Lucky Scrapyard Finds! Repair-A-Thon!

[Music] engineers have released a source [Music] we certainly keep hearing a lot about sustainability these days actually it has come to a point long since where a guy like you and me can't even use the word anymore without somehow feeling pretentious and i think a lot of that has to do with just about every major corporation we know quite literally pretending to be super sustainable even though they've probably been in business for decades and have changed next to nothing in the way they operate but i think it is sad the word is being tainted and that actually more and more words are being taken away from us because they are misused until they become unusable here's a suggestion though of what sustainability could mean it could mean do the thing you know is right even when you live under circumstances that are wrong and let me ask you to follow me once more on a trip to the scrapyards looking for items that wouldn't have ended up there in a world that truly lived in accordance with that dictum down here we find a bunch of relays and fuses and i make sure to salvage at least some of the relays because a lot of cool things can still be built with those i wonder what these heavy chains here were used for once looking pretty massive just like this piece of farming equipment here unfortunately something that heavy is even still kinda expensive even if you just pay the scrap price for it over here i found a pretty cool rather unusual bench grinder and i'm taking that one home next to this magnet here we find this old folding bike and i'm going to buy that as well these old gears here would make nice decorative pieces but i guess i already have enough things lying around that i bought for that reason this rugged steel frame here on the other hand will be very useful for another repair job we're going to perform today in addition to these fines i also got my hands on these military toolboxes and believe me there are some more interesting things i have in store for you today let us take a closer look at that bench grinder then on the right hand side two grinding discs have been installed in parallel so to speak the outer very thin one has broken off though the tool rest is also quite rusty on the left hand side we find a cup shaped disc it's almost completely worn though from the nameplate we learned that this machine was made by a company called grife which is the german name for griffin it was built for 380 volt three-phase power you could also run this on 230 volt single phase with a capacitor though the lower nameplate implies that for grinding knives the right wheel including the axle holding it can and should be detached from the machine the remains of the old three-phase power cord are completely falling apart and i start the repair by detaching the old grinding wheels when unscrewing these nuts on a grinder that is rotating towards you the right wheel will have a right hand thread and the left one a left hand thread this outer wheel here simply has two aluminium washers holding it and i'm pretty sure that this is not part of the original setup but rather an add-on by the former owner the inner wheel is held by two rather massive machined washers made from steel and we find a lot of residue inside that we will have to remove this threaded rod here holding the wheel can unlike normal grinders be unscrewed out of the motor shaft that is what the name plate meant by detaching the right wheel i've worked on a lot of bench grinders in the past and many of them have really terrible tool rests this one here is really ruggedly made and i like that a lot but it is very rusty and we'll have to do something about that quite unexpectedly i can get this left-hand nut here off with ease the cup wheel however is sitting very tightly on that shaft and i use a mallet to tap on the other side until it ever so slowly starts coming off i can now start to scrape off the grinder residue with this old screwdriver in the next step i want to have a look inside the switch enclosure before i proceed with any repairs inside we find a three-phase rotary switch and even though the old power cord is falling apart the internal wires leading to the stator of the induction motor are still solid and in good condition i also tested the switch with a continuity tester and it works just fine i have now started to connect a new power cable with new 16 amps three phase power plug to this grinder i measured the resistance between the stator windings and they looked okay and i will also just assume for the moment that the motor works in my many repairs of old german quality tools i almost never encounter damaged motors when installing new power cords on any device or in any application it is always important to secure the cable from being pulled out which could lead to one of the phases getting in contact with the enclosure for example in this case i have to tighten the nut on this cable gland it protects the insides from humidity and dirt but it is also a kind of strain relief i do that with a style villa wrench that i also found recently i wish i had an entire set of those in the meantime i have already applied new grease to the bearings but the wheel guard is still super dirty and all the small washers and nuts are super rusty and dirty as well the ultrasonic cleaner isn't working properly anymore but i want to get this repair finished first so we'll have to rely on other methods then i want to remove the rust once again with citric acid but this will only work if the old paint paper rust and grime are properly removed first i first used some soapy water and after a few hours of soaking in i use a wire brush to clean the parts that wasn't good enough though to properly degrease the parts and that's why they're getting a gasoline treatment next i usually try not to do this anymore because of the fumes and the fire hazard but gasoline or petrol if you will is just a great solvent and degreaser after also wiping off and rinsing the parts they are now ready for the acid bath and as i've done it many times before i simply dissolve some citric acid in warm water and i put the parts inside and wait a few hours and you can already see the positive effect quite early and most of the rust you still see can simply be wiped off with a towel now in order to get a better surface finish i simply clean the parts with steel wool in a final step the guard is also cleaned in soapy water the right wheel and wheel guard can now simply be reattached in many cases in the past i have gone for a completely new paint job but in this case i like the old paint and it's going to stay it was also unexpectedly easy to find a replacement for the cup wheel it just appears to be a standard size it hasn't really changed in 60 years and i think that's a good estimate for the age of this machine it could be even older though the grinder would now theoretically be ready for action again but a bench grinder also needs a bench right well some kind of support wouldn't hurt and i think that the steel frame we found on one of the scrapyards could fit that roll just perfectly as you can see another cast iron enclosure of some kind was installed here until it was quite brutally broken off and i unscrew the remnants of whatever that might have been and i grind off the rather uneven surface then i use a power drill to drill new holes to fasten the grinder in place by the way this metabo drill was one of the repairs from the very first episode of this series this is episode number 25. if you are interested in seeing more well then the other episodes are all linked down in the video description below and after bolding the grinder in place i think it might be time for a test okay so it all seems to work fine a future upgrade here though might be to install a detachable tool rest on this side as well the next set of items that i want to take a look at are these military toolboxes that were formerly used by the german armed forces for a change these are not scrapyard finds i bought them all together from a guy they look really rough with many scratches old stickers and labels and nasty tape stuck to surfaces the lid on this one is also stuck they probably don't look like much right now but i think there are diamonds in the rough and i have a pretty cool idea to make them more appealing first of all the old stickers and labels have to go i actually like the looks of this old red sticker here but it is only made from ordinary paper it will not be able to withstand any amount of humidity or abrasion i am removing it with a blade trying not to damage the paint underneath and nasty old duct tape like this one is the worst and i recommend that you never apply it to any painted surfaces or objects that mean anything to you i again use a blade and then apply some penetrating oil to the surface it's similar to wd-40 but essentially a no-name alternative if you're lucky it will dissolve the tape residue good enough so that you can just wipe it off with a rack or paper towel in combination with penetrating oil the rough side of a kitchen sponge can also work wonders you only have to be careful not to apply too much pressure or you will scratch the surface beneath all of these boxes receive the same treatment in this instance i'm using a plastic ice scraper i'm also able to get the stuck one open and on one of the boxes the bottom receives a new paint job because too much of the old paint was scraped off after the stickers and all that tape are gone the toolboxes already look much better but in my opinion they lack a finishing touch and here comes some new stickers into play that i designed myself it's of course a kind of logo for my channel the post-apocalyptic inventor and over the past few months i have had a large number of both stickers and patches made from it if you want to have some of those stickers and patches for yourself i will tell you how you can get them in the end of this video i'm sending one of these boxes to a friend in america the other ones i will probably keep for myself i think they look pretty awesome what do you think in the beginning of this video i've talked about the term sustainability on a very abstract level but there are of course very specific topics where you can also talk about sustainability and here is one example that not a lot of people i think uh have in mind now this map here shows the situation in the middle of europe around the end of the 1970s and germany of course is still split now the eastern border of germany today is right about uh here and this state here ddr or gdr the german democratic republic uh back then belonged to the eastern bloc which of course with the warsaw pact was well the military uh antagonist to the western states here that were mostly part of nato germany was split in the middle and when the cold war would have gotten hot so to speak germany would be the most likely place where that war even a nuclear war could have happened so an enormous amount of money energy and resources not just coming from germany but basically from all around the world uh was focused in building military stockpiles not just weapons but also all kinds of equipment and part of that is also tools and clothing for example and i've been trying to find new old stock items that have been built at that time energy and resources that have already been spent and i'm trying to use them in my life now i'm wearing these old overalls or coveralls or what whatever you want to call them jumpsuits um and they were made for mechanics of the west german army the bundeswehr back in the 1980s they just fit me perfectly so they i bought as many of them as i could get because i figured that i might just wear them for the rest of my life at least here at work then i also found all those um different kinds of military bags that were made for the or by the nva the national uh people's army of east germany and now i've found something different and that is inside this seemingly original packaging here now waiting for at least 30 years inside this wax paper from the stocks of the nva i have an adjustable spanner made by wmw in the gdr and it certainly looks like new i can get more of these but i'm testing at the moment to see if it's really good and that's why you can see it being used on repairs throughout this video and speaking of repairs let's get on to the next one then as you will remember i also found this bicycle leaned against that huge magnet at the scrapyard now i'm usually not a huge bicycle guy and i don't work on them often but this is a folding bike and i have actually thought about buying one in the past it's great to have one of those in your trunk or even take it with you on a train now you might think not a huge bicycle guy but he has a workbench just for bicycle work well this is not my workbench a friend of mine uses this bench to work on his bikes and i borrowed this for the day this is the folding hinge and it could use some oil the pedals are missing the tires are both flat and you can see it was sitting in some basement for a long time that part holding the dynamo is also totally bent out of shape the bicycle is also incredibly dirty the name of the manufacturer is fatalland which literally means fatherland for the times we live in it is certainly an unusual name for a company but probably not when this company was founded in 1906. however after about 100 years they seized operations in 2007 and as you can see i'm cleaning the bike now and i'm doing that with baby wipes and now i haven't become a dad or anything like that i simply learned this from my buddy who happens to have kids even though i'm sure he's not the first to come up with that idea after that i proceeded by oiling the folding mechanism taking off the front and rear wheels removing the chain guard removing the old grease from the chain and then applying new grease to it next i decided to do something that i hadn't done for a few years changing the inner tubes on bicycle wheels i actually feel a little ashamed that i haven't done this in such a long while i've probably just been driving way too much with my car and had neglected my bike for years nothing super dramatic but having almost forgotten how to do simple bike repairs just seems like one of those things where your dad or grandpa would make fun of you for having lost touch with the real world while replacing the tubes i also found that this piece of rim tape wasn't sitting in the right place and one of these spoke ends here must have been poking into the inner tube all the time after having reinstalled the wheels i add some halfway period correct lights and reflectors to the front and rear and i'd say it already looks much better and of course you're not super fast and efficient on a tiny folding bike like that but rather see it as a good thing to have in your trunk when on a road trip or visiting another city but where to go where to go well hello good sir have you heard of the eighth wonder of the world well i'm not sure about the eighth but certainly know the seventh the great pyramid of giza the hanging guards of babylon and so on oh the hanging gardens you must be kidding good sir the hanging train is what i'm talking about that is what you must see okay so the best use for a folding bike in my opinion really is to visit other cities because it's no fun driving around with cars in city centers that you're not used to and you're also very slow when you're on foot so having a folding bike like that in your trunk is actually a pretty good idea but to be honest the combination of folding bike plus car isn't really riding in style what is riding in style is folding bike plus monorail and here's a little message for those of you might be interested in donating to the channel you know it happens now and then that people donate to the channel via paypal and i thought why not come up with a little reward for that so what i have for you here are stickers and patches and the story is that um when i was visiting my parents in the winter i really didn't have much on me i didn't even have enough a laptop there so what i did is that i drew this little draft or sketch with a bunch of pencils and when i later returned home i well drew a larger more refined version that i then scanned in and turned into a vector graphic and then i had stickers and patches made from that and this back here from the east german army um it's just here so that you can see what that looks like if you apply it to something same with the work overalls that i'm also wearing here at work and in case you want to have some it's really quite easy you just have to donate five euros and then you will get two of the stickers and if you want to have a patch you can just donate 10 euros and then you will get a patch if you want to have both well sent me five plus 10 euros and that's that you don't have to care about the shipping even if you're living far away from germany because i can just send this in a normal envelope and i will just pay for that so all you have to do is to send um a paypal donation and put your address and maybe also tell me what you want to have if it's a more complicated order so to speak that's really that you can also send me an email to inventordonations gmail.com if you want to do this another way now people have also contacted me a couple of times because i mentioned that i'm planning about selling these bags and the overalls but at this point in time i'm not there yet even though i have large numbers of these things i'm still working on upgrading them a little bit with some little nifty ideas so that they are more useful to you and i also need time to actually set up an online store for that so for now it's really just um i'm sending you these patches and stickers as long as i still have them as a reward for a donation of course if i run out of them i can refund your your donation but well let's uh see how many people even want them i have a bunch of them so just do it the way i just explained to you contact me if you want to do it otherwise and then this should just work the shipping to america takes about four to five weeks unfortunately uh to the uk it's only about one week and within europe it shouldn't be a problem so let just let me know if you want to have some of them and i say see you soon

Channel: The Post Apocalyptic Inventor

Views: 197,518

Keywords: Tool Restoration, Restore Tool, Tool Repair, My Mechanics, Tool Rescue, Handtool Rescue, AvE, ThisOldTony, Vise Repair, Vise Restoration, Grinder, Bench Grinder, Repair-A-Thon, Repairs, DIY Grinder, Made In Germany, German Tools, Knipex, Bosch, Metabo, Siemens, Heuer, Gressel, Leinen, Schraubstock, TPAI, Hilti, Fein

Id: jFxh8NTgYI0

Length: 21min 27sec (1287 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 18 2021