TuneWeaver - Posted - 01/07/2023:  17:47:10

Yep.. My shop has been invaluable to me for making banjos and repairing fiddles and a million other things. Over the years the large bench crank vise had started to develop a wobble, and generally looked bad and was hard to turn. Finally, today, with the weather being too cold to go busking I decided to tackle the vise repair job.

First I spent 5 LOONG minutes disassembling the unit.. and found that two of the anchor screws had come loose . It took TWO minutes to tighten them and then another 5 minutes to reassemble and lubricate the vise. I looks  and works better than it has for five years..

So... total time invested in this very satisfying repair... 12 minutes (Eastern Standard time ).. See? I AM a pro at procrastinating!! I'm laughing at myself because I thought I'd have to completely rebuilt the bench vise and was expecting to be spending an entire day on the project.. Sometimes, fear of the unknown is just unfounded, don't you think?

Edited by - TuneWeaver on 01/07/2023 17:51:43

Snafu - Posted - 01/07/2023:  18:38:33

Yea but just recently I had the same idea, fix something on my furnace that had been wonky (but worked fine) for years. So I get to taking it apart and a crucial tiny spring goes flying to god knows where and a two minute “fix” turns into a slew of phone calls to plumbing supply shops and a panic drive out to the one, 20 miles away, that said they had the part I needed. This with a deep freeze coming on in a day and the Mrs who keeps asking if it’s fixed yet - maybe you should have called the guy. Grrrrrrrr

I wish I’d left it alone all said and done, the stress was not worth the gain.

TuneWeaver - Posted - 01/07/2023:  18:40:41

quote:

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Originally posted by Snafu

Yea but just recently I had the same idea, fix something on my furnace that had been wonky (but worked fine) for years. So I get to taking it apart and a crucial tiny spring goes flying to god knows where and a two minute “fix” turns into a slew of phone calls to plumbing supply shops and a panic drive out to the one, 20 miles away, that said they had the part I needed. This with a deep freeze coming on in a day and the Mrs who keeps asking if it’s fixed yet - maybe you should have called the guy. Grrrrrrrr



I wish I’d left it alone all said and done, the stress was not worth the gain.

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Yes.. I know that one all to well.. Murphy's Rule #5 is .. "Leave well enough alone" 

UsuallyPickin - Posted - 01/08/2023:  04:33:08

I often feel like I am the champ of trying to make something better ... only to make it worse. Parts that jump out of my hand, one more tool to make it "work properly", the list goes on. I am pleased to know there are more of "us" out there. R/

Swing - Posted - 01/08/2023:  05:14:45

Guilty as charged, I will render all projects useless until I have collected a surplus of tools and parts for any given project (that could have been fixed with a simple screwdriver)

Play Happy

Swing

farmerjones - Posted - 01/08/2023:  06:01:35

God bless chores and projects. I know they keep me from becoming a permanent part of a lounge chair. But those 5 minute jobs stack up. I know I'll never be caught up. I dunno, what was the question?

Hobbiest - Posted - 01/08/2023:  07:25:28

Amen brother!

The Violin Beautiful - Posted - 01/08/2023:  12:12:10

I had a home repair project that ended up taking way too much time out of my life.

When we moved into our house, there was one wide top drawer in our built-in cabinet. It was new but always felt flimsy because the bottom was particle board and it wasn’t braced with anything. We stored most of our kitchen implements in it, so it was the most important drawer. After a couple years the bottom started to sag and it would rub against the frame as it went in and out. Once it got to be annoying, my wife asked me to fix it, so I reattached the bottom of the drawer and added some brackets. It held for a while but then sagged again. Since the drawer was so flimsy, I decided to make an improvement the next time, so I built a new drawer and mounted the old track on it. Now the drawer was rock solid.

After a year or two, the track started to wear out and the little wheels kept jumping off the track and making the drawer fall in. I adjusted it several times to keep it working, but it eventually just wore out enough that it had to go. My wife ordered a similar replacement track and asked me to install it, but it turned out our track was not a standard length, so the replacement was too long. I went to the hardware store and tried a couple other sizes, but clearly the standard sides wouldn’t work as they were.

Then, as I was coming up with a solution, I decided I might as well upgrade the track to a heavy duty one with good bearings, so I bought one and ended up putting some wood blocks behind a shorter track to account for the discrepancy. It took a long time to get it all in properly, but now we have a solid drawer with tracks that should last forever and it works better than it ever did before. It took an almost ridiculous amount of time to get it all done, but it had become a matter of pride to get it fixed, and I just wasn’t going to accept defeat. I’m glad I didn’t in the end, but it was not a lot of fun for the majority of the time.