Wombling

[Toddy]

Well, it is a British forum, so most of the members will understand fine where I'm coming from with this thread.

I got told I was a womble on another thread for suggesting using something thrown away for a new purpose.

So, who else wombles ?

I have gas bottle cauldrons for living history and natural dyeing, (cheers Wayland for the idea ) and I have a firebowl and fire irons that Warthog1981 made from an old oil drum and stuff he found , My garden beds are edged with thrown away and fetched home paver bricks and my green house is securely bedded down on broken slabs and the seed trays and their covers are the disposable mushroom boxes. One of my spinning chairs is made from oak that came from an old fishing boat. I have a small bit of heavy rubber that dropped off a lorry as it turned the corner in front of me as I was crossing the road, that has holes in it that's just perfect for holding the canes together for the pea wigwam. Probably lots more, but this is just what comes to mind right now.

What do you have ? or have made ? from your wombling.

" Underground, overground, wombling free
The Wombles of Wimbledon Common are we
Making good use of the things that we find
Things that the everyday folks leave behind "


cheers,
Toddy

 

[John Fenna]

Knife handles from old oak and beech furniture.
Forge air pipe from a tent pole thrown away at the last Moot.
Wood store from bricks that had been dumped.
Workshelves in the garage/workroom from bread baskets salvaged from the river.
Workbench and Woodstore roof from from toilet doors being skipped when our local school became a private house.
Bookshelves from old planks.
Pot hangers forged from the metal leg support bits from an old wallpaper pasting table.
Shelf unit from old crates.....
The list is endless!

 

[Wayland]

I have a workshop full of old stuff scavenged from all sorts of places, I hate throwing stuff out and I'll pick up almost anything that looks useful.

I don't remember the last thing I made without some recycled element to it.

 

[rancid badger]

Erm.......they call me the 'skip rat' at work

I hate it when I have to drive past a tasty looking skip and trips to the local 'tip' are a case of coming back with more than I took! ( sometimes)

I have a fully working, almost unused, 70's brother sewing machine and some brand new b&q jigsaw type foam mats ( I use in the canoe for kneeling on) from the last trip to the tip

I collect stuff, which tends to lie around unused, till the next time I cant get moved for it in the garage, then its off to the tip again

cheers

R.B.

 

[JohnC]

I prefer to recycle stuff rather than buy new, and will always hang onto stuff. I'm still using some of the fittings and screws we got from the ward when it was last refurbished. Jane is making oak spurtles from old bits of whisky cask staves we got.

 

[Matt.S]

I used to use the handle from a dumped-and-burned Boots shopping trolley as a forge air pipe (tuyere/tue), which lasted a lot of fires (until I became careless and let it burn up). I've also made plenty of candle lanterns and oil lamps from discarded tins. Lots of 'storage pots' too!

Does buying from a second-hand/junk or charity shop count? If so I have a lot of misidentified 'rubbish'!

I've been known to 'skip-dive' many a time, especially in my youth, but there hasn't been quite so much available lately. Perhaps I'm just no so observant!

A 'gentleman of no fixed abode' down my way makes and sells trinkets from dicarded tinnies -- ash trays, swans etc.

 

[tombear]

I took up the noble art of skip diving as a student and to the embarrasment of friends and especially family never stopped.

The worst/best was a entire chest of draws I managed to carry off from a skip for my then work room.

Recently it has mainly been stuff friends were throwing out or very cheap items from charity shops or carboots. Zeis binos for a fiver kind of stuff. Prismatic compass for £3, top quality butchers chain mail glove for £2 and more tools than I will ever get around to fixing.

Sad to say that unless you are prepared to cough up for the very best tools just were (on average) better made way back when.

By the by after 15 years of my company and cooking and 3 kids herself has a strange resembalence to Orinocco.... I keep threatening to get her grey furry thermals, and she keeps hitting me!

ATB

Tom

 

[CaptainBeaky]

Wombling? All the time!

Kids climbing frame made from bits of the set from "Oklahoma".
Paved area in garden (built entirely by the Management on her own) from pavers thrown in the skip at a neighbours house when they had their garden re-done professionally.
Knives made from files and crowbars from the tip.
6'6" Garden gate, large arbour and wood store made from timber salvaged from demolition of a garage in the next village.

Wombled stuff has the huge advantage that, being free, gratis and for nothing, I don't mind risking messing it up trying something ambitious.

And I'm always wombling for firewood

 

[Tengu]

Oh, lots of stuff.

Nowadays its mostly wood as Im trying to restrain my gathering instincts

 

[gregorach]

Many years ago, some friends and I moved into an unfurnished flat. By the time we left, it was fully furnished, without spending a penny. It's amazing what people chuck out. (Although you should always be careful with furniture you find in the street - there's no telling what might be living in it...)

These days I'm not quite as hardcore... But I do still have a liking for repurposing old junk. My main compost bins at my allotment are made out of old pallets, and the beds are laid out with whatever timber comes to hand. I propagate my brewing yeast on a magnetic stir plate made out of old computer parts. Stuff like that...

What I'm really on the lookout for now is a standard 500mm under-counter display or larder fridge in working order...

 

[SMOKOE]

Recently it has mainly been stuff friends were throwing out or very cheap items from charity shops or carboots. Zeis binos for a fiver kind of stuff.

Tom

Zeiss binos for a FIVER

As in Carl Zeiss binos which don't start much under £500 going up to almost £2000

Blimey Tom I'll come car booting with you next time you go !!!

 

[Whittler Kev]

Forge from old BBQ at the dump
Files cring when they see me coming as if they don't do the job very well I burn um, ammer um and grind um into knives and firesteels oh arr.
My parents always taught me to make something from nothing

 

[BOD]

Guilty M’lud.

It’s a wonderful activity and great finds can be had if you are not afraid of being embarrassed.

The greatest wombling I have seen is a man with boat full of rubbish handpicked from the canals of old Batavia in Indonesia.
Even plastic bags were recycled. No pic at the moment.

I once carried my passion for recycling too far.

On a foraging (for food sources) beach walk - http://www.bushcraftuk.com/forum/showthread.php?p=429598 -I came across an old pot wedged between mangrove roots.

It had obviously been in the sea a while as there were coral encrustations on the rim and white calcareous deposits within.

I thought what a good feature it could be in the garden or elsewhere

I was returning along with the beach when I saw two Indian men walking toward me. I knew them and stopped to greet them.

They looked uncomfortable and then one spoke to tell me that I was holding a bone pot used in Asthisanchaya, the Hindu the bone gathering rites. The deceased’s recently cremated bones and ash are collected and deposited in a pot and released to running water or the sea.

A relative bears the pot on his shoulders and walks into the river or sea, places the pot into the water, turns and leaves without looking back lest the deceased seeks to return.

Unwittingly, I had become a soul gatherer and now there was no relative to return this pot to the sea.

The two men did not volunteer so I picked it up walked into the lapping waves and placed the pot on the water.



I couldn’t help looking to see the result. On the incoming tide it kept coming back to me!

Finally, I just left it to the sea to decide and the next morning it was no longer there.

 

[dogwood]

Indeed, it's a British forum, but a few of us Yanks drop in to share a cuppa and observe your strange ways.

And despite my many visits to your fair land, I have not run across "wombling" before -- it appears to be a slang for scavenging and reusing things. Is that the case or is there a nuance that I'm missing?

Cheer, etc.

 

[Matt.S]

Indeed, it's a British forum, but a few of us Yanks drop in to share a cuppa and observe your strange ways.

And despite my many visits to your fair land, I have not run across "wombling" before -- it appears to be a slang for scavenging and reusing things. Is that the case or is there a nuance that I'm missing?

Cheer, etc.

Essentially, yes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wombles

 

[wingstoo]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/57443.stm

Orinoco Womble was one of the Clan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wombles

And they had a song

Underground, overground, wombling free,
The Wombles of Wimbledon Common are we.
Making good use of the things that we find,
Things that the everyday folks leave behind.

Uncle Bulgaria,
He can remember the days when he wasn't behind The Times,
With his map of the world.
Pick up the papers and take them to Tobermory!

Wombles are organized, work as a team.
Wombles are tidy and Wombles are clean.
Underground, overground, wombling free,
The Wombles of Wimbledon Common are we!

People don't notice us, they never see,
Under their noses a Womble may be.
We womble by night and we womble by day,
Looking for litter to trundle away.

We're so incredibly, utterly devious,
Making the most of everything,
Even bottles and tins.
Pick up the pieces and make them into something new,
Is what we do!

Got to No4 in the UK charts

It's a great past time is "Wombling"

But make sure it really is something "that everyday folks have left behind" or they might come after you

 

[brancho]

Look for WOMBLES

 

[demographic]

Built a mates woodstove from gas bottles, used the spare bottom end from one bottle for making a forge and the spare small top to make a hat for the chimney.
I can't walk past a bit of metal or wood without picking it up and they make brackets for motorbikes, stove, parts of my house, all sorts.
Got given a "broken" chainsaw and after giving it a good clean its a goer.

Nothing wrong with Wombling, its good sense

 

[tombear]

Yup Carl Zeis Smokoe, actually since we moved to Rossendale I have aquired 2 pairs, the first I picked up for the kids for bird watching but when I realised what they were and had been made in the '40s and that the fact they had been painted a tan / sand colour put them on ebay and some one gave me a fair bit of money for them! The second pair are in lovely condition so I have kept them as no way could I afford to get as good modern ones.

The trick is to look often but buy seldom.

I got the wife a ventile jacket for £5 from the old lost property shop at Victoria Station in Manchester before it closed down. Now that was a treasure house if you knew when the delivery day was and wasprepared to help sort the piles of kit. I got all sorts there and could turn my nose up at anything that wasn't new! I still can't fathom the mentality that would lose a new £120 sleeping bag and not ask if it has been handed in!

ATB

Tom

 

[dogwood]

Essentially, yes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wombles

Ah! Fascinating!

Thanks all for the information -- and now I can safely use the term going forward.