You know, the Pocket Fisherman gets a lot of bad press, but as long as you didn't expect it to act like your $100 rod/reel, it was OK.
My dad received one for Christmas one year and didn't want it, so I carried it around in my trunk and used it every once in a while when I'd be out somewhere and decide to go fishing without having to go home first to get my "real" rig.
I never had to try reeling in a 10 lb. speckled trout with it, but it worked fine for light-duty work. Caught a few bass, crappie, and catfish with it.
Only real (reel?) problem I had with it was trying to get new line on the reel was frustrating.
MP Mike Patterson Please remove the spamtrap to email me. "I always wanted to be somebody...I should have been more specific..." - Lily Tomlin
Don't know which table y'all are talking about. Family gave me one for b'day about 8yr. ago, the "professional" model. I mounted it on a permanent platform. The more I learn here, the more I wish for something better, but it has served me adequately. Someone said it wouldn't accommodate their B&D router, same here, as that's all I had @ the time. I marked, drilled & tapped the B&D base to mount it in the table. There is another way though . . Sears makes a "universal adapter" plate for the table so it will accept other routers.
Must have been almost 25 years ago, I was at a kids' fishing contest at a small muddy pond stocked with trout for the occasion. The little kid next to me had the "Pocket Fisherman" and was mercilessly ridiculed by everybody who saw it.
He soon had apparently snagged his tackle on a log. The reel was so bad, any tension on the line would just cause it to unspool more. He was just about to take everybody's advice and cut the line - when it moved.
10 minutes later, he landed a 44lb. carp. It was as tall as the kid, and bright orange. Maybe somebody's liberated goldfish. He could not get enough drag on the reel to snap the line, and the fish finally beached itself. I would not have believed it had I not been standing there.
So far so good, but I think it's a lifetime affliction. Just yesterday I put an old 486 laptop in the garbage, one that still runs. That was hard enough. (I've got a "new" replacement freebie laptop.) But the power supply and its cord got wrapped up and put on the shelf for some future electronics project. Sigh...
Dave Hinz wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@individual.net:
I use the old cords, because it's easier than crawling under the desk to run the functionally equivalent new ones. But it takes quite a pile of the new ones building up, before I toss them out.
It's probably genetic. My parents and grandparents lived thru the Great Depression (and my birthdate is not that far removed from it). I remember growing up that NOTHING was wasted...even if it was never used.
Perhaps in a few more generations the trait will dispppear.
Oh yeah, that goes without saying, doesn't it? These things are absolutely useless without one of those flex shaft flummies. In fact, until you brought it up just now, I had forgotten it used to not have one. Wow. :)
I think a dedicated flex shaft tool would probably be a better investment if I ever manage to use this thing enough to kill it though.
LOL! I have no idea, but I have a bunch of cords left from the time I had a wiring wardrobe malfunction and put 220V to all my shop lights. Oops. I thought about saving the thin aluminum side panels too.
On this general topic, I'm gutting my closets, cleaning house HARD while SWMBO is away. Haven't looked at it in 15 years? You'll never notice it's missing. You didn't know where it was anyway. I found a shower curtain rod from two places back. I have been saving it because I thought it would be useful again some day. Well, I put a buncha crap on a shelf in my own closet, which I have never really used for anything except my flannel shirts and some dress clothes I haven't worn in yearrrrs. (I own a tie? Why do I own a tie?)
Oh, um. I'm getting sidetracked. Spending seven hours on a perfectly gorgeous shop day cleaning out the damn closets in the house must have done it to me. Sigh. I did get my printer stand glued together, finally. Only the second time I've tried to build anything that's well and truly furniture-like. If I had been wanting it to look better, I would have neatened it up and put a face frame on it, and done a more tidy job with the glue. I *could* have done these things. I may anyway, even though it means stripping the existing finish off the recycled plywood I used and putting a new finish on it. Anyway, it's just simple dado + glue joinery. Multi kerfs with the waste chiseled out by my son. It would have looked better if I had had better control of my new rabbet plane for the top bit, but hell, for something I knocked out in a couple hours (spread out over a dismally long week) it's pretty damn solid. Flat on the floor, square, tight. I guess I do have a little bit of skill after all! It was really too damn big to make in my itty bitty shop though. I'm going to have to move my lathe and a bunch of other stuff if I ever want to rip anything longer than 30" out there. Kinda makes the prospect of building curio cabinets some day seem like something that should come after I build a real shop, in 20 or 30 years. Sigh.
Oh, blah blah blah, what the hell was I rambling about? The closet pole. Anyway, it was supposed to help hold up the shelf I loaded down with my wife's old childhood crap she can't get rid of. It didn't fit, so...
drum roll...
I THREW IT AWAY!
I have about two entire boxes of trash bags out by the curb FULL of stuff.
I have shitloads of closet space right now. Maybe when I'm finished you'll actually be able to walk through my damn house without tripping over anything. My house looks about as bad as my shop. My wife and I both got an F in housekeeping, and the last time we called dial-a-maid, she ran off cackling like a lunatic.
Wow. I have to go drink some beer, smoke a cigar, and maybe go buy a copy of Hustler or something to prove I'm not gay after all this. :)
Yeah, and those brittle ones are loads of fun when they decide to fly apart. Safety glasses are definitely mandatory.
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You sure you mean "Hoover" and not "Kirby"? Kirby is the brand that is priced in the $1k + range and had all of those attachments that came with it. Although they were OK vacs, they certainly were not worthy of the price tag and I wouldn't be surprised that a number of them wind up in Goodwill stores. I think the Looney Toons "Suckolux" was modeled after the Kirby claims. They also usually came with a *very* pushy salesman, the kind that gave door to door such a bad name.
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The "buzz to make your whole arm numb" type. I guess I didn't notice that part near as much as the "buzz loud enough to wake the neigbors' dead" noise.
:-)
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