I picked up a pretty nice 8" crescent wrench from the roadside today .

I spotted a car battery in the middle of the road last week that I will pick up on my way to work and get a few bucks at the scrap dealer on my next trip.  I have scrapped quite a few batteries over the years.

Bill

Today was a good day!

So you're finding this shit in people's trash, melting it down and casting it into bullets?

That's pretty smart.

I found a set of jumper cables laying in an intersection on the way home from work the other morning...

Scavenging will be a valuable skill in TEOTWAWKI.

What a surprise for the would be thief!!!






 

My dad had the best eyesight when it came to finding shit in intersections.
I can't recall how many times he'd tell me to jump out and get that 5/8" socket. And damned if it wasn't a 5/8".
He was head of a college police department and would ride around and pick things up in the parking lot. He kept a jar on his desk of the change he'd found over the years.

His best spot, while making a right at an intersection, "hey, was a S&W .38 on the edge of the road?"  Sure enough it was.

Endless supply of bungee cords on the side of the road.

I sit in traffic about 1-1/2-2 hrs a day on 95 and 295.
I have started scooping up metal objects by leaning out my honda door if I'm not on the bike.
Many 2-4' sections of rebar and guard rail nuts and bolts.
A few nice chunks of steel that I use for welding/ scrap and nobody will be impaled by that piece of rebar

Melting both down for boolets?

Just the lead one.

I may have lost my wedding band yesterday in Albany.  Someone may find a few hundred dollars in white gold up there!

It may be in the trailer I transported down... I pray to Saint Anthony for that!

Bill

Good score yesterday:

Todays find:

Most recent finds from SB Sunday:

Found a double ladder stand that bounced out of the back of a pickup next to my hunting proprty 2 years ago.

Best find ever has been a pair of rusty awkward looking channel locks - they fit perfectly into the PTO of my kubota tractor to squeeze the button for the locking collar on my bruch hog - I can't get in there with my hands/ fingers. Have had those pieces of junk for close to 20 years, and would be lost without them. Nothing else quite fits there and gives the leverage I need.

You won't hit a home run every time at bat!

Hence my motto: "Treasure is where you find it!"

A friend of mine used to walk to work everyday. One day he found a S&W Ladysmith laying in the ditch.

my best find was an 8' fiberglass folding ladder on the shoulder.  surprisingly it hadn't been run over yet.

one morning sitting in traffic i looked down in the grass beside the road and there was a pair of channellock 440 pliers.  in my tool box now.

She is intriguingly attractive.

I like walking the dog along the shoulder.  I've found several treasures along the way.  Several Wheel weights, tiedown straps a 6 foot fiberglass ladder and an aluminum extension ladder.

So cash!

Perfectly working computer found put out to garbage.  Not sure what I will do with it, but I have it.  Most computers have every bit of personal information imaginable to lose your identity!  Even if they are password protected it is simple to get past.

OPSEC HINT#1: Remove, or format, your HDD prior to putting an old computer to the curb!

Most times, I pick them up out of curiosity just to see what was left on the HDD!

I yank the hard drive on mine. Then I get medieval with a blow-torch and pliers.

I remove hard drive and drill a dozen or so holes through it.

would dumping it in a demagnitizer work?

Yea, buddy. Bout 149 more of them and you will have a fur coat. All the preppers will be jealous.

open up the hard drive.  there are a couple of rare earth magnets in there that are very useful.

Thank you!  I have some spares to tear apart.

Bill

Fresh roadkill that didn't get smashed makes for good eating.

In the spirit of the thread, I found an Ipod nano in a parking lot in Iraq.  The mud tire track it was mashed into clearly indicated it had been run over by an MRAP.   It had a small crack in the screen, but otherwise worked perfectly.

I found an adjustable wrench in excellent condition that had been buried UNDER an asphalt road for who knows how long.  This was at a military training facility that had a portion of roadway being removed for future construction.  A bulldozer went through and stripped the asphalt.  I forget what specific task I was doing, but I remember that wrench peeking up through the compacted roadbed.

I found a pair of Vise Grips clamped to my car's inner wheel well once.  Apparently when I had an alignment done the guy clamped them to a lip to keep them handy but then forgot about them.  They were found a year later when I had the tires balanced/rotated.

The only thing I find is firewood on the side of the road after storms and town tree trimming. Free heat for the house, I'll take it.

One of my friends does siding and roofing on the side from his regular job. His lead flashing donations gets turned into shiny boolits, along with the wheel weights I score from a high school buddy's tire business.

I found a miller wire feeder model S22a with the 60 pound spool adapter on the way home from work. I had it tested at the local welder supply and found it to be in working order.

I am always treasure hunting. If you're not looking for it, you won't find it!

Life jackets and throw cushions.  Always late on Sunday on the southbound lanes heading towards Massholeland.

I have kind of a long story about picking up road side treasure. After working the midnight to 8 shift, me and a couple of buddies would hit the gym in the next town over.

One morning after a good snow, on the way to workout, I saw a 20# propane tank laying in the ditch. You could see in the snow where it had bounced in the road and rolled into the ditch.

I jumped out and threw it in the back of my Ford Ranger, on top of a bed full of snow that I had dumped in there with a loader for weight.

I drove around for about a week with it sitting there in plain view. One day I thought I would drag it out and put it in the shed, as I did I noticed it had a regular garden hose spigot on it instead of the normal propane valve.

I was like WTF? Got to trying to figure out what was going on and cracked it open a hair and bout passed out as the gas leaked out. The damn thing was full of anhydrous ammonia.

Some tweaker had lost the ingredients for his next cook.

I didn't know what to do with it, so I called the sheriff dept. They said don't go anywhere there is a deputy from the drug task force on the way.

So in about 15 minutes a deputy rolls in and after explaining how I came to be in possession of it she said I was lucky I had not been stopped because I would have been hauled straight to jail if they had discovered it.

Said she had to take it with her but could not put it in the car with it full because the ammonia eats on the brass fitting and it could blow out at anytime.

She asked if I had anything to shoot it with. So, I got to set it out in the field and shoot it with my AR, which was pretty uneventful.

After telling the story to some people they said it was probably worth $1500-2000 to the right person. To me the "right" people to call was the sheriff dept.

This.

Also, the platters have a mirror finish and can be used as, well, mirrors.  I used to decorate my workstation with them a long, long time ago so I could see people walking up behind me.

... if you ever find a PC in front of my house, don't bother -- it is very old and must be very dead if I'm dumping it :-)