The Things People Throw Away!

Picked up a nice, top-of-the-line microwave oven someone had taken out to the curb. Looked brand new. The only thing wrong with it was a high-voltage diode. Five bucks.

Probably the best deal I ever found was two dye lasers at the local metals-recycling yard. The kind used by dermatologists for tat removal, hair removal, treating blemishes, that sort of thing, complete with fibre optic. Bought 'em for ten cents on the kg.

I'll trade you a real nice impact gun for one!

Lol! I'm afraid they're dye lasers no more - I salvaged them for parts years ago. Chock full of all kinds of expensive goodies.

Well so much for my dream of holding the world hostage with a miniaturized giant death laser.

It's dye laser, not DIE laser, silly man! Don't forget your safety glasses.

See how the vanes are... problem blew more air past the vanes then the air compressor can produce.

I had no problem running off a 2 HP commercial unit the other day and the shop it came from has at least a 5 HP system.

With the O-ring blown out the inlet swivel assembly I suspect that was it's main problem.

That's the world coming to... a mechanic breaks his tool, and he doesn't fix it, instead he throws it away and buys a new one.

That's the part that baffles me and this is far from the being the first or most expensive tool I have ever picke out of the scrap that had a minor problem any dummy with basic hand tools could have fixed.

The guys I learned my trades and skills from took pride in running a tool to the point it was no longer functional even if it meant having to handcraft replacement parts towards the end because OEM parts were either non existent or too hard or expensive to get.

I figured it had a major problem like the hammer and anvil or motor components being blown to bits inside or worn out beyond being cost effective to repair. Not a simple under 15 minute fix for less cost than a burger combo meal sets me back.

Worst part is I suspect it's less than 2 -3 years old too! The slip on rubber grip on the handle is still in good shape and those things never hold up in hard use.

I noticed this over 30 years ago with my nephew. I was his godfather, and I'd actually bought him things for his birthday or Christmas that I enjoyed when I was 8-15 years old. Things you made or built. Legos, models that you had to assembly... no patience... I found he enjoyed things you opened the present and pressed a button and it goes.

it followed him in later life, as a farmer. He'd trade a tractor or skidsteer off only on the basis the dealer made him a deal he couldn't refuse. He kept the implement dealer in good money.

At 42, he had a farm auction last fall.

Mechanics don't even work on their own cars, so why would you expect them to repair a tool, when the tool salesman is bringing donuts next week. And the week after that.

Pretty much all of my mechanic associates work on their own vehicles.

To me anyone who won't put their primary profession skills to work on their own stuff says a huge amount about them.

Would you eat food made by a cook who won't eat what they make?

How about buy a vehicle from a car salesman that will not own anything of the brand he sells?

Usually a good mechanic, doesn't have time to work on his own vehicle.

If they can't manage their work life Vs personal life they might not be that good of mechanic! None of the guys I know live and work at the places they are employed by 24/7 and the few who are self employed don't have a problem setting up certain times off from their normal work schedule to do what they need to get done for their own personal sake.

I for one have never had a problem finding time to work on my own stuff but then I generally don't have a problem with telling people to go pound sand and come back later when it's my time off and my stuff needs attention either.

Now as for the ones I do know who won't work other stuff it's largely because they are stuck in jobs the can't get out of (usually buried in debt beyond reasonable recovery for numerous reasons) and have come to hate the work they do.

frankly, I myself, do not know of any mechanic that really needs their cars serviced...

back on topic..

back in the 80's, we were buying like new chainsaws... for a fraction of new.

There was a big 'fad' about weekend warriors making their own firewood. The found out the hard way, its not easy, especially if they didn't know what they were doing.

We bought a 041 Stihl for about $150.00??? with file, gas, oil and a spare 24" bar.

didn't even go through a tank of gas.

new at the time they were well over $400.00.

When we talked to the owner, the owner was disappointed on how hard it cut... my dad saw that he must have ran the chain in ground and all it needed was a sharpening... but the owner was so disgusted with it, he wanted it out of there.

So we had a new Chainsaw for a fraction of its value.

We also picked up a Husqvarna pretty reasonable, can't recall the size.

Since then, the market tighten up and purged the weekend warriors out.

At the Logging Congress, ^{when it was held in Green Bay, WI} we picked up a Sachs Dolmar,... it seems ok.

I agree with you, I would tend not to. Most mechanics I am familiar with started their shops long ago, probably do not do that much work now, but they have plenty of these things called employees. Mostly, the owners have their race cars, and their "babies".

No, a cook that does not eat what he cooks is either a moron, or knows he is a lousy cook.

If it's broken and repairable I'll fix it. If it's broken and not reparable I'll salvage anything I can from it and probably repair something else!(much to the wife's chagrin!)I've picked up many electric tools that needed new brushes...not much work and few $$. My garden tractor is 17 years old and will probably go to salvage this year because it's just not worth repairing any more...and the wife wants a new one...I've rebuilt the steering 3 times, modified several things to make it run better and to make belts stay on, rebuilt the mower deck a couple of times. It's been a real help but now the new Kubota is taking over for it....and I've already made new "devices" for the Kubota!

Yeah, they don't make engineers like they used to . It's the false economy mindset of the bean counters...
Mending stuff does take time but it saves money and enhances skills.
Del

My wife wants me to throw away an old Windows 3.1 computer, and several generations worth of printers we have succeeded in wrecking in our cat-hair infested office (and also lint dusty). In fact, our house is so dusty, linty, and ravaged with animal hairs, that it might be a hazardous site.

Anyway, rather than throw all those printers and computer parts in the trash, I plan to cannibalize every part out of them I can wildly justify having.

Any project suggestions? Flash-lamp pumped death ray anyone?

If you have any laser printers in that bunch, they usually have some fairly decent stepper motors. Ditto for the old dot-mtrix printers, and they also commonly have some decent slide mechanisms. There's your start for building a home-brew 3D printer.

At around age 75, I think I reached the peak of my dismantling and saving parts. Now I'm trying to give away much of it, but there aren't that many builder/maker types left. And of course, quite a bit of the stuff I saved 30-50 years ago is of little use now...

It is the way of the world. Maybe you should contact the American Pickers, and tell them you have this old barn...

If I had a barn, I could keep the stuff there, ...and put a car or two in the garage.

no... you'd fill your barn up... and then your cars will still be outside because your using your garage

You need to reconfigure them into lint and hair cleaning robots to colonize the den. In a few years they may be able to form their own civilization.

The Roombas shall rise and we will all be swept away.

Practical engineers are indeed few and far between these days, unless they are my (senior) age.

Mending stuff does enhance skills, but it does not take a bean counter to do a little math. If the parts and labor cost to do a repair is the same as or more than the cost of the replacement - replace. I have established my own rule - if the repair cost is more than half the cost of new, buy new. Chances are the old one was on the way out anyway. I have many employees using many power tools and they not only get used, they get abused.

As for my own personal tools, I repair if the parts are available and not too costly as I do not have to add in any labor $.

If your doing it on a personal level,... there are plenty of engineers and people with initiative that will do it.

Hell, I'll change oil in my car,... if it'll save a few bucks. even though if you look what I make and it'll be cheaper for me to have others do it... its because I keep the money in my wallet... period.

And more times then not,... I catch things where others would miss. And that's when I took it in.

I moved house about 3 years ago and found that the front door handle and mechanism were shot. I rooted around the shed and found a suitable black iron handle for the outside, a chrome one for inside and a mechanism which needed cleaning and oiling but worked fine. All together a rather nice new door set for nothing.

One of the best feelings I have,... is when your doing a repair, Plumbing, electrical what ever at home... and when 'rooting' you have the part you need.

A small peltier refrigerator. Apparently when it stopped working, it pi$$ed the owner off something fierce. I found the carcass out in the desert while walking my dogs. Looked like they had run it over 2-3 times with a big rig.

I got my tools and salvaged the peltier module and 2 fans, plus the electronic control board. Threw the rest of the twisted aluminum case in the recycler bin. The peltier was good (tested with power supply), the fans were good - but needed a little work on the shrouds, but the control board was broken in half.

The control board had more traces than my shaky old hands could fix, so I ordered a new one from the OEM for $12. The ironic thing is, when I checked out the original board - I would bet big $ that the only thing wrong was a blown electrolytic cap in the power supply section.

Oh well, their loss, my gain. I mounted it on a styrofoam cooler, and use it to control the temperature of 3 gallon batches of homebrew beer!

Wow, you are seriously doing more for the environment than any of the safe-room snowflakes ever thought of.

Good on you, I hope you stay young long enough to enjoy all the fruits of your hard labors.

We joke about burning tires but think of all the mosquito borne disease cases you prevent when you burn them, shred them, etc., rather than leaving them stacked up with rain water in them.

Actually this is just one of hundreds of odd tools and equipment and other items I have picked up for free or scrap value or in trade over my life time.

Some took more work and money than others to get working again and others were slower to be justified scrap than worth fixing if I didn't already have the parts or a way to a cheap and relibelfix for them.

This impact gun was just one of those head shakers that I felt was worth sharing the story about given its apparent age, value and how bonehead simple and cheap the fix was.

The other advantage that "we scavengers" have, is that we probably have a lot of friends that may do the same thing and get to trade things without $$. Needed a good used tire for my utility trailer...traded a chain saw that needed a coil for it to a mechanic friend that services chain saws.

the one thing one needs to avoid,... is becoming a hoarder of broken items,... that can be fixed, but aren't.

the back story... We had a 'neighbor', an old bachelor, personally, I didn't care for him,... he worked for the local farm Co-op and delivered gas to our farm. when I was about 8 years old.. he thought it was funny to grab you and smother you with his gasy gloves. I didn't care for him.

Anyways, this guy would go to farm auctions, and they always have boxes of 'junk' and he'd buy them.. sure, once in a while, he hit it big with a good find... but most of the time... it was just worth scrap.

For one reason or another, I was at his place... and he had boxes upon boxes on his lawn that he bought at auctions... he didn't mow his lawn... maybe around the boxes of crap. but it look like crap.

From that day on... hoarding, I try my best to avoid.

So after he smothered you...did you notice soreness anywhere upon waking up?

I know, I really, really should not have gone there, and you can chew me out if you want to.

I keep thinking the things I keep are going to find a home in one of my projects, then I just go out and buy new stuff, because, LO and behold, it still won't fit, and no two things have a part off one that fits on the other, since they are all made from government cheese.

Hey now! love those boxes of junk for $1 or a whole row cleanup final bid for $5 deals! #1 draw point for me to go to an auction and it's rare I don't score a good pickup load of stuff for under $30 or a pickup and 20' flatbed load for ~ $100 - $150 when I go!

Two summers ago I picked up a 10 HP three phase 120 gallon four cylinder two stage commercial air compressor for $50 (~10 years old and in good shape plus ~$3500 new) because no one there thought it was worth anything being three phase powered.

Last year one local consignment auction had a garden tractor mounted rototiller my dad wanted so i bid for him while there. It was sitting on a old ~5' 10' steel decked trailer with a old JD garden tractor plus snow blower and a bunch of other things.

He said to go to something like $150 for the tiller. I ended up with the tiller for that plus they threw in the trailer, garden tractor , snowblower and whatever else was near the trailer with it since no one wanted to bid on anything as separate items.

Turned out the old garden tractor only needed head gasket (~$15) and a starter rebuild kit (~$20) and a good wash to get it running good but the online JD garden tractor collector forums says it worth around $1000 or more being it has some accessories that very few of that model came with.

It's on the list to get the tiller refitted to work with the old style JD three point system one of these days. Also being the garden tractor is heavy as hell and has the creeper gearing plus variable speed belt drive and live hydraulics system I plan to make a small trencher attachment for it for doing electrical and water lines around home with it as well.

But does your yard look like a perpetual garage sale?...

Construction site!

Too many personal projects going on at once. It's sort of like putting together a big jigsaw puzzle. Right now most of it is still in the stage where everything gets spread out all over the table so that you can see and find all the pieces while assembling the bigger picture one part at a time.

Sounds like me... I have a lot of projects started on the warm snap last month, and then the rain hit...

Same here.

A week or two for nice 60's - 70's early in April got things going then the slow every two three days drip rains and cool windy stuff came back so now 8 - 10 projects of various sizes and priorities are all in play as time and conditions allow for each.

Can't do siding when it's windy.

Can't work on the dozer undercarriage rebuild when it's cold or wet. (it's outside)

Can't do several dirt work projects until the dozer is back together. One bigger one of my own is the whole front yard around the old house is getting taken out and good soil brought in so the grass actually grows here where it's supposed to for once.

Every time I start on a project in the shop one or more primary pieces of fabrication equipment gives up and needs a run to town for parts so that burns up half a day to fix.

Next is a trip to town for wood for a new deck and more siding material to another part of the old house.

If I get all this done this month the old place might just turn out to look like someone respectable who give a shyte lives here! (aughta confuse the heck out of the neighbors.)

I hope a new projects doesn't come along and bump this one.... But,.. I don't believe Sheila will let that happens... she's talking like its done...

That's the story of my garage/shop. I go out to clean and everything is part of a project I am working on. Once I started listing them and got up to a 6 page list on college ruled paper both sides of the page. Then I started picking off 3 or 4 projects a week and got it down to three pages, but then it started growing again. I still have a shop full of projects.

Better to be busy than bored...
Del

That's true. I've recently started building an Alaska mill and am accumulating lumber.

Better to be a tree than board.

I'd rather be a smart ass rather than a dumb ass.

but in both cases, your only right have the time...

I resemble that remark, and I ain't saying which part!

I have an Alaskan mill and built an entire barn with it! A lot of work but save a lot of $$

Like that? (Northern Tool ad)

Those things, to me, appear to be an accident that is out of planning, has been staged, and is about to happen on a log near you (or me, or whomever).

Run properly, they are safer than a plain chainsaw.

The one I'm making is different in that I am putting a nose guard and stinger handle at the nose of the bar so that the tip of the bar is fully guarded. It has the added feature that it cannot kick back out of the cut.

The Northern units are intended for one man operation, but do have the nose guard on the larger models.

If the saw is kept sharp, no issues.

Mine looks more like this...

OK, Tom. I confess to illiteracy (or ill-something, at any rate), but, what IS that thing?

It is an adapted cat-carrier, the cone screw has been removed, and a couple plates of metal added where the cat head goes.

Thank you. You joke, no doubt. Good joke!

That "thing" clamps onto a chainsaw bar. The clamps are on the bottom. The upper stuff is a guide that rolls over the top surface of a log to guide the bar for a straight cut. Usually for the first cut, you screw a board to the top surface of the log. The cut will be as straight as the board. From that point on, the upper guides slide on the previous cut surface on the log.

The one I am building looks like this:

The saw bar is shown with the nose of the bar on the left. I put a guard around the nose with a handle attachment stud. This is a 32" saw bar on a 75cc saw. The engine would be on the bottom right.

Nice! Seems a solid design, but how do you control tipping of the blade, with resulting kick-back? Not a problem?

The two guide rollers on top keep it level and the clamped on nose guard eliminates possible kickback. The cutting chain is buried in the log or in the nose guard. A son-in-law or other expendable gets to use the handle attached to the nose stud. (Full handle not shown) Much like the stinger handle on one of the old 8 foot long bar McCulloch old growth chain saws.

It's amazing how much the newer design saw teeth reduce kickback. On this setup, the only real hazard is a thrown chain.

CC that! Throwing a saw chain is always dangerous to the operator, and any assistant.

Son-in-laws do count, 10 points last time I checked.

Thank you, too! NOW I see it, but, I confess, I was looking for something much more complex for what is, essentially, and simple job. This is an elegant design, for which I have great admiration!

Here's how the final version came out.

The saw is a Shindaiwa 757 with a 32" bar and .404 pitch chain. This thing should handle a maximum 24" board width.

The stinger handle on the nose cap is for son in law #2 to use if his help is needed.

Thus, as shown in the photo, the saw is set up for a what, 8" thick plank? I suppose you can adjust that a wrench applied to the nuts on the all thread?

The rollers can be adjusted down to the saw bar. in the photo it was set up for about 9".

I made a guide that screws into the top surface of the log. It was two 2 x 4s laying flat with two spreaders between them, kind of like a ladder. The guide is screwed down on the log for the opening cut so that it would split the log down the center and leave a flat surface on both halves. After that, the rollers are set to the plank thickness and guide on the opening cut surface.

I was presently surprised that with son in law #2 helping on the stinger handle, we could do an 8' long cut in 16" wide material in about 5 minutes. The reviews on the mills available on line left me to believe that it would run about 30 minutes per cut. I suppose the reason is that the saw is 75cc. This piece was opening cut on a log 16" dia x 8' long, apple wood. I'm looking forward to making some wood plane bodies out of the heartwood.

Looks like some nice wood. Cut looks good too!

first glance at that, it looks like butternut. but it seems to much white on the outside grain

It's apple wood. I the old days they made drafting scales out of fruitwood, which was apple, pear or plum. Some antique wood planes and spokeshaves were made with fruitwood. I plan on making a couple of scrub plane bodies out of the heartwood.

My mind was tuned somewhere else than wood working at first, and I thought you were going to make an air-plane.

Now I understand what you are up to. Good luck with it. I suppose the heart wood of apple is not as susceptible to warpage?

I don't know much about fruit wood or wood in general. Years ago I trimmed back a grapefruit tree that I had let grow rather wild. My son took a few of the longer straighter branches and used them to play with (swords, guns, walking stick, etc.). He shaved off a lot of the bark on a few.

It surprised and impressed me how hard the wood is.

Does grapefruit wood smell good?

I don't recall an odor (aroma?). My son made a branch into a long stick. It was about an inch in diameter not quite walking stick length and probably shorter than a baseball bat. I thought it had a nice weighted feel to it (you know the weight of a good quality hunk of anything).

I'll take a picture of it if I can find it in the back yard laying around.

I'm am just in the last year getting my wood working equipment collection and useable skills up to where I'm not an embarrassment to myself.

Fun part is what I can make for so little work Vs what a similar finished piece of wood would cost to buy in a store.

Downside is all that rough lumber and odd scrap wood that used to barely qualify as firewood now looks too valuable, in avoided cost equivalents, to get rid of.

Don't worry. The stuff grows on trees.

Yep! and if you're like me, you go out to work on one project, and notice two or three others that you had forgotten, but are really more urgent or interesting, so the original project gets put off until...

At home we refer to that as scope creep.

Photo of you at the auction using your low-key bidding tactics.

I'm not one to go up against in an auction. The guys who run most our local auctions know me and even joke around aobut it every now and then.

Unlike most people I don't hmm,a haw around for the last 4 -5 bids like I am making a life or death decision over spend a few dollars more or not.

I bid like I have all the money in the world to spend and plan to win then when I hit the limit I had set for myself I just drop it right there. Given that tactic I have left many bid pushers standing there with a pile of junk they paid way too much for.

For those who don't know what a bid pusher is it's usually someone associated with whomever owns whatever it is being sold who pushes bids up to get the seller more money and it's also the last guy the actual seller wants to win the sale either because it basically means he just bought his own item back minus the auction selling fees.

So if you are selling something and you want $200 for it and the bids are only at $50 you get the pusher to try and drive the bids up but have them back out before the real buyer drops out which with most people is when they start the Hmm and Hawing act.

I'm that guy who gets in at the $50 point and goes against the pusher until I hit my price which may be $150 then just drop my bidding right there leaving the seller with not only not having gotten his $200 he wanted or my $150 but having gotten his item back minus the auction listing fees plus percentage of the $150 his pusher paid as well!

The auctioneers who know who are bid pushers giggle at it and give me a nod almost every time. They got more fees and a greedy seller got himself screwed.

in our area... the auctions have what's called a buyers premium is getting pretty common in our area... they collect on items sold.

A few years ago I picked up three 2.5kVA Honda portable generators that a hire company was throwing out.

Apparently they had been on hire to some construction mob, and they all failed within days of each other. The dills had filled them with diesel instead of petrol, and no-one noticed the problem, so they just turfed them.

I scored a 6HP mercury outboard that just needed a new spark plug and a carby clean to get it running.

Recently an almost new 2HP compressor came my way, just needed a new start capacitor (which I already had).

Dropping off some junk at the tip and spied an electric scooter. A couple of new batteries and a clean up and the grandson loves it.

I notice that more folks these days tend to ditch any thing that is not working rather than fix it. There is likely a twofold cause for this - repair costs are often more than the price of a new item - younger ones just don't know how to, or can't be bothered. fixing stuff.

Personally, I get a great deal of satisfaction from getting equipment going again - so much so that I am the local Mr. Fixit to my neighbours.

Fixing is not what it used to be. Thank you so much California, for over-complicating everything down to the smallest ICE's in service, I am surprised that you have not yet messed with model airplane engines.

That and once a computer control board goes out, who in heck knows where to get a replacement board for a vacuum cleaner? I pulled a motor out of one (that had been discarded), but I missed paying attention to the run light being in series with the start coil (or something), and now I cannot run the motor. Anyone have a Hoover schematic?

I have read,... somewhere,... that they started some type of community incubator, where you can fix and even make items of your own. It's even manned with volunteer professional experts in their fields to assist.

I know there was one about 60 miles were I live that has been going on. And you can go for robotics and 3d printing and stuff like that. I found out about that about 5-7 years ago.

If they have something like that in Lubbock, you have to be a member of some local school to participate, since it is most likely a vocational training program.

It is a club, that backed by the local community... in our area, it started as a hobbyist getting together.

A lot of community has small business incubator, and its kinda an offshoot of that.

https://www.ifixit.com/

https://www.facebook.com/FixItCommunity

nice...

I do a lot of repair work and upgrades on my vehicles... replace pads, rotors, alternators, exhaust, shocks, new interior, carpet upholstery.

I'll go on you tube, to see if there is something similar and if there is, I'll watch the video to see if I can do it. If I can, there are times that I can buy tools and material and still be far ahead then having it doing. With the same quality.

It takes away from local repair shops... but I still give them the business... But I've seen memes from repair shops that goes something like this.

Charge Rates

• $50.00/hour to repair your car
• $75.00/hour if you first tried to repair it based on a you tube video.

Yes, there is a local shop I take my truck to for anything above my pay grade, and yes, I do give them the business, and they in turn let me know they do not appreciate that kind of behavior.

I used to frequent the auctions to get those "boxes of stuff"...usually to find antique tools that someone didn't know was worth anything. I restore them if needed and sell them on e-bay. Have not done that for a while since my "stock" is still filling my storage space. Rule is I can't buy more until I have space for it. That's how you control the hording instinct! I usually find several bit braces, chisels and various "clamping" devices, that can be fixed up and sold. It requires a lot of research into the various old tools to find trade marks, etc. It's a fun little hobby that I can put aside or concentrate on as my time and mood dictates.

that's different and understandable, Your going on a quest... that's different. it the hoarders that need to win the bid to get that box is different.

good luck on your future quests.....

My biggest score was a commercial 3D printer. The company shut down our office and two years later liquidated everything. I stopped by at the end and noticed the printer and asked the guy running the liquidation about it. His comment, "If you know what it is and want it, get it out of here." I backed up the pickup and loaded it up along with supplies, drove it home, cleaned it up (Bad case of drywall dust contamination) and put it to work. What's funny was that when they closed the office they wouldn't sell it to me as they thought they would probably use it. Two years later I got it for free from the back corner of a warehouse jammed with office crap.

Unrepairable means "I'm too dumb or it's somebody elses equipment so let them do it" in today's world; I believe our society will soon all implode!

Don't worry friends, all hope for the future is not lost. At least a few of us young bucks listened to our dads growing up.

About a year ago I dismantled an old Ikea-type dresser that was wobbly and wouldn't close properly. We didn't need it anymore, but it had some pretty good boards for the drawers and sides.

Just this past Sunday, I took all of those drawer fronts and built a much needed rack for our movies. It's great because it fits perfectly over an existing end table and doesn't need fasteners. I never could have found something that works as well in a store.

Congratulations! People like you are few and far between. It does give a great deal of satisfaction to do something like that.

That leads me to think you did a poor job of choosing a CR4 moniker! ...or does the "Con" refer to construction?

The company that owns the company I work for had another divisions people at our facility 15 years ago. The office manger showed me a box of 12 or 15 cordless telephone headsets that the repair shop said were 'unrepairable.' There were 2 or 3 cube transformer/power supplies in the box, but all wrong voltage. I went and got some 300ma power cubes at Radio shack and got several working by plugging them in. (Rocket science) About a week later I got a call that all of the power supplies were wrong and would not work. I asked what the problem was and was told they required 200ma cubes. I told them the 300 would be fine but they insisted that they would not work and wanted to take them out. The people using them rebelled when they tried to take them away and leave them with nothing. They decided they could use them until they failed, but would not fix them. That division moved away 6 or 7 years later and took them all with them! - JHF

Did they leave huffily, or foaming at the mouth and falling backward? Are you sure they were not from a Monty Python skit?

Usually, the parlance of the repair shop goes thus: "That item is unreparable". Manglement chimes in with "the correct term is irreparable". Purchasing comes to the rescue, "we need to re-order 17 of those unrecoverable items". Back at the repair shop:"...zzzz....zzzz....zzzz...." Marketing then queries: "Where are those wireless items we sent in for repair?" Repair shop attendant: "Hey I just woke up, you really expect me to wire those for you?"

Yea, when we went from an individual owner to the multi-national corp world, I got some 'learnin'. (Cleaned out a storage room to make an office, I dropped in a tele and ethernet- MIS guys "why you doing that. We have a contractor we use." Contractor came out, tied a new new wire to my old new wire, pulled, it was stuck so decided my wire was 'good enough". That'l be $500.00 please.

US Navy. Stationed in Japan (Near Tokyo, at Kami Seya) from1976-1979. (Probably still works this way, as it was a Japanese Culture thing, about which we dumb Americans "knew nothing", and which, translated means "we Americans don't work that way, so we'll just take this home and fix it") The Japanese people around where we lived threw away numerous appliances which they wanted to replace, but which still worked fine. They had lots of money, and prestige did not include using appliances more than a few years old, or they were moving up, from a one bedroom or efficiency apartment to a two room apartment, and thus needed all new "stuff". At any rate, they would cut the power cord off of an otherwise perfectly good appliance, and put it out as "broken beyond repair", and NO, they did not want to take it to a repair shop to be fixed, as this would mean THEY WERE USING A REPAIRED ITEM, and that, in turn, made them look poor. The recycling industry in Japan was such that the trash man would pick these up, either repair them himself and send them to a poorer place (like almost anywhere in Okinawa, which it seemed to please all Tokyo or Near-Tokyo dwellers to think was poor) for resale by a shop there. But the average Japanese wouldn't think to cut into the downward spiral of nearly perfect goods by picking it up and starting his or her own shop, even if they knew how, as that would take food out of someone else's mouth (or so my Okinawa-born-and-raised friend, college-educated here in America, and gone back as a Japanese Baptist Pastor, explained it to me). But we cheap Americans cut the circle, collected the goods, and sold them to our military compadres who lived in the barracks or in military housing and needed them. WE aren't too proud to use fixed stuff. And I, personally, fixed and delivered a great many items, picked up free, repaired from parts taken from other stuff picked up for free, sold to other military folks for cheap, and EVERYONE (with the exception, probably, of some of the Japanese people) were made MUCH happier. Good days. Probably, given Japanese culture/pride/hubris, still going on with the US military.