What’s the Coolest Thing You’ve Found?

Some rag bologna, hoop cheese, soda crackers and a glop of mustard on a piece of wax paper washed down with a bottled coke

 

I found this in the road Friday. Does anyone know what it’s from? Broke right at the drilled hole.

 

Broken Truck leaf spring.

I don't so much find things, as things are given to me.
Problem with this is it accumulates faster than rabbits multiply .
ON the one hand there are people that will throw good stuff away in the trash thinking of no one else, and on the other there're those that would rather give it to some one that might have a use for it.
I seem to have acquired this gift/curse from dad. and it takes great restraint to say no to people that want to give you stuff.
When dad passed I inherited all his stuff, and when my brother retired he gave me all the contents of the air compressor shop.
Friends and neighbors give me stuff they are about to throw away, even trees for fire wood.
I have barrels for recycling ,but i've even picked through them for materials needed for making repairs on stuff Im working on.
Having learned to weld plastics , having a selection on hand makes it difficult to just throw it all away to some one else recycling.
Storing all this stuff is another big problem among with organization .
If I scrap something , the time is invested in seperating fasteners and other useful components , and what has no known future, "that" is recycled .
Problem is the more you know how to fix the less one is willing to throw something away.

 

I found an enormous Wilkinson aluminum pipe wrench. I think it's a 24". It's wonderful to work with, being so light weight, and it has sharp stainless steel teeth.

I found a military lawyers tablet, a cab drivers phone, and a couple wallets. All returned to very grateful folks.

 

Are you guys related to me? I keep telling everyone my penchant for looking in the trash is genetic, like my grandfather, in the early 'teens He found a waterloo boy and rebuilt it to use. Dad was the same way, so are my brother and our nephews. I dug lots of hand tools out of scrap bins at work..

 

I know what a waterloo boy was, Dad talked about them often enough. We used the last parts of one to make a header trailer. Axle of a JD combine. I was born across the river from John Deere's smithy. Also, if anyone cares, in the same town Dredd Scott lived in when he tried to claim his freedom. First rail bridge across the Mississippi. Effie Afton, Abe Lincoln. Lot of unspoken history in the QCA.

 

YUP learned to drive on a ford 9-n

 

Looks like a new knife to me?

 

About 1996, two glass bottles of Off, priced at 85cents each in an old neighborhood hardware store.

 

I’m going to give it a shot. I’ll post the highlights or lowlights.

 

I believe he could get a few good knives out of that .

 

Other than "finding" my wife? Hmm, well I did find coffee at 55 cents/lb in Panama. Filled my seabag with that.
Or maybe an 1876 Whitneyville Armory revolver for $50?
Kind of hard to say any one item as the coolest

 

Coolest things I've found:

• A family friend we lost track of years ago on an Internet forum. We became friends without knowing who each other was and it wasn't until a face to face meeting at a protest in Salem did we put the pieces together.
• Hunting in eastern Oregon found a cougar skull and ran across a fire pit made from a Bobcat tread.
• Piles and piles of obsidian flake at and around Bogg Hot Springs near the Oregon/Nevada border where the Indians used to winter and passed the time making arrowheads.
• Obsidian boulders as big as houses on the southern slopes of the South Sister.
• A natural staircase of columnar basalt going up the side of a cliff on Ruckel Ridge in the Columbia Gorge

 

All great responses folks. The little dog was right near if not at the top in my opinion. Awesome.

 

When I was 6 or 7 years old I found a heavy iron coffe pot buried in a field just west of Omaha. My mom wanted to take it to the Museum and have it appraised but I gave it away to my aunt before she could. Mom never forgave me for that but my aunt kept it for the rest of her life.

 

Two greatest ones: A ride-on Ditch Witch in the woods. It was a big project and cost about $800 to fix up. Used it for several years and took an offer of $2000 for it. The next was a 32 volt DC generator with a two cylinder diesel engine. We hauled it out of the woods and cleaned it all up and got it running pretty easily. It was from a house that burned down in the 1930's. Hauled it to a Threshers Reunion and took an offer of $1500 for it.
Yesterday, found a Streamlight Microlight in the parking lot at the hospital. I told security I had it if anyone comes back for it. No way I was leaving it with them, because I know they always find the "owner".

 

Some recent finds