Hoarding works, eventually......

[bungeejumper]

There, I knew I'd be glad of it one day. A flat tyre on the wheelbarrow, and a choice between (a) fixing it and (b) ordering a complete new wheel @ maybe twenty quid. So what's a man to do?

Rummage around in my extra special drawer, of course. The one where I keep useful-looking lumps of pole-shaped steel and oversized cold chisels and hub pullers and boat anchors and similar, you know, stuff. And there they were, three lovely big tyre levers, unused since my earliest biking days in the late 1960s. I just knew they'd come in handy if I waited long enough.

And hey, guess what? After fifty-plus years, and five house moves, they still worked as well as on the day I bought them.

So what's in your hoarding drawer? Whitworth spanner sets? Antique cans of oil or grease? Cables and brackets that you've kept handy "just in case"? Bits of electrickery that still contain bakelite?

BJ

[swill453]

Not that old, but a Snap-On screwdriver given to me by my father-in-law, a former helicopter engineer, in about 1985. It's outlasted all the rest.

Scott.

[sg31]

A bucket of old screws, nuts, bolts and assorted fixings. Not in a drawer, just an old builders bucket. Every oddment from the last 45 years has been thrown in there, plus the oddments I cleared out of dads garage which go back probably another 30 years.

It's survived numerous house moves and has got me out of trouble too many times to remember. If it isn't in there it probably doesn't exist.

[UncleEbenezer]

A bucket of old screws, nuts, bolts and assorted fixings.

Don't we all?

Along with pens/pencils, rawlplugs, offcuts, perhaps a USB stick, ...

[swill453]

Don't we all?

Along with pens/pencils, rawlplugs, offcuts, perhaps a USB stick, ...

Yes, in a baby milk powder can. Said baby was 30 this year.

Scott.

[JohnB]

Pah, I've got bits of wood in the garage my Dad inherited from his carpenter father in the 1950s. Every few months I scan the shelves and force myself to dispose of some tin of chemicals priced in shillings.

[UncleEbenezer]

Pah, I've got bits of wood in the garage my Dad inherited from his carpenter father in the 1950s. Every few months I scan the shelves and force myself to dispose of some tin of chemicals priced in shillings.

Only this last weekend I disposed of a bunch of old stuff. Had to bring myself to chuck a perfectly good fitting for long-dead (and pre-LED) bike lights ...

[bungeejumper]

I've got a bucket full of old door locks, most of them with no keys. You tend to accumulate those when you rent out flats.

The reason I haven't dumped them yet is that I have another stash of orphaned keys that don't have locks.

Y'know, I've been thinking. Some day I ought to sit down and try to pair them up.

BJ

[88V8]

A drawer...? Is that the best you can do? We have two storage units costing £200/month each, that we've had for nine years, containing stuff for which we have no room in our current smaller house but can't yet bear to part with.

And in the garage I have... so much stuff... including a tin of oil for the Luvax shock absorbers on my 1935 Standard 10hp that came off the road in 1970, and oil for the Jackalls system on my 1946 Wolseley 14/60 which I sold in 1974.

And funny you should mention wheelbarrows, because the tyre on one of ours went flat, si I pulled the tube out - no tyre levers needed which is just as well as I know I have some but can't find then - and the tube was fine but the valve was leaking, so I put it back, dusting the tube with the talcum powder in the special little puffer I bought in about 1972, and replaced the valve core with one from the pot in which I keep valve cores... and that leaks as well. So now I put in the spare wheel and tyre I kept for fifteen years from a deceased barrow, and the next day that's flat as well. Never mind, I not only have valve cores that leak, I also have a puncture repair outfit with dried up rubber solution which is probably with the tyre levers, so one way and another I'll get it fixed. Meanwhile, wheelbarrows seem to work OK with flat tyres anyway.

All this stuff will all come in handy one day. Almost certainly the day after I chuck it out

V8

[stevensfo]

Only this last weekend I disposed of a bunch of old stuff. Had to bring myself to chuck a perfectly good fitting for long-dead (and pre-LED) bike lights ...

I got into the habit many years ago, of always buying lightbulbs when they were on offer, then of course, halogen lightbulbs, and sticking them in a box.

Fast forward many years, and I started doing the same with LED bulbs. I realised with horror a few months ago that I've got a huge collection of old bulbs and a growing collection of LED bulbs. The thought of not using the old bulbs is irritating, but I think it may be best to just throw them away.

... and that's before the additional problem of me not realising that LEDs came in standard warm yellow and awful bright clinical white that nobody likes - albeit not bad for desk lamps and security lights.


Steve

[bungeejumper]

All this stuff will all come in handy one day. Almost certainly the day after I chuck it out

Excellent, V8. You win.

Footnote to the wheelbarrow wheel story. I found that the inner tube had ruptured close to the valve, probably because I'd been using it at suboptimal pressure. Fortunately, Ebay was flogging new tubes at £4.95, and I bought one, and it arrived with a ready-made hole already in it.

What to do? Send it back, or kiss goodbye to my fiver and fix the puncture? No-brainer really - I got my trusty bicycle puncture kit out, and it totally failed to fix either tube, probably because the patches were too old and too small.

I briefly considered splashing out another six quid on a proper motorcycle tube repair outfit. But that was when I found that I could have an entire wheelbarrow wheel, with tyre and inner tube already fitted, for £8.99. Or £11.99 for what might be a better one.

Reader, I prevaricated, and then I ordered one. A man can only spend so much of his life resisting the pull of throw-away modernity. Greta Thunberg's gonna hate me for this.

BJ

[GoSeigen]

I've got a bucket full of old door locks, most of them with no keys. You tend to accumulate those when you rent out flats.

The reason I haven't dumped them yet is that I have another stash of orphaned keys that don't have locks.

Y'know, I've been thinking. Some day I ought to sit down and try to pair them up.

BJ

Pair up with a lady instead, have a couple of kids, wait ten years or so and let the kids pair the locks up. They'll love the task and the couple of quid they earn. Worked for me anyway


GS
I've got an unused 12V relay; really have no idea what I'll use it for but there must have been a good reason to buy it thirty years ago.

[bungeejumper]

I've got an unused 12V relay; really have no idea what I'll use it for but there must have been a good reason to buy it thirty years ago.

Oh, that one's easy. You bought it for the towbar that you'd need to hitch up your new trailer. That was when you found (a) that it wasn't properly specced for your new rear light arrays; (b) that you needed the one with reverse polarity and some infernal diode or other; and (c) it was too big to fit under the dashboard anyway. Still, never mind, it would be sure to come in handy one day.

I still have a clutch of parallel cables from the early days of home computering. The ones that came with clips at the sides. The main problem with those was that people used to swap the pins, according to whether they were being used for printers or for primitive networking, and the only way you'd ever find out which sort it was would be by hooking up the cables and seeing whether anything went bang?

Posterity value, then, was not zero but substantially less than zero. And do you think that stopped me from hoarding them?

BJ

[stevensfo]

Pair up with a lady instead, have a couple of kids, wait ten years or so and let the kids pair the locks up. They'll love the task and the couple of quid they earn. Worked for me anyway

GS

They're great at that age, aren't they? Our boys and their friends used to be so useful as slave labour in the garden. They loved competition and the trick was to give them no time to think.
"Who can put the most leaves in the bucket...three..two..one..."
"Who can pick up the most stones? ..most branches...." etc

Then came the fateful day when they gave 'that' look - "Your Jedi tricks will no longer work with us, old man."

Bloody kids!

Steve

[kiloran]

It was only a couple of years ago I threw away a couple of 807 valves https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/807_(vacuum_tube).
Last used around 1975

--kiloran

[Gerry557]

Not that old, but a Snap-On screwdriver given to me by my father-in-law, a former helicopter engineer, in about 1985. It's outlasted all the rest.

Scott.

We lost one about that time. Spent ages looking for it before the aircraft could fly again. Can I have it back now? I can close down the missing tool log too!

[Mike88]

This thread reminds me that I have a lot of throwing out to do

[UncleEbenezer]

This thread reminds me that I have a lot of throwing out to do

Indeed. Cast away such negative thoughts!

[johnstevens77]

My wheelbarrow tyre and tube needed replacing, at the same time as our neighbour was replacing his barrow so I used his tyre and tube. I too used tyre levers last used on my Triumph Trophy back in 1971 when I had a puncture in the wilds of North West Scotland.
In a bag in the garage I have some old Triumph tools including a clutch puller and a couple of spanners, also an Amal Monoblock tool. Any one needs them can email me and we shall see what we can do.

john

[sg31]

A drawer...? Is that the best you can do? We have two storage units costing £200/month each, that we've had for nine years, containing stuff for which we have no room in our current smaller house but can't yet bear to part with.

And in the garage I have... so much stuff... including a tin of oil for the Luvax shock absorbers on my 1935 Standard 10hp that came off the road in 1970, and oil for the Jackalls system on my 1946 Wolseley 14/60 which I sold in 1974.

And funny you should mention wheelbarrows, because the tyre on one of ours went flat, si I pulled the tube out - no tyre levers needed which is just as well as I know I have some but can't find then - and the tube was fine but the valve was leaking, so I put it back, dusting the tube with the talcum powder in the special little puffer I bought in about 1972, and replaced the valve core with one from the pot in which I keep valve cores... and that leaks as well. So now I put in the spare wheel and tyre I kept for fifteen years from a deceased barrow, and the next day that's flat as well. Never mind, I not only have valve cores that leak, I also have a puncture repair outfit with dried up rubber solution which is probably with the tyre levers, so one way and another I'll get it fixed. Meanwhile, wheelbarrows seem to work OK with flat tyres anyway.

All this stuff will all come in handy one day. Almost certainly the day after I chuck it out

V8

Wheelbarrow wheels £3 at B & Q. I bought one a while ago at full price which was around a tenner.

https://www.diy.com/departments/verve-d ... 087_BQ.prd