Why didn't you do that before?

[Dr.Al]

I thought it might be interesting to start a thread going about those little, easy and cheap jobs that were on your list for ages and when you finally got round to doing them, they saved you loads of time or effort.

To qualify, the time involved should be measured in minutes (not hours or days) and the cost should be minimal.

A few starters for 10 to give the general idea

1. A longer spanner for the BOC cylinder (this is what inspired the thread, following a conversation with @Sammy7): https://www.mig-welding.co.uk/forum/threads/stuff-you-have-made-today.67127/page-406#post-1459907
   
   
   
   
2. I hate cleaning swarf out of t-slots on the milling machine, so I got a few odd bits of thin aluminium sheet out of the drawer, trimmed them down, drilled some holes and bolted them to the table. Now the swarf is much easier to deal with.
   
   
   
   
3. I always found it very hard to get a consistent flat finish when dressing the grinding wheel with my diamond stone. I'd tried a little sleeve for adjustment (pressed up against the rest), but it was hard to move it in small enough increments. I chucked a diamond dresser in the lathe, turned the 1/2" OD down to 12 mm and put a thread on it. I went for 1 mm pitch, but it would have been fine with 1.75 mm and then I could have just used a standard M12 nut. Took less than half an hour to do and makes dressing the grinding wheel SO much easier.
   
   

Anyone else got any little gems of easy & cheap ideas that save a lot of time?

 

[Parm]

Neat projects

 

[eLuSiVeMiTe]

Racking my van. Haven't done it yet but the amount of time I spend hunting stuff down is getting stupid

Fitting an SSD to my old desktop.
Saves at least 5 minuites letting it warm up.(same for laptop)
When I was into gaming/computing still the prices were prohibitive for a decent size

 

[anto]

All my screws, bolts, studs, nails, nuts etc were all gathered into quality street tins in no order at all. Everytime I needed something I'd tip it all on the floor to look for it.

I eventually organised it into the wee sorting boxes from lidl. A lot more efficient !

 

[Farside]

Got fed up tipping out the big container of crimps, searching for particular sizes, and as I was going through more of them it seemed a good idea to sort them out.

Hot-glued some mackerel tins inside a foil tray and made a sensible sized holder for various crimps. Each tin holds a hundred of various blues and reds.
I'm upsizing the next one to pink salmon tins for the yellow crimps.

 

[Wightsparks]

Thats a good idea, much easier to fish out what you need, do you think it can be scaled up?

back on topic, I bought and installed some magnetic tool holder strips on garage wall (coming up again in Lidl) - really great organisation as they are easy to replace tools on they get used all the time

Oh - and I labelled the upright freezer drawers for meat, fish,veg bread, pre-cooked etc - took minutes but has saved hours of hunting for stuff!

 

[cheb]

I'm guilty of spending more time sorting, boxing and labelling stuff than actually making things with it.

I know where all my stuff is though.

 

[Morrisman]

All my screws, bolts, studs, nails, nuts etc were all gathered into quality street tins in no order at all. Everytime I needed something I'd tip it all on the floor to look for it.

I eventually organised it into the wee sorting boxes from lidl. A lot more efficient !

There was a time I kept all 3000 assorted screws, bolts, washers etc all in the same Cadbury’s tin. But then I discovered Screwfix. £20 or so for a 20 drawer storage box. I thought 3 of them.

 

[Dr.Al]

There was a time I kept all 3000 assorted screws, bolts, washers etc all in the same Cadbury’s tin. But then I discovered Screwfix. £20 or so for a 20 drawer storage box. I thought 3 of them.


View attachment 205215

Definitely a good plan: you can never have too much organised storage...

 

[arther dailey]

Thats a good idea, much easier to fish out what you need, do you think it can be scaled up?

back on topic, I bought and installed some magnetic tool holder strips on garage wall (coming up again in Lidl) - really great organisation as they are easy to replace tools on they get used all the time

Oh - and I labelled the upright freezer drawers for meat, fish,veg bread, pre-cooked etc - took minutes but has saved hours of hunting for stuff!

I think you might regret the magnetic strip tool holders , as you will find every bit of swarf/filings etc costantly attatched to said screwdrivers and spanners etc after a while. sorry .

 

[Wightsparks]

I think you might regret the magnetic strip tool holders , as you will find every bit of swarf/filings etc costantly attatched to said screwdrivers and spanners etc after a while. sorry .

Good point, but I have had them up for a good while now, no issues, - but I don't do any grinding/cutting in the garage, and any milling/drilling I do I have the vac (handily mounted) to remove swarf as it is made.

 

[colnerov]

 

[snoozer]

Funny as this thread prompted me to ponder on what met the criteria of the opening post.
Something I meant to do when I swopped to Virgin Media Broadband was to change the Router Login password, Change the 2.4 & 5 ssid & the default wireless key for both.
Just finished doing the deed, Jeez I forgot how many devices I would have to re config, Thought I was done until I remembered 5 rpi's upstairs running Seti@home bless em.
So thanks to Dr.AI for the reminder

 

[ukracer]

Funny as this thread prompted me to ponder on what met the criteria of the opening post.
Something I meant to do when I swopped to Virgin Media Broadband was to change the Router Login password, Change the 2.4 & 5 ssid & the default wireless key for both.
Just finished doing the deed, Jeez I forgot how many devices I would have to re config, Thought I was done until I remembered 5 rpi's upstairs running Seti@home bless em.
So thanks to Dr.AI for the reminder

What's an RPI and Seti@home..lol

 

[cheb]

rpi's are raspberry pi's I expect, small home programmable computers, and seti@home is the search for extraterrestrial life. Their research is aided by borrowing volunteer's computer capacity. In short, if you're not using you computer, they are.

I hope this makes sense to you.

 

[Farside]

Got a couple of BOINC boxen running - old crippled server boards at half capacity, so 24 threads chewing away at disease research.