Junk Yard Finds and A Tool SALE!

Great week here at ReSource, we finished Saturday with a record breaking day of sales because we had one of our seasonal tool sales. Check out all these tools!

I was able to score a table saw, compressor, bandsaw, and a couple clamps. Pretty psyched about it ( :
These are them…

My new little Delta Table Saw (still need to find it a crank handle). Little Red compressor and ban saw on the ground behind it…

The Delta Ban Saw.

People love the tool sale and line up a ½ hour early just to get in first. It’s an event, which is something I think needs to be capitalized on in our reuse community. I have so many visions for how I want to see this place and these aren’t the same visions as the senior managers have. So I’m really feeling like I’d like to start my own. And I want to make things feel right, feel like I would like a business to function. Not that ReSource is doing anything wrong. I just have a different culture in mind. A scrappiness, but also a place that provides opportunity. More of a collective really. I’m seeing things like profit sharing and ways to open up new sectors of the company that collaborate with the others. I see an employee coming to me one day and saying, I have this really good idea about starting a café and I’m wondering if we can’t add that project into our business. And I say hell yeah and together I help other employees become entrepreneurs alongside me. The other pieces of the company helping to support the growth of the next and collectively we can all take a share of the excess profit. I guess that the company couldn’t be a non-profit like that could it? I’d also like to see it as a certified B Corp. It’s a big dream but if I want to improve my current job situation there are two paths I see…

One, run my own company,

And

Two, go back to school for a Graduate degree.

I think starting my own Salvage yard would be pretty cool.

Anyways, sorry for the ramble, (I’ve really been putting a lot of time into this idea) here’s the other cool stuff that’s come in this week here at ReSource.

Clemente, our absolutely solid and loved yard manager, got some donations luck the other day and tapped this lovely old bow! He had ‘Canada Mike,’ one of our regulars, come on out to give him a thumbs up. I happened to be out there when he checked the bow and let him know it was a keeper.

The other bow (light colored one to the right of the nice bow) did not get the thumbs up. It made some pretty nasty cracking sounds! Probably not safe to shoot.

For some reason I liked this small stainless steel drinking fountain. Sort of a random item to get in, my favorite kind I guess ( :

I’m always surprised at how much “precious metal” (copper, aluminum, brass …) gets thrown out. Scrap price is pretty high for this stuff so we make a happy price for selling this back to scrap metal yards who will recycle it. I mean if you think about how nasty those big copper pit mines around the world are you’ve gotta wonder how much of this stuff, that got extracted from the earth with all the energy of mining, is getting thrown back into landfills again.

Look at this awesome cast iron farmhouse sink! That is not a rust spot in the corner, that’s a clod of mud. It didn’t have any chips in fact, in excellent condition. I saw this on sale online for $700 and we sold it for $50. I wanted it really bad but starting a remodel of the kitchen is not on the agenda yet! I’ll have to wait for another to show up.

These gorgeous beams came in and I couldn’t resist getting them for the Post and Beam workshop I’m saving up materials for. These came home with me ( :

Everyone thought I was crazy to accept this old spring mattress. In fact the guy had 3 of them but we only took one. Guess what… It’s gone now because someone bought it. I wish I knew what they were going to do with it. I just love it. Wish I’d been able to save the other 2 from the scrap metal pile.

This really nice front door came in. I kinda wanted it but the work of putting in a new front door seems like a nuisance, My front door is pretty nice already.

Okay, okay this gorgeous (oak?) desk was not at ReSource, It was at my favorite Salvation Army shop. It is such a nice desk with three matching chairs. It has really gorgeous handmade details. If I had the space I would have snatched this up. But I just don’t think it was meant for me.

Probably my favorite personal score of the week was this pack of Tarot Cards! Brand new, straight from 1971! It is a full set with it’s instruction book. I’m going to do another write up on how particularly synchronistic this find was soon.

Thanks for caring about what gets saved from the garbage can and put back into use in other people’s lives. It’s certainly something I care a lot about.