What are your frugal and sustainable tips and tricks?

[gtaus]

Clearance on Central Machinery 9" Band Saw at HF

I just picked up a Central Machinery 9" band saw at Harbor Freight on clearance for $84.00. I got the last one at our store. Here is a picture of the box...

That Central Machinery band saw is being replaced by the Bauer 9" band saw selling for $180.00, which, as far as I can tell, is the same saw just under the Bauer brand name.

Of course, I read the reviews on the Central Machinery before I bought it, and it was rated 4.5/5 stars at full retail price. Guys were really happy on the performance given the price of the saw. Yes, you can spend a lot more money and get a much better band saw, but most of the stuff I do is pallet wood projects. This saw should be more than adequate for my needs.

My frugal strategy: I had a band saw on my short "To-buy List" for about a year, but I just was not willing to pay full retail price. Patience paid off for me. I ended up getting my band saw for about 50% off on clearance. If you know what you want, and the price point at which you are willing to pay, it's really sweet when you come across a deal even better than you had hoped for.

Did I really need a band saw? Well, I don't know for sure. There have been times when I wished I had a band saw but used other tools to get the job done. I guess I'll be looking for projects to make with a band saw now that I have one. Some of the shop guys I talk with use their band saws a lot. So, I hope I find it just as useful in my shop.

Heading into my retirement years, I am building up my shop tools and experimenting with them. I'm at a point in my life where I have both the free time and money to enjoy a few hobbies. And I do enjoy using my hands and making stuff after most of my life pushing paper in office jobs, if you know what I mean.

To put costs in perspective, Dear Wife and I went out to a new Mexican restaurant in town. It was $40 plus tip for our meal. Yeah, the food was good, but it was only one meal. I would rather have that $40 for shop tools and supplies that I can use to make things of value to me. I'm not a big fan of eating out. I'm OK with a frozen burrito that has fresh lettuce, sour cream, and salsa on top.

 

[gtaus]

I did briefly consider a small ziptie, but the wire is a better fit.

That's why I have stashes of both in my shop. Dear Wife does not like those metal coat hangers, so I take them out to the garage, and they eventually get used for something. I save the thin wire from unpacking stuff. Just roll it up and put it in a drawer, ready for use if/when the time comes. If I can reuse it, I'm willing to save it for later.

The missing screw is a special machine bolt, technically, with a thin metal "nut" to hold it in place. I doubted I'd find anything similar in the hardware section. I could contact the company, to request a replacement, but the wire works fine.

And the birds don't care! Yeah, I've had to do similar stuff on my repairs. Lately, I have been modifying tools for one-time projects I am working on. Sometimes it seems that nobody is using standard hardware on their products.

When we have something that has failed and needs to be junked, I'll tear it apart and save those small nuts, bolts, screws, etc.. I put them in a plastic jar for storage. No organization other than it's my misc jar of parts. If I have need for something like that for a repair, I just dump the contents of the jar out on the bench and see if anything works. Most of the time - not. But sometimes I hit gold!

 

[Smokerbill]

One of my earliest memories is of me and my grandpa straightening used bent nails with hammers. I learned early on how to make use of what most would consider to be trash. That was a little over 60 years ago.

 

[gtaus]

One of my earliest memories is of me and my grandpa straightening used bent nails with hammers. I learned early on how to make use of what most would consider to be trash. That was a little over 60 years ago.

We must be close to the same age. I have the exact same memories. My grandpa grew up during the Great Depression, and I cannot remember throwing anything away that might be reused. We built lots of stuff with both used lumber and used nails. Maybe that's why I am so comfortable making pallet projects today. It just fits into the way I did things at the start.

BTW, I learned how to straighten out a bent nail long before I learned that you could buy new ones at the store!

I think lots of guys our age learned that most valuable lesson from our grandfathers. I save almost all the nails I pull out of pallets and reuse them in projects. I still have the skills to straighten out those bent nails!

However, with our new cordless drills and impact drivers, I prefer to use screws on most of the projects I build. I find screws faster to use and have better holding strength for most of my projects.

 

[Smokerbill]

I think I'm a little older than you but not much. My grandpa was near 30 years old when the depression started, born in 1901. He was definitely frugal, buying lots of things at auctions.

His home that he put in place in the late 40's was actually a pair of decomissioned army barracks that he moved and repurposed. Lived there with Grandma until he died. The "house" was demolished maybe 10 or 15 years ago.

 

[gtaus]

I started cleaning out the garage this morning. The idea was to toss junk and other stuff that I am not using. But I find I am the world's worst clean up person. Just about everything I pick up and look at, I say to myself, that could come in handy for something, someday, and I think I should hold on to it a while longer.

No doubt, whatever I do manage to throw out, it will be just the thing I need in a month or two, then I'll have to go out and buy a new one.

Anyone else have that problem?

 

[Molpet]

No doubt, whatever I do manage to throw out, it will be just the thing I need in a month or two, then I'll have to go out and buy a new one.

Anyone else have that problem

Totally my hoarding problem. Even boxes.

And yes I have gotten rid of stuff .
When mom moved back in 04.... divided pet bowl my mom brought back from Texas....and a week later a stray cat showed up, had to buy a new one. Like there's not a ton of other things a stray could have been fed in.
Mom is gone and the chickens eat out of the cat bowl now.

 

[saysfaa]

...

Anyone else have that problem?

Yes

Going to estate sales helps with motivation to change. First, to not get like so many are. Second, its a bit obvious that we can't take it with us. Third, any given thing isn't so rare as I once thought.

Not that I particularly want to change this but I do want to please my family so I keep working on it.

And a frugal tip,
My nephew's fiancée is collecting mismatched mugs for her wedding reception - they are thinking of hanging them on a pegboard for guests to choose one to use at the reception and then take home afterwards. So, they are looking for a wide range of kinds so people have a better chance of finding one they want to take home. It is a reuse, and maybe two reuses.

The last wedding I went to had mismatched colored glass goblets and it went very well with her table decoration theme.

The mug idea expanded to the plates and silverwear.... at least for use at the party, probably not for the guests to take home. At the last estate sale I went to, I found a box of silverwear (54 forks plus various spoons and butter knives - and one gold earring in the bottom, lol). All for $10. That comes to 18 1/2 cent per fork... less than buying plastic.

She was considering putting only forks out since the menu worked with that. But that was when she was finding forks for 25 cents each. The box I found for her has more spoons than forks so I think she will put both out for the guests.

 

[gtaus]

Going to estate sales helps with motivation to change. First, to not get like so many are. Second, its a bit obvious that we can't take it with us. Third, any given thing isn't so rare as I once thought.

No doubt, my estate sell might have lots of things nobody else wants! Value to me, but probably not so much for others.

I wish we had some kind of community free exchange depot. Someplace where you could drop off items for free that you no longer want or need, but could be useful to someone else. Our local church Thrift Shop used to put things outside the store that they could not sell. You could pick up things for free. Some things required just a little bit of tender loving care to bring them back to life. I repaired a number of items that way and still use some of them today.

Unfortunately, the neighbors complained that the store was dumping "junk" outside, and it attracted the "wrong" kind of people rummaging through the items. So now the store dumps everything that they don't think will sell, or sell fast enough, into the big dumpsters out back.

I talked to a guy who works at the Thrift Shop (all volunteers) and told him that I have been donating stuff there for years. Whatever they sell helps to support local charities. But I told him that I do not get the same good feeling donating stuff to the Thrift Store because they no longer offer those items for free if they can't sell it. I used to have the attitude that if they sold my donations and made money to help the local charities, that was a good thing. If they could not sell it, but give it away for free for someone who would use it, that was also OK with me. But knowing that they will just dump stuff in the garbage bins instead of first offering it up for free just makes me feel bad.

Back to my garage stuff, there are some items that will be trashed, some I will keep, but there are a lot of items that fall between those bins. I might set them outside on the side of the road with a "FREE" sign and see how much is gone by the end of the day. I don't know if that is a workable plan for me, but at least I might give it a try. I will have to talk it over with Dear Wife and see how she feels about it. Of course, the easy thing to do is pack up all that stuff and drop it off at the Thrift Shop, which is what we have done in the past. I'll just have to get over the notion that some of our stuff might trashed and not sold to help the local charities. It's just too bad that they no longer offer those reusable, or repurposed items, for free if someone wants them.

 

[gtaus]

Totally my hoarding problem.

Yeah, I consider myself frugal and don't toss out things that might have a valuable use at some point. It's all those other people that hoard stuff that have no value to me that I don't understand!