What things have you made from junk?

[wolram]

What have you made from it? The first thing i made was a cart, from old pram
wheels and cadged wood, i used to make radios from stuff thrown on the tip.

But may be there is to much money these days and people just buy what they
want.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

What have you made from it (junk)?

Mostly it works the other way around for me. However, once I bought a complicated toy (a kind of train set) at a flea market for 25 cents. I think the original cost $20, but there was an important piece missing so it wouldn't work. I figured out what the missing piece had to be from the picture on the box and made a copy out of cardboard and salvaged the toy.

 

[wolram]

Some of my first motor bikes were bitsa's, vitualy any part that could be adapted to fit, but lots of people did the same.

 

[BobG]

Two methanol bottling machines - one for plastic bottles and one for cans. Of course, they started out as bottling machines, old enough that they may have been the first invented ... but they were definitely junk.

When I first got there, the bottles were generally filled by a machine at one end of the line, then either spilled or forcefully ejected methanol upon reaching the capping machine, and then they were manually refilled and capped at the end of the line. The housewives working there used to hate what the methanol did to their hands and we all hated having methanol splashed into our eyes. We used to remove any evidence of use and even blew dust onto them whenever the fire department was scheduled for an inspection.

A few rubber bands, a custom made clamp, some cardboard shims, a paper clip and a lot fine tuning of different bolts and both worked like a charm - you could even tell when the bottles started to come up short of methanol (the machine could bottle faster than the main supply tank could pump - ideally, the local reserve would run low just about break time).

The plastic bottle machine always skipped a bottle when the methanol started running out (the tension was so finely tuned that the bottle's didn't have enough momentum to push through to the clamp if they were short of methanol). For the cans, I wound up having to rely on my sense of musical pitch. The cans would rattle as the belt carried them down the line. As soon as I heard that warning low pitched rattle, I knew the cans were coming through low on methanol - a little practice and I could even pinpoint exactly which was the first 'short can' just by sound.

The housewives loved me. One of the foremen loved me (the other was worried our hours would get cut if the machine started working properly). The owner loved me. We didn't even have to hide the fact that we were using the machines from the fire department, anymore (thankfully, they never looked too close - paperclips, rubberbands, and pieces of cardboard don't look all that impressive).

 

[wolram]

BobG, from one that has been in the packaging industry for to many years,
i say," good one", this trade does nurture such inventiveness.

 

[Danger]

Way too many to remember, let alone count. I'm still using parts from a 1923 Royal typewriter.
Let's see, now:
several Hallowe'en costumes; fake fireplace for theatre use made from used cardboard cores, a couple of sheets of chrome polyester, left-over bearings from something or other, and the motor from a Selectric II; replaced broken toilet flush lever with platen advance lever from a Selectric II, a stray bolt, and a cam from a dot-matrix printer; quite a few weapons of various types; and I'm still finding new things to do with several VCR bits. I also use bits of one thing to repair other things, such as using a nylon dart shaft to replace the interlock switch trigger on a blender.

 

[hypatia]

I'm using my old PC as a security system for my garage..but haven't hooked it up to the phone lines yet, so it can only type out CALL POLICE.
I took a old door, set of stairs with a great oak bannister and put it out in my yard, the door opens yet goes no where. But it looks great covered with sweet peas and watermellon growing on it.
I've made several bird baths from old china pie dishes, drilled through and some threaded rebar and a nut ..simple and cute.
Way too many mini-bikes to mention, all called Da'pooshes, cause you had to push start them..lol.

 

[wolram]

I'm using my old PC as a security system for my garage..but haven't hooked it up to the phone lines yet, so it can only type out CALL POLICE.
I took a old door, set of stairs with a great oak bannister and put it out in my yard, the door opens yet goes no where. But it looks great covered with sweet peas and watermellon growing on it.
I've made several bird baths from old china pie dishes, drilled through and some threaded rebar and a nut ..simple and cute.
Way too many mini-bikes to mention, all called Da'pooshes, cause you had to push start them..lol.

A lady of so many talents, and completely nutty to boot, who could ask for more

 

[brewnog]

I reckon mine sound pretty pathetic compared to hypatia's, but never mind.

My first go-kart was made from two old prams, and some wood we had lying around. Didn't need an engine, - Sheffield has plenty of hills. But this thing weighed a tonne! I used to tell my sister we could take it in turns; me riding down the hills and her pulling the bloody thing back up again.

Made a lovely wheeled tool cabinet/workbench out of old angle iron and some aluminium sheet. Designed it to fit some plastic tray-type drawers that I'd got from a cupboard which had rotted.

And I made a fantastic extention cabinet for my guitar amp. The frame was pine timber , and the panels were 18mm MDF, both of which we'd got left over from some big DIY job. Bodged a 12" 150W Eminence speaker in it. It sounds sweeter than when being played through the original Marshall amp!


And a really interesting table lamp from a Ford Sierra indicator lamp I found, and some scrap timber...

 

[wolram]

Brewy, it is nice to know that your hammers have a nice home.