Sadly, my father died in the USA, so the contents of his workshop (he was latterly a cabinet maker) went to his friends & the residue to auction. I kept a teeny-tiny plane (no bigger than my thumb) for sentimental reasons.
I've just been clearing out some paint. Including some first used not long after I moved in here, about 40 years ago. And the room it was used in re-decorated to a different colour scheme several times since. Knowing my luck there will be no paint left for touching up with any colour scheme current.
I've got a box, I think it came from an operating theatre and contained various sutures, with my own scrawl of "odds and ends (non-electrical)" it's about the same age ...
Have wondered what will happen to my electronic components stock when I pop my clogs. Something like 2 x 2 metres of nests of boxes jam packed with all new bits. I never buy one of anything, since bulk reduces the price per component so dramatically.
I'd have hoped a local school electronics club could have made use of them
- but do such things even exist in these days of protecting the little darlings from life?
Call it a piece of modern art and it'll be worth something ;-(
Owain
It'll go in the skip with everything else.
On the subject of things going in the skip I am helping a friend with the house clearance of a hoarder - sorting anything of use from all of the crap has been a challenge. And on that note does anyone know if old electronic valves (I suspect salvaged from many TV sets) are in demand by anyone these days, or can they safely hit the skip?
Please send them here, I'll happily refund the postage, as long as it's not 3 or 4 valves. If you reply to this addy I'll go check it. They'd go to a good use.
NT
One of the problems we had was that the answer to your question is "Yes, but how on Earth do you find someone who wants them?" That and can you be bothered to make the effort? My best friend's dad died over 10 years ago, and my friend still has all his father's electronics gear; the effort of disposing of it to someone who wants it is overwhelming.
Just think, you could leave this ...
EEVblog #737 - World's Biggest Collection Of Electronics Components
I may still be alive in twenty years, possibly thirty, but by then I doubt I will care. So, having moved house last year, I approach its renovation on the principle that whatever needs doing had best be done now[1] while I still have the will and time to enjoy it.
[1] subject to delay due to wrong kind of tuits.
To my surprise I did find a matching pint of vinyl from 20 years ago the other day. It needed a lot of stirring plus straining to recover it, but it was good enough for the new set of bathroom shelves.
If you don't mind listing and possibly posting them try
Someone was shifting parts from a Type 42 destroyer the other week.
Original valve boxes (sans valves) might also be sought after by collectors.
Owain
If anyone finds themselves in the right part of Devon and wants a break from cream teas and cottages this place is full of interesting bits.
I visited about 15 years ago and obtained a couple of stand pipes for fire hydrants and some 3" fire hoses and branches (nozzles) for a project. The floors in the old building they use at their Crediton site were buckling under the weight of stuff. A nice break from the tidy sanitised emporiums that have replaced a lot of these interesting places. I defy many of the DIY ers on here to visit and defy the urge to get something because it is interesting and unusual. It was only a lack of a trailer that stopped me from buying a dummy Torpedo, at least I assumed it was a dummy.
G.Harman
Set that hard did it, most of us would use a bit of wood.
G.Harman
Oooh, the OXO tin! That's a memory from my childhood. Our next-door neighbours had one full of all sorts of odds and ends. On rainy days during the school holidays (it was banned at all other times), I and their daughter spent hours fastening bits and pieces from the tin together, making God knows what.
SteveW
I don't know about a club, but my sons' secondary school certainly does a limited amout of electronics in lessons.
SteveW
eBay or Freegle depending on how much effort you want to put into it.
Dad had around 6 sticks of Gelignite about 4" long in one of his. Arctic Gelignite, manufactured in 1910 according to the label, The solid component appeared to be compressed sawdust rather than I believe a china clay like medium used later. He had acquired it in the mid 50's when he did some work modernising a small cottage up the road which was on the edge of a country estate that at one time around the turn of 19th to 20th centuries had a small stone quarry for material to construct buildings with ,make walls, rubble tracks in the woodland etc. Inset inside a wall of this cottage there was a small safe like cupboard which though it didn't have a lock was easily hidden by a picture or mirror and this was where the stuff had been stored for
45years. Part of Dads tasks was to render what had been exposed stone work and the estate owner asked him to cover over the cupboard . The former tenant had elected to move to a new council bungalow on retirement and wasn't there. Dad found the stuff and just took it home and as you do put it in an OXO tin meaning to do deal with it later.Roll forward to the end of the sixties and once again the successor farm worker tenant retires and opts for an easier life in a nearby village with mains water and decent heating. This time the cottage is sold by the estate to a nice couple who are put in contact with dad to bring the cottage up to late 1960's standards, Ironically a lot of the couple ideas were returningit to an "old look". Fifties tiled fireplace ripped out and open hearth fireplace exposed* etc , in passing Dad mentioned the covered over cupboard and they asked for it be left exposed again. Mother happened to be there at time (she was measuring up to make them some curtains) and said "Whatever happened to that Gelignite? Dad replied it's an OXO tin in the big shed, bottom drawer of the old chest of drawers," The one I keep my small gardening tools and baby bio and seeds in " asked mother Yes I suppose" so said Dad" never got around to getting rid of it."
I got fairly nervous then, not because of the thought that Mother may have been blown to bits, by then that was unlikely as the Tin had been emptied by teenage me gradually for a couple of years and I would have some explaining to do. My mates and I tried to detonate some with firework bangers but without success which in retrospect was probably fortunate .
The OXO tin bottom was highly corroded so I think the nitroglycerine must have leaked out over the years.
G.Harman
And IME, the effort isn't worth it. Especially since it involves dealing with the general public for little or no return. I want this stuff to be re-used, I really do, but the experience of dealing with Freeglers and the like means it's easier just to put it in a skip.
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