[TheForge] Re: Use it or toss it?

[Mike Spencer]

Bruce quoth:

> I lean toward the hoarders myself, but the counter argument is worthy,
> if phrased correctly.  If you have a functional shop, excess equipment
> will just get in the way.  Storage can be expensive.  If you can
> convert the item into $$, you come out ahead.

Well, considering that most of the old tnings we use are no longer
articles of commerce and that much of the newer stuff is very costly,
I never feel like I'm ahead when I part with some (even potentially)
useful whatsit and end up with nothing but money.  There's not much
out there that I want that doesn't (1) cost a *lot* of money or (2)
require extensive, expensive, tedious search, travel, shipping and/or
negotiation to acquire.

> Failing that, trade it off for something you need more, or even just
> get it into the hands of someone who will use it and who can
> reciprocate the favor some day.

Now that's more like it.  I recently gave away a 6" leg vise with
damaged but usable screw to a neighbor. This guy built a sawmill
almost entirely out of junk, supported his family with it and put the
kids through college.  Guy like that should *not* have only a little
4" bench vise.  And I was already behind on my share of reciprocal
favors.

> What is WRONG is to junk it.  I hate seeing all the stuff put out as
> junk every week in the burbs.

Here, between 10 and 50 miles beyond the burbs (depending on how you
calculate it) we have a "Clean-up Week" (aka Big Junk Day) twice a
year.  A blacksmith can get some very useful stuff during the 2 weeks
that this goes on because people are never sure when their pickup day
is and put all manner of crap out by the roadside a week or two early.
Last year I built a fume exhaust system entirely from BJD
acquisitions.  Some people even politely arrange their roadside heaps
of junk so that the salvagable stuff can be grabbed by people like me
without having to root through the wet carpet, broken dishpans and
crumbled plasterboard.

But the sorts of people who own stuff like blacksmithing gear or old
machinery tend to be too crafty to put it by the roadside on BJD.

OTOH, what could I do with an infinite supply of partially corroded
barbecues?  I hauled a couple home but have exhausted the ideas for
using bits of crappy consumer-grade metalwork around the shop. :-)

- Mike

-- 
Michael Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada       .~. 
                                                           /V\ 
mspencer at tallships.ca                                     /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/                        ^^-^^

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