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O Holy Crap

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Re: O Holy Crap

#261

Post by gibspaulding »

sevensor wrote: post #91

If you're willing to tolerate not owning things when they're new, survivorship bias can be your friend. I especially recommend saying yes whenever an elderly relative / friend offers you a hand-me-down. You'll get things that are no good, to be sure; sometimes trash survives because people have inexplicably taken delicate care of it for decades. But often, you get things of great utility. Wool army blankets from the…

This is great advice! Over the years, most of the shiny new household goods from our wedding registry have ended up donated or binned, and more and more of what we use every day is either inherited or bought used. Estate sale cast iron cookware and shop tools, inherited fiestaware, utensils, and dining room table, a commercial deep freezer from Alejandro's used appliance store.

When inheriting or estate sales aren't an option I've actually been buying a lot of used stuff off of eBay lately. PC's (the trick is to select "no OS included" to find the business ones IT departments are discarding), a label maker you could use as a bludgeon in a pinch, a vintage flannel that's actually wool.

I've come to really like second hand. Clothes don't shrink when you wash them, boots are already broken in, and things have generally survived past that first failure spike that weeds out the lemons.

Re: O Holy Crap

#262

Post by doug_durham »

Wow this guy has bad luck. I simply don't have any of the problems he mentions. Stuff rarely breaks. I'm sure that his 70 year old juicer draws about 5 amps, and isn't grounded.

Re: O Holy Crap

#263

Post by blep_ »

cfeduke wrote: post #42

The thing in this space that has always bothered me was the simple can opener. (For those not in the US, yes, in the US we still need can openers.) The new ones which can be purchased in the grocery store break within a month or two. I don't even want to think about modern electric openers. I found a used vintage can opener from the 1970s on eBay six years ago and use it practically every day; as it was used it cost…

... do people outside the US not use can openers?

Re: O Holy Crap

#264

Post by phaedrus »

sevensor wrote: post #91

If you're willing to tolerate not owning things when they're new, survivorship bias can be your friend. I especially recommend saying yes whenever an elderly relative / friend offers you a hand-me-down. You'll get things that are no good, to be sure; sometimes trash survives because people have inexplicably taken delicate care of it for decades. But often, you get things of great utility. Wool army blankets from the…

I have a set of "spade" drill bits for wood that once belonged to someone's grandfather. The operation of this style of wood drill bit is sometimes jokingly referred to as "slapping chunks of wood off" until a hole appears, and I agree - for the ones sold now. Not these ones.

They're noticeably sharper and truer than the ones you find now, more perfectly symmetrical in profile and grind, probably a half-dozen other subtle differences. When you drill a hole with one of these bits, all of the shavings are uniform and the sides of hole aren't ragged. There's less vibration, less heat, more progress.

Re: O Holy Crap

#265

Post by ziml77 »

myself248 wrote: post #223
datr wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've run into this issue with jeans. They develop holes around the crotch six months after buying a new pair. A decade ago I'd buy jeans and they'd last years. Unfortunately my waist line has since increased and none of those survivors now fit me. I started with Levi 511s and -- when they started failing -- moved to Nudie Jeans (2x price) as they offer free repairs. When I tried to get them repaired though I was told…

In my experience this means they're fitting wrong and there's undue stress in the place that they're failing. For crotch area specifically, look into Duluth Trading's "Ballroom" pants. Alternately, the moment you buy new pants, add some iron-on patch reinforcement across the area. A two-dollar giant patch can spread the force out quite a bit and probably double the lifetime of the unreinforced fabric. But really, a t…

As someone who has also had these issues with the crotch of pants wearing out, I would also suggest trying these options.

It's a combination of stretching and friction. Jeans have it especially bad because they have prominent seams right where the thighs touch, causing an extra large amount of friction. A gusseted crotch (which I believe the Ballroom jeans have) both helps with the stretching and moves the seams around.

Re: O Holy Crap

#266

Post by gibspaulding »

gottebp wrote: post #141

Breville coffee grinders fall into this category, and were impossible to get OEM internal parts for. When mine failed a few years back, I designed a 3D printed upgrade for the main wear-part in their BCG800XL SmartGrinder and it was not too much extra effort to document it on iFixit[0] with ShapeWays[1] as an easy way to get the part. I think there is a lot of room to do this for all kinds of stuff that would otherwi…

Favoriting your comment since I have that grinder. It hasn't failed yet, but this isn't the first time I've heard of that issue.

Do you by any chance sell the STL itself for those with access to a printer?

Re: O Holy Crap

#267

Post by ihumanable »

CadmiumYellow wrote: post #208
cfeduke wrote: post #42

The thing in this space that has always bothered me was the simple can opener. (For those not in the US, yes, in the US we still need can openers.) The new ones which can be purchased in the grocery store break within a month or two. I don't even want to think about modern electric openers. I found a used vintage can opener from the 1970s on eBay six years ago and use it practically every day; as it was used it cost…

Ikea actually makes really amazing can openers. I've had the same one for 8 years and it's still going strong. No signs of weakness at all.

I have an Ikea can opener too, I think it's going on a decade of quality service. It's mostly light blue plastic, I thought it would fall apart, but it still works great. One of those that cuts through the side of the can instead of the lid itself.

Re: O Holy Crap

#268

Post by tengwar2 »

nosianu wrote: post #82

I don't quite know what to say to what I found near the end in this article: > Recently, my wife needed a carrot peeler. She needed one rather quickly. Off to Target. The one she bought (the only one on sale)... I stopped at the phrase "the only one on sale". Inevitably the next part reads: > looked handsome enough, and the brand was one she recognized, but it failed in the useful department, miserably. It wasn’t sha…

She was sold a carrot peeler. She didn't receive a carrot peeler.

It's not relevant what the price was: that's a decision for the shop. If they can't sell carrot peelers at a price that makes sense for them, the answer is to not sell carrot peelers, not to sell things that are described as carrot peelers but which cannot peel a carrot.

Re: O Holy Crap

#269

Post by Dan_- »

crystaln wrote: post #139
willglynn wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corning invented a particular kind of borosilicate glass about a hundred years ago and called it PYREX™. They left the consumer goods market about twenty years ago, divesting the brand. Nowadays that name might refer to either borosilicate glass or to soda lime glass.

Depending on the capitalization. The good stuff is PYREX.

You can still get it in America from a company called icedteapitcher. It’s the made-in-France true PYREX and is metric.

Re: O Holy Crap

#270

Post by eternityforest »

jollyllama wrote: post #214
eternityforest wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It happens, but it's not common. Amazon lets you get stuff a generation ahead of what's in stores, which often uses better tech and fixes issues in the last generation. When "Cheap crap" first became common 20 years ago stuff got a bit worse, but it seems to be improving.

I don't think the comment about generation ahead is relevant or true. As a final thought, I'd say at least in a store, if you have the ability to determine if something is junk by looking and touching it, you can practice that.

I'm not sure how I would tell just by looking without reviews and specs, any more than I could tell from a picture, the differences are really subtle.

The plastic cover on a bad switch looks an awful lot like the one on a good switch.

Glass filled nylon seems to be somwhat reliable thought, not quite as much utter trash has a chassis made of that, at least for tools.

And sheet metal, I usually assume anyone who uses that is cutting corners or wants to appeal to old fashioned types who hate plastic no matter what.

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