Out it goes

I’m somewhat of a pack rat. Throwing stuff out is hard for me. So much junk has potential to be rebuilt into something useful. In spite of my desire to hold onto stuff I’ve been filling up heavy duty trash bags. 

Half my mud room is full of tools and materials. It’s been long overdue for a complete overhaul. I’ve been stuck at home recently and tackling the mud room has been a good way to pass the time. On the bright side I’ve found some tools I thought were lost and gone forever. 

There’s also a lot of just plain garbage. There are tubes of glues and gasket cement that probably solidified years ago. Why did I keep so many empty bags and packaging? Maybe I just need to keep a trash container in the mud room so useless stuff can be easily thrown away? 

Then there is the weird stuff that isn’t exactly junk, but it’s stuff I’ll never use. Things like 1980s Mercedes Benz alternator brushes, ambulance light bar motors and reflectors, and the center console insert for a 1994 Ford pickup truck. Why did I save a bunch of office chair wheels that were replaced with better ones? Who knows?

There’s also a small fortune of nuts, bolts, electrical fixtures, plumbing connectors, and whatnot in serious need of organization. Have you priced that stuff lately? I’m pretty glad I didn’t throw that stuff away. Good thing I saved up a lot of containers. 

-Sixbears

Junk wood season

October is what I call junk wood season. It’s a transition month from warmer to cooler weather. Actually, here in the North Country, some days are quite cold. Last year we got our first snow in October and it didn’t melt until late spring.

This is the season when people really don’t want to spend money heating their house. Those of us with woodstoves hate to burn our quality wood so early in the season. The house tends to overheat. We also run the risk of running out of quality firewood before winter is over.

This is a good time to burn lower quality stuff. For example, right now I’m burning aspen and some softwood. Lesser grade woods don’t put out the BTUs and they don’t last as long. That’s fine when you only really need a fire in the evening and again in the morning.

The aspen came from my daughter’s place. The trees were growing into the power lines and had to come down. My softwood came from a friend who was cutting down trees for garden space. The wood, while not the highest quality, was free. My son-in-law even delivered the aspen, so you can’t beat that.

I’m also taking down a deck that has too much rot to repair. The wood was never pressure treated so it’s not toxic. The deck boards, once chopped up, will make good kindling.

We are closing the house for the winter in about three weeks. The junk wood should keep us warm enough until then.

-Sixbears

Twilight of Manufacturing

In yesterday’s blog I mentioned that couple who were traveling around the world using human power had been using second hand $100 bikes. They’ve been on them for thousands and thousands of miles with few problems.

However, it wasn’t just luck. One of the travelers, Zoe, has a background in Industrial design. She’s firmly convinced that a lot of older stuff was put together much better. There was a small weight penalty for going with older bikes, but they aren’t racing. It’s more important that the bikes hold together. The last thing you want is some major breakdown on a Peruvian back road in the middle of nowhere.

My auto mechanic is not a big fan of modern manufacturing techniques. One of his big complaints is the amount of cheap plastic built into cars these days. They use plastic on critical components that used to be metal. Even expensive cars use cheap plastic.

It’s not even good plastic. It’s possible to make good plastic parts that last. Like everything else, the good stuff cost more money. Instead they use junk that’s guaranteed to fail.

Marine stainless steel is something else that’s taken a huge tumble in quality. US made stainless from the 70s is much better than the junk coming out of India and China. People have been known to seek out junk boats just for the steel hardware to put on new boats.

Recently I was talking to a restaurant owner who uses a lot of induction stoves in his business. I happened to mention that my old cast iron works just fine. He told me that a lot of the new “cast iron” doesn’t have enough real iron in them to work right. The guy claimed that magnets won’t even stick to some of them.

So what’s going on here? Have we forgotten how to build stuff? The main issue appears to be money. Things are being manufactured as cheaply as possible. Personally, I’d rather have a few good things that last than piles of broken junk.

-Sixbears

Mired in Muck

I got back to trouble shooting my well water supply line issues. There have been a lot of distractions requiring my attention. To be honest, the though digging out the line from the basement side was discouraging. However, there's no putting it off any longer. The problem doesn't appear to be on the well side. It's time to face the horrors of the basement.

The house has a partial basement with a gravel floor. The area by the water line has been accumulating junk for years. One of the problems with working in the basement is that I've had to admit to myself that a lot of my stuff down there is junk. Since I've been unable to find a use for most of that stuff for years, it's time to let it go.

Just clearing up the area around the bench filled four large trash bags. Not everything was junk. In fact, I'd found some useful things that I'd totally forgotten about.

Unfortunately, while moving the bench out of the cramped basement, it bumped into my jury rigged plumbing. The jostling caused one of the joints to start leaking. A lot of water poured out before everything was shut down and repaired.

The area where the supply line comes into the basement is the lowest spot. Everything turned to mud. Rather than struggle with that mess, I decided to wait a day for it to dry out. That was a setback, but it shouldn't take me too long to dig up the line. There's a ninety degree elbow that has to be removed before my pipe snake and bore-scope can go down the line. It's possible that debris got jammed in that elbow, which would account for drop in water pressure. My fingers are crossed.

-Sixbears

Harvesting the junk pile

Snow and freezing rain finally came to an end Saturday morning. The sun came out and temperatures rose into the low 50s. It felt wonderful to see the snow melt away. Perfect weather to knock off a project from my list.

It was a good day to tackle the brickwork around my stove pipe. I'd hopped to be able to repair it, but in the end everything got ripped out. The old red break was replaced with commercial firebrick for industrial boilers. A few years ago a friend of mine worked as a boiler maker's apprentice and scored some left over brick. I knew the day would come when it would come in handy.

Originally the brick was going to be used in a rocket stove project, but I decided to invest in a kitchen cook woodstove instead.

To the untrained eye it would appear that there's some junk stuffed under my deck and in my basement. It's not junk, it's just treasures that haven't found a use yet.

Hope everyone has a happy Easter. I'm spending it with friends and family. The weather here is cold, but the people are warm.

-Sixbears

When I'm done with a car

It's done. We got rid of our 2002 Chevy Cavalier. The brakes: lines, rotors, and pads were gone. Also there was possibly a leak in the master cylinder. The CV joints were making clunking sounds. The exhaust system was held up with wire coat hangers. The body was kept together with a disturbingly large amount of spray expansion foam and fiberglass.

Surprisingly, the engine started. In fact, after sitting inside a giant snowbank for 4 months, it turned right over. The engine ran rough and big clouds of white smoke blew out the exhaust, but it ran. The smoke might have been something as simple as the gas going bad over the winter, or it could have been as serious as a blown head gasket.

What does one do with such a fine fine car? Trade it in? That would have raised the price the of the deal. Sell it to a 16 year old kid? How could I have slept at night? This car once collided with a moose.

We did the only wise thing and called the local junk yard. (I mean auto salvage.) They were willing to haul it away for free. The fact that they also wrote a check for $100 was a true bonus. We didn't lose a car, we gained another parking space.

This car died well. All the major problems happened pretty much at the same time. The worse is when a car keeps having $300 - $500 dollar repairs over a number of months. You tell yourself that each repair would be last, but it never is. The thing to do with such a money pit is to drive it behind the barn and put a bullet through the engine.

So now we have a nice new car. I expect to drive it until the wheels fall off, or we come to the end of the petroleum age. Whichever comes first.

-Sixbears

Apple toys

Anyone else think it's ironic that Apple has made a watch? Thanks in large part to smart phones we no longer need a watch to tell the time.

Yes, the Apple watch does much more than tell the time. So what? I can't think of one really burning need it satisfies -unless one counts the need to have the latest Apple toy.

Early technology adopters pay a huge price for being first in line. I'm usually way back in the pack. That way by the time I get into something it has proven its value, the bugs are worked out, and the price has come down. I was an early adopter of solar electric technology, but it was the price of freedom and independence. Those old solar panels are still cranking out power too.

Most electronic gadgets plummet in value very quickly. Ever get excited about 10 year old electronics? Think about how worthless a 10 year old Apple watch will be. Anyone still enjoying their LISA computer? Didn't think so.

There is a limited market in old electronics, but it's a nostalgia market. They aren't so much selling equipment as they are selling memories. However, for every person who has fond memories of their old gameboy there are piles of electronic junk best forgotten.

The Apple watch may catch on. I assume the company has done plenty of market research. Who knows, maybe in the future it will be useful and the price will be right. That future isn't here yet, in my opinion. I've got a lot of other more pressing needs than a new wrist toy.

-Sixbears

Junk tools

My father-in-law picked up a big air compressor for next to nothing. It had a large air tank and lots of hoses and accessories. The only problem was it didn't work. This compressor, like generators, pumps, and many other tools, was built in China. Replacement parts are almost never available.

Just read reviews of Chinese built generators sometime. Ignore the reviews from people who just got one and it fired up. Look at the reviews from people who actually use them for a living and work them hard. Those reviews are terrible. Quite a few are broken right out of the box.

Sometimes it's possible to do what my father-in-law did and fabricate parts yourself. That's what it takes.

I used to look down on equipment that use small Briggs and Stratton engines. They are pretty low tech and have been around forever. Now I look for them just for those reasons. Parts and manuals are readily available.

Good quality equipment is still available, but they aren't cheap. If your business depends on your equipment working, spend the money. That also goes for people who buy equipment for emergency use. If the grid goes down and your cheap Chinese generator fails when you really need it, will you be thinking about what a bargain it was?

There are times when I will buy cheap power tools. If I'm doing a job that needs special equipment, but I never expect to use it again, I might go the cheap route. If the equipment fails it will still be on warranty. I once blew through a pile of guaranteed wrenches. They'd snap and I'd go down to the store, get a replacement and snap that one too. Eventually one lasted long enough to do the job. The store was getting really really sick of seeing me, but that wasn't my problem.

As for my father-in-law's compressor? His cobbled together repair lasted a year. Then he tore it down and did another cheapo repair. He's still using it.

-Sixbears

Every part of the Buffalo

It's been said that Native Americans used every part of the buffalo. Nothing went to waste. I'm not carving up a buffalo, but I do carve up pieces of dead technology.

I gave up on trying to fix the old inverter that came with the van. It has too many obsolete parts. Just throwing it away wasn't an option. There are other useful parts to be salvaged first. The heavy duty DC cables and plug will go on whatever inverter I buy to replace the old one. It had a nice medical grade GFI AC power plug with will find a home somewhere. One prize is the cooling fan. Many cooling fans in electronic equipment run off of 12 volts DC. They make nice little fans for bringing a little fresh air into my sailboat's cabin. Then there's a big pile of screws, nuts and bolts.

As you can imagine, I've got a hard time throwing anything away. Sometimes it drives my lovely wife nuts. Over the years, she has learned. Salvaged materials can save a lot of money.

One person's junk is another's treasure. What separates treasure from junk? Knowledge is the big one. There's no use collecting junk if you don't know how to do anything valuable with it. I'm continually amazed at the number of people who have no idea how the technology of our world is put together. We are supposed to be tool using animals with big brains.

It only makes sense to have at least some rudimentary idea how keep things going. I've run into adult males who don't know how to change a light bulb. They deserve to stumble around in the dark.

That's not to say we should know everything about every bit of modern technology. It's too complex. However, with the proper tools and information, a lot can be figured out. Along with tools and information, we need materials. If the materials can be salvaged, that's even better.

-Sixbears

Pile of healing

In my family, we used to say that given enough junk, my dad could repair or build anything. When he sold his house and moved to a trailer in Florida, all that junk had to stay behind.

It wasn’t really junk by then, but raw materials. He had organized piles of scrap metals, plastics, wood, hardware, wire, motors, electronics, fabrics, just about anything imaginable.

Most of this stuff was snapped up by people from the same school of thought. They tend to drive old trucks with big tool boxes in the back. You never know when something might need to be taken apart and hauled away.

My buddy Jeff calls his scrap collection his “pile of healing.” With the junk from the pile he can make most things better. His wife wasn’t too keen on that pile until he showed her how much money it saved them. We built a nice solar panel rack from junk out of the pile. In fact, we saved literally thousands of dollars on his solar electric installation by digging through the pile.

The trailer hitch on my van is the happy marriage of scrap from two different fix it guys. It takes skills and tools to make it happen, but sure pays off in the long run.

While not in my dad’s league, I’m a bit of junk collector myself. Today it hit me how far down that road I’ve traveled. My lovely wife and I were talking about our woodstove in the basement. It takes too long for the heat to make its way upstairs. What it really needs is a hood with some ductwork to channel the hot air directly upstairs.

Well . . . I’ve got this hood from a glass blowing furnace that would almost fit. All I have to do is modify it with some metal from the jacket of a scrapped hot water tank. There’s some left over hot air duct that could direct the hot air to a repurposed cold air return register. Of course the whole thing will be fastened together by salvaged screws and rivets.

By the way, the last time I visited my dad in Florida, he had just added a second shed for his stuff. Over time he’s slowly acquired a somewhat scaled down scrap collection. There is no stopping an old tinkerer. There’s always something that needs to be repaired or built.

-Sixbears

Truck Tricks

Truck Tricks

It’s always something. I got my truck back from the garage over the weekend. The mechanic did a fine job fixing the brakes. Monday, it worked well to tow the sailboat to Lake Umbagog. Leaving the lake, the truck started a bit sluggishly. The next day it wouldn’t start at all.

After charging up the batteries, the truck fired right up. However, the alternator wasn’t generating any power. I certainly wasn’t going to take the truck back to the garage. An alternator isn’t that hard to change, and doesn’t require special tools. The local junk yard had a replacement for $45. I could afford the price of junk yard part, but not a dealership part, especially after paying for brake work.

Some people really get into working on cars. I’ve never been one of them. All I want from my vehicles is for them to work. They don’t have to impress people, confer status or look nice. Recently a lot of vehicles around here suffered hail damage. My truck might have too, but it’s too hard to tell with all the old nicks and dings. Let’s just say I don’t waste any money on car wax.

Today was a pretty decent day to be a shady tree mechanic. Beats the last time a friend and I changed the alternator. Temperatures were not too far about zero. Tools kept falling from frozen fingers into the snow. Even working alone, this job went much faster.

It is a real satisfying feeling to do a repair job, fire up the engine, and have everything work the first time.

Now all I have to do is figure out where to tow the sailboat to next.

-Sixbears

Salvage

A salvage economy takes the remains of the previous economy and repurposes it. It happens all the time.

After the days of the Egyptian Pharaohs, their monuments and tombs were taken apart for the building materials. Much easier to take apart a pyramid than quarry fresh stone and haul it to the city.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union the salvagers moved in. So much stuff was taken apart for scrap steel that it depressed world steel prices. The average Russian reused just about anything they could get their hands on. Since the currency was no good for a while, barter kept some economic activity going. Salvaging was a big part of that economy.

Much of the world's economy is in trouble. Imagine if you will, what will happed to world commerce should the US dollar fail. For all intents and purposes, the dollar is a world currency. Other countries use the dollar as a reserve currency. Most of the world's oil is traded in dollars. US dollars are no longer backed by gold, but by the petroleum in other people's countries. The system made sense when the US was the world's major oil exporter. It's a bit of a rip off now, and some oil producers are looking to get away from the dollar.

Dimitry Orlov's "Reinventing Collapse" speculates that the US is going the way of the Soviet Union. He's not alone. Our collapse could be happening any day now. We could be in one now.
All empires fall.

Don't let that get you down. Think of all the salvage opportunities. Many already have. Think of all the foreclosed and abandoned houses. They've been stripped of their wire, pipe, fixtures, siding, right down to the timbers. Unlicensed freelance salvagers (a more generous label than thief) have recycled many houses already. They got in on the ground floor. (and took the floor too!)

Eventually salvage becomes organized. It's nothing new. A few years ago the mill in my hometown closed. It wasn't too long before the place was bought by a dismantling company. Tools, equipment, and machinery were stripped out of the buildings. Eventually the buildings themselves were taken apart.

My dad was always a great collector of junk. We used to joke that given enough junk, he could build anything. His backyard was organized. Angle iron in one pile, aluminum in another, pipe in another, sheet steel in another, and so on and so on. His basement was full of shelves and jars of salvaged items: screws, nuts, bolts, wire, washers, rivets, gages, electronics, sewing machine parts, etc..

He had the tools to build things with all those parts: welders, air tools, drill presses, power tools of all sorts, files, hammers, wrenches, glues, and of course -duct tape. Just as important, he had the knowledge and skill to make use of everything.

I can't but help follow in his footsteps. There's a lot of stuff around my place that I just can't throw away. I've had piles of salvaged windows taking up space for ten years or more. So far only used a few. Built a solar batch hot water heater using old windows and a propane water heater tank. Still have the outer sheet steel from the water tank. My truck could use a few good steel patches. Most of the rest of the windows are going into next month's greenhouse project.

My truck is largely parts salvaged from other trucks. My buddy Jeff has been collecting old Fords and Ford parts for years. Jokingly, I refer to my truck as being to the "Jeff Standard." When the starter failed, Jeff was right there with a salvaged part. It runs fine. If for some reason I had to give all the parts from Jeff back to him, the truck would fall apart.

America overbuilt just about everything and if we didn't build it, we imported it. Those days are coming to an end. Enter the salvage economy. We might give it a sanitized name like recycling. No matter. We will end up dismantling the monuments to our gods. The endless miles of strip malls, our monument to our god of money, will be torn down for parts.

Knowing what to do with salvaged materials is a darn good skill to have. Wouldn't hurt to know Jeff either.

-Sixbears