Getting a grip

I do like a good garage sale. Car boot sale, clearing sale, antique auction, garage sale. Call them what you will, but if there's old stuff, covered in rust and dust, then I'm a happy camper. So what's better than a good garage sale? How 'bout the annual Kyneton Garage Sale Weekend! 
Yes that's right, purveyors of stuff both old and new, valued and valueless have their address added to a secret map, which is handed out for $3 a pop, at 8am on Saturday morning. From that point the race is on to get to as many of the garage sales as possible before anyone else.

I was fortunate enough to ride shotgun in a van with a good friend David and his Dad John, who are seasoned garage sale specialists. If we went to one sale that day, we went to fifty! Some streets in the town had 3 or 4 sales per street. By lunch time the van was full to the brim and we were pining for coffee.

Strangely enough for me, I didn't buy a heap of stuff that day. But one particular sale on the outskirts of town sticks in my mind. A heap of stuff spread out in the front house paddock of a small farm. Amongst the old bicycles and junk was a broken plastic tub with a heap of old rusty iron in it and a few old porcelain insulators, the kind you would find on old telegraph posts. On the top of the heap was an old rusty strap style gate hinge. I'd been looking for one to pair up to another forged hinge I already have. 

Great, I thought as I headed over to get a price. The old fella came over and asked what tub it had come out of and then proceeded to tell me the whole tub was 3 dollars. "I really don't want all this rubbish," coursed through my mind as I handed over the gold coins, but it was a cheap hand made hinge all the same. 

As I bent down to pick up the tub my eyes focussed on one of the rusty bits of iron. There in front of me was a very old iron 'parallel guide' from a leg vise. God knows how long it must have been sitting around rusting away. Bargain.

But not much use unless you have a good screw mechanism to go with it I hear you say? Well I can't even remember where I found this old one, but it's been waiting for a home for years. So into the molasses with both of them and when they come out, they'll go onto a new workbench for the workshop classroom. One mans trash is another man treasure........especially for three bucks.