Ever Find Something Decades after you lost it?

[chrisrosenb]

I broke the handle on a handsaw over twenty years ago. The only reason I can remember it was over 20 years ago is because I broke it in another building that I had my shop in at the time.
I moved out of that building to my current shop 20 years ago, but I do not remember how long before I moved that the handle got broke. Some how the part that broke off of the saw handle got lost before I got it glued back together. For some reason I kept the broken saw in my tool cabinet.

This week my wife asked me to get an old kids size table & chairs out of my shop attic so the grands kids could use it. When I looked for the set, it was not there.
I decided to check the attic of the old shop building & there it was but it was all in pieces. I remembered it was put up there because it needed work & I never got around to fixing it.
In the pile of table & chair parts, I found the part of the saw handle that got lost. So it would not get lost again I just finished gluing the handle back together.

   

 

[kdzito]

Not decades, but a couple of years and here's the story.

One night I went out for a couple of drinks and when I came back threw my wallet in a box (I was in the middle of moving) and guess what for the next day could not find it for the life of me.  So I gave up on ever finding the wallet and did my security diligence (cancel CC's, get new ID's and such).

So way after the move and 2 years later found the wallet and still in that box.  What a sweet find because I also had $80 in that wallet.

 

[Sparktrician]

Back in the mid-70s, I took apart a ratchet to clean the innards, when a very tiny ball detent spring shot out across the garage and made the Great Escape.  I put the remainder of the ratchet back into the tool cabinet figuring that I'd eventually find a replacement spring.  It was almost 15 years later when I was cleaning the tool cabinet that I found that tiny spring lodged in one of the drawers into which it had shot.  I grabbed the ratchet and reinstalled the spring, and it's still working today, nearly 40 years after I bought the ratchet, and the manufacturer went belly up in the mid-60s. 

[smile]

 

[Wonderwino]

Chris, I would nominate for the procrastinators club, if I could get around to it, but I think by fixing the handle shortly after finding it, you blew the nomination.  If you had thrown it in the drawer to do later, I think you would have been accepted, if they ever got to your application. 

 

[chrisrosenb]

Chris, I would nominate for the procrastinators club, if I could get around to it, but I think by fixing the handle shortly after finding it, you blew the nomination.  If you had thrown it in the drawer to do later, I think you would have been accepted, if they ever got to your application. 

Well Alex, I just added another black ball. I am just about finished repairing that old kids size table & chairs.
It is amazing what someone will do for their Grandkids.  [big grin]
My wife told me that the table & chairs came from my mom & that I may have used it when I was a kid. [eek]  That was added incentive to get it repaired.
I do not remember using it, but that was the story she told me & it got the job done.

 

[CharlesWilson]

Several decades ago, I lost something somewhere inside my apartment. It wasn't a big apartment, so there weren't too many places to look for it. I never found it. Unfortunately, within a year or two, I couldn't remember what it was that I had lost.

So, now I have lost two things. The original object, and my memory of what it was. It has been bugging me ever since.

Charles

 

[peter halle]

It may not be decades, but just last week I cleaned out what once was my micro shop that was damaged back in 2003.  I managed to repair and rebuild the necessary sections back in 2004 without setting foot inside.  So last week was the first time in 6 1/2 years that my feet touched the plywood floor.  Found stuff that I forgot I had.  Also found stuff that I feared had disappeared.  More than a ton of stuff went to the landfill.

Now I have to find the brand new chisel set I got 5 or six years ago.  Wonder where that went?

 

[Tinker]

I had bought a hand blower and put it on my truck for use during fall cleanups.  I stopped at a job where I had a crew working.  Walked around checking progress and gave a few ideas for efficient progress (The boss must always be a PITA just to keep everybody on their toes.) I then went home to do daily bookkeeping and whatever else I had to take care of.  The next morning, as I added a few items to my truck for the days work, I did not see my blower.  Nobody in the crew seemed to know anything about it; so i had to go back to my guru and get another blower.

In fall of 2009. i walked into my dealer's shop and the girl asked if I had ever lost a Shindowa blower.  I did not recall, so she told me that a person by name of XYZ had just brought in a hand blower for repairs.  He said he had never used it (as it turned  out, he probably had not.  The machine was like brand new.) She had gone back in the records and the serial # had turned up in my name. I could not remember anybody with that name, but when I got home and told my wife.  She remembered the name as being pronounced differently, at which point the history of the lost machine came back to me. 

The counter girl did the research and found i had bought the blower 13 years before.  I don't know if the guy had intentionally put the tool away for all of that time and figured by now He could get away with using it.  At any rate, my old 13 year old blower was about on its last legs.  My guy changed the sparkplug and it started right off.  One new spark plug was all it cost to get my blower back.  As near as we could determine, the machine had hardly been use, maybe a couple of times only.
Tinker