free stuff from work

[sobpinstriping]

I work in a wood shop (we do interior signs for albertsons whole foods etc.) I was looking thru my paper work of what I had to do today and noticed one of the prints was for styrene! we get the stuff in 8'x4' sheets from time to time (I have only worked here for 2 months) but any scrap is free for me to take home so I brought home 2 2' squares! I also can get scrap aluminum and veneer.

Do any of you guys have jobs that get free perks like this? (I'm not talking about steeling or any thing)

[slantasaurus]

I used to work for a art gallerie framing pictures, I would occasionally get sheets of styrene when we would get plexiglass shipments........and all my masking take was free. I also use to get razor blades, wire, and other stuff I have used for modeling.

[seeker589]

I once worked for a fire truck company. I measured and cut aluminum valve covers for small and big block chevys. I also have tubing that I have moved to three different homes that I SWEAR I'm gonna use in some kind of hot rod project. I made off with paint - enough to paint graphics on one car and paint two other cars entirely.

Another employer has donated superglue, sand paper, and small styrene panels (2x4 inches).

[LDO]

Scrap copper and brass. I'm a plumber and it's all stuff that we remove when repairing/replacing stuff. I keep it in 5gallon buckets. When I quit my last job, I had a few days off so I decided to separate my scrap and turn it in. I figured I'd have 3 or 4 buckets worth. I went into the garage and saw another bucket, then another, then 2 more. I remembered I might have some on the side of the house. I did. My mom came over and reminded me I had some scrap in the shed. I ended up with 17 buckets plus some stuff that was too big for a bucket. I got $1148. It bought me a corner sofa from Ikea and I had some cash left over. I LOVE the new sofa, btw.

My new job doesn't let us keep scrap

[whale392]

Scrap Aluminum, Titanium, Stainless Steel, heat shrink of all sizes, shielded wire (the shielding makes great wrap to duplicate the flexible couplings in exhaust), aluminum tape, all sizes of rivets and O-rings, double-bubble/Hysol; all sorts of cool stuff. Access to carbon fiber, kevlar, honeycomb composites, and heat ovens for baking paint.

[Rob Hall]

Paper clips. pens. notepads, sticky notes, pushpins. Not much really scrap in a corporate cubeland environment.

[Dave]

Old surgical tools once they wear out. All manner of tweezers, hemostats, pics and prodders etc. Sometimes some nice fine mesh and plenty of various sized tubings and wires etc.

[Art Anderson]

I work in a wood shop (we do interior signs for albertsons whole foods etc.) I was looking thru my paper work of what I had to do today and noticed one of the prints was for styrene! we get the stuff in 8'x4' sheets from time to time (I have only worked here for 2 months) but any scrap is free for me to take home so I brought home 2 2' squares! I also can get scrap aluminum and veneer.

Do any of you guys have jobs that get free perks like this? (I'm not talking about steeling or any thing)

Yup!

I work in Physical Facilities at the university here, and see the architects, engineers and interior decorating people all the time. Lessee, old outdated offset printing templets (very nice thin aluminum sheet), all manner of plate glass samples submitted for approvals then discarded (perfectly flat building surfaces, among other things!) wood veneer wall covering (real wood, on a backing, all manner of exotic wood too!), samples of aluminum extrusions--great for working up in my mill), and the other day, a very large sample of pure copper roof flashing (now, all I gotta do is carve out a buck so I can hammer out a real metal body shell in scale!). All of this stuff gets given to me by those guys, once they are done with it.

Art

[moparmagiclives]

I work in a dealership, so there isnt much in the form of hobbie supplys, but I do come across some pretty good finds as far as what Chrysler calls scrap parts (warrenty parts they do not want returned) The best one recently was just before we lost our Chevy franchise. We did a head swap on a brand new 454 ho crate motor for GM performance. It didnt fix the problem they were having so they had us replace the whole engine... for some reason they wanted the old engine with the new heads back, not the original heads (less then 8k on them). As of right now, I'm having a hard time convincing my wife that a free set of heads is a good reason to build a big block chevy...and a big block chevy is a good reason to build a big block car..

[Nick Notarangelo]

I recently bought a house off a retire electrician and between the shed and my house I have tons of conduit piping in all shapes and sizes.and spools of wire.also a pair or moose antlers and elk antlers that were left in the shed if I wana add bone trim to anything.

[diymirage]

i have some scrap aliminum tubing that ive use for sidepipes

litte peices of wire i use to ad strength to styrene joints

and yesterday o was allowed to take a quart of marsh stencil ink that im hoping will make a good blackwash

[Mark]

My previous employer (2002-05) was an electrical contractor who also operated a vinyl sign shop. (They sold greeting cards too, but that's another story.)

While they were in the process of going under, they threw tons of stuff away. I got some larger diameter coated single-strand wire that might be good for making headers, if I ever get around to it. There were a couple of whole rolls of the stuff, but I only took scraps. (I don't even take pens, paper clips, or stamps from work, only things that are thrown away.) I also took a few boxes of business cards left by short-lived employees. (Why did they save these; did they think they might hire another person with the same name?). Those are good for making patterns, and cheaper than buying index cards.

On the sign store side, I've got some vinyl scraps including some that looks like chrome. It's not flexible like foil, though. They also threw away a bunch of CDs that were used with the programmable vinyl cutters; those have fonts on them that can be used in artwork applications. The sign store also used #11 X-Acto blades, and threw them away after every few cuts so as not to tear the vinyl. The discards were tossed into a coffee can so they didn't get mixed in with the other trash. I went through the can and saved every blade that didn't have the tip broken off. I will never have to buy another #11 blade again, ever.

I even sharpened them on company time. The owner wanted me in the building during working hours because the sign shop was operated by a woman, and we weren't in the greatest neighborhood. He kept me around full-time to watch the office and do a payroll with two employees on it (me and the girl) though I told him up front that there wasn't much to do. I got paid for two months to read magazines, surf the Internet, rummage through the place, and sharpen X-Acto blades. Small compensation for having been lied to about the company's overall condition, and having to deal with the IRS every couple of months over back taxes...

[Mike Kucaba]

I have a part-time job parking cars at the garage for the Arizona Diamondbacks baseball team.... sometimes at the end of the night I find some sealed cans of beer that someone didn't want in their car,so they toss them out.

[highway]

I used to work at a warehouse that carried everything from office supplies to janitorial supplies, not to mention packing and shipping materials. There was one time the warehouse manager decided we'd clean the warehouse out and as cases of masking tape was getting ready to hit the dumpster, I told him I could use some. I ended up filling the trunk of my car with masking tape! I've probably got a lifetime supply! I also got scraps of bubble wrap from there from rolls they would cut to the customer's specs, and most were 250 feet rolls that maybe had up to a foot of extra scrap at the ends after cutting, so I'm set with bubble wrap, too! There were occasions when we would get a damaged case of toilet paper in, too, and if I was lucky enough to be in the warehouse soon enough to be one of the first vultures circling the damaged case, I brought that home too! One time I didn't have to buy TP for over 6 months!

There was also one time they were throwing out old computers they weren't using anymore, and my friend rebuilds computers, so I asked them if I could have the parts from them for him. I was told as long as the hard drive was destroyed, I could have the rest. I ended up getting him about 6 towers and a few monitors, and one monitor I still have that I used for over a year and still have as a backup. In fact, some of the parts from those "junk" computers are still in the computer I'm sitting at right now!