I always check out a rack of kitchen gadgets, even though I don't do very much cooking. Still on the lookout for that perfect not-quite-flat-ended spoon/spatula hybrid like we used to have with the steel handle and plastic grip. Also need a backup for the Westmark cheese slicer that we bought in Whitehorse (Yukon) in the mid '80s. Something like this one -
http://www.amazon.com/RSVP-Westmark-Rollschnitt-Cheese-Slicer/dp/B000BUDE2K - in case we break it. It is awesome.
Salvation Army thrift stores - buried treasure everywhere. Now that I've discovered that my DVD player can handle PAL format, I'll have to go back to my local store and see if they still have that German copy of
Der blaue Engel, with Marlene Dietrich. (No, I don't understand German, but maybe it has English subtitles.)
There's this place in my town that sells recovered building materials from demolished houses, like old doors and windows, and hardware like old hinges, doorknobs, light fixtures. I almost bought a vintage
green spherical "EXIT" light globe, but they wanted too much for it. They also have two huge palette-sized boxes of assorted sandpapers in different formats and grits from #32 to #1200, for only $2
per pound.
Fabric and sewing notions stores. Especially interested in some of the sewing gadgets now that I've been
sewing kites.
One of my problems is that I often go looking for something to buy with the intention of fabricating something totally unrelated to its intended purpose. It's typically the overall shape and material that is important, not the function, because I might be cutting it up and drilling it and such. Store clerks usually can't help me. (eg cheap carbon fiber arrow shafts or matchstick bamboo curtains for kite framing, snap shackles for trebuchet triggers, woodburning kit for fray-free cutting of nylon spinnaker cloth, 45 gallon HDPE barrels for lightweight armour, leaf rake tines for a thumb piano, now I'd like to find a second-hand single-pane glass patio door to use for a combo light table/fabric hot-cutting table ... you get the picture.)
At any rate, it makes me view the contents of some shops in a completely different way than most of the customers.
Ooh - I've recently discovered the existence of a huge old barn-like Army Surplus store in my area that I have yet to check out. That's gonna be fun. The guys at work say "Oh, you'll like
that place. Something different around every turn, and it's stuffed to the ceiling".
Picked up one of the heads and a 2 meter long aluminum bar. I don't know what I'm going to do with either one. I just can't help myself.
Does the bar have a precision milled straight edge? Great for a cutting guide. Most straight edges stop at four feet, and stuff like angle iron tends not to be very straight.
If it was a thick polished or anodized
slab of aluminum it would be good as a heat sink for rapid thawing of frozen meat and such.
