# Fix anything shops



## Astro Pen (Nov 27, 2021)

Repair it, reuse it: The people saving stuff from landfill
					

We make too much waste for the planet to handle. Can repair and reuse shops help turn the tide?



					www.bbc.co.uk
				




I'm all for this. I very seldom buy new things and have been fixing things for years. I worked in recycling for a few years and it is infuriating how much viable stuff people throw away.  Good for me and the other renovators of course, each of us had a specialism. Like I would refurbish the musical instruments and cameras. Others renovated furniture or clothing.  Not everything is reparable, dvd players, chipped glassware etc but a lot is.  Even things like unwanted sky boxes have a 500 gb or 1tb  hard drive in them.
Shows like T_he Repair Shop_ are great for encouraging this with 'sentimental' items but the real eco impact is doing the everyday things.
There are also many good youtubes that demonstrate renovation. Like this one:





(Though there are a few fake looking vids where they 'come across' items that are obviously just muddied up to look "just found" . Yeah sure 

Have any of you done restorations of things? Garden tools, bookbinding, technology, chairs whatever.?


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## Foxbat (Nov 27, 2021)

A few years back, I partially restored an old Pathe 9.5mm film projector. I say partially because I had to manufacture a new drive belt (the old one was sprung metal, the new was a modified O ring). I also had to build a new light source due to the lack of original lamps. I settled on a small halogen but had to build it into  a special swing arm. The reason for this was any jamming of the film would result in burning because of the heat from the lamp. The film was fine when it was moving. Any stoppage resulted in scorching within a few seconds. A swing arm allowed me to quickly get the light away from the film and prevent damage before I worked on whatever problem caused the jam.


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## Fiberglass Cyborg (Nov 28, 2021)

I wish I had more practical fixing skills- it'd reduce my "oh, I can probably used the parts for something" pile.


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## mosaix (Nov 28, 2021)

Satnav (new batteries, reformatted memory card), replacement disc, fan and power supply in my desktop, additional memory in my laptop, replacement motor in my cooker hood, replacement central heating pump, new bearings in my washing machine, replacement PCB in my dishwasher, new capacitor in my macerator, new door microswitches in my daughter's micro-wave, replacement timing clock in an electrical heater, replacement corroded terminal in another electrical heater, re-soldering broken wire in a stereo speaker, and numerous repairs to my power tools.

Recently I've had a gas fire that the engineer said was obsolete and unrepairable. The thing is only 5 years old! I've found the required spares online and ordered them. I'd fit them myself but I'm not going to take the risk. I've persuaded the engineer to come back and fit them. 

I hate throwing things away if they are repairable. One thing the internet is good for, apart from the Chrons, is the ease of locating spare parts and youtube videos on how to fit them.


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## Vladd67 (Nov 28, 2021)

Fiberglass Cyborg said:


> I wish I had more practical fixing skills- it'd reduce my "oh, I can probably used the parts for something" pile.


My dad has a I could use this for something garage.


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## JunkMonkey (Nov 28, 2021)

Astro Pen said:


> Have any of you done restorations of things? Garden tools, bookbinding, technology, chairs whatever.?



Constantly.  My house is full of stuff pulled out of skips and got working again.  Current long term project - which has been on hold for a while now because other stuff got in the way and the workshop is too fecking cold at this time of year to do anything other than run in and get tools out* -  is getting a rusted-sold 1930's Record woodworking vice working again.  It took lots of soaking in thin oil (drained from an old oil-filled radiator that was destined for the recycling) and hitting with big hammers before the jaws started moving:
Here's Daughter#2, who loved rescuing stuff, working on it with me :



 

We're working on my woodworking bench, inherited from my dad who made it out of bed irons and scaffold planks.  We have history. For many years my parents made their living by buying junk and selling antiques.

Hardly anything gets thrown out of our house.  I have this idea that if you pile enough of the same sort of stuff up it will, at some point, stop being rubbish and become a resource.  Luckily I have a big house, large garden, and don't give a sh*t what the neighbours think. 


*This is why we had a table getting its top sash-cramped back together upside-down on the living room floor all last night and most of today.


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## JunkMonkey (Nov 30, 2021)

Thinking of this the last couple of days I was trying to remember the last things I did fix  worth mentioning.  I came up with:

Last week: My Bluetooth headphones which just snapped.  I picked them up and found the headband had broken right across.  Hot Glue gunned the crack and then for good measure splinted it by glue gunning on the handles from a couple of plastic yogurt buckets and lashing it with black gaffer tape. 

A couple of months ago: The flatscreen TV with built in DVD player that I pulled out of a skip where it had obviously been dumped because it no longer worked.   It continued not working until the _very moment_ I scraped a wee bit of corrosion off one of the battery connectors in the remote control....


EDIT: AND!  Just because he came round to drop something off at my house and I remembered:

I once heard the handyman in a hotel I used to work at exclaim, in a very loud voice: "How the f*ck am I supposed to fix that? It's broken!"


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