Half drunk & wandering

[jvan1954]

Several of the bolts holding my drive sprocket "wallered" out on the road. JBed them in to get me home and ended up forgetting about them for over a year, found them again when I was upgrading to belt drive.

[Robert Whitten]

It's always amazing what you can do when you need to. Jerry Van, your Dad sounds like mine was. He wasn't going to spend a dime that wasn't necessary. As a kid when another adult would tell him to get this or that fixed he would say, I'll let that boy fix it. Most times I didn't have a clue as to what they were talking about.

[Robert Whitten]

Lofty, I busted a sprocket on the hay bailed in the field once on my bailer. Guy I was bailing for said, what you do now. Found a beer can in the ditch & repaired it enough to finish his hay.

[Tin Man]

Cereal boxes, single ply cardboard, flattened beer can metal (regular tin cans had ridges), inner tubes and leather all saw use for my family. My Mother told a story from when I was a baby. Because it was all we could afford, my Father drove a old car that was very small....she thought it may have been a Nash Metropolitan. It's engine was in dire need of rebuild, but they could not afford to do it. Each night, when he got home from work, Dad would take a quilt off the bed and lay it along side the car. He would then physically tip the car onto its side, remove the oil pan, remove the crankshaft and replace the bearings with new ones made from leather. After reassembling the engine he could drive the car to work the next day and return home, to repeat the same thing each day. She says he did this for about two weeks, till he made enough money to buy all of the required parts to do an actual repair. To this day I find it hard to throw stuff away.........

[Yakatak]

Cereal box cut to shape with a ball peen hammer. My dad would treat them with, what he called, "hard oil". Hard oil was white, translucent, with a waxy feel. I've been trying to find some for years. If anyone knows what this stuff is...let me know.

[Snakeoil]

Cereal box cut to shape with a ball peen hammer. My dad would treat them with, what he called, "hard oil". Hard oil was white, translucent, with a waxy feel. I've been trying to find some for years. If anyone knows what this stuff is...let me know.

Maybe lard oil?

[Robert Whitten]

Yakatak, Haven't a clue on that one. Haven't heard that term from the ( really, really old farts. I'm like Rob. The only thing I can think of would be lard.

[windmill]

A "hard oil" I'm aware of is an old farmers home made mix of 1/3 bees or canning w@x, 1/3 boiled linseed oil, 1/3 turpentine. Kind of a do it all, a rubbing finish for wood tool handles, waterproofing leather, corrosion protection, bullet lube, even treat wounds on livestock.

Use it myself for all sorts of things.

[TomsFunMachine]

I once cut a tire on my road bike (bicycle), and used the 'dollar bill trick' to get home. A former road racer friend told me about this trick while we were bench racing one day, after a training ride, I stored it away in my head.

When you cut a road bike tire, the tube bulges through the slit, like a hernia, and pops. If you were a serious cyclist in the early 1980's, you always carried a patch kit, usually a spare tube, frame mounted Silca brand pump, your ID, a little cash, but no one carried a spare clincher tire. A cut tire 40 miles from home and it's "dude, you're screwed".

I took a dollar bill from money clip, inserted it between the tire and the replacement tube, the paper money covering the 1-1/2" long cut. Pumped it up to 110psi and peddled home. It turns out paper money is made from some tough fabric-like stuff.

[jvan1954]

This has turned into a pretty cool thread for me at least. Brings back a lot of memories of my Dad who could do just about anything with just about nothing. Or as he put it, "poor boys got poor ways"
After a wreck one time he did an alignment on our truck by measuring the distance between the front, then the back of the front tires where the tread and sidewall met. Adjust the toe in, roll it back and forth, remeasure, repeat. I don't know if it ate tires or not, I imagine it did, but I do know we were hauling hay the next day.

[jvan1954]

A "hard oil" I'm aware of is an old farmers home made mix of 1/3 bees or canning w@x, 1/3 boiled linseed oil, 1/3 turpentine. Kind of a do it all, a rubbing finish for wood tool handles, waterproofing leather, corrosion protection, bullet lube, even treat wounds on livestock.

Use it myself for all sorts of things.

Had some of that stuff stashed everywhere, on machinery, vehicles, tack room. It even helps keep your hands from cracking when its really cold. Have to put in on before the cracks start though or it burns like the dickens.

[bratmanxj]

This has turned into a pretty cool thread for me at least. Brings back a lot of memories of my Dad who could do just about anything with just about nothing. Or as he put it, "poor boys got poor ways"
After a wreck one time he did an alignment on our truck by measuring the distance between the front, then the back of the front tires where the tread and sidewall met. Adjust the toe in, roll it back and forth, remeasure, repeat. I don't know if it ate tires or not, I imagine it did, but I do know we were hauling hay the next day.

That's how I do alignments on my "small equipment" like garden tractors, golf carts, and ATVs. I'll let the more precise computers take care of my on-road vehicles, but you can get them pretty darn close after a suspension repair with just a tape measure.

[stagewex]

I've never made a gasket out of a cereal or pizza box but last Summer I went to buy plain old gasket material at our local Autozone. Kid at the counter asked me what year & model my car was.

Me: "That doesn't matter, I just need gasket material, I'll cut my own gasket".

He seemed puzzled but put the words into his inventory computer.

Him: "Hey, I can't believe we actually have that. You're the first person that I ever sold any of it to".

Me: "It's pretty common, how long have you worked here?"

Him: "5 years".

Lord Help Us.

[cookiemech]

I'm so lucky that six miles away is an old mom-and-pop (no, really, a married couple well in their 70s own it) NAPA store, and when I asked for some gasket paper, Larry Jr. (the son, in his 40s, who is always at the counter) asked me what thickness I needed. No big deal there!

[Peter Pan]

I have amazed myself with how long some of those quick-fixes have lasted.

My father in law's "mientras tanto" = "meanwhile"... meanwhile he installed once a bakery in the chicken stable that lasted about 8-10 years.

Made a respirator out of a condom once. Hate Covid 19.

The Condom is in fact a very durable material. I used to fit them onto the compensors/shock absorbers of glass drilling machines with very good long lasting results.... (The water glass dust mix is extremely abrasive) Condom life expectance 2 month and the one of the shock absorbers raised from 3 month to 2 years.