Useful items free or near free adapted for use on boat ...

Refueler

Refueler

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I don't know about you lot ... but many items I see around various shops etc. - I can often see a use for on the boat. This is same for my RC hobby ... where many RC'rs like myself find odd bits and pieces in unlikely places that are ideal for the hobby.

A thread earlier had an LED Canopy light ... which I found near same at 1/6th of the price in a local Builders merchants that has a camping section.

But anyway - here's an item :

How many use telescopic boat hooks ? have a look at a decent telescopic painters pole ! If you ever break your fancy priced Marine version ... some can have the 'head' removed and fitted to another pole.

Hatch arms that slide and hold open ... check out Caravan shops - same item .. half the price usually but listed for windows ... just take care to get the right material and not the plated versions !

Yes - I'm a cheapskate and always on the lookout for gear I can use !

Anyone else with items to mention ?
 
I had an old floor mop that had a telescopic ali handle. I pop rivetted a bit of metal sheet on the end to make a useful boat hook. Now it is not long but is mostly adequate but will fit collapsed into the cockpit locker so is easily accessible. recently the rubber handle pulled off and te boat hook went to Davy Jones Locker. No problem found it the next day while cleaning the boat bottom. So it lives again. ol'will
 
Refueler said:
I don't know about you lot ... but many items I see around various shops etc. - I can often see a use for on the boat. This is same for my RC hobby ... where many RC'rs like myself find odd bits and pieces in unlikely places that are ideal for the hobby.

A thread earlier had an LED Canopy light ... which I found near same at 1/6th of the price in a local Builders merchants that has a camping section.

But anyway - here's an item :

How many use telescopic boat hooks ? have a look at a decent telescopic painters pole ! If you ever break your fancy priced Marine version ... some can have the 'head' removed and fitted to another pole.

Hatch arms that slide and hold open ... check out Caravan shops - same item .. half the price usually but listed for windows ... just take care to get the right material and not the plated versions !

Yes - I'm a cheapskate and always on the lookout for gear I can use !

Anyone else with items to mention ?
Click to expand...

Well I'm absolutely miserable like you when it comes to spending money. I'm currently bidding $10.25 (plus postage) for a HP250 laptop computer with no disk drive or battery. (They are selling it for parts)) If I win the auction I will install a SSD (Solid State Drive) and then I'll have an excellent computer for the yacht navigation.

I've recently upgraded to Windows 10 but I need Microsoft Office as well. I thought of buying Microsoft Office at a cost of $200 but decided to download the free LibraOffice (Open source just like OpenCPN) . It looks exactly the same as Microsoft Office!? consequently I won't have any problem using it.
 
Retired climbing rope, from climbing gyms, recycled, for free, to become snubbers. If they are not recycled - they go to land fill. I shudder to think how long they might take to 'decompose'

Get on your bikes!

Jonathan
 
Marina bins are a great place to find items for reuse. People throw away ropes and fenders because they are dirty, waterproofs because they are last year's fashion.
even got a complete aerogen that just needed the brushes cleaning.
 
+1 for marina skipdiving, last year produced an excellent tarpaulin with only one eye damaged plus half a tin of antiflouling.
 
Rappey said:
Marina bins are a great place to find items for reuse. People throw away ropes and fenders because they are dirty, waterproofs because they are last year's fashion.
even got a complete aerogen that just needed the brushes cleaning.
Click to expand...

I used to know a guy in HYCO - that when he considered changing his on board battery - he'd check the skips and around first ... very rare he didn't find a battery that was good - that basically owner had replaced due to poor husbandry ! If that failed - there used to be a car Breakers next door ... perfect 2nd hand tested batterys for small money.
 
I'm amazed at how many replace their battery's every 2 to 3 years regardless.
There are some great devices for testing a battery's health even when flat.
It's like Xmas when you find a pile of yuasa battery's in great working condition
 
For fishing I got a gearbox off a Teagle bale elevator, 16:1, it had a large v pulley on the slow end, so belt drive gave a further reduction, plummer blocks, shafts, pulleys, bearings, from a pile of weaving machines in the scrapyard, to build a hauler. One local yard gets a lot of ex W D, so pallets of props, S/S tube, shaft..... bronze pins........beats the aisle of dreams in Lidl.
Zinc plated plastic sheave sash window pulley for in transom steering cable mounting. Small boat obs.
Often saw boats heading far afield, Bay of Biscay, with heating oil tanks strapped on deck for extra fuel.
Breadboards for LDPE sheet. Lidl rope lights 12v, for engine room illumination, £10 For five metres.
The best bait knife, ten inch blade, I ever had came from Trago forty years ago and I still use it daily at home.
Agricultural scrapper also had a dust proof generator off a combine, so splashproof, retro fit to a Lister diesel. Charged the battery better than an alternator does.
 
My 4-107 Perkins inmy boat now was scrapped from a Rustler in HYCO years ago.

Guy didn't like it smoking and replaced with a Beta or Yanmar ... which I cannot remember ... but the 4-107 was put on a pallet and shoved to back of the yard.
Some years later my 4-99 seized and I wanted to replace. I was offered the 4-107 for 250 quid sold as seen ... I got the resident to check it and fit to the boat. It dropped straight in being basically same as the 4-99 ..
Pressed start and with a bit Ether up its chuff - it burst into life.
That motor has ploughed round the solent .. across channel ... crossed Baltic and round islands etc. chugging away like new. All it needed was a good old hard throttling to clear the crap and she runs as sweet as anything. Yes she smokes a bit as you'd expect when so much fuel being thrown in ! when you go more than about 80% throttle .. but I only need 30 - 40% to go 6+kts. She does over 9.5kts when opened up !!
Its now about 15 years since it was fitted.
 
Widening the thread ( but in the same spirit) what about items which serve multi purposes on board? When considering 'new stuff' to bring aboard Coral Wind we try to think if it can have another use ( and, of course, where to store) 2 quick examples .... our 8 foot boarding ladder can have a light board attached by cords over the rungs to form a gangplank...…. we needed a cockpit table and were able to use the ( nicely varnished!) Avon floor which, anyway, stores under a mattress.
 
Fine ... the idea is to expand the thinking and to see where we can source / use items that often we overlook etc.

Who throws away Ice cream sticks ? Never think they make excellent disposable stirring / mixing sticks ? Have a cracked item that you just need to strengthen behind ? RC modellers use cocktail sticks .. BBQ skewers .. Ice Cream sticks to strengthen / align / assist in many ways of glueing etc.
Got a screw that no longer holds into that crap chinese plywwod that looks like beautiful ply ? That ice cream stick with a touch of glue to hold - can give just enough thread hold to solve. (That Match 35 springs to mind there !! That's exactly what I used to repair a screw in the nav area !)
 
I used to use the handle of a fly swat (cost less than a euro), rather than parallel rules, to do my 'paper chart in holder on my lap in the cockpit' style navigation in the small boats I used to sail, just transferring angles by eye. You only needed one hand to operate it, it didn't need a perfect flat surface, it had no sharp corners, and didn't break if you sat on it.

It also doubled as a backscratcher, or even, in extremis, a fly-swat!
 
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