I’ve got McGuyver I haven’t even used yet. I carry a Leatherman and a Swiss Army knife. I’ll list some of the McGuyverish things I’ve done, but I’d like to point out that the end products were invariably so ugly that I was almost too embarassed to use them.
I have:
Built a building large enough to shelter 20 people out of drop cloth, sticks, and duct tape.
Sealed a hull breach on a Swamp Fox with chewing gum and mud.
Produced an “ancient papyrus map” using a tshirt and a cup of tea.
Made my own fireworks.
Modified a camcorder to serve as a nightvision scope.
Built a crude telescope from a couple of pieces of costume jewelry a teammate was wearing.
Made a winch out of a cooking spit and a length of twine (to pull a sword out of stone–take that, Merlin!)
Built a pulsed-electromagnet nail gun out of scrap wire, a cardboard tube, and a handful of timer chips I found on the floor under my workbench.
Rigged a scrap VCR to act as a time-lapse recorder in a homebrewed security system (which also used the IR camcorder above).
Built a large “granite” altar with a hidden reliquary out of foam insulation, duct tape, and spray paint.
Scotti tosses a bunch of fuzzy killer bunnies into the general direction of heresiarch
I don’t do drugs. I do, however, do crafts. And belive me, my handy dandy hemostat is quite useful. I got it from the hospital when my dad cut his thumb off. Did you know that they throw these things away after they use them? Whatever happened to sterilizing stuff and using it again? No wonder it costs so much to visit the ER.
Say, why are you here si arch anyway? Inquiring minds want to know…well, mine does, anyway…
Okay, when automobile fuel pumps were mechanical devices, the diaphragm on one of mine failed, leaving me stranded. Automobile tires had innertubes back then. So, I sacrificed an innertube by cutting out a piece large enough to use as a diaphragm for the fuel pump. This was a significant road side repair and I am still proud of it.
Louis, I did the EXACT same thing, in high school…I was driving a '67 Ford pickup, with an inline 6-cylinder engine…the fuel pump hung off the side of the engine…anyway, it failed, but I had a screwdriver, a pocket knife, and a crescent wrench (adjustable spanner), and an old bicycle tire in the bed. I just cut up the inner tube from the bicycle tire and replaced the rubber diaphragm…worked great and got me home on a cold, dark night!
My second McGyver-ism was accomplished with a ball-point pen. There was this fluid valve on a small hydraulic actuator cylinder. It quit working but was part of an assembly unit that was going to shut down the whole line…anyway, we opened up the valve, I looked at the spring, which held pressure on a small steel ball. I just knew I had seen a spring like that somewhere before…I pulled the ball-point pen out of my pocket, took the spring out of the inside, and replaced the spring in the valve. Believe it or not, it worked! Still working to this day, as far as I know…
When we (my brothers and sisters) were all of driving age, my dad would buy 2 or 3 Ford Pintos from Budget Rent a Car for us. Our house looked like a taxi stand. My brother replaced a missing car handle with a piece of rubber pipe and a metal coat hanger. I think he increased the value of that car.
