The garage workbench

[Jeremy Harris]

7 minutes ago, ProDave said:

Just to be clear, there was nothing underhand about me finding a good home for a number of surplus workbenches.  The lab at the time was undergoing a period of change and modernisation and virtually all the old wooden benches were being replaced with smaller metal framed melamine topped replacements. The old ones were scrap.  It was a quirk of the bureaucracy that anything made of wood could be freely given to employees as "firewood" for free. If an employee wanted any scrap metal or scrap electronics that was a whole new level of difficulty.  Scrap metal was sold weekly and it was pot luck what was there each week. Scrap electronics had to go through the radio club, and i remember it taking a whole year for a scrap oscilloscope I had rescued from a scrap bin to be eventually released for me to buy it for £3 (I repaired it and still have it)

 

Same here.  There was a standing arrangement at Farnborough that anyone could take home wood from an area outside the main stores on the last Friday of every month, with the only limitation being that it had to be able to be fitted in, or on, your car.  You were given a property pass to allow you to take the stuff out through the main gate, if challenged.

Edited November 4, 2017 by JSHarris

[ProDave]

Just now, JSHarris said:

 

Same here.  There was a standing arrangement at Farnborough that anyone could take home wood from an are outside the main stores on the last Friday of every month, with the only limitation being that it had to be able to be fitted in, or on, you car.  You were given a property pass to allow you to take the stuff out through the main gate, if challenged.

Slightly different arrangement. Having identified your scrap wood, you had to get a "wood chit" signed by someone to say it was scrap and counter signed by the storeman. Then present the chit at the gate on departure.  No size limitation, my trailer was the method of transporting complete workbenches.  This was UKAEA

 

It really was a hangover from 50 years ago when most people had an open fire and were regularly collecting firewood.

[Jeremy Harris]

I'm pretty sure that the Farnborough arrangement was really intended for firewood, too. 

As an aside, I collect my UKAEA pension later this week................

[Guest Alphonsox]

15 minutes ago, ProDave said:

Just to be clear, there was nothing underhand about me finding a good home for a number of surplus workbenches. 

 

I wasn't inferring otherwise My electronics bench was replaced by the company due to ESD calibration issues, not that it couldn't be calibrated but that the ongoing cost of getting it calibrated was more than buying a new "easy to calibrate" one. I think I paid the scrap metal value. It's very strange how companies value surplus goods.

[ProDave]

Just now, Alphonsox said:

 

I wasn't inferring otherwise My electronics bench was replaced by the company due to ESD calibration issues, not that it couldn't be calibrated but that the ongoing cost of getting it calibrated was more than buying a new "easy to calibrate" one. I think I paid the scrap metal value. It's very strange how companies value surplus goods.

Yes it is.

 

I also managed to purchase an early laser printer. A monster of a Cannon thing. It was given a notional value of £50 which I was happy to pay, but then the cash office complained about the cost of raising an invoice so I could pay them the £50 so suggested a nill value disposal instead.

[SteamyTea]

Was there not a story about a guy from Culdrose that got in trouble for having some WD40 in the boot of his car without the proper chit.

[Jeremy Harris]

3 minutes ago, ProDave said:

Yes it is.

 

I also managed to purchase an early laser printer. A monster of a Cannon thing. It was given a notional value of £50 which I was happy to pay, but then the cash office complained about the cost of raising an invoice so I could pay them the £50 so suggested a nill value disposal instead.

 

 

Reminds me of the way I paid for our honeymoon.  Driving past the scrap compound, I spotted a used Mk44 torpedo battery (from a trials weapon - fired with and exercise head, rather than a warhead).  I knew that these batteries were based on magnesium and silver chloride,  so went and asked if I could buy it, at scrap value.  After much looking at it (they are a real mess after being used, from internal corrosion) the accounts people concluded that, as long as I cleaned up all traces of it they would give me a property pass to take it out the gate at no charge.

 

I spent hours stripping apart hundreds of alternating very corroded magnesium plates from soft and crumb silver chloride plates.  I then put all the silver chloride plates in a crucible, added some washing soda and heated the whole lot up on a bodged up charcoal hearth.  This extracted all the raw silver, which I then sold to a precious metals scrap dealer in the Forest of Dean for around £800.  In 1986, this pretty much paid for our whole honeymoon, touring the West Coast of Ireland.............

 

The left over bin bag full of magnesium plates went into the base of the local bonfire on fireworks night.  It was pretty impressive, apart from the fumes that hit those downwind..........

[Jeremy Harris]

8 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

Was there not a story about a guy from Culdrose that got in trouble for having some WD40 in the boot of his car without the proper chit.

 

He was an RAF corporal who worked for me, as a torpedo armourer.  At the time I was his acting Divisional Officer, as the RN Lt post was gapped for a few months.  He was caught at the gate and I was called back in.  I spoke to him and he said he'd been down to Porthkerris OP, doing routine maintenance that day and had used his own car.  I suggested that the WD 40 could possibly have have fallen out of his tool kit.  He agreed and gave a statement to the NP and was released.  I gave a statement saying that I'd authorised his trip down to Porthkerris and agreed with his explanation.

 

Early the next morning, the NP called me in, saying that the corporal had admitted theft and that he'd made up the story about going to Porthkerris OP, making me look like a prat.  I wasn't charged, but had my car searched every day for months, just because they knew full well I'd been trying to help the corporal out.

 

The funny thing was that the corporal was posted to Belize as punishment, yet he was a very keen scuba diver, so it was a brilliant posting for him...............

[Stones]

14 hours ago, Alphonsox said:

 

It's very strange how companies value surplus goods.

 

I remember our Divisional headquarters splashing out on new office furniture one year (replacing stuff that was 20 years old).  The janitor, being a sensible and down to earth sort of chap, put a sign up asking people to take the old stuff away, which various people did.  Everyone was happy and the pile of old stuff steadily shrunk in size until someone from the property department put a stop to it, saying the desks had to be formally disposed of because they were an 'asset'. 

 

I hadn't got in quick enough so ended up phoning said department asking how I could acquire one of the desks.  'We'll have to get them valued' was the response.  Can I make you an offer I asked, 'No' was the answer. When will you get them valued I asked, 'Well, we probably won't because getting a valuation would cost us more than the desks are worth'. So what will you do with them I asked, 'Probably just dispose of them as waste'.  When I pointed out that hiring in several skips to take the stuff away would cost them, and that by allowing staff to take them for personal use they were in fact saving money, there was no answer...

 

 

[ProDave]

Another company I worked for later on sent and received machinery all over the world. so had a lot of surplus packing crates. A lot of it came from Brazil and was really nice hard wood crates (far too nice just to use as packing wood)

 

It used to get piled up during the week at the back of the site and a big bonfire light each Friday morning. So the accepted practice was to go and pick over the bonfire on a Thursday lunch time and put any you wanted in a separate pile then go and organise a wood chit and collect it after work.

 

I built a couple of sheds, a whole load of fencing, and boarded my trailer with that nice Brazillian wood.

 

Not long before I left someone decided it was no longer "correct" to burn it, so they started paying a contractor to remove the waste wood, and at that point employees were no longger allowed to have any.

[Onoff]

I was getting a load of fast grown, radiata pine a few years ago, came from NZ in containers supporting machinery. 4"x1", 4"x2" and some 3"x3". Made a few bits and ripped some down to give 2"x1" for the front fence. Very soft though.

[readiescards]

I went with the full length bench - built just a week before this thread was started!

[Guest Alphonsox]

1 hour ago, readiescards said:

I went with the full length bench - built just a week before this thread was started!

 

That's exactly the sort of thing i'm intending to construct - What's the work surface made of ?

[Nickfromwales]

2 minutes ago, Alphonsox said:

 

That's exactly the sort of thing i'm intending to construct - What's the work surface made of ?

It looks like plywood, capped at the front with a pine nose to me. 

[Onoff]

2 hours ago, readiescards said:

I went with the full length bench - built just a week before this thread was started!

 

Is that your biggest vice? 

[SteamyTea]

2 hours ago, Onoff said:

Is that your biggest vice?

What goes on in the shed, stays in the shed!

[readiescards]

On 24/11/2017 at 10:08, Nickfromwales said:

It looks like plywood, capped at the front with a pine nose to me. 

Correct. As suggested by my chippy.

 

And total cost was just under my £100/metre budget