Latest Bricolage...!

[Crossbreed]

I found an obsolete portable TV around the house. I was able to cannibalize its antenna and, along with two partial antennas, was able to improve the reception of two portable FM stereos...!

Feel free to add your own real-life "MacGyver" feats here, too.

 

[Outdated]

We've been using cardboard takeaway food containers since plastic has been banned. If the lid of the container remains clean I cut it off and save it as a microwave dish for things like frozen pies.

The lid lifts the pie up higher so that it's more central in the microwave and heats up quicker, and also because it's a porous and absorbent surface the pies don't go soggy when you heat them up.

 

[Jumpinbare]

McGuyver was a rank amateur. Or, more accurately, McGuyver's writers were rank amateurs. They consistently took a little knowledge and liberally misinterpreted/misapplied it to present impossible situations. In the original series, young aspie me used to get really upset with this, since I knew how easily the writers could have researched just a little bit more  and McGuyvered the situations correctly.

All that said, I pretty live a McGuyver existence. Growing up poor (or at least lower middle class), I never had money to throw at things, so I had to come up with no or low cost solutions. Even now when I do have some funds to throw at problems, I still take the McGuyver route more often than not.

My latest "project" was fabricating a locking pin lever for a Derringer pistol. After looking for suitable metal, wood, or plastic pieces to make it from, I noticed that the plastic underside of a push-and-turn safety pill bottle cap was about the right thickness, and seemed rigid enough. So I separated it from the top of the cap, cut it to shape, and drilled a hole, which I then elongated to fit on the locking pin. You can see the working result in the first pic.


I didn't like the white appearance of the lever, so I used a Sharpie pen to blacken it as seen below. The remains of the pill bottle lid are also shown. The last pic shows how an original locking pin lever looked.

 

[Judge]

I found an obsolete portable TV around the house. I was able to cannibalize its antenna and, along with two partial antennas, was able to improve the reception of two portable FM stereos...!

Feel free to add your "MacGyver" feats here, too.

Very interesting! To date I still run two stereo receivers (one ancient, one not too old) using dipole antennas that go across the floor to my sliding door, then deliberately upwards in a 90 degree fashion. Gives me good reception to local FM, but with the Sierra Mountain range so close it makes FM a bit precarious in general.

 

[Outdated]

Very interesting! To date I still run two stereo receivers (one ancient, one not too old) using dipole antennas that go across the floor to my sliding door, then deliberately upwards in a 90 degree fashion. Gives me good reception to local FM, but with the Sierra Mountain range so close it makes FM a bit precarious in general.

Buy a little coaxial Y junction and connect your FM radio to your TV arial, works a treat.

 

[Outsider]

I have a refurbish laptop. I bought it by mistake without knowing what this term means in reference to a computer. It worked well for about 2 years but then suddenly it died without giving a warning. I did everything I could to wake it up but in vain.
After a week of unsuccessful attempts to force it to collaborate I looked at the damn device and talked to it. I said, "If you stay silent for another minute I will throw you into the garbage chute!" Suddenly, the indicator light went on and the laptop woke up.
Am I a miracle maker? There are people called horse whisperers, they can talk to the horses. But I excelled them, I'm a laptop whisperer.

 

[Crossbreed]

Buy a little coaxial Y junction and connect your FM radio to your TV arial, works a treat.

I know how to convert between coax & 300Ω, but I do not know how to convert either to a telescoping antenna.

 

[Outdated]

I know how to convert between coax & 300Ω, but I do not know how to convert either to a telescoping antenna.

Connecting my stereo to the TV aerial was something I used to do everywhere I lived many years ago, it saved a lot of mucking around and always gave excellent reception. I haven't listened to radio for many years now though. I'm not sure how well that works with newer digital aerials but then again most radio stations are also now transmitting in digital.

Your FM aerial connection in the radio should have two leads, one is to go to the aerial and the other is an "earth" or "ground". In a portable radio the earth would normally be the chasis of the radio underneath it's external plastic casing.

I don't know how electrical outlets are wired in the US, here our outlets have 3 connections, a positive, a negative and an earth. The earth is pretty much literally what the name says, the earth is connected directly to a copper rod outside the building that is pushed at least 6 feet in to the ground, it's not connected to the electricity supply in any way shape or form so it can also be used to earth other devices.

 

[Crossbreed]

I don't know how electrical outlets are wired in the US, here our outlets have 3 connections, a positive, a negative and an earth.

We have essentially the same arrangement, but they are shaped differently.
Our ground is usually attached to our cold water pipes which also run underground.

 

[Outdated]

Our ground is usually attached to our cold water pipes which also run underground.

That was going to be my other suggestion - that if your electrical outlets only have 2 pins then plumbing makes a superb earth. As a little kid I had a germanium crystal radio set that lived in the bathroom, one aerial lead connected to the tap in the bath and the other pushed out the window.

 

[Jumpinbare]

Most interior water pipes in the US now are plastic.

 

[Crossbreed]

I'm not sure how well that works with newer digital aerials but then again most radio stations are also now transmitting in digital.

Our FM stations are still analog, at least primarily.

 

[Crossbreed]

The reason that I am chuffed about the FM receivers is that I play my MP3 playlist* all day through a media player into an FM transmitter, like a legal pirate radio station.

*414 songs, shuffled.

 

[Jumpinbare]

I do the same with 1310 shuffled mp3s

 

[Crossbreed]

I do the same with 1310 shuffled mp3s

What do you use for your media player? Mine is a Western Digital WDTV-Live.

 

[Jumpinbare]

A raspberry pi 3B

 

[Crossbreed]

I used a hand-powered hamburger grinder to break up hardened chunks of Gatorade powder mix.

Meat Grinder

 

[Ronald Zeeman]

Used one of these when a kid to make hamburger meat.

 

[Crossbreed]

My wife wanted sliced onions for our homemade hamburgers but I could not find an inexpensive tool to do so.

I ended up using an electric knife while holding the onion with a fork.

(It worked for the tomato, too! )

We have dubbed the end creation, "Chainsaw Burgers."

 

[Shevek]

I have a very small car that I had to overhaul myself, with a bed and kitchen I made from leftover boatbuilding supplies. Last week, I was improving the plumbing setup and made a custom elbow at a 70 deg angle, with a plastic barb on one end, and the aluminum tube from a dead flashlight on the other to work as a standpipe with another fitting free to turn inside as the sink gets stowed away. The union was accomplished with some very rare light fiberglass cloth and epoxy resin, laid up from postage-stamp size pieces, pre-soaked and then cut from a strip.
I have hundreds of things I've rescued from the trash and either fixed or re-purposed. I once had a free 220 volt monitor here in 110 volt North America and made a special extension cord to run it from the hot wires in two different outlets. It sounded so alarming that I actually had a licensed Australian electrician insisting that I could not be using my monitor, but it is quite safe. You can just plug it in at random, and you'll either get no voltage or 220. I had previously used the same trick to make a hotplate from junk with two temperature settings.