{"id":42551,"date":"2024-08-07T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-08-07T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/?p=42551"},"modified":"2024-08-05T13:24:50","modified_gmt":"2024-08-05T20:24:50","slug":"gars-tips-tools-issue-181","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/gars-tips-tools-issue-181\/","title":{"rendered":"Gar’s Tips & Tools – Issue #181"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Gar\u2019s Tips, Tools, and Shop Tales is published by Cool Tools Lab. To receive the newsletter a week early, sign up\u00a0here.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Grand Tradition of Fishing Tools from the Trash<\/strong><\/h1>\n\n\n\n
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Image \u201cGranddad\u2019s Workshop,\u201d by Chris Frewin<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Some of the first tools I fondly remember were garbage. Literally. In my grandfather\u2019s basement workshop, he had 8 O\u2019Clock Coffee and repurposed paint cans everywhere, filled with rags, tools, hardware, materials, and supplies. All along his workbench, he had rows of baby food and peanut butter jars hung from their lids along wooden racks, each jar neatly labeled with its contents (nuts, bolts, screws, nails, etc.). When I think back on that space, most everything was made from garbage and junk. The workbenches were old doors. One other \u201ctool\u201d type I remember was storage bins made from laundry detergent boxes. He had cut them on a bias (kind of like magazine back issue boxes) and used them to store repair manuals, warranties, and other paperwork and small wood and metal scrap. I remember thinking Gramps<\/strong> must be some sort of genius for coming up with all this. Now, as an adult, I not only use similar garbage for storage and organizing, I participate in a hobby (tabletop wargaming) that uses trash extensively as modeling material. I\u2019m in the process of making an entire sci-fi town for a game called Stargrave<\/em> out of a single plastic crudit\u00e9s tray I fished from the trash. I call this junk-material-finding skill \u201cterrain eye.\u201d What \u201ctools\u201d have you fished from the trash? I\u2019d love to see some pics<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Work-in-progress sci-fi pod building made entirely of trash.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

IDing and Testing Counterfeit Tool Batteries<\/strong><\/h1>\n\n\n\n
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