Category: Crafting

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July Auction Finds – Weston Electric Model 24 Amp Meter & More

It’s been a while since I have written a blog posting. I guess life can get in the way of some of our hobbies, or as I have noticed other hobbies take priority over others. You may ask what I have been up to over the last year that has been taking up so much time.

My side hustles :

  • Buying vintage video games and repair / refurbish for resale
  • Buying vintage cameras for repair / refurbish for resale
  • Buying vintage electronics / test instruments for refurbish for resale
  • Recycling old computers and reselling their components

Recently I won an auction that had some very cool vintage test instruments and I thought I could put a little time into refurbishing them and flip for a couple extra dollars. If you have ever read my blog its not about making money on my projects, but more of the process to get to the final product that I enjoy.

The Weston Electrical Instrument Co. Model 24 – Ammeter

At a recent live auction I picked up 4 various test instruments

  • The Weston Electrical Model 24 Ammeter
  • The Weston Electrical Model 45 Voltmeter
  • A Simpson Model 260 Multi-Meter
  • A Shallcross No 310 Galvanometer

The first Item I decided to refurbish was the Weston 24, it was by far in the worst shape of the lot. I’m not sure if it got this way from being in service in some industrial factory or  maybe in a subway? I estimate this meter to be at least 100 years old.

How the Weston looked when it arrived

This is what the meter looked like when it arrived at my house. The dirt was embedded and would not come out. I used a mixture of alcohol and water and a Dremel with a wire brush attachment to loosen 100 years of grime.

It was a slow going process, but eventually most of the dirt, rust and crud was liberated from the meter.

Continue reading “July Auction Finds – Weston Electric Model 24 Amp Meter & More”

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Restoring a WWII Era Battleship Lantern – 5293-L

World War II ended 76 years ago, and at this point there are not many surviving service men and woman around to tell the tales of the time. I believe we need to preserve the stories of the past to enlighten future generations to insure history will never repeat itself. When I came across this Battleship lantern from the mid 1940’s at my local Goodwill, I felt it needed to be restored and preserved to tell its story for many more years.

I purchased the light for $20 from the Goodwill, which I felt was a bit overpriced for its condition. However hopefully some of my purchase price is going to a good cause. Researching a 76 year old flashlight proved to be more difficult than you would expect. According to Google, the 5293-L Lantern was attached to the US Navy Battleships and according to the letter that came with the lantern it was also used on cargo and merchant ships.

ORIGINAL LETTER INCLUDED WITH LANTERN
Tools & Supplies you can use

Continue reading “Restoring a WWII Era Battleship Lantern – 5293-L”

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Restoring The 1920’s Everedy Gear Top Bottle Capper

Covid19 has pretty much left me trapped in the house over the last few months. Needing to keep busy I started to clean out the basement, selling some stuff on Ebay while tossing the rest out in the trash. I did come across this Everedy Gear Top Bottle Capper under a table gathering dust and rust and decided it would be a good restoration project. Restoration would be very easy as there are only a few parts and the capper was simple to take apart.

Tools you can use

Since the bottle capper is made of cast iron and had some serious rust, I decided to go with a wire brush to remove the dirt and prep the surface for paint.

wirebrush
$9.00 Brush set

 

Wire wheel brush set – About $9 at amazon

 

Continue reading “Restoring The 1920’s Everedy Gear Top Bottle Capper”

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Keystone Moviegraph D752 Projector Art Project

We all accumulate stuff in our homes over time. In fact George Carlin has a great comedy skit about “stuff“. While going through my stuff  I came across this antique projector. A Moviegraph D752 made by Keystone in Boston Mass. The wiring was dry rotted and belts were broken, and I was going to toss it in the trash. The only question was does it have any value? After a quick check on eBay similar projectors in better condition than mine were selling for $50 to $100. Not worth my trouble to sell, but old enough to keep as art work!

Moviegraph Before
Moviegraph
Before
Tools You Can Use

Continue reading “Keystone Moviegraph D752 Projector Art Project”

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What were – United Profit-Sharing Coupons

I was helping clean out some old paperwork in my grandmothers basement and came across these United Profit Sharing Coupons. On the surface it would appear you collect the coupons which are issued for making purchases and then redeem them for items you want out of a catalog. I was curious how it worked exactly and decided to do some research.

The United Profit-Sharing Business

United Profit-Sharing Corporation was based in New York city at 44 West 18th street.  I’m not sure when they opened, but I believe they operated from the 1920’s to the 1950s. The idea was quite simple, strike contracts with Continue reading “What were – United Profit-Sharing Coupons”

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Extracting Etsy Product Reviews To CSV File

Etsy is a great platform to sell your handmade wares, however since Etsy has become a publicly traded company they have made some changed that angered some sellers and may have caused them into looking at other venues. Moving to a new online store is like moving into a new home office. You want to take your belongings with you and setup shop in your new place. In Etsy’s case this could include your product listings, order history and even your product reviews.

Easy to move except product reviews!

Etsy is kind enough to provide tools to capture your sales data into a neat CSV file ready to import at your new shop, however the product review section is much more difficult to work with. There is no simple interface to export your reviews to a CSV file.

To capture your product reviews. you could cut and paste each one individually, and if your shop is like mine with over 3,000 reviews it could take days or months to complete this task

I want to help get you your data!

In my opinion you earned the reviews and therefore they belong to you and your shop. Now is it ethical to re-post the reviews at other venues? Can you legally use a customers name? I’m not sure, so what you do with the CSV file I provide to you is, well up to you. My official stance is Etsy product review extraction is purely for archive purposes.

How much does it cost? What do I get?

Each page of product reviews contains about 15 reviews on it. To make payment options simple and affordable to all, see rate chart below. Even at the $25 range it comes out to about .03cents per extracted review

  • 1 – 50 pages $25    (up to 750 reviews)
  • 51 – 100 pages $45 (up to 1500 reviews)
  • 101-200 pages $75 (up to 3000 reviews)
  • 201-500 pages $150 (up to 7500 reviews)
  • 500-1000 pages $200 (up to 15000 reviews)
    Over 1000 pages of reviews (email me!)

    PURCHASE AT THE GEEK GEAR ONLINE STORE

What will the data look like?

The data will be in a CSV file and contain the following

  • Reviewers Name
    (Some older reviews have been set to Anonymous by Etsy)
  • Date of the review
  • Content of the review
  • Item name

Unfortunately the process that I use is unable to capture the star rating. Hopefully all your product reviews are 5 star so it will be simple to add it on!

DOWNLOAD THE SAMPLE DATA HERE

Click the link to download the sample data it will show you the exact format of the data and you can easily manipulate it in Microsoft Excel.

 

 

You’re interested and would like to proceed

Click this link to my online store -> www.geekgearstore.com
Purchase the number of reviews you would like extracted
During check out, include your review page URL from Etsy and shop name.
(https://www.etsy.com/shop/<SHOP NAME>/reviews)

The system takes some time to crawl the pages and extract the reviews, usually I can have the work done in about 24 hours.

PURCHASE AT THE GEEK GEAR ONLINE STORE

Ready to go, just click the link above and you’re on the way. If for some reason I am unable to complete the task, you will be issued a 100% refund!

Questions? email me joe@joeoliveri.com

Thanks again for reading my blog,
Joe

visit the GeekGearStore

RELATED
Is Etsy just another Ebay?
Forced Etsy Payments; Is this a good thing or bad?

 

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Emerald Green Mason Jar Night Light!

I have been making mason jar night lights for at least 10 years. I try to make them in various colors and styles. In addition to my Sun & Moon, Red, Green, White, Purple and Flickering Candle I have now added Emerald Green!

I know LED’s can be programmed for any color of the rainbow, however there is still something special about the standard 5mm led. I enjoy finding unique colors and adding them to my creations.

These emerald green buggers are truly a special color. Just look at the image below that shows the contrast between the emerald green and standard led.

Emerald Green Mason Jar Night Light

Continue reading “Emerald Green Mason Jar Night Light!”

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Make a Sony E-Reader Picture Frame

The technology world is continuously changing. Today’s awesome technology is tomorrows trash, its just a simple fact of life. I truly believe we should do what we can to reduce, reuse and recycle our old tech.  Today while rummaging through the archive of stuff I came across an old Sony PRS-600.

The Sony PRS-600 was released in 2009 and by all standards ready for the trash heap. Before sending this device off to its finial resting place I decided to make a cute black and white picture frame.

Step 1 – Prepare the PRS-600

Using an old  2GB SD card, I loaded up around 300 of my favorite photos, inserted it into the unit. On the settings menu I configured the PRS-600 to never shut off, and run a perpetual slide show with a 60 second delay between images. Continue reading “Make a Sony E-Reader Picture Frame”

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Fun Project – Nintendo Wii Remote Flashlight

If you read this blog on a regular basis you would already know I enjoy re-purposing broken electronics into new useful gear. I had an old Wii remote sitting around that was broken and it was calling out flashlight to me. I figured I would give it a shot.

My self imposed requirements called for using one of the original buttons to turn on the light, and I also had to reuse the original battery holder.

Tools you can use:

Triwing Screwdriver – Nintendo likes to use “special” screws across all their equipment. The Wii is no different and requires a Triwing screwdriver to open the Wii remote. This kit is $11.99 and covers them all!

 

About 12″ of wire the lighter the gauge the better. This 22 gauge wire collection would be a great addition to your tool box. $20.00 at Amazon Continue reading “Fun Project – Nintendo Wii Remote Flashlight”

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Weekend Project – Broken Stick Hockey Trainer

Trainer

My children love Ice Hockey! Basically in my house its all hockey all the time. When they are not on the ice for games or practice,  street hockey in front of my house will do. On many occasions we have had sticks break under the stress of vigorous play and we tend to keep broken sticks around and re purpose them for other fun projects.

Today I will show you how to make this cool stick handling trainer out of a few scrap parts you may have laying around.

Materials:

StickBroken WOODEN street hockey stick

 

2x Hockey pucks Continue reading “Weekend Project – Broken Stick Hockey Trainer”

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