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plongson

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Neighbor had a broken water line to his house today...not good just before Christmas, and in the dead of winter. He needed a PVC union, it was late and the hardware is miles away. We cut away the union in the broken line and I ran it back to the shop, put it in the lathe and bored out the glued in pipe joint...life is good!!

I cannot imagine life without a machine shop. What do mere mortals do??? LOL!!!
 
I have done similiar. I took the coupling for a pipe in the ground and took out the divider in the center of the coupling so I could slip the coupler over on pipe and slid it out of the way glued and slid back over both pipes.
 
Wait till the neighbors find out- you'll be swamped with requests :)
(which could be a good thing if they are willing to pay)
 
plongson said:
Neighbor had a broken water line to his house today...not good just before Christmas, and in the dead of winter. He needed a PVC union, it was late and the hardware is miles away. We cut away the union in the broken line and I ran it back to the shop, put it in the lathe and bored out the glued in pipe joint...life is good!!

I cannot imagine life without a machine shop. What do mere mortals do??? LOL!!!
Click to expand...
They spend their money replacing stuff. We spend ours (and probably much more) buying tools so we can fix instead of replace.

I do that stuff all the time. I recently spent at least an hour making a replacement for a lost hitch pin to avoid driving 10 miles and spending $5. Felt pretty good about it 'til I discovered I had some 5/8 bolts that would have only needed a cross-hole drilled in them.
 
Almost all my hitch pins for the tractors are made from 3/4" bolts. I think I have one legit hitch pin. Come to think of it, I think there are a few 16d. nails replacing lynch pins or cotter pins too.
 
Redoing my mothers bathroom before the holidays. Full gut down to the studs. Removed acrylic shower pan and of course the new one needs a different drain pipe arrangement. Luckily whoever replaced the shower pan 30yrs ago replaced drain line going to main stack all galvanized pipe. When I removed the stub needed to be replaced the 2” line was only about 3/4” clear. The rest was 30yrs of debris and crud.
Luckily for me I had a brand new 2” Cleveland pipe tap to clean out the threads and recut so more than three threads were engaged.
My mom was so happy and surprised I had the tap and was able to rescue the fitting from replacement.
Week before I made a new storm door handle. Old one broke was aluminum cast and the retaining ring edge the holds the handle to the mounting plate had broke from a 10yr old boy pulling and abuse. New one was 70 bucks. Made mine out of stainless on hand and its way better than original. And looks better too! That’s what I Do.
 
You know those combo sink stoppers with a rubber plug attached to the bottom of a stainless steel filter basket? The rubber part is usually attached to the basket using a separate (cheap) chrome-plated plastic piece, and those pretty quickly go to hell. Well ours won't ever again because I turned replacements out of SS rod I bought.just for the purpose. Along the way I learned that the manufacturing tolerances for the rubber part are loose as a goose so I got to remake some during the process.
 
Bringing back fond memories of a night of threading and turning a new handle on a faucet because the stupid store wasn't open so late, just to be able to turn the water on and off in the kitchen for morning.
 
You didn't have to machine the old pipe away. Put a hose clamp on the outside of the joint (the female part), then use a heat gun to soften the PVC. Once soft, grab the PVC to be removed and twist it. The softened PVC will simply peel away from the part you want to save. The hose clamp just supports the part that you DO want to save.
 
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