Your worst screw up? - Page 2

Grabbed a 340 lb roll of copper clad railway wire back in the late 1970's before all the fuss.

Another clasic a guy I knew wanted a Euclid differenctial which was still in the shipping crate left at an old minesite. All I had at the time was a Toyota pick up, went up with a bunch of wrenches to dismantle this thing after emoving the axle bolts pounded on the end of it hoping it would pop out it it wouldnt budge.

Couple of years later I have a Chevy 1 ton flatdeck with a winch on it, scrap hauler. This guy still wants the diff so off I go into the backend of Harrison Lake and winch the whole differenctial onto the truck.

Coming out some of the mountian roads ahd some very steep inclines while coming down one to the steeper hill this **** axel that I had removed the bolts years before decides to let go. I came smashing throug the rear window punding into the dask right beside my right arm.

No damage to the arm but had to live with that huge dent in the dash, a bit higher and it would have zipped clean on throught the windsheild.

That was a long time ago the guy paid me $350.00 for that diff, problably could have got more had I sold it to Madil the folks on Vancouver Island who used to manufactur mobile spar trees used for reteiving logs off the mountian sides.

Madil made mobile wheeled spar trees and also used surplus WWII tanks to mount their mobile spars onto, now you guys finally get to see the type of scrap that I used to go after. But then scrap was only worth like $20.00 a ton a hundred dollar day was big money.

More pictures located on this site. http://www.heavyequipmentforums.com/...shington/page9

That long steel pole is telescopic. and there's 8 or 10 winches used to hoist up the spar, insdie there's a tripple drum winch used to haul in the logs.



The tripple drum as the name implys has 3 drums, the largest drum has the heavy mainline line, the next drum has the haulback, cable about 1 inch in diameter then theres the straw line.

Once the spar has been set up on location the men pull out the 3/8" straw line then feed itthorugh a block bringing back the the spar where it is now hooked omto the haul back. The winch operator now pulls the heavy haulback through the block and back to he mainline where the proeedure is repeated.

, two diesel engines both truck and spar have their own, then inside there would be a large Quincey air compressor and air tank along with valves and various controls.

Some logging compamies went broke and they would abandone any equipment, then after years forestry decided it was an enviromental thing and they wanted this stuff removed. Most scraper would not go after it as some of these 6 x 6's spars could not make it on their own power to the sites they now rested but needed additional catterpillers to pull them into place.

A good 4x4 could usually make it into these sites and get a good heavy load, coming down the mountian fully loaded could be hair raising. It was hard work and my back at 62 years of age knows it's been to hell and back.

had a load of cats (about 5 k worth mostly large foreign and a barrel of copper in the back ofmy truck forgot tto shut the tailgate expenesive lesson to learn

biggest mistake to date was tearing apart 2 old ocilloscopes. Took off the covers and was blinded by all the boards. scrapped them both. Got a whole 30 bucks in boards and finger cards from each one. Couple of days later I was looking on ebay and discovered that non-working for parts, exact ones that I scrapped, had sold for $250 each !!!!!
Biggest save- putting my 4 year old son behind me right before my grinding wheel disintigrated and threw pieces of the wheel thru a card board box he was standing in front of 2 minutes before.

Originally Posted by Russell

I goofed. 5 am on my way to work its dark. There it was shining in my headlights, a basketball pole! No backboard, no hoop, nothing to mess with. This a cement into the ground type not your flimsy portable type. It seemed extremley heavy. Attributing this to the possible cement in the bottom pole I secured her down off I went. Well, its actually filled completely solid with cement all but the top 2 feet. I took the grinder to it praying it was only the bottom foot or two. Now what?

Easy to cut and snap go 2 or 3 foot sections and get rid of in a few trips
----------------
Mistakes I have made are scrapping the old film projector screens that stand like a projector . I heard some types are valuable
also scrapped two boilers till i learned of the copper coil inside many of them .
Best recent save was 50 Ball canning glass jars sold on e-bay

Usually he doesn't like the noise and heads to the backyard when I fire them up. Like I said I moved him before I started and he was heading to the yard as soon as the grinder came out and before i started it up. No, never work with power tools with him around. He would rather crack open power cords and get he transformers out. He swings a nice 10 oz hammer for a 4 year old. Puts on his gloves and goggles, puts a towel over them and goes to town.

Some days you win and others you don't. Just let it go and move on.

I once threw out(sent to recycler) 4#of silver oxide batteries before I new what they were. The next week I found out they were worth 20%+ in silver.

Eric

Pawned a chunky 14 kt bracelet my Mother gave me. Forgot to go back and get it, ouch, that was in 2008.

Originally Posted by Dunemaul

Plugging in a tv to see if it works then unplugging it and breaking it down. we all know what happens lol.

Hey Dune, you related to Hoss?