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What do you mean by "gave up the ghost"? Replacement brushes are available and if the motor is still spinning it may just be the 25-cent plastic coupling on the shaft.

Been looking for one of these for a while. The belt wasn't tracking right, even with the adjustment, but a little cleaning and a couple drops of Mystery Oil and all is well. Worth the $35, I think.

My local Habitat ReStore sells assorted nuts, bolts, screws, washers, etc., for a buck a baggie full.

If the landscape allows it, the best option is to locate the collectors below the pool an allow it to thermo-siphon -- eliminating the cost of pumping all that water. Insulating the floor of the pool is good, but heat loss also occurs at night from the surface due to black body radiation.

[/url][/IMG] The molding was easy, just marked and cut the 45s with a hack saw and did the cut-out around the vise with a Dremel. Held down with countersunk drywall screws. That flooring is tough and has held up well, also easy to wipe up spills.

I'm cheap, so I got a box of leftover laminate flooring at the Habitat ReStore and floated it on top of my workbench, held in place with aluminum molding. It's tough, nearly seamless and easy to replace in the future when it gets dinged up.

Hydraulic ram pumps are pretty cool, but they can be annoyingly noisy unless you insulate the sound they make. Also, once saw an Amishman who built a waterwheel with an offset crank, hooked to a 100-yard cable that made the handle of his old-style hand pump go up and down. That was pretty noisy too.

I like those clip-on models that go on the bill of a ball cap, with rechargeable AAAs, and have a red light option. Not an option for those who wear their cap backwards. Gets rid of the stupid harnesses of most headlamps.

Maybe we're seeing the ebb and flow of tool manufacturing bringing production back to the USA. After World War II, the U.S. took the forefront because all the competition was bombed to rubble. Today the Asian plants are aging, inefficient and manpower intensive. Starting afresh, U.S. companies...

America acquired a lot of bad habits in the prosperity that followed World War II. Easy money and the throw-away culture took hold and the ethics of thrift that were learned on the farm -- when we were in an agriculture-based economy -- were tossed into the wind. That bucket of rusty tools you...

Agreed. Though they're rarely laying out at garage sales, at estate sales you can usually find them still screwed into a wall somewhere if you ask.

I've kept the family's daily carry knives: top is my "new" Tinker; next a similar Swiss Army model that my father took from a German prisoner in World War II; next my maternal grandfather's Barlow and below that the rigging knife he carried in Annapolis in 1907. At left is my paternal...

Here's what I wound up doing: I torched both broken ends red hot, then carefully formed counterposed 1/4 inch interlocking hooks and then cold pressed them together flat in a vise. Rewound the spring back into the drum and it withstood enough tension to operate the typewriter. I don't know how...

I resurfaced the old, battered workbench that came with my house with a box of laminate flooring from my local Habitat ReStore last summer. I just planed the high spots off the original surface, laid down about a dozen layers of newsprint, floated the new flooring on that and retained the edges...

I have a 1930s manual typewriter with a broken spring steel motor (which powers the carriage along as you type). It parted in mid-length, and the spring is about a quarter-inch wide, one mm thick and maybe five feet in length. While I seek a replacement, which may be a tough search, is there any...

I frequent yard sales and thrift stores for old tools, consumables and projects I can use them on, and get great satisfaction in bringing old stuff back to life. Over the decades I've acquired enough to tackle many jobs without having to run to the hardware store. Speaking of hardware stores, I...

Consider a donation to your local Habitat for Humanity ReStore, which likely could supply the labor to haul everything. You can then claim a tax break, but it's up to you to come up with a total valuation and defend it if the IRS should question it.

I just picked up a 1950s Craftsman eggbeater hand drill for $2 at a thrift store, and the 1950s is about the last time I used one. It cleaned up and works fine. I think it's a solution to a problem I've had in that every drill bit set I've bought in the intervening years, the first bits to die...

Cravens on Main Street, Butte, Montana. Now used for servicing the city's garbage trucks.

New GJ member here, and here is my Rock Island 231, complete with pipe jaws. It came with my house, so I know nothing of its history or age. It's a bit beat-on, but still works well. The black item to the left is a 9x9x1 7/8 slab of steel that my Dad picked up somewhere and which I use for an...