My Unorthodox and Frankensteined Cleans and Restorations

The Beryllium Zippo

My first installment was a fun one. It started when I thought I had dug up some more of the element Beryllium (98% sure I found some prior in another field, but that's another story).

This piece looked different though, man-made and machined. After I laid in my initial guess that I had again found some of this fairly expensive element, I began my tests. Sanding made a sheen (Don't breathe it though, or you can contract berylliosis, not to mention it's VERY toxic). It was extremely hard. Grinding it didn't throw a spark. A certain volume of it powdered matched the specific density of the #4 on the periodic table. I was all sorts of happy too because I had found over 41 grams of the stuff!


And at some estimates puts the value at 23$ a gram! But something about it just didn't look right. I had to try the X-Ray test. I knew I was to get a dental exam done shortly by a customer of mine so I thought I'd piggyback the opportunity and request he zap my find with X-Rays. You see, Beryllium has the ability to pass x-rays right through it as if it wasn't even in its path. It is used anytime an object has to be x-rayed without the interference of air or any other gas distorting the x-rays, so it's placed in a vacuum and the "window" used to peer into the vacuum chamber is made out of beryllium.

Well, the day of my appointment came and it was his cute assistant that worked on me. I laid out my claim and re-established that I was sort of her boss' pool doctor in a way and she agreed, also because she thought it would be very interesting to do! Well, we zapped it . . . .




And got this!


It's a damn zippo!


Half dumbfounded, half amazed that it worked and how quickly I got the results, I was determined to give it the old Crimsin restoration.

The layout of the lines became abundantly clear that they were the opening point for the zippo lid. I just had to get it open. I first soaked the doodad in lemon juice and it came out like this.




With a little finesse, I worked the top open.



Then gave the casing a buff.



I tried to scrape some of the calcification off the inside and found the slightest bit of pressure broke the flint wheel from its base. Oops.



At this point, I filled the small pits and holes with joint compound and let it dry, then sanded it.



Then I turned to the cabinets where I keep my paints and remembered the wife had bought some metallic looking paint for one of her projects. Turned out to be a textured paint instead of a smooth paint, but what the hell! I superglued the wheel apparatus back on and this is what I got!



It will never work again, sadly though. I couldn't restore it's ability to spark. It probably flicked its last flick many years ago, but in the end, I considered this turd polished!

Damn Dude! This post sure gave me the rollicking giggles this morning! Excellent!
Mud

Way too much work for me.
But as long as you had fun,thats all that matters

I mean, you could have sent it to Zippo and got it fixed or a brand new one for free... Congrats on the persistence though!

Oldsjunkie said:

I mean, you could have sent it to Zippo and got it fixed or a brand new one for free... Congrats on the persistence though!

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There are other brands other than zippo though, and I wouldn't have been able to tell if it was an authentic zippo; it was pretty corroded. But is that a thing? Does zippo fix or replace any zippo? I'm not a smoker.

OP3CRIMSIN said:

There are other brands other than zippo though, and I wouldn't have been able to tell if it was an authentic zippo; it was pretty corroded. But is that a thing? Does zippo fix or replace any zippo? I'm not a smoker.

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Yeah, they maintain a great business model and will repair any Zippo for free. If they can't fix it, they'll send you a new one. Back in the day when I smoked I sent them my grandpa's 40s model when the hinge got really loose and they fixed it right up. I know at least one or two members here have pulled them out of the water and sent in crusty ones and got them replaced.

My Clean Dingaling

One of my favorite finds from my church field permission has been my #5 crotal bell. From what I have managed to research on my own, crotal bells were worn by horses as it seems it was necessary to audibly alert people that a horse-drawn carriage was approaching. I guess death by horse trampling was kind of a thing back then. Whodathunkit?

Also found out that the number on the bell corresponds to the size, but it isn't just an arbitrary number, thye five means the bell measures 1 and FIVE eighths inches in diameter. A #7 would be 1 and seven eighths and so on and so forth.






But here's the turd that came out of the earth.












Gave it a bath and knocked off the loose dirt. I could hear a clump of something inside. Could it be its dingaling? (I looked it up and that IS the technical term for the piece inside it, you believe me right?)







And that's approximately where most people would leave it, but I'm not most people. Gave it a ride on the wire wheel and got it shining!



This could even be where OCD people would leave it. But I'm not your average everyday OCD. It just had to get dunked! And by dunked, I mean a ten minute bath in pure muriatic acid.


Now that's shiny!

Last was a glaze and wipe off of vaseline and you can hear it dingaling like the days it was on the carriage!

Love the piece you wrote up on the Crotal Bell. Turned out very nice. The lighter might be a zippo but most "Zippo" brand lighters are mark on the bottom of the case.

OP3CRIMSIN said:

There are other brands other than zippo though, and I wouldn't have been able to tell if it was an authentic zippo; it was pretty corroded. But is that a thing? Does zippo fix or replace any zippo? I'm not a smoker.

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They are marked on the bottom, here's one that I found in a creek and sent in and got a new one in about 2 weeks. They stand behind their product.

JTW said:

Way too much work for me.
But as long as you had fun,thats all that matters

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+1

cool! show more more! Please

Fist With An Iron Rule!

I may have that title's phrase wrong. Either way I chose my iron ruler as my third installment as it's still leaving me scratching my head. You'll see.







Odd little thing isn't it. Grunted worse than the ex wife. Dug about eight inches to get to it. Came out of my own backyard where I've found welded repaired bucket loader teeth, Warranted Superior sawnut medallions, type 2 iron square nails, and even the friggin' nail puller!





But this craptacular beauty is interesting because it measures exactly an inch inbetween the notches. The notches measure exactly a quarter inch. This, to me, means specialized ruler for a specific job, but what?!? You see if you had an exact inch from the center of each notch to the next, then it would act like a standard ruler, albeit heavy and bulky, but it could be used at that point to measure length on the American system. Or even if the bottom of a notch to the bottom of the next notch made one inch. But NooOooo. It's gotta go and be weird.





I deemed this one official end of the ruler as this end is much cleaner than the other. The other looks as if it has snapped off altogether hence why it was discarded.




Hell with it! In the acid with Ye!














Well that helped a little bit. I could now notice that the first notch bump was bumped out on the "spine" of the ruler as well, whereas the subsequent notches were bumped only on the front and back faces of it. Weirder and weirder. So unless anyone can give me a reason to NOT take this to the grinder, I'll have it smoothed out shortly.

Thanks for reading! Crim.

Good stuff here man keep it up!

Yeah, this is different

matmit said:

Yeah, this is different

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Hopefully good different lol

I have found several broken silver rings over the years. I was able to repair them and they looked like new when I was finished. I have even found a couple that I made (unbroken) but I have made so many I don't remember who bought them.

Interesting antics.

Finally figured out the videos, so I got my dingaling video on my second installment to play!