Odd Tinkering

I found this old Black and Decker D500 vintage cord drill online for restoration project. I haven't yet restored many power tools and I thought this is just a clean up job, but little did I know the tool was making a terrible sound which had to be repaired before using. The drill had only a little rust, but it was covered in dust from the inside and had a lot of wear on the outside. All the greas was either dry or done. The terrible noise was coming from the rotor rubbing against the part around it. This was caused by loose bearing. I couldn't find a new bearing but I fixed the problem by filling the bearing with copper paste. It was only a little loose, maybe some tenths of a millimeter but that was enough to make contact. This is most likely not a permanent fix but it worked well when I tested it for a while. I can always add some more copper paste if needed. If I find a new part I will change it of course.

This week I wanted to make Aquaman's weapon, the trident of neptune from the new Aquaman movie. Instead of the real deal I made a tiny weapon. I liked the movie and I this seemed like an interesting, yet feasible challenge. I would like to cast it in full size but that would need lots and lots of brass and currently I don't have room to store 2 meter tall trident. It's not my usual project but I learned a ton and I think it's important to constantly try and learn new things.

I went to see if a local fleamarket had some cool old tools for restoration projects, which it rarely does. I was surprised to find this beautiful old masonry hammer only for 50 cents. I've seen people ask a lot more for similar ones. The handle was not realy staying on well so I needed to fix that.

I bought this old straight razor for a couple of dollars for restoration. I thought since the blade was not chipped it should be quite easily restored although it is very rusty. Also the rust was not layered so I was hoping it was only surface rust. It turned out there was some pitting which is bad because on a razor there is not much steel to grind down to get rid of the pits. Luckily I managed to get rid of them. After removing the pits I polished the knife up to 2000 grits and then continued with metal polish compounds.

This time I'll restore this Japanese kitchen knife. I thought it would be a nice project for restoration although it was old and in rough condition. The blade is chipped and it is rusty. The handle is also badly damaged. I decided to replace the handle with secret wood handle that had kind of ice looking resin part.

I bought this old rusty soviet/USSR firefighter’s helmet for $15. So it’s perfect item for restoration. The helmet had some dents the leather liners was dried up and the metal parts were rusty one of the rivets attaching it to the helmet was also gone, so it was nice practice for all sorts of skill needed in restoring antique and old items. I also noticed it wasn’t very well made the weldings keeping the thin on top attached were poor and it was far from symmetrical. I’m not sure if that is usual for helmets of this age.

I bought lot of old lighters from auction for restoration. The lighters are missing parts, have dents and some rust and oxidation. I'm sure I'll be able to restore at least some of them. The lot had 4 of this type of lighters and a couple really old ones. The lighter has 3 parts. The lighter itself, a tank for extra lighter fluid and a cap. I think it's called Tommy style lighter after brand of Tommy lighters. I have no idea what the brand on it is.

For this week’s restoration I found a rusty vintage or maybe even antique coffee grinder. I believe the manufacturer is Fabrica Nazionale and it was made in Italy. I also found similar one for sale on ebay for $50. Mine is little more rusty but the other one was missing a part. I only paid 10 € for this. As most of my restoration projects, I bought through an online marketplace. Hopefully next summer, when there are more flea markets than during winter, I find items with more interesting stories behind them.

This weeks restoration project, vintage Wonder flashlight/lantern, cost me only 0.7€. It is very patinated and had a bit of rust and as you will find out later on the video there was other issues too..The restoration started as usual by disassembly. The flashlight was very pleasing to diassemble, so many little parts but still so simple. Kind of like legos.

As this weeks project, I will completely restore this rusted and damaged vintage pocket knife. The large blade has small crack and the tip is badly bent. The guy who sold this to me told it had been sitting in a box which was packed away in 60's which means this knife is at least 50 years old but probably older because is clearly wasn't new when it was put in the box. I think it's Solnigen pocket knife, because of the shield symbol and text on the blade., Usually they say "Solnigen garantie"

Today I'll be restoring this rusty antique lighter. It has been damaged badly by the rust and is in urgent need of restoration. The whole top side had rusted and the stone didn't even move when I begun. Luckily the lighter is made of thick plate and the rust had not gone trough. The cap didn't have much extra material left though. After removing the rust I found stamp saying FZ 522 and the bottom of the lighter says 522 too.

In this week’s project I will restore the original Nintendo Gameboy. As a 90’s kid I thought it would be cool to restore a Gameboy. Or should I say retrore. I bought this one from Japan. It’s obviously dirty but it’s also very yellow no rust this time. With this rust would be very bad. However the screen is broken and it is missing a lot of vertical lines. Otherwise it seems to be fine. I had some issues with turning it on when I tested it but after I got it on, I’ve had no trouble. The batteries I used were probably dead. It’s also missing the screen cover/lens.

In this video I'll be restoring an old rusty straight razor. In my last razor video the handle probably isn't as good as I can do but I'ts still my second watched video at the moment so I felt like I had to make another one with handle that sticks with the original design. (psst. the intro is a satire...)

I bought a lot of 4 old items a while back the lot had this multicolor refill pen, the razor (brand is razo) and two completely worthless rusty items. I knew this pen would make a good video and also the razor might make a video. After searching Ebay I saw one of those razors being sold for 100 USD and I think the pen could be worth at least 60-70 USD and I paid around 16.5 USD euro for the lot so it was a good deal if I want to sell those. I'm actually not sure if this should be called pen or pencil in English but pen is shorte, so...

This week I'll restore an antique letter scale. It is rusty, paint is coming off and the brass is badly oxidated. One of the legs has broken off at some point and someone welded it back on destroying the decorations on the body. I'll try to remake those as well.

I found this rusty old Japanese kitchen knife while browsing ebay. What a great find for my restoration projects. It has some rust and the handle needs to be replaced. I was a little surprised how much rust there was on the tang. Luckily it still had quite a bit of steel left so I didn't have to weld a new one on. I used copper and walnut for the handle. All the pitting was sanded from the blade and it was polished to super mirror shine.

I bought this rusty vintage Imco safety lighter on ebay. It was sold with the heavy wear and mention that flint needs changing but NO pictures or mention of the destroyed of the screw, which made it impossible for an average person to change it. I'm sure they knew what they were selling to me but I can't really complain since it made the project much more interesting.

In this episode I'll restore this vintage Corgi Junior Whizzwheels Mercedes-Benz 280 SL toy car. I really wanted to see if I could make a new windshield. That turned out to be quite tricky. I tried also to cast it from epoxy but then I found that easiest way was to from a piece of plexiglass. I know there are vacuum forming tables etc. but I don't think it would have not been sensible to make or buy one for only this project. I'll make on if there is more need for it but I don't want to have one taking up space just in case I need one.

This time I restored the original SNES. This is the PAL version and it is quite badly yellowed and dirty both inside and outside. Inside also had some stains of something which I seemed to be yogurt or other dairy product. It had been poured in from the game slot and it caused some trouble with reading the games. Luckily most of the yogurt had missed the pins. These retro consoles are lot of fun to restore.

I bought a lot of pocket knives for few euros. One of them was this rusty vintage knife. It was made in Solingen, Germany. I don't know anything else about it. It looks like it was made maybe in 50's and the handle could be made of ebonite. I wanted to try to do a recycled plastic handle because I thought it would look pretty similar to the original one although a wooden handle may have looked better. Also recycling is always a good thing these days. And I guess since I'm an "influencer", I should do something good with that every once in a while say maybe one or two of you get interested in recycling stuff because of this.

I this episode I’ll restore this old lift arm lighter from 1930. I think the manufacturer is called Polo. It has a bad spark, minor dents that need to be fixed and the plating is mostly gone. No extreme defects this time. I think the seller also accidentally sent me extra an lighter. I too has some minor dents and the plating is almost completely gone. The brass on both lighters is also patinated.

A few weeks ago I bought this cute little vise to use on my projects since I typically work on small items. I think it’s a jeweler’s vise but I have no idea who made it and when. This is much more practical for small projects than the big vise you’ve seen me use. Doing my squeeze lighter restoration I however ran in a problem with the dents in the anvil part of the vise. The dents caused the other side of the rivets I was hammering to deform which doesn’t look good although it has no affect to the practicality of the rivets. So I decided I should probably do complete restoration since the jaws are also pretty worn out.

Restoring the original Gameboy got me really interested in restoring and repairing more of these old gaming consoles like this Nintendo NES along side with the knives, tools, etc. I might move into other old electronics as well. I haven’t really done much this type of work ever but with every project I learn and get better.

Times restore another straight razor. These are great projects for restoration. Some of you didn't like that the original handle was not used in my fist 2 restored rusty razors. I wanted to see if I can save the handle on this one. I always think no more razors because I literally spent hours and hours sanding the hardened steel, but I still always seem to do more of these...

I bought this rusty vintage lighter which was found from the ground. I will restore and rescue this vintage item. The lighter is an Imco Triplex 6600 Junior. I really enjoy repairing these Imco lighters because they have such interesting mechanics, but I will do other stuff as well. You can see one side is much rustier and the rust is darker because it has been underground. That speeds up the rusting process because the water in the dirt doesn't evaporate as fast as from the surface. The lighter need a complete reassembly because it needs to be re-plated with nickel to prevent it from rusting again. I'm wondering if my video titles should say ASMR restoration or repair because so many comments in my video mention that.

I will try to restore this rusty old Tonka dump toy truck. Can I rescue it? I don't know the exact model of the toy but I believe it is a Tonka truck from 1970's. The sticker on it says Toronto Canada. There is a lot of rust and the paint is gone on large areas. The windshield is very scratchy. The white plastic on the wheels has yellowed.

I will restore this rusty 0.5€ pocket knife back it's former glory. I found it from a flea market. The knife is very rusty but there is no major damage besides the pitting from the rust. I hope it's not rusted beyond restoration. I found this very interesting because before actually starting the disassembly I didn’t notice how the assembly was done and I thought it would be a nice project because the pins were hidden and I was curious how the covers of the handle were done, was it paint or something or something else.

I bought this rusty antique door lock. The lock is jammed from rust and as it turns out I was sold wrong key with it. I will restore the lock and make a new better key for the lock.

In this episode I will restore the Gameboy Pocket retro console. This unit is missing the glass screen on top of the actual LCD screen and also the battery cover. I managed to find an original cover. I will show you how to fix a screen burn and do a general cleanup on the Gameboy. I don't do electronical work every week but I promise there will be also this type of videos every once in a while.

Couple weeks ago I found this rusty cast Iron pan from a dumpster. I didn't see any cracks so I thought it's definitely worth saving and of course It makes also nice little video of the restoration and seasoning process. Next week I'll do something more complex again.

This week I restored this rusty old steam engine model. I'ts pretty rusty and I didn't work when I tested it. I found the water tank was full of some white substance which probably had blocked the airways of the engine. But can I get it running? Stick around to find out.

In this episode I will restore this Rusty Imco Funkmeister spark lighter. It has a lot of rust but luckily It's mostly on the surface and there is even some of the old plating left underneath. Regardless the metal has a lot of pits and need a good sanding. Luckily there are no dents as those are always a pain to fix. After sanding down all the pitting I re-plated the parts with nickel to protect it from corrosion. For this video I had to get a larger container and do some adjustments to the system.

Welcome back to another restoration. My dad bought a lot of old tools from an auction for a few euros. One of the items was this dented vintage breast drill. It's a hand cranked drill and it's in need of restoration. I believe it was made around 1940's. It has some rust and most of the old paint has come off. I decided to restore it and see what's inside. I will clean it throughout, give it a new paint job and grease it so it will be set for another 70 years of drilling.

This week I decided to turn an oil bucket I found from trash into a melting furnace for my casting projects. A little break from restorations videos and good chance to practice some different skills. I'll get back to restorations next week. I got a chance to do a lot of welding and also to get back to metal casting. It has been almost a year since my last attempts.

This week I will show you the restoration of this vintage coffee grinder. It has some rust and it's definitely well used so it's was a great project for restoring. I only saw a picture from the from when buying and surprise surprise, it was broken from the back. I'm really just trusting that these items are broken so they make more interesting restoration projects.

I wanted to restore a PlayStation 1 for my next console restoration / repair. I got this forgotten Playstation from person who told me it started having issues and then it was stored in a shed collecting dirt and dust, but hopefully not rust.

This World War I Trench lighter in in dire need of restoration and repair. It's missing some parts and rusted badly. I started restoring this lighter long ago but I continued now because I finally came up with a plan to make new screw for the bottom. Th lighter was made by Imco. You've seen me restore number of Imco lighters previously. They have usually interesting mechanics. Unlike the previous lighters, this design was also made by other manufacturers.

This weeks restoration project was an old amptutation saw. These were used by doctors to through a bone when something needed to be amputated. The saw has some rust on it and I was to sand everything flat and replated the parts that have been nickel plated originally plated. And of course it needs to be able to cut through a bone. As you can see I made this video in to a Halloween special.

I needed a DualShock controller for my restored PlayStation 1 so I wanted to do a restoration and repair for one. I got my hands on this abandoned DualShock controller for the PS1. It was sold to me as working but, as usual it was broken… The shell is also quite badly yellowed and dirty. Couple of the screws on it were rusted.

I needed a bench grinder for the shop and restorations so I decided to buy old quality tool and restore it rather than buy a new Chinese grinder. I found this old Metabo that I liked. It works but there is still some restoring to do as there is some rust and cord is bad etc. It also has a badge the Finnish importer has added on it. Since that is not an original badge I decided to replace it with custom badge of my own since the grinder will be used in future videos.

I will be restoring this dented vintage Tommy-style lighter. I restored one of these almost a year ago and that restoration was one of my first popular videos so now after passing 500 000 subscribers I wanted to try to restore one better. That video was also where I originally got the idea to get my nickel plating set up. I didn't have one at the time so I started plating things a bit later. Starting my new channel "Odd Experiments" this was a perfect opportunity to show in detail how anyone can make a simple plating set up with relatively cheap parts.

Sega Dreamcast restoration – In this video I will restore Dreamcast console launched by Sega in 1999. I bought this yellowed console and a game from Japan. This is a e version of the console, which can be seen from the red Dreamcast logo. Dreamcast has been one of the most requested consoles in the comments even though back in the day it was a flop.

Restoration of badly a yellowed Sega dreamcast controller and VMU for the extremely yellowed Dreamcast console I restored earlier. Like the console this unit also has only cosmetic defects. There are some glue reside from stickers and the yellowing is pretty bad.

Restoration of WWII era dynamo (hand crank) flashlight. This week I restored this hand-crank flashlight made by Phillips (type 7424). These were used by Germans in WWII. When I got it I had no idea if it worked. After testing thatt it in fact wasn't working I opened it up to find what's going on.

Restoring the original Xbox. In this episode I will restore this old Xbox. The console is very dusty and it has some problems, but nothing beyond restoration. The disc drive is stuck and it won't save the time and date if it's unplugged. Both are common problems with the Xbox and pretty easy to repair. This unit has been unused for along time and it also needs to be cleaned from all the dust on the inside and outside. I wanted to publish this episode right before Christmas have got this gaming console for Christmas almost 20 years ago.

For a long time I've wanted to restore one of these old hand cranked pencil sharpeners. Restoring mechanical items is always so interesting and this type of vintage sharpener are beautiful. The sharpener was very rusty and it didn't sharpen pens very well so it was in need of a restoration. This pencil sharpener is made by Boston but I'm not sure what year it is. Possibly from the 1940's.