My best tip is dead vcr's and printers... There is scadds of wire, screws, gears, bearings, and in really old equipment cheapy DC motors. There is often a lot of aluminum in them, as there are heatsinks, and the base/sides are sometimes aluminum. Get them for free... and sort it all out, and you could turn it in to cash at the recycling center. Plus you get all the fun of creative destruction.
You would be surprised what one can just find about the hose to use. I am an odd exception to the rule as a Costumer and a Car restoring hobbiest. This ment I have a lot of tools about I take for granted and forget folks need to buy those and other stuff that I have laying about. Still look over spare junk in the house. with a creative mind you can use that old junk.
I have found that a spare MGB washer fluid pump makes a dandy 1/2 unit pump in a pinch But only if your DD/CL runs 9.6V. 6V tends to run slow. But they are self-priming Most auto-body sheet metal is good for prop blades. It'll rust, but this is a scrounging topic Also, if you work on old cars, you should have some POR-15 that you can paint it with. I scrounged an old 'Grasshopper' RC car... Got it back in 1985 for Christmas, it still has 2 working servos, a 550-size motor, and an old resistive-element speed controller, a gearbox full of gears, some adjustable pushrods,and a surface-legal 2-ch FM radio. It'd been sitting in my closet from before I was in the Navy. I hooked the 7.2V battery up to the charger (also in the box), and drove the care around my parents' house. I'm tempted to do a slacker's guide to convoy ship bulding Chris, you remember the hard-cider maru we were making at Nats? I still have it, with the zip-zap radio and motor
"Hard-Cider Maru?" "zip-zap radio and motor?" I seem to recall hearing something about this, but could you refresh memory?
Ahh the Hard Cider Maru. Had to do something, we were done battling for the day and there was a tropical storm blowing over. NATS in a tropical storm, good times. As I recall we were sitting around watching deadliest catch, drinking hard cider and decided we needed a convoy ship, dont ask me why. Visit this site Look for Clark's post 4 or 5 down. It was/is truly a modern marvel. Good thing we ran out of cider and stopped drinking before we tried to run it in campaign.
Copied from the thread Chris pointed to (thx Chris!) I did do a $25 convoy ship at Nats 06... Chris from NJ and I got a litle tipsy on hard cider, and we cut up the thin cardboard that one of the six-packs came in, and made ribs and a keel, then fiberglassed it with newspaper & thin cloth I had in my toolbox, and CA. The hull was about 10" long, and about 2" wide. A cannibalized zip-zap provided a 2-channel radio, a tiny tiny motor, gears, and the rudder servo. We used a coffee stirrer as the stuffing tube and a zip-zap drive axle as the propshaft. God only knows what it would've done if it hit the water But anyone wishing to get into the hobby on the cheap has my permission to emulate my "Yopparatteiru maru"* idea. Easily under $200. *The name means "Drunken Sea"
That might be a fun mini-event at Nats '09... Have a wednesday 'master class' on building a scrounger's convoy ship... Post a list of what to bring, and then everybody works in a big room, with some extra 'junk' to swap around and be creative. Maybe an award for best use of junk parts In any case, I'm contemplating shredding my Grasshopper for a generalized how-to on using an old rc car/truck and scrounged parts to make a cheap convoy. (I'd use the Maru, but it IS rather small (I think it's 10" long and 2" wide, but I'm at work, and the boat is in the shop).
I was at lowes today, they had 10 12volt nicad packs for drills on sale for 1.99 each. Could have been assembled for a dandy amount of c sized nicads, probably 1.2 amp hours apiece. The air compressors once used in the hobby were 5.99 at harbor freight, but the cambell hausfield one with auto cut off is like 40 bucks normally. But that's a whole 'nuther thread.
Scroungin parts is deffo the way 2 go. On one of the other threads rare earth magnets from pc hard drives were being used for holding a superstructure to a hull I belive? I just junked 2 pcs so i thought id have a go. GOOD STUfF! Got 8 of the magnets from 2 hard drives. Cant belive how strong those magnets are. I will add them to the parts pile.
I've also use a range of scavenged auto parts, including 20A thermal headlamp curcuit breakers, radio aerial sections for stuffing tubes and cut-up oil bottles for superstructure cladding.
