When your looking for what I call "Good Junk", I can recommend the following sites.

Looking for very small drills and tools, motors and other stuff try:

"American Science and Surplus" http://www.sciplus.com/

Looking for motors, electronics, and other stuff try:

"C and H Sales Company" Yes, they are back in business at: http://candhsurplus.com/index.htm


For "cheap" tools that will last for about a project and a half (or if your like me and can never remember where you left a screwdriver {I now have several sets on several work tables}) many of you are probably aware of:

"Harbor Freight Tools" http://www.harborfreight.com/

Edmund Scientific used to be a great source of surplus lenses but has gone more commercial. There are still a few gems in their catalog and worth a look:

"Edmund Scientific's" http://www.scientificsonline.com/

For surplus lenses and the like:

"Surplus Shed" http://www.surplusshed.com/

Have fun perusing these sites. They may have just the part you need for your project. There are also some great motors that could be used to move a dome around.

Ron, C&H Sales especially appears t/b a treasure cove of "good Junk". Thanks!

Don't forget
For surplus lenses, including some terrific deals on Eyepiec kits and classic Jaeger telescope objectives

--
www.surplusshed.com


--==
Carol

Great addition Carol :!: Have not been there before. Looks like a great place for optics. Sort of what Edmond Scientific used to be. I will be spending some time there just looking over everything.

Just what I need, another place to spend money :?

HEY, nobodys posting any good junk .. check out this mega parsec in a cube .. who doesnt need one? gare


http://www.bathsheba.com/crystalsci/largescale/

I've got her M13 in a cube.

Really pretty stuff. Nice lady, easy to do business with. These things make REALLY nice awards, if your club is interested in acknowledging a member in some neat way.
Rich

globular in a glass eh? right arm! of course we planetarians are busy going,.... hmmm.... if i imbed it into the dome about THIS far up and ...

Actually if your planetarium or observitory ever developed into a small museum, I could see these slowly rotating over an LED light source.

It would sure be an attention getter.

im trying to put these in the right categories but admit ive been all over the place. speaking as we were of good junk in the physics department

i dont want a van de graf or a tessla, though i wouldnt mind a jacobs ladder, you know, those diverging rods where the arc across them goes up and up .. but what about physics stuff from childhood .. where are the gyroscopes, where are the radiometers

where are the SLIDE RULES!!! i had a log log in 1966 66 .... i bet you cant buy a slide rule today!!!

gare, adjusting pocket protector...

Well I hate to admit it but I am a slide rule collector on top of everything else. I did manage to sell about half of my collection last year (about a dozen slide rules, leaving me with a dozen). You absolutely can still buy slide rules, and if you look at eBay you will see about 500 of them up for auction right now.

There are also gyroscopes, and radiometers still being sold. You just need to know where to look for this stuff.

Jacobs ladders are fairly easy to make - you just need a neon transformer and some wire coat hangers. They are tempermental to get working: The gap and spacing is critical to start a new arc every time the old arc gets to the top and extinguishes, and to get the arc to climb instead of just sitting at the firing position.

i love it ken, you collect slide rules! i last had one in jr high, we had to buy them for science, they were actually called log logs - i'll never forget a kid in that class looking at me and saying with a straight face, my log log is broke broke. seems like ive googled them before and nobody had new ones, good ol ebay is the only way eh? you got a picture of your collection?

i bought the pipes for the mount today! ron, i had to defer to economics so i bought pvc, i will paint them metallic gold though! gare

I don't have any pictures of the slide rules. I never intended to be a collector of them - they just seemed to accumulate.

There are still dealers selling new ones, but I think they were overseas - I just don't remember exactly. There are also some dealers that have New-Old-Stock slide rules that they are selling. They are still new and in the original packaging.

Most of my slide rules are the log-log type. They represent the slide rules that I and my co-workers were using when I started out in engineering about 40 years ago.

I also acumulated a few Sorobons (Japanese Abacus).

I got one too!

Still the original one I started out with and still works well.

Click to view attachment

That's the same Post slide rule that I used through my last two years of college, my Air Force years, and first two years of civilian engineering. When I got that slide rule, I thought I was getting a cheap, second-rate imported slide rule. That was before Japan was so well known for making first-rate high quality products. It turns out that it is rated number one in a poll of slide rule collectors. It ranks up there with the Faber-Castell Novo-Duplex slide rules for being the best all-around.

More proof that one should always save all the "good junk" they can.

how can math possibly be transferred onto a ruler, i NEVER UNDERSTOOD that .. i mean sure i can see addition etc .. but logrthyms are functions of space between sliding scales huh?

is all math spatially oriented? dr garestein

C and H Sales are out of business! I drove by today (Dec. 29th, 2007) to get a couple of items I saw on line. They must have had a close out sale late this fall.

The store is almost empty!

I was disappointed as it looked as though it was perfect for me, being so close to home.

Charles

Well, that's a bummer! They were a great supplier of surplus stuff.

This has been the trend for the last ten years. I've seen more than half of my favorite sources for surplus parts close their doors in that time. I think it's only partly due to the rise of the internet, and web based surplus suppliers. It's also a shift in the culture. There is not the same demand for (or supply of) a wide range of parts for off the wall projects. People don't tinker and create things on their own as much any more. I could go on about that but I think you all know what I'm talking about.

I just checked their web site:

www.candhsales.biz/CandH/index.htm

and they still seem to be in business there. Perhaps they just gave up on a retail store and are switching over to just web sales. One can only hope.

We should compile a list of all our favorite web based surplus suppliers. Could be very handy.

heres some good junk at the kennedy space center - i'll pick one up next time the flea market has them.. its a saturn five booster engine !!



Click to view attachment

Good news for the "Good Junk" collector. C&H is back in business. Check them out at: http://candhsurplus.com/index.htm

Various Lenses, glass and plastic I like the sound of THAT ... good gare