Neat Stuff you bought and never used - yet

Ed Fowler

Ed Fowler

Joined
Jul 21, 2001
Messages
2,869
I just read the thread about Tagua nuts. Years ago I took in a bunch of them in trade, they sat around in my shop for years, now I believe the shop gremlins got them.

How many of us have seen great nifty stuff, bought traded for harvested or accepted as a gift for knife supplies, it and never used it?

Here is some of my stuff.

Beautiful mineature silver mermaid. I was going to mount her in a handle.

Boon and Crocket class horns and antlers I will never use because they are too outstanding to cut up.

Bear Claws for mineature knives - I will never use them, just dream about it.

Fantastic gold bearing ore I have had since the 50's for knife handles, again I can't force myself to tear into it, the specimens are exceptional as they are.

20 pounds of silver fileings and tiny pieces.

The list goes on, but I ask how about your plunder?
 
Yeah. Before meeting you great knife makers and before I ever thought I might make a knife I bought a bunch of machine tooling. Before using much of it I got into knife making. The mini mill is great for that but a bunch of the other stuff I have not yet used at all. Just sitting in the cabinets. Someday I'll figure out a use for the stuff for knifemaking. Someday. The rotary table I have used in knife making but it is stuff like indexing for gear making - you know.

RL
 
I have a box full of cherry wood that I begged and pleaded Roger to send to me and have only used 4-5 pieces of it....:(


Can you forgive me RL?



Worse one yet is that bone and horn supplies sitting on my shelf because I'm too scared to carve 'em up....

Neither of these is neat stuff, though.....:footinmou



I do have, however, a valuable piece of jade that I wanted to use for a knife but have yet to find the right application.
 
I shearched for sale in the papers for about 18 months looking for whales teeth. I got 2 handle size not going to cut them up now. I have some small gold nuggets very small about 1/8 diamiter used one resessed into a hand for a prospectors pick I forged up. A dome of resin magnifies the size of the nugget. the rest of the stash I gave to the kids. I also have some wood from the Endevour and Dyfken replica ships built in Fremantle. The ships are full size I got into the scrap boxes while they were building.
 
I hoard things like electric motors, wiring, digital controllers, pumps, anything electrical really. I start all these projects and box them up for a rainy day and rarely get back to them. Maybe I'm saving them for retirement.
 
My plan is to add 600 square feet to my shop. I'm sure once I do that I'll find things in my existing shop that have been duplicated many times. Sometimes its easier just to go buy new than to try and find what I'm looking for. If I find any gold I'll let you know.

Higgy, What would you charge to clean my shop? :D
 
I've amasses a lot of stuff, don't know if I'll use half of it. May end up selling off some of it, but then again, I'm like Higgy and I'm a pack rat. Have a mess of White tail antlers, and some Stagg, meteorite that I can't bring myself to use, a lot of mammoth ivory, I also seem to be collecting nickel sheet for projects. My problem is, that every time I order from Texas Knife, Pops, Tru-grit, K & N (the list can go on and on), and ALWAYS seem to find something in the catalog that I don't need, but that I order anyway (to save shipping costs of course). Some sort of behavioral problem I think. Ed, I'm afraid to go to the shop and start looking at the shelves of stuff that I'll probably never use. As far as equipment, I seem to use about all that I've built or bought or otherwise acquired. Still want a Paragon HT oven, but that's another story.
 
Thats weird.
I just ordered some Tagua nuts off ebay.
How about all the sealers,paints, varnishes,and fillers some used some not for doin handles.If that varnish sets up enough can it be shaped into a handle.
Bought a miniture oxy act torch. Still new in the box.
Got enough handle wood for years. Cribbage anyone?
Traded some silver work for a scroll making jig.Just found it haven't seen it for 20 years.
We should all clean out our shops and have a national yard sale day.
Take care
TJ
 
I have successfully purged my shop of all the stuff I wasn't using to an extent that is but you know what they say give a man apace and he will fill it. TJ can I ask where you scured theat Mini AC torch? been looking for one since I have some space now.
 
Last summer I went to Dawson City, Yukon and got all these great ideas for knife embellishments. I bought a bunch of small hematite (Alaskan Black Diamond) stones, jade stones, and some pure gold. The stones I was going to use for spacers in hidden tang knives and the gold I was going to use to fill in cracks in mammoth ivory.

Oh and a friend gave me a very cool fossilized bison ankle bone to use for a knife handle (just can't cut it up).

Alas all of this stuff is still sitting on my shelves. Although I'm not giving up hope on using this stuff I definitely am no closer to trying any of this stuff out either.

Oh well some day some day.

Sean
 
Greg Covington said:
A Fire Extinguisher.....yet :eek:
Click to expand...

:D Me too! <knocks wood>

I'm an incurable collector. My collection of handle materials I can't bear to use is growing to the point I can't figure out how to store it anymore.. :rolleyes: I'm all the time stripping old computers for a few screws and magnets; I keep telling myself someday I'll make some small folders and use that tottering stack of ciruit boards for scales... Right. I have boxes full of odd pieces of brass and copper that I do dip into from time to time but frankly I can't imagine a use for some of that stuff. I have several boxes of 220V biscuit fans - for what? And all those little electric motors and switches... I'm sure I need those, better keep em.

What about knives? I have knives I still scratch my head over: that Grateful Dead knife shaped like a guitar? Cripes, Dave. How many gimme Swiss Army knives does anyone really need? Broken switchblades I'm going to fix some day? Sure.

What about books? Cripes, I have a couple thousand books my wife won't let me put bookshelves up for (Takes up too much wall space? I don't get that.). And the books I value or use the most are pushing me out of my little office space. I keep packing them up, more keep pushing me out again.

I have a freakin accordian that I bought at a garage sale thinking I'd cut up the cool antique plastic to use for scales for those folders I'm gonna make (some day). I keep tripping over the dang thing. Guess I should just get it cut up, huh? Stack the plastic on top of the circuit boards, next to the army mess hall trays that are sure to be folder scales some day too.

Good grief!
 
Beautiful, absolutely beautiful, keep them coming.
I knew we were brothers all the time!
 
Mainly handle material, like some goat horn that after I cut I refuse to throw any of it away, who knows, I might need some for a thumbob inlay or such! I've got more spring clamps than I'll ever need, though I do use them ocasionly. I've got several buckets of scrap tools, ball bearings, files, pieces of saw blades ext. for frontier damascus that is collecting faster than I can use up. I haven't seen my bench top in months! Come to think of it I haven't seen the bottom of the shelves or draws for longer than that!
 
I feel better now. I thought I was the only packrat in the bunch. They tore down my old shop yesterday, and are supposed to start shop #2 today. It took days for my wife and me to clear out the building. Yep, I found stuff I forgot I had, motors, tooling, handle material, etc. Having 2 shops is a necessity; makers gotta have some where to store stuff! My wife is proud of me- the go to the burnpile heap was larger than the save pile. I just gotta figure where to build shop # 3 and still have room to park my jon boat and truck. Hey, it makes for less grass to mow, I can tell her. I sent a bunch of dried cherry logs to the burn pile, and still have a wild cherry crotch "Y" that is cut and dried. The two halves stood up on end look like this- YY. Any of ya need some big cherry, come get it! I have some big dried flame grain walnut up for grabs, too. My email is oldhickory45@yahoo.com
 
Well I see a common thread here...handle material! I have two boards of cocobolo, a board of ebony and a board of bocote under my bed, oh been two years now. I have stabilized amboynia burl I haven't used and a stack of desert ironwood that I've only used on one knife in the past two years.

In the shop I have boxes of chainsaw chains, yup, gonna be damascus someday. A coil of wire rope, same deal. Antlers haging from the walls, a box of tin for making bronze someday. Coiled up bandsaw blades etc. A tomahawk drift I had to have but haven't made a hawk yet. But I've got one when I need it!

My scrap pile outside is growing everyday too. Leaf springs, giant 1" diameter u-bolts, train carriage coil springs, car coil springs, brake drums, garage door springs, old 100 lb. propane tanks, steel buckets, old 20 lb. propane tanks, freon tanks, 55 gallon drums, etc. (and I live in a subdivision!)

The winner has got to be either the 5"x8" double acting hydraulic cylinder for a "someday" press project, been sitting in a box on the clothes dryer for three years or about 300 lbs. of charcoal In four garbage cans that I gleaned from a nearby subdivision project when they were clearing the land and burning the trees! Not sure which! Oh, and did I mention I have quite the collection of squirrel cage blowers stacking up in a box? :D
 
1942 chevy pickup. I screwed around and never got the motor put in it.:barf:

The body was Primo.

oh yeah I got several Tagua nuts and some Madrone around here some where, half a ton of RR car springs and some GERMAN BALL BEARING STEEL . The replacement bearing cost $27,000.00 I still have a whole bearing and the pieces of the mate that went kablooie.
 
Man we all sound alike now,More neat stuff and not enough time to do something with it.Being a pack rat myself I shouldn't work for my Mom and Step Dad in the scrap yard..Let's see multiple hand crank blowers-post vice parts and complete ones also-a few old forges and rusted out old anvils,then old bandsaws(metal cutting and wood) table saws,a whole bunch of tread mill motors and controllers to go with them,Plus 4 Dyton industrial DC motors(3are 1 1/2 and one is a 2 HP)along with all the circuit boards and fuses and controllers to make them work when I ever find someone smart enough to figure out how to put them together for me(hopefully that will be soon as I would like to use these motors,but no one in my area can figure out the wiring diagram from the machine they came off and thus They to are in the bus behind the shop)Then I have about a dozen or 2 dozen sweater boxes full of handle material from exotic stag to exotic wood and then ivory all waiting on me to use them up(yea right never in my lifetime and I keep getting more) just boxed up 65 pounds of NS Scrap of different sizes and thicknesses that came in one day so I can play with my casting more now(if I can get away from the scrap yard long enough to get in the shop,and sometimes on here)Then comes the old pile of steel ranging from ball bearings to chains of all kinds to different types of coil springs yes train included and then the leaf springs and of course all the plow parts and old saw mill blades from 2 foot across to 6 feet across,plus enogh steel of all kinds to fill a pickup bed trailer in a pile in the middle of the smithy,got enough parts from old furnaces now to make a half dozen or more new gas forges plus the takes or pipes to make them with..a wall full of hammers and tongs most of which are recovered before being scrapped also...Plus allot more cool stuff but to much to mention.....
Man working in a scrap yard has some rewards but can fill up a shop quick.
Bruce
 
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