My wife and I attended a large local flea market over Memorial day weekend, which we do a couple of times a summer (it’s held one a month). This is a well done affair and has been around for some time, and isn’t a field full of tables with junk or cast off items no one wants. There’s a lot of interesting items, particularly antique furniture and jewelry – my wife’s particular interest. I’m always on the prowl for tools, and almost always find something. This time around I found two small micrometers; a 0-1″ Craftsman, actual manufacturer unknown, a 1-2″ Slocomb from Providence, RI. and a damaged battery load tester. The battery tester was not functional as it had broken negative lead where the cable enters the clamp. I paid $4.00 each for the micrometers and took a chance on the battery tester at $5.00.
A friend of mine has a very nice set of Jobe (gauge) blocks so I borrowed them and checked the micrometers for accuracy. Believe it or not, the Craftsman was within 1/2 a .001, the Slocomb was accurate to just short of .001. For the work I do with my little lathe this is close enough, so I’m not intending to adjust either device.
The load tester really required two new cables, as the outside black insulation was cracked and dry-rotted. As I never throw away power cables from discarded power tools, I went through my ample supply of cables and just happened to find a perfect match to the original cables installed on the load tester. This was a pretty simple repair… easy disassembly, a bit of soldering, reusing the original cable strain reliefs and the unit was repaired within and hour or so. I had to improvise on the positive (red) insulated handle as the red insulation was so brittle it crumbled when I attempted to remove it from the handle, even after applying gentle heat to soften it. The improvising consisted of wrapping a couple of layers of inner tube around the clamp and then wrapping the whole affair with red duct tape (everyone has different colored duct-tape around, right?). Worked out great. The original black insulation was quite soft and supple, so it was salvageable… go figure.
Once I had the whole affair back together I tested it on an older used 12 volt car battery I keep around as a spare, and the tester seemed to work fine. By the way, the battery tested as “weak”, though it was fully charged. Not surprising, it’s an old-timer.
So for a grand total of $13.00 and a little effort I have three well-used-but-functional tools put back into service.
Here’s a brief YouTube video that provides more detail…