Time waster
 

Have you ever spent more time and effort on something than it could ever possibly be worth? We were getting my mother-in-law's house ready to sell and I was out by the shed; looked down and saw the outline of a knife in the mud. Of course I dug it out; it had definitely been there a while! Full of mud and rust but I brought it home anyway. Soaked it in a bowl of WD-40 for a couple weeks, then went after it with a wire wheel on my Dremel. The metal's pretty pitted up as you might imagine. I made it for a Camillus as it looks almost exactly like an old two-blade I have, and sure enough. I was never sure if the scales on mine were real bone or plastic, but on this one the one down in the mud looks original while the one that's been exposed to the weather is bleached nearly white. No idea who lost it or when, but I'm betting it was my brother-in-law who just passed; wish he was here to share the story - he'd get a kick out of it...

https://i.imgur.com/e6eDPF8m.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/WHumfK7m.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/w0xvKY7m.jpg

You should see the bulldozer Mills and I are working on. We have not made much progress either. Also, the growing collection of abused LOM cases I have been cleaning up.

I hope you didn't have to dig that bulldozer out of the mud :eek:!

Nice save Phil! Not a waste of time-but the internet, well???

good find and a good storey....love old knives....charlie

Gettin’ hammered
 

Here’s one. Belonged to my father in law for sure and maybe his father. Got it maybe 40 or 50 years ago. Pandemic time saw me running out of projects so decided to revitalize this hammer. I could see it had at one time been painted red. Checked the big time waster Google and found one like it on eBay with still a good amount of red on the handle. Wire wheel then buffing wheel then gun blue took care of the metal. Some sanding and some filler and a couple sprays of red paint took care of the wood. I purposefully left the chip at the bottom of the handle unfilled. Will pass it along to a great grandson or maybe great-great grandson of the first owner when I’m done with it. It has always been a go to hammer for me so maybe it wasn’t a waste of time after all:)

My Dad and brother have put a new handle on an ax blade some of our archeology friends found. You know, the kind you see in museums that are brittle with rust.

I've kept my old Boy Scout knife in a salt water tackle box that I had forgotten about for the past 60+ years. When I removed it from the sheath it was gross. Fish guts and scales have a way of corroding metal. I cleaned it up a little, ground away the rust, and put a new edge on it so now it is ready to use again. Sadly...the sheath didn't fare as well.

I wish I still had the hatchet I took on my trapline for many years but I lost it through the ice in a muskrat swamp around ‘62 or ‘63.
It was a shingler’s hatchet with half the handle painted red. There was a nail-pulling notch in the bottom edge of the blade that was perfect for bending and twisting wire.






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I've driven an hour and a half to a lake, set up decoys at 4am, put finishing touches on the blind, got the dog all settled in only to find out I forgot my gun. Does that qualify as a time waster?