Recently we painted the dining room. At one end against the short wall sits an antique breakfront. It is immense, almost 8 feet wide and in two pieces. It must weight 400 lbs. It’s also filled with breakables now.
Oh, how to move it away from the wall so I could paint behind it? I went and got the 2 1/4 ton floor jack I had in the garage, and brought it into the house. I never thought it would sit in the dining room, but there it was. Squat and ugly. I lifted one side of the breakfront, inched it away from the wall- watching it sway slowly as I did so- then eased it down and repeated on the other side. Voila ! Painted, then reversed the proceedure to get it back where it went. No sore back, no broken curios.
Who has used something for other than it’s intended purpose, with great success ( or, atrocious failure? )
I used to repair torn nails this way (I don’t wear fake nails)
Cut a tiny fingernail-sized piece of pantyhose. Paint torn nail with clear polish. Stick pantyhose to it. Paint over the top. Let dry, do another coat.
When it’s dry, get out my Dremel with a fine sanding sleeve on it, and smooth out the top, round out the front, etc.
When it was done, you couldn’t really tell unless you were paying attention. And it was strong!
You know chenille sticks (aka pipecleaners)? They’re not meant as hair accessories, but I’ve got a really nifty way of using them. Ponytail your hair, using one end of the chenille stick to make a loop. Wind the stick around the ponytail and then loop the other end through your hair to secure it in place.
I also do that ‘chopsticks’ hairstyle with everything from pens to three-foot-long balloon sticks. “Careful, you’ll have someone’s eye out with that!” Everyone looks at you funny when you have three feet of plastic pipe poking out from the back of your head. Bulldog clips are workable for keeping your hair up when you can’t find anything else too.
I’ve used a 5c coin or a paperclip when I can’t find a screwdriver.
Ah, the joys of regional differences in language. A “bulldog clip” is a heavy-duty version of a paper clip. There’s an inch-long black clamp that holds the paper and pivoting steel loops that open the clip then fold down flat. What do you folks call them?
Perhaps I was too broad in my assertion, my apologies. Every office that I worked in, with 1 exception, people have called them alligator clips. As far as their proper name? binder clips sounds right.
The one exception was when I worked for SCI, Inc - at one of their manufacturing plants which produced printed circuit boards. So yeah, I know what a proper alligator clip is.
I have a feeling that Bulldog Clips are a case of a registered name becoming generic, like Hoover becoming the term for vacuum cleaner, they are different from binder clips in that they are made of two separate jaw pieces inserted through a split tubular spring.
Binder clips, which many people seem to call Alligator clips are usually constructed as a (roughly)triangular section spring with stiff wire loops acting as levers to open the jaw.
Pantyhose will make an excellent makeshift fanbelt for a car, too. Don’t do hundreds of clicks with it, but it’ll take you to the next garage without overheating.
Shouldn’t the word “MacGuyver” be in the thread title?
I had an old Toyota. Rust and metal fatigue had caused the lower radiator hose to be in reach of the fan blades under certain conditions (acceleration torque or going around corners) and so after 3 or 4 abrupt overheating episodes followed by frantic searches for parts stores with the expensive little rubber elbow piece, I went off to the plumbing supply store. Bought a metal pipe elbow. Threaded the rubber radiator elbow piece through it. Would occasionally hear “ting ting ting” on acceleration or cornering but never again had to replace the damn thing.
I once tried out the new Crock-Pot when sis-in-law and her husband were in town. It was only when the soup was done that I realized that I didn’t have any good way to get it out of the pot–I didn’t own a ladle. SIL was just about to gingerly try to pour the soup over the side when I came up with a better plan. I went to the cupboard, got a coffee mug, and scooped the soup out with that. Much less mess that way. SIL carried on like it was the most bloody brilliant plan she’d ever seen :). I used the coffee-mug method several more times until I found a ladle I liked.
One time I was camping and trying to put up a canopy, but the grommet for the center pole had ripped out. I took a plastic lid from a container of dip or something, cut a hole in it, put the pole through the lid, then put the assembly where it was supposed to go in the canopy. The lid kept the pole from sliding through the ragged hole in the canopy.
I love this kind of thing; here is one of my better ones. Some friends and I had gone to Red Rocks Amphitheatre for an afternoon of play and partying. The linkage from the shifter to the transmission fell off because of a missing C-ring. I found a bottle cap; and using a screwdriver, pair of pliers and a rock; fashioned a temporary C-ring. It held together for about week before my friend finally bought a replacement.
Once while my best friend and I were talking on the phone, she was trying to change the water filters on her house. They were too big to get a regular pair of pliers on, but stuck so tight that she could’nt unscrew them with her hands.
I told her to go find her husbands oil-filter wrench. It worked like a charm, and its now the official filter removal tool at her house.
Makes ya feel kinda clever…
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