aluminum aircraft production to peacetime camper production.
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Our SCA household has a bake oven made from aircraft aluminum. Set a couple of big propane burners under that puppy and you can bake just about anything. And we have.
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After WWII and into the 1960s, a lot of surplus airplane drop tanks got turned into Bonneville salt flat racers. Those streamlined shapes cut the wind nicely, and they had enough room to fit the engine, running gear, and a driver.
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In 1997 we two decided on a last mile solution after blackboxing entire homes. We got the highest patent rating ever in or then fortune 50 – then the CIA stepped in and threatened everybody…. so I did history on our idea before we had it… In the 1840s Sir https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Tyndall attended a presentation of Faust at the Paris Opera. The show had hired a French Physicist to help them make a beam of light come out of Mephistopheles’ mouth. This was before they had incandescence lights and so the only option was arc light that are too smokey and dangerous on a stage so they opened the windows in the basement and had an arc light focused into a water hose. Mephistopheles had a faucet on the other cheek and when he needed the beam of light from hell the faucet was turned on. It was like our current lighted fountains and the beam followed the water flow to the target. John Tyndall was like WOW!.. He went back to his labs but after years of work bubbles in the water interfered with analog transmission too much and he switch to glass. Years later the glass got cladding by others and evolved into fiber optics….. We wanted to do water for the last mile to the home through water pipes to the watermeter which would become a router. We could get around the analog problem by using digital methods we currently used in the much more noise prone RF for CDMA cellular. It worked perfectly in our test labs. If the 3 letter goons had not stepped in you might be getting your internet that way today. (blue green lasers – the same in blue ray players, Water pipes work like poorly clad fiber optics) The neighborhood pressure reduction valve would have been where internet went to real fiber.
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Now that raises the question of why the CIA would be interested in (domestic?) water-pipe transmissions.
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Hmm. City water is going to have to come out here (as soon as I want to mess with the bureaucracy) because the valve on their side is broken such that it can’t be turned off.
Now I want to be there to see whether there is any unusual light coming out of the line…
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That reminds me we have to check to see how EWEB setup the shutoff valve on the new meter. The old one had a locked-valve. Instead someone (presume was the prior homeowner, but could have been original contract plumber) put in a lever, much easier to use. New meter because they finally got around to giving us one of the radio/wifi (? whatever tech they are using) meters. So much for not getting one until we brought the existing meter up to the current front yard grade, or we lowered the part around the meter back to the original grade. Our take was “don’t give us the new meter, we don’t care.” One day there was paint all over the plants, sidewalk, and road, near the meter. A week later EWEB crew showed up and replaced the meter. Um, okay. Still don’t care. But we didn’t have to pay for it.
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Having done Renn faire for a number of years, most of the family will go into stores, (hardware, hobby, office supply, Dollar Tree, sewing) and start looking at things, and thinking, “That would make a really cool…X…with just a little decorating”. (Hubby is the exception, he goes there and thinks, “That would make a really cool weapon…”). Yard sales, same thing.
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“There’s only a few of us and there’s a few million of them. Their imaginations outnumber our own.”
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Ox slow. Ox know this. Can be very slow on uptake. Yet, at work, sometimes ox wonder why ox not think of something aaaaages earlier. Then have the Sad Realization: Nobody else did, either. OR… they did think of it, but failed to ACT upon it.
“Somebody should…”
…Put a sign above mirror with that, and “Here is an image of Somebody.” ?
Haven’t done that…. yet.
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Just an illustration, I’m sure, but I am a sucker for wanting to build random contraptions as means of conveyance.
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A couple-three decades ago, somebody was driving an unusual motorcycle around San Jose. From the few times I saw it (invariably from right behind; could not get to other angles no matter how I tried) it looked like it started life as an early ’60s Honda (Honda 50 maybe), but the rear wheel drive was missing in favor of a 3′ or so diameter prop. It did have a guard for various values of safe-to-be-near. It didn’t seem that loud, so I wonder just how much power was available.
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Living in rural areas where the nearest decent supply of just about anything is minimum an hour and a half away (pre-internet) caused a lot of self-sufficiency to spring up. My uncles could fix a car with spit and bailing wire (maybe). . . . but they actually fixed a car with a stick and superglue once. A smoking oil leak because an o-ring was worn away. I watched two of them look at my sister’s engine. We’d driven up to one uncle’s for a flying visit and the other uncle happened to drive in as well. The first uncle saw the smoking engine and told her to open the hood. The second uncle drove in as he was looking at it and got underneath to look at it from there. Between the two of them, they figured out exactly which part was the problem, remove it, pound out the center of it and hand it to her so she could get a replacement. Then they looked around the ground til they found a stick about the same diameter, clip it down to the right size, and glue it in to the outer bit. It held until she could get it fixed. No more smoking engine.
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“Stobology” is a term I heard for that. You find a stob of wood, cut it to the proper shape/size, then …
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I once watched an Air Force sergeant whittling little bits of wood until they were the right size to stuff into the oil cooler of a T-29 training plane to block off some oil leaks.
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@ Mike Houst > “American Innovation is partially a conceptual holdover from pioneering days. As you may recall, people only brought with them what they could carry, or haul, into frontier territory.”
Not too surprisingly, Brigham Young is credited with promoting this 19th-century earworm maxim for the Latter-day Saint pioneers:
“Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.”
This, plus our natural inclination, is why we have 6 storage sheds in addition to the garage (what, some people use that for cars??)
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Often I need something to solve a problem and either I find nothing which does or the thing which does is too costly. That’s when I go wandering around the local Menards or Lowes looking at stuff and thinking “can I use this to help me solve my problem.”
These are fun times if the problem isn’t desperate. Also being a pack-rat I usually do this first around home and my workshop only going out if I can’t rework something I already have. Doing things like this for over 60 years I have a large number of things to work with. My pack-rat status happened because every time I throw something away it is usually just what I need later to fix something.
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I don’t always come up with fresh ideas for reuse/repurpose, but I’m good at borrowing/stealing ideas. On a winter trip over the Cascades, we saw a house with plastic panels where the summertime porch was open. I can do that. The current version has to change for easier installation (things got heavier from 20 years ago. Sigh.) and to match some trim changes on the house.
A friend mentioned using a piece of a hay rake to get pine needles. Didn’t know anybody with a spare rake, but the farm store had tines that slid over 3/4″ pipe. Bolts to hold the tines in place and a frame to mount the rake to the tractor, and I have a 9′ wide pine needle rake. (We have a lot of trees.)
I was “gifted” with a bunch of cedar 2 x 6s when a then-friend (also control freak, as we discovered when she disapproved of how I used the unsolicited material) was redoing a deck, and both used and offcut new stock was available. Several tables and 4 chairs loosely based on the Adirondak were the first. (The burnable cribs made to hold several yards of picked up pine cones for burning ticked off the then-friend. She thought we’d use it all, according to her wishes. In ways she specified. Nope, she gave it, I didn’t ask for it, and saved them a dump run.)
Most of that batch of cedar is used up. OTOH, I dismantled our deck last year (fire hazard). The ideas are forming, plus I have a century’s worth of kindling.
I’ve adapted designs for tools and shop stuff. The shop-made drum sander used surplus parts from a Silicon Valley semiconductor fab. I also got 3″ silicon wafer boxes (yes, that old) that would have been tossed. Those are handy for storing nuts and bolts. A couple of DVD shelf units with extra dividers holds that batch.
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I have a bunch of old beams that I have resawn into 2”x6+” stuff. Decently tight & straight grain. Salvaged from demo at work. Gonna build 5 panel doors out of them for the house to replace the crappy flat birch hollowcore doors from the 50’s.
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Innovation has much to do with the penalties for being wrong. In my years (deccoughades) of Navy time in the Pacific and IO, I saw innovation less in areas and organizations where innovators were subject to the censure of neighbors or the powers-that-be. It did not matter if the idea was good, only that the proper credit was given, face saved, bribe paid, etc.
It’s why you always find one or more western co-authors on every Chinese scientific paper. Any innovative ideas seeming to violate Xi’s orthodoxy can be blamed on the westerner.
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Australians used to be notorious for finding creative new uses for things. Back when an electric percolator was the state of the art in coffee makers, some Aussies complained to the manufacturer on the other side of the world about the new and improved model. They finally sent a man to Oz to find out what was up. It turned out what Aussies wanted was a coffee pot that made soup just as well as the old model.
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