I've got one thing that I keep re-purposing.
Maybe 15 years ago, before I owned a welder, I took a catalog page with some bookshelves down to Mexico for a shop to reproduce. The work was very inexpensive, but I had to haul all the pieces back stacked on top of my Jeep and I had to put together the wood shelves (distressing, staining, varnishing) by myself. Still, it was a huge amount of furniture for very little money and the stuff served me well for a long time.
Three years ago I cleaned up my garage. By then, the old bookcases were part of the clutter sitting where I was supposed to park my car. I painted over the stain on two of them and used them to hold stuff in the garage. The long and low one got a piece of plywood put on top of it. The top piece was hinged so it could function as either a desk or a kind of drafting table.
Then I replaced both of them with other kinds of storage (thanks to this board, of course), and the low and long shelving unit got stuck back behind the garage. But I also had a lot of leftover steel in the same place, so I flipped the steel skeleton of the shelving unit upside-down and cut off the face section, curling up the 'arms' I'd created with a pipe wrench.
Then I duplicated those pieces with what was left of the face. Here it is in the vise.
The center section stands on its own, but I welded a T-shaped foot to the pieces I made out of the face. They would function as the rack pieces I could position out on either side. I used those leftover ends you see on the floor there. They were from the canopy shade cover I made from the patio last month.
Here's my poor man's welding positioner.
And here's the rack in position. It leans back against the house. You can see I also added some little gussets for strength.
I'm going to put some rubber caps on the ends soon -- probably just as soon as I cut my leg open while walking past it.
But wait -- there's more:
The pieces I didn't use for the rack (basically 14" steel dowel rods) ended up becoming useful for moving heavy things in and out of the bed of my Jeep.
THIS VIDEO shows how easy they make it to move a 500-pound engine in a crate.
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