Just recently I was helping a friend move… we were packing up some of her clothes (ya know everything on hangers, slip a garbage bag over the top and what not) but we didn’t have string to tie the hangers together and were out of tape.
So I just cut off the drawstrings on the trash bag and used that. Everyone looked at me like I was some sort of superman for comming up with that idea.
Ahh having an engineer as a father
Clean dutch oven in electric self-cleaning oven.
My wife tested this cleaning tip on a dutch oven with about 75 years of oily crud on the outside. I got home just as the fire trucks were pulling away.
The crud burst into flames, my wife tried to cover every burner lid with a pan lid to smother the flames, then called FD when that did not work. Firefighter pulled oven away from wall and unplugged it, then used big fans a/k/a “smoke ejectors” to get the smoke out of the house.
Pan was nice and clean on the outside.
I have another use for a floor jack. My dad has a drill press that he wanted to be able to move around the garage. He incorporated a floor jack into a system of coaster wheels, levers, and hinges, and mounted the whole thing to the base of the drill press. Now when he wants to move it, he jacks it up, the wheels lift everything off the ground, then when he jacks it back down the wheels fold up underneath.
A buddy of mine fixed a Volkswagon engine with a piece from his own Erector Set. As far as he knew, the part lasted the life of the car.
He also used ball-bearings from an old skateboard to fix the steering column on his girlfriend’s car.
I used a paper clip to fix an old van’s shifting mechanism. It was an old Dodge (from the 1960’s?) with a three on the tree transmission. I was on the freeway and shifting up when my ability to shift just stopped. I pulled to the side of the road, looked under the van and saw that the vertical rod that must’ve extended down from the shifter had disconnected with the horizontal bar that must’ve connected to the tranny. So I used a paper clip - stuck one end through both holes and twisted them together. Worked like a charm, and the guy I borrowed the van from could get it fixed the next day.
When I was 17 I fixed the perpetually running toilet at the shelter I lived at with a paperclip.
When I was 21 or 22 or so a friend of mine had the most beat up piece of crap pickup truck ever. The passenger door was so dented that it didn’t open. The windows didn’t roll up. The driver’s door needed to be rigged into place to keep it closed, and it didn’t have a starter. They’d been using something (maybe an alligator clip!) to hold together two wires when they wanted to start the thing.
Well I’m known for collecting weird shit. If something breaks, I take it apart and sort out the bits to use later. I had all sorts of boxes, tackle boxes, jars, etc of “stuff”. They asked if I had anythign to fix their truck. It needed to be a button or switch that connected then released. I found a part of a car cigarette lighter adaptor that had a spring loaded button on it that did exactly that. I wired it up to some old wire (I had a huge box full of wire bits)… all soldered and nice, then sealed the thing up with plastic and a soldering iron. They hooked it up to their truck and that is how they started it from then on.
I pulled out a dent on my old car with the bathroom plunger.
In a pinch I’ve used a pair of headphones as a microphone to record audio (not very well but better than nothing).
One time I was making a flan and after I mixed the ingredients and boiled them and so on I get to the part where I have to pour it all into the mold and stick in the oven but I can’t find the mold cause I’d left it at my mother’s. Now I’m stuck because I have nothing else I can bake this thing in sooo…I unscrewed the plastic handle from the pot I was using and shoved the pot into the oven. It looked weird but it tasted good.
When your’e raised on a farm you learn that baling wire and a pair of pliers can be used to fix almost anything 
I have used a Budweiser bottle cap, a screw and epoxy to replace a TV volume knob.
Wood from oak shipping pallets and 4 casters make a very serviceable inexpensive furniture dolly. Left over pallet scrap makes very good fireplace kindling.
Distilled water and rubbing alchohol make a very effective glass cleaner.
In a pinch, paint thinner works as a charcoal starter and vice-versa.
I once discovered that in a VW Microbus, if your clutch cable breaks you can still drive it a short distance (several miles) if necessary. Kill the engine, place it in 2nd gear and then start the engine. The starter motor will get you moving until the engine starts. When you need to stop, kill the engine and coast/brake to a halt. Repeat as needed. Of course, you have to stay in 2nd gear, but it saved me from a 4-5 mile hike.
Also, you can use a bent coat hanger to replace a car radio antenna
This thread reinforces my belief that anything in the Universe can be fixed with either duct tape[sub]especially the duct tape[/sub], WD-40, a wire coat hanger, or some combination thereof.
[hijack]
You betcha. MacGuyver could make a '57 Chevy out of a newspaper, a dead fish, and some twine.
[/hijack]
While were at it, the only tools absolutely necessary are:
Pliers
Screwdriver
BFH
My dear departed father-in-law was a genius at making repairs with whatever he had on hand. Fortunately, he always had a garage full of normally useless junk to rummage through until he found what he needed.
My favorite memory of him is when I was in the midst of some repair (he taught me everything I know about repair so he was, of course, at my side) and some whatsit was stuck and I was getting frustrated, he seriously intoned “Don’t force it … (long pause while I prepared to be chastised) … use a hammer.” And he handed me this enormous hammer.
It cracked me up. I loved that man.
This actually works? Cool. Know why? I thought headphones were output only.
I used to sub 2 AA batteries for a 9 volt battery (the rectangular one). The trick is putting the batteries against the male clip thingy (with the appropriate end on the pos and neg) and touch the other ends with a penny. It can jiggle lose real easily so you have to kind of force it into a place where it won’t move much afterward.
Dairy Mary
Actually, you can do this in just about any (synchronized) manual transmission car, and you don’t need to stay in second gear (although having a tachometer helps).
I’ve done it by starting the car in first gear, then shifting without the clutch (I actually drive this way every once in a while just to keep in practice). It’s not hard, and you won’t harm the transmission as long as you stay aware what RPMs match what speed in each gear, and don’t have the gas floored while you try to pull it out of gear. The transmission won’t let you shift if there’s a mismatch between RPMs and speed anyway.
Some advanced driving classes actually teach this. I haven’t taken them, but have heard about it.
Yup, it works. A headphone and a mike both have a cone that either produces or records sound. Of course, one is set up to produce, and the other to record, but they can do both. Works the other way 'round, too: a mike plugged into a headphone jack will produce a faint sound.
Be careful with that last experiment, though. The mike is set ut to be very sensitive, and it’s quite easy to blow it up when you use it as a headphone. Conversely, you’d have to raise your voice quite well (or change the recording volume) to get your headphones to function like a proper mike.
Pointless and mundane hijack.
When I glanced at the email notification regarding this thread, my brain saw…
Running with scissors… you can’t do THAT with THAT!
My mom was right!!!
I always wanted a hot wax treatment I could do at home so that I wouldn’t have to pay those outrageous salon fees when I get a manicure. I bought an old crockpot from a thrift store for about $5.00 and now I can have a paraffin wax treatment any time I want it. What do you mean . . . well, I thought it was important.
Telescoping cymbal stands make great cheater bars; in fact, if it’s a tire iron you’re hooking up to, the wing-nut tightened collar joint may let you really get a grip.
If you need to pull an engine out of a VW bug (old type), a skateboard can work as an engine sled.
You can cook food on your car’s engine.
When our building’s card key system became inoperative one weekend, I was able to print out a jagged stripe pattern on a piece of paper and hang it with a paper clip from a recessed light fixture next to the ceiling mounted motion detector that also unlocked the door. A tug on the “string” (that I’d made from tape, as we had no string in the office) that I attached to the bottom of the paper and ran through the crack between the doors and attached outside wiggled the stripes in front of the motion detector and reliably unlocked the door.
And most of y’all probably intuitively know this, but may not have had to do it. In a typical modern office building with a “false” acoustic ceiling, you can get past a locked door by pushing aside the ceiling panels and crawling over the top of the wall.
I’ve lit entire offices as a “t.v. dramatic set” from above, and run the cabling over into the adjacent hallway, by removing a lot of ceiling tiles. This practice is SO popular, that one maker of grip equipment makes a “scissor clamp”, that allows you to attach to standard dropped ceiling metal framings.