Scrounging

Don_Papenburg · March 07, 2011, 09:53:53 PM

When I was sophmore in HS the new ind.arts teacher threw out all of the very good old stanley Baily planes and hand tools because they had paint on them . They were painted to match the cabinet that they belonged to. I only got a few planes and acouple of turning chisels.

mrcaptainbob · March 07, 2011, 11:35:24 PM

My neighbor/friend, now pushing 71 years, raised his family junkin'. Bought and refurbished his house, bought vehicles, sometimes new...always good clothes and great food. Quite a guy....

Bandmill Bandit · March 07, 2011, 11:44:34 PM

Scrounging is a hereditary trait in my family. I learned it very young cause Great Gram-pa left his 87 years (thats when he moved to town) of scrounging behind on the farm. I was just a tyke then, and Gran-dad had already added about 50 years to the collection and my dad had started by then too. By the time I was 15 i was welding better then my dad and Gran-dad had taught me a lot of the black smith skills.
Got so people would come over to our place when they couldn't fix stuff or the part wasn't available any more. I would almost always come up with something from a combination of scrounge inventory and with a bit of new and old and little to a lot of ingenuity I fixed things that the shops in town said couldn't be fixed.

Have a good friend that I worked with when I was on the farm and between the 2 of us we fixed engineering issues and just plain PIA inconvenience issues on farm equipment that would have made us rich if we hadn't been so young and dumb at the time.

All combines built to day have 2 systems that we built the the first of on a TR70 and IH 1460 combines the first years they were available.

The electric header auger reverse system was the first. It was just a ring gear/flywheel off an 455 Olds that fit the starter gear off an old MF super 90 propane. We may have had to Jimmy rig that starter drive to get the fit but I don't remember. It worked so good that the next year IH had em available as an add on option.

The other one was the stone door "closer" on the bottom of the feeder house on the TR70. (it got installed on the 1460 a bit later too.) Every time that thing tripped to kick out a rock you had to get out of the cab and crawl in behind the right front driver to close it and when you are bigger guy it was a real PIA. We took a piece of cable and cable pulley off a NH 1033 bale wagon and a bale tension spring off an old MF 12 baler and set it up so that when you raised the header to full height it would close the stone door.

EVERY PIECE that went into these mods was scrounged from old equipment. Wasn't 5 years and every combine made had both of them on as standard equipment.

There probably were a few other guys around that had similar ideas but the NH block man for Western Canada was a "friend" of ours and I know for a fact he took pictures of our "improvements" back to the engineers in R&D more than once.

That is just a couple of the mods we made. A few other things we made ended up in New Hollands short line hay conditioning equipment line ups too. one being the swath/lifter/fluff-er/mover overer. :D The only thing new about that thing was the Hydraulic drive. the rest came from about 5 or 6 different pieces of vintage farm equipment from binders, balers, combines, swathers, 2 different hay rakes etc.
I still say the one we built worked better then the one NH put on the market 2 years later.

thecfarm · March 08, 2011, 07:51:07 AM

I have some junk,well that's what my wife calls it.If you come to visit me you would have no idea the items I have.But take a walk down back and it's any man's paradise.I still have 159 acres to fill up. :D My stepson brought his FIL over for Thanksgiving and we went for a walk.My wife had a fit because he was going to see all my junk. He had a ball. Our 'dump" had a over haul a few years back.Use to have all the metal just thrown into a pile.Well the small time junkers would go through it and take what they wanted.The town got paid by the ton for the metal.I guess they was putting quite a dent in it and I suppose liability came into too.Now we have a roll way and "NO PICKING" rule.Once it gets into the dumpster it belongs to the town. I have reached into it a few times when nobody but the old guy and me was there.And I have uploaded a few items from a truck right into mine.They will set aside items too that they feel someone will want.I have got many big metal coffee cans too.Getting harder and harder to find now,it's all plastic now.

flibob · March 08, 2011, 09:30:03 AM

One guy's stuff is probably some wife's junk.

Raider Bill · March 08, 2011, 10:33:29 AM

My friends the driver on a fire engine. He will stop and look through junk piles and has been known to carry it back to his car on the top of the engine. ;D

redpowerd · March 08, 2011, 10:46:16 AM

thinking about this thread made me go and fill the truck up with things to take to the burn pit. now i have room for better junk.

Bandmill Bandit · March 08, 2011, 01:17:39 PM

Quote from: redpowerd on March 08, 2011, 10:46:16 AM
thinking about this thread made me go and fill the truck up with things to take to the burn pit. now i have room for better junk.

Thats the tough part! How to part with not so good junk to make room for better junk?

Think maybe we could come up with guide lines (no more then 10) on this Forum??

Maybe call it the "Scroungers 10 Commandments"

ely · March 08, 2011, 03:26:07 PM

#1. if it is consumable by a fire or prone to rot dont pick it up. ;D

sandhills · March 08, 2011, 03:39:46 PM

If it is froze tight and rusted beyond reading any sort of casting names or numbers it HAS to be a treasure (of some sort). :D

Papa1stuff · March 08, 2011, 07:12:22 PM

If it's free , pick it up ,Might be able to use it somewhere sometime! ;D

Ianab · March 08, 2011, 07:41:21 PM

Quote from: ely on March 08, 2011, 03:26:07 PM
#1. if it is consumable by a fire or prone to rot dont pick it up. ;D

What about free firewood? ;) :D

Ian

Troublermaker · March 08, 2011, 07:58:55 PM

25 years ago or so a buddy of mine and I decided to build a wood splitter. We didn't have the money to buy a store bought one. That Saturday we went scrounging around checking out our neighbors junks piles. When we got home we had a truck load of steel, wheels and axle . One neighbor even gave me a 18 hp Wisconsin motor to power it. Another neighbor who was a mechanic had a cylinder off of a John Deer loader,a small hydraulic plumb, control valves and 5 gal of hydraulic fluid that he had change out of something. When we got thru all that I had to buy was the hydraulic hoses and a use battery that I paid $5.00 for from a junk yard. Later I did change the plumb out for a 2 stage and repack the cylinder.

Someone said that one man junk was someone gold mine.

SwampDonkey · March 08, 2011, 08:28:34 PM

That's funny. The neighbors around here wouldn't want anyone touching their "gold". Most the farmers around here of my father's generation, as I'm sure down that way, fix all their own stuff and modify a whole bunch of factory made stuff. ;D My father rebuilt two potato harvesters, a couple rock pickers, a potato bin piler....just to name a few. Actually dad had some schooling back in the day to weld, fabricate and so one in grade school. It was that era just after the war, then the Korean war. I've seen a bunch of his study books. It's stuff you'd have to go to CC now a days to learn, then apprentice. My brother has his books now I think.

SPIKER · March 08, 2011, 10:31:29 PM

We used to buy garbage bags of rags for cleaning metal prior to painting more than once I swapped shirts at work too :D Heck I think I ended up buying a few bags my self just for the t shirts. 2 bucks a paper bag from local salvation army store. goodwill was 5 bucks for a garbage bag full of cotton shirts & 7 bucks for cotton jean pants. ;) Lot of them were almost new sold for rags if they were dirty soiled and or stained ripped ect.'
Ya I let my nephew clean up some of my junk piles that were left on the place when I bought it for the scrap... He took out 4 or 5 pickup full of alum, steel & copper that had been tossed for years (generations)

Mark

Coon · March 08, 2011, 10:35:53 PM

Around here if you want scrap iron and such all you have to do is drive around the countryside and talk to the older farmers. They tend to have old cultivators and swather and combines and such. Most times they will give them to you if you tell them that you are building such and such out of recycled materials. In the last month I have gotten three cultivators (a 21 ft, a 24 ft and 36 ft) two complete swathers (one with a running slant six chrysler industrial) and any parts I want off of two partially dismantled combines. There is so much old metal around these parts due to the steel plant in Regina, Sask. is quite a distance away and fuel prices are high. The snow has to melt before I can start dismantling. :'(

ely · March 09, 2011, 09:06:54 AM

tip for all the scroungers who like the metal coffee cans, if you can get with someone involved in the school lunch rooms you can get all the one gallon cans you can use.

and if you are really nice they will cut both ends out of some of them so you can use them around your tomato and pepper plants.

DanG · March 09, 2011, 09:17:34 AM

The plastic cans work as well or better for anything not involving heat. ;)

Hanson · March 09, 2011, 08:44:03 PM

My last "dive" yielded 5 tire chains in great shape that came off of a semi, a little resizing and I'll be in good shape.

ibseeker · March 10, 2011, 03:28:52 AM

One man's junk is another man's treasure. I've left more than a few garage sales with more than I started with. I don't do garage sales anymore. I've reduced my gathering to old tools. I call them wall hangers for my barn but my wife looks at me a little funny...I know what she's thinking..."You don't have a barn! You big dummy!" but I do have 20 acres and one day I will have a barn! Even if it's just to hang my wall hangers on.

Doc Hickory · March 10, 2011, 10:17:43 AM

Went down to visit my brother this past Saturday. He is a scrounger too. He's the only person I know who has TWO knuckle boom loaders. I don't know if he's a shopaholic or his goal is to have one awesome estate sale when he goes toes up. Anyway, he had acquired a used small boat trailer. We did a little horse trading, and I'm now the owner. It is going to become a logging arch. I'll have to cut down the tongue, remove some other parts and rig my arch up, but I believe this has possibilities. It has a hand winch and jack stand already so I won't have to find those parts. Will keep you guys posted on progress and try to get some before/after pictures up as well.

Woodchuck53 · March 13, 2011, 12:52:22 AM

Right place at the right time. Saw these two things outside. Fork lift driver backed up onto 2 of those carousel nail holders at a local store. I asked the owner what they were going to do with them and 20.00 and 2 hours of elbow grease later I have a pair of great bolt bins. Full of scrounged and picked up bolts of course.

5quarter · March 14, 2011, 07:14:35 PM

One day I was on my way to the industrial salvage (no kidding) when I saw that one of the run down buildings nearby was being gutted and refurbished. They had a huge pile of junk out front, so I went inside, asked if i could look through it. guys says I'm welcome to what ever was out there. Among the goodies was a large blue drum over 1/2 full of nuts and bolts. There was no way I could move it, but there were a bunch of desk drawers in the pile, so after tipping this drum over, i literally began shovelling the hardware into the drawers. It was all I could do to lift just one of those drawers full of nuts and bolts onto the truck bed. These weren't the cheap nickel-steel either...all grade 5 and better. matching lock nuts, washers etc, etc...I wound up with 11 drawers full, plus a bunch of other stuff. never did make it to the salvage yard. ;D ;D

SwampDonkey · March 14, 2011, 07:29:44 PM

I'm always searching for a bolt and matching washer and nut. :D

Taylortractornut · March 14, 2011, 07:54:05 PM

Not to brag or nothin but I mthe manager and head operator at a private landfill lol. I learned to hull out the bigg narrow pallets they chunk for 2by4's I get 4 to8 pine 2by4's from each one. Also end cuts off chiop board s used i nthe plant.

Scrappers here had killed the scroungers like us here. No more combines or cotton pickers. I did save an MF 200 combine the otherday. FOlks here would rather drw a disability check and haul scrap than to use some thing to work with. A man carried a small F 700 with a behind cab mounted Prentice boom and grpple along with a factor single axle 5th wheel log trailer to the scrappes wouldnt even price it. Banjo Picker knows one of these types that hauled off 40 years worth of neat equipment for a crack rock. This guys dad had a construction company and bought tons of Military surplus and other machines. and trucks. He scrapped a trailer truck load of Wisconsin eninged that never had been used rather than sell them to the public. They acted like they ddnt want to see a person use them.