Ok, What's your best ever Dumpster Dive?

Spring clean up days , back about 10 yrs ago. About 2 blocks from home, on the way to work, I seen some boxes of new flourescent lights and 8" stainless steel chimney sections, cap, wall bracket, Tee section, etc. Hit the brakes, backed up , started to toss the goodies on. Another fellow stopped, but by then I had the new twin tube lights, chimney on the truck! Some of the chimney parts and lights were still in boxes, never used, but one section got dented from the car bumper in the garage, I guess!. The house had been sold and the owner was cleaning out his garage before the move. Some of the lights , brand new , had some rust, they went into my shop. The 8" chimney, I had no use for as I had an overhead gas heater in the shop. Word got out at work of my find and a week later I sold the chimney for $250 to a co worker with a cottage. The $250 went on the Credit Union loan from work for the unused General 260-1 VS lathe and a lot of accessories, a bargain I couldn't say no to that I had just bought. A consignment sale a local WW tool dealer had. Fellow had died before he every got to use it, family got the dealer to sell it. Still had the skid bolted to the lathe! Saved about $1500 over new!!!!

In the late 80s, I worked in a building in downtown Norfolk that was slated to be imploded. As it happened, my boss was one of the last two occupants of the building, and the demo people started working on the upper floors while we were still there. LOML, boss, and I started roaming the building after hours looking for salvage and hit a gold mine. We got at least 2000' of chair rail that we just pulled off the walls--a bunch of it went into my house as well as boss' house, and he sold the rest. We also found a set of metal book shelves that had been built into a niche in an office, which broke down into 4-foot sections of shelves, uprights, and back panels. I laid claim to them, and they have been set up and torn down three or four times--last set-up was permanently, as LOML faced the shelves and uprights with oak and built them into our home office. There was 12 linear feet of shelving, 8 feet high, and as the wall we put them on was 13', LOML built a cabinet at one end and the entire unit looks like a built-in that was supposed to be there. There are about 50 individual shelves and you should see my library!

We also salvaged a bunch of bar sinks out of that building (seems that every office had one) that were recycled.

That building had been built in about 1909, and all of the public areas, including hallways, were floored with 1x2'x1" marble. We got several pieces, which are still sitting here waiting to be made into a couple of tables.

Wish I could find another building to scavenge!

Nancy

Alex Reid said:

Don,

Living in Japan garbage has a whole different meaning. Many Japanese, especially in the cities, live in less spacious surroundings. Consequently when they upgrade they often throw away. In the early days when I came checking the garbage pile on the side of the road was habit for most foriegners. I am not kidding you. Stu can back me up on this. I got my first bicycle in Japan out of the garbage. It was a good bike. I have friends that used to make the rounds once a week looking for stuff.

Click to expand...

I STILL check the large garbage days around here, amazing what I've found.

The list would be something like this between 8 and 12 VCRs, most just needed cleaning and they worked fine, I gave most of them away. So many stereos systems I cannot remember, most were just older, needed simple fuses, or cleaning. TV, same thing, cannot possibly remember.

Fridges? at least a dozen, one I found just about full food, the freezer had a bunch of frozen meat in it etc.

Beds, shelving units, dressers, stuff you can't believe, sewing machines, man, the stuff is unreal, more than I can stash

The best thing I've found yet, to me, is a Honda 15Amp generator. It would not turn over when you pulled the start rope, it went "Clunk"

I pulled it apart, and inside the head area, there was a chunk of carbon, about the size of a walnut. I guess it was inside the motor, and it built up until one day it came loose, and jammed the piston, took that out, filed the sparkplug flat, gapped it, put everything together,and it started on the 3rd pull

I've recently found a DVD player, put the CD lens cleaner in it, and it worked just fine!

Cheers!

Much of my shop is furnished in DD finds. My router table is the wing from an office desk. I added two legs and extended the other two, closed in the knee hole for a DC plenum and mounted the router plate through the top over the knee hole, it has three drawers for storage. My side bench is a counter from a nurses' station that the hopital was throwing out. Same hospital tore out all the old maple handrails for new plastic/aluminum rails and I made my bench top from the maple with lots of BF left over. Two old metal nightstands that are now the base for my planer and the other fits under the wing of the table saw for storage. An old bakers cooling rack with shelves added is now my roll-a-round cutoffs cabinet. Two rolling carts (one stainles steel), one holding my grinder and wolverine jig and the other misc stuff. When I first installed my DC system, I used 4" tubes from carpet rolls that were behind the carpet shop. All DC fittings fit perfectly and the tubing works for free. An old shop vac that I hooked up to the CMS through one of those Sears 'Auto-On' dealies. The motor and squirrel cage for my shop-made air cleaner from the pile behind the HVAC shop. The old freezer I gutted of it's motor and compressor that I now use for storage of glue/finishes/paint/etc. Put a 25W light bulb in and its good for all winter without bringing stuff into the house to prevent freezing. And more.

http://www.ncwoodworker.net/pp/showgallery.php?cat=198

George

Welcome to the group, George. I think you might be the best scrounger in the whole lot and tons of ingenuity besides

Does lumber in the raw count? This bench I built last fall represents mostly scrounged wood.

The elm, locust and black walnut were claimed from a tree trimmer and I had it milled.

The iroyko was salvaged from some lumber skids

The pine and fir was from another salvage.

I have less than $100 into this bench, including the vises.

I *failed* a spectacular DD a few years ago by being
a) too short to leap a very large dumpster
b) in decent clothes I didn't want to ruin.
The place I had been working had a fabulous prototyping shop (many exhibits in the then-new tech museum in san jose were built there) and when it closed they emptied the shop. The big CNC machining centre went for 50k - with 100k worth of tooling thrown in! I happened to pass the building and notice a huge dumpster so I took a look; maybe a dozen routers, more circular saws, jigsaws etc. boxes of sandpapers, spanner sets, router bits still in cartons, etc etc. I really wish I had done the math that a couple of hundred bucks of pants/shirt etc didn't add up to the treasure recoverable! Dumpster was gone next day :-(

Last year yet another local high school woodshop ended their program

But I scored three maple workbenches with 2 vises each (44 years in that shop ). Also a cool old drafting desk.

A 10 HP cyclone went into the dumpster though.

Hey, Tyler - it's simple! Get a wide cylinder mower and just tow it behind your dumpster tractor. You'll get those sought after cricket pitch stripes as a bouns.