Seeking good home for old mechanical stuff

[Jon Nicoll]

Hi all a family relative has died recently and left a garage full of ... stuff.

This consists of a large mixture of tools, fixtures and fittings, acquired, made or (possibly) bought over a lifetime of working in the British automotive industry, man and boy. I'm talking about imperial nuts & screws, other fixings, Allen keys, taps & dies, cramps, screwdrivers and files, sheet materials, ... all sorts.

Some of this will be passed on to descendants etc., but a large part of it just won't be of use to us. I hesitate to either just get scrap value for it, or take it to the skip, as I'd like to think that things like the imperial fixings would be of use to someone.

I'm basically looking for ideas as to where I might find a good home for this stuff. Suggestions very welcome...

Thanks J^n

[Charles Lamont]

An autojumble?

[geoff]

In message , Jon Nicoll writes

If you gave a clue as to where you are, there might be some peeps happy to come and relieve you of some of the unwanted stuff

[Mark Rand]

Are you prepared to either describe or photograph the parts you want to dispose of?

a very place to list engineering stuff to sell/borrow/give_away etc.

Ebay also works if you are prepared to put more work into the describing/photographing/selling side of things, otherwise it can be disappointing.

People have had acceptable (to them) results by just roughly listing the stuff here, saying what part of the world it's in and asking if anyone's interested.

Good luck

Mark Rand (who only uses metric fastenings when no-one's looking) RTFM

[Matty F]

Try museums that restore old equipment. They need that kind of stuff. Otherwise, what's the postage to New Zealand:)

[Richard Edwards]

To assist in our contemplations, where roughly is this Aladdins cave located?

Richard

[Andrew Mawson]

value for

Jon,

Where are you located? Your local ME club would probably assist

AWEM

[sm_jamieson]

Will you be selling the house ? I bought a house previously owned by a similar old boy. Had Rolls Royce duffel coats in there, huge ring spanners, a wall of drawers with screws, nails etc. I took what was of use when I sold. The rest, car-specific tools, including the garage with a pit, was a major selling point for the car enthusiast that bought it. On the other hand, the "junk" could put some people off I suppose. Simon.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I have a pretty large stock of 'hobby' electronic and electrical stuff - the electrical stuff mainly for cars, although some domestic, and often wonder what will happen to it when I'm gone. ;-) And quite a big collection of old electronic test gear.

When you get to a certain age you start thinking about such things.;-)

[Charles]

Imperial stuff, as in BSF, BSW etc is still widely used by both old car types and various "model engineering" types.

The easiest way is probably to take a load of photos and use

to post some free ads. Alternatively you've got the world of Ebay. Rather annoyingly there isn't really a single decent place that old car people congregate online.

I certainly hoard BSF and whitworth fixings and taps/dies - you can't just nip to Homebase of you're missing one on a Sunday afternoon

Charles

[Huge]

Your executor(s) will curse you as they fling it into a skip. :o(

[Dave Liquorice]

Having moved my father from the family home of 52 years a few years back and just cleared his last house I'm going to try and make sure I shift my "junk" before I shuffle off this mortal coil. Yeah, right...

[Huge]

Quite. I moved my mother out of her 3 bed semi into a 1 bed flat, 2 years ago, my father having died several years previously. We threw out over

100 bin bags full of junk (the task made considerably easier when she wasn't there) some of it not unpacked from 2 or 3 house moves previously.

When we returned home, I immediately started throwing things out. Especially since we want to "down-size" in a year or two.

[Adrian]

"Dave Liquorice" gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

Let 'em. They want the house, they can do some sodding work.

I seem to remember SWMBO saying something as we finished clearing her parents house (after ~50yrs in residence)...

We now have just as much stuff in our house, AND a 75sqft storage unit filled (mainly) with stuff from their house...

[Andrew May]

Executor != Beneficiary

[Adrian]

Andrew May gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

Usually, within a family, it does.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Quite. They'll not be worried about a few hundred quid if they've got the house.

But there are many hundreds of quids worth of new resistors, caps, transistors, common ICs, etc. As well as loads of new hardware like nuts and bolts all nicely organised in small drawer cabinets. It would be great if it all went to someone or some organisation that could make use of it. But I suppose a school electronics club - if they still exist - would have to have it all approved before use. ;-(

[Adrian C]

Sounds like the description of my shed.

It would be great

I'd track down a charity that can ship overseas. There are plenty of parts of the world that could do with the spares, where equipment is still being repaired rather than thrown.

I was party to a depressing conversation yesterday about the antics of building clearance organisations that destroyed thousands of pounds worth of broadcast editing equipment because they didn't know or care what they were clearing. Aparently skips & pick axes were involved :-(

I'd rather like to see some waste body - even commercial - step inbetween the disposal and 'smash to component bits to reuse materials' and make these items available to educated individuals (and probably overseas if none here....)

[Huge]

I managed to donate my father's book collection to the local library, and anything that looked like it had any value (woodworking tools, mostly) went into a storage unit, which we then had the local auction house clear. My Mum got $900 for the contents and was well pleased.

(P.S. Never let your parents emigrate. The whole situation upon death is made orders of magnitude more complicated when they're 2500 miles away. Anything you want for family reasons has to be shipped back to the UK.)

[Rob]

On 24/05/2010 13:53, Adrian C wrote: snip

A friend has just been made redundant, firm gone bust - machine shops full of hand and bench tools, lathes, vices, testing equipment, just everything going in the bin. No discussion, site made secure so no one can steal it before it gets thrown.

If I was given the task of running a society it's the sort of thing I just couldn't make up.

Rob