silverclaws
Senior Retro Guru
Is anyone else doing this, wherever they go in the suburbs and countryside, is their eyes scanning the overgrown grubby places for dumped machinery and in terms of machinery, I mean bikes and other useful cast offs ?
What is it with me, I guess and ancestry of scrap metal merchants, but even for my arts, I souce my materials from refuse and discarded scrap, but last night I was at it with an old dumped bike I had mentally noted from a walk in the country. You see, I needed bits for an old Saracen and having found them on ebay, I was damned if I was going to pay the postage for what amounts to a special bolt weighing a few grams, so it was thinking outside the box time. I could have made the part, but why bother, for another idea trotted into my mind, the fun of it that recently noticed dumped bike.
So, after a few pints of Abbott I was grubbing around in the undergrowth at the edge of the woods yanking an old bike frame out of the brambles, a bike I discovered was another Raleigh with a pressed steel cottered crankset and a near totally gone back to nature derailleur, a DMT Epoch, but it had some useful parts, the cable tensioner and jockey wheels and various bolts, similarly what I had gone out for, old thread eye cantilever anchor bolts and straddles and whilst I was at it, I got the brake tensioners and rather crumbly shifters, old friction type, a Shimano over bar I had not seen before. So back in my workshop, the rusty bits chucked into a pot of weak sulphuric acid and the ally bits aside for other processes, a satisfying night. Next time I go out, I must take some dismantling oil, as those cantis I will have, old mafac type with external springs.
Tools I take when out on the hunt, a Leatherman Juice, a red led torch and a bike spanner, must add can of spray lube to that as well.
Does anyone else engage in these kind of activities, claiming free bits from the enviroment ?
What is it with me, I guess and ancestry of scrap metal merchants, but even for my arts, I souce my materials from refuse and discarded scrap, but last night I was at it with an old dumped bike I had mentally noted from a walk in the country. You see, I needed bits for an old Saracen and having found them on ebay, I was damned if I was going to pay the postage for what amounts to a special bolt weighing a few grams, so it was thinking outside the box time. I could have made the part, but why bother, for another idea trotted into my mind, the fun of it that recently noticed dumped bike.
So, after a few pints of Abbott I was grubbing around in the undergrowth at the edge of the woods yanking an old bike frame out of the brambles, a bike I discovered was another Raleigh with a pressed steel cottered crankset and a near totally gone back to nature derailleur, a DMT Epoch, but it had some useful parts, the cable tensioner and jockey wheels and various bolts, similarly what I had gone out for, old thread eye cantilever anchor bolts and straddles and whilst I was at it, I got the brake tensioners and rather crumbly shifters, old friction type, a Shimano over bar I had not seen before. So back in my workshop, the rusty bits chucked into a pot of weak sulphuric acid and the ally bits aside for other processes, a satisfying night. Next time I go out, I must take some dismantling oil, as those cantis I will have, old mafac type with external springs.
Tools I take when out on the hunt, a Leatherman Juice, a red led torch and a bike spanner, must add can of spray lube to that as well.
Does anyone else engage in these kind of activities, claiming free bits from the enviroment ?
