What on earth is a bacon buttie??? I'm so starving right now!
We all just need to ditch our grodie old contacts and get Lasik surgery- now that's a real MacGyverism cuz it's so high tech and utilizes lasers.

Sorry, I mean a bacon sandwich. Yummy!

I don't think I'd trust anyone enough to burn my eyes in to shape with lasers!

I second that wholeheartedly.

There's no way anyone getting close to my face with one of those things! When I was in high school a friend and I built a working laser that cut metal after scrounging a local junk yard and borrowing some things from the physics lab. We pulled rough schematics out of some of my dad's books and made up the rest. Well, we had a minor accident and my wrist bears the result of that. Left a pretty good scar and I still occasionally have trouble moving my first three fingers. Would I want something like that anywhere near my face? No way! Now these lasers are all fancy and high-tech and all. Tell you what, the more complicated something is, the more likely it is to have an unfortunate accident. Besides, nobody knows what'll happen to your eyes 30-40 years down the line once you have this thing done.

A much safer way of fixing your eyes is doing eye exercises. Really works too. I kept my old glasses just for comparison...

I second that wholeheartedly.

Me too! I don't even wear contacts, I never could bring myself to put them in. I have enough trouble with eyedrops. Just a few days ago the doctor put some of them in that did sting very much and then demanded I should keep the eyes open! Turned out to be very difficult!

When I first heard that Rick had Lasik surgery I did not know whether I should admire him for being that courageous or think that he was crazy. But when I later heard about how much trouble he had all the years I thought more among the lines "Why did he not do it years ago?"

But then again - why did he not just wear glasses? I think this questions belongs to the "What if MacGyver was ugly"-thread. Though he doesn't have to be ugly when wearing glasses, some people look better with them than without them. And he could have fooled the bad guys much better in case they thought he was weak and then he could surprise them even more.

Didn't expect my improvisation to spark so many responses! Believe it or not...my contacts seemed better off after the spit soak! lol. The right one had been bothering me the last few times I put it in and after that incident...it was fine again. Don't ask...I dunno. lol... maybe I should bottle my spit and sell it for contacts. Nevermind...maybe not. Yuck.

Well, I have to admit, it's been fun reading all these, I just had to create myself a new account just so I could mention my own minor MacGyverism ...

Not sure exactly WHICH existing post I'm going to wind up replying to, really need a "new" post, but I don't see away to DO that without starting a new topic ...

Similar to a few others posted, but haven't seen this exact application so far.

My Mom's eyeglasses seemed about to bite the dust, had two screws, one on each site holding the main frame together (I bet you see where I'm going already!). One site had lost it's screw so often that the threads were about worn out, and/or the current screw wasn't the original, and didn't fit well enough. Got to the point where she couldn't keep the screw in and/or keep the side of the frame together, therefore the lens wouldn't stay in.

So, I put everything back together except for the reluctant screw, lined up the holes in the frame, and started looking for a twist-tie! All I could find at the moment was a rather large garbage-bag tie, which I couldn't get to fit through the holes well enough to pull through the other end, so I stripped off the plastic/paper cover to get the bare wire. Then I just put it through ONCE, twisted it tight, and clipped it off, trying to get the short twisted ends bent out of the way.

I had done exactly the same trick once before when one of the nose-pieces on my own glasses lost a screw and I couldn't find a spare. Not to mention, with screws that small, my bigger problem is finding an appropriate screwdriver, even if I *do* recover the original screw! Usually easier to find a twist-tie!

What surprised me both times, was that the twist ties, after application, STAYED without breaking, pretty much as long as necessary. Can't recall exactly HOW long, but at least long enough to get "professional" repairs, and/or new glasses! I'd always thought of those twist-ties as relatively "weak" because most of them can be broken with your bare hands by bending for less than a minute. But I guess once they're "in place", they're stable enough without being bent, so they don't break ?

Since we're talking "MacGyverisms", I should mention, that I'm not sure if a SAK would have assisted in this situation. I have had one or two in the past, both "clones", but the latest was lost in a recent move (they just seemed too bulky to be comfortable in my pocket). Don't know if any current models include a screwdriver appropriate for common eyeglass screws. And both times, I stripped the coating off the twist-ties with my fingernails easily enough (that's saying a bit, since I'm a non-classical guitar player, I keep the fingernails on both hands trimmed pretty short).

That's about it. Thanks for reading!

I have an in-law who used to work off-shore a lot, and his buddies wound up calling him "MacGyver" because he'd usually find a way to make "whatever" work well enough to get by until the next supply run on-shore. Maybe I can talk him into contributing some stories. He's not particularly 'net-literate yet.

Mike

PS: Sorry I tend to get a bit verbose!

Welcome to MOL, MinstrelMike! With all your craftiness, you are going to fit right in here!!

Welcome to our discussion group, MinstrelMike! You'll totally fit in

Hi MinstrelMike!!!

I am a jewelry designer and I know why your twisty wires break so eaily. When you bend metal back and forth, the molecular alignment of the metal is altered. Initially the metal gets harder and stronger, but if you keep bending it, you go beyond the tensile tolerance of the wire and it becomes brittle. Once the wire becomes brittle it will snap easily in your hands. I have ruined more than one piece of jewelry by over working the wire.

I have another use for those twisty ties that I discovered at 5:30 this morning. I was getting ready for work and had what could be termed a "plumbing mishap." The chain on the flush mechanism in the toilet managed to tangle around itself and shortened itself to about an inch long. This caused the water in the tank to run continuously, not a good thing since I live in the desert and water is a scarce resource. I had to fix the chain but when I tried to untangle it the damn thing broke. Niether piece was long enough to repair the toilet. I have lots of chain, but I didn't want to use sterling silver to repair the toilet. Inspiration!!!! the wire from a twisty tie. I connected the two peices of broken chain reattached them to the flush lever and SUCESS! The toilet is fixed, no more running water, no more wasting resources.

Considering all of this took place before I had my AM caffiene, I am pretty impressed with myself.

A couple of days ago I needed to run a garden hose out of my second floor apartment. The trick of course was connecting it to something. After looking around and trying a few things that didn't work, the bathtub faucet was going to be it. Now the thing about that faucet is that (as all of the other ones in my place) you can't screw anything to them. You can't snap anything onto them either. Well, the hubby just finished slurping down a half-gallon bottle of grape juice and I had duct tape and my SAK. I cut a hole in the bottom of the plastic bottle, fed the garden hose through the bottle so the end that's supposed to screw into the tap was stuck on the inside of the bottle. I duct-taped it in place so it wouldn't leak too much. I cut the top of the bottle off in order to make the hole bigger so that the end of the faucet would fit inside the bottle. I padded up the opening with duct tape to make it square, to fit the shape of the faucet better. I taped the whole contraption to the faucet itself and turned the water on. Sure it leaked somewhat and the water pressure could've been better, I guess, but it worked perfectly for what I needed it for. Gotta love those plastic Ocean Spray bottles. There are so many good uses for them

excellent

This is so clever and resourceful *and* a double MacGyverism for the recycling a plastic bottle!

My latest MacGyverism involved failed.

Last Saturday my ever loving adorable little boy superglued a Girl Scout cookie to my living room sofa. (No I'm not making this up) There was only a small nuclear explosion in the Utah west desert last week.



I found the cookie before the glue had completely hardened, so I was able to remove the cookie. Unfortunately the glue and the acetone I used to remove the worst of the glue left a big bald patch in the nap of the upholstery of the sofa. Since the only thing that can truly fix the sofa is re-upholstering it, I just flipped the cushion over.

Good thing its an old sofa.

Please????????? Can somebody explain to me the logic behind superglue and cookies??? I mean, these just aren't things that go together. My friends keep telling me I need to have another kid. I think I need a vacation.

Gee... I wish I could help you out here, but it sounds like you need a chemist to explain how the superglue, cookie and upolstery material's chemicals all intermixed. I haven't a clue - my rememberance of high school chemistry is too far in the dim, dark past. Perhaps you could inquire at a local college/university. Mac, being the chemist that he is, could probably have cleaned it up with a few household cleaning products.

These wouldn't be male friends would they?

There is no logic... other than its better then gluing your hands together with the stuff.

Maybe you need to re-think your position on kids being allowed near super glue.

Rock--the superglue was in a cabinet in my art studio. Logan knows that he is not supposed to go in there. He was totally on a mission to find the glue. I ususually don't leave chemicals around where he can get to them. I teach way to many safety and health classes to leave things around where Logan can get to them.

The chemistry of the superglue is such that it is not too soluble in most organic solvents. I have yet to find a cleaning product that will remove it from anything. Acetone works best by softening the glue and then you can peel it off. acetone is flammable and in high concentrations, not so good for your skin.

Flipping the sofa cushion seems to be the best option for now. I am so glad I opted for the week long vacation in California instead of new furniture last year.

And yes, most of the friends advising another kid are male--go figure.

Oh.. well maybe you should superglue his hands together as punishment then

Superglue has become a bansihed substance in my house, although I should probably keep some in my work office desk drawer. I could have used it a couple of days ago.

Tuesday I wore what my son calls my GI Joe pants to work. They're a camo print canvas and totally cool with a long sleeve white henley shirt and brown leather bomber jacket. Anyway, I digress. The pants have a large sturdy metal button closure that cut the thread holding it in place while I was sitting at my desk. Going home to change clothes wasn't an option and I had a meeting later in the day. I had a WWMD moment (what would MacGyver do?). No duct tape, stapling the pants together wasn't going to work, paper clip wasn't strong enough to hold. Ah ha! Those black binder clips however were perfect. I used a small one to hold the pants closed, untucked my shirt to hide the clip and went about my business. No one was the wiser to my situation.

If I had superglue, I could have jsut glued the button back in place. Instead I will need some Kevlar thread to put the button back on.

BRILLIANT!

Well, I don't know whether you can count this a MacGyverism, but at least I actually thought about what to do and then solved the problem.

We were going back from holiday yesterday by car and I happened to sit at the side where the sun was shining. No sheets at the window, no air condition. The sun was shining at my dark jeans and you can imagine it got very hot, almost burning.

So I thought about what to do and then put my white woollen jacket over my knees. You'd assume that it became even hotter but of course since white doesn't collect the heat as black it became much cooler actually and I wasn't roasted anymore.

*looks pretty pleased with herself*

hehe...love it MacGyverGrrrl! LOL. And good thinking Astra!

These are hardly genius, but...I had a couple of paperclip adventures this past week.

Monday, hubby and I borrowed a Ford Expedition (I think...it was humungous) to take 5 teens to a concert because our car wasn't big enough. So we're under way, and one of the teens thought to bring one of those tape adapter things to convert a tape player to play an iPod. No CD player. So we stick the tape part in, and nothing happens. None of the buttons do anything, including eject it. So, luckily, it had that little cord attaching it to the iPod to pull it out with. So we root around and find some cassettes in the console and put one in to be sure it's not the converter. It's not. The tape is stuck. And of course THAT one doesn't have a cord. So paperclip to the rescue...I bent it out and hooked one end in the reel hole of the tape and was able to get it out.

Next paperclip adventure...We're at church yesterday and Isaiah decides that it's a terrible emergency that he didn't put a belt on and even though he's sitting down his pants are in the process of falling down. *rolls eyes* EVERYTHING'S an emergency with a 7 year old. So anyway, I made him tough it out till church was over and before Sunday school I raided the office for a couple of paperclips. I looped each one through an adjacent beltloop and then hooked the clips together. It pulled in just enough of his waistband that he survived Sunday school AND a potluck without embarrassment... LOL.

My husband has one of those digital pen and pad devices. It looks like a regular clipboard with a regular paper notepad on it, except that everything that's written on the notepad with an ink pen gets digitally transferred into memory and then handwritten sheets can be transferred to the computer like that. The ink pen writes like a regular pen and also has a digital sensor (like a pen digitizer that most artists probably familiar with) It's a neat device and also greatly cuts the clutter as the hubby was liable to take notes on pieces of junk mail that I then would be unable to dispose of.

Well, he needed to buy ink refills for the pen. This was the first time him buying those and he brought the pen with to the store to check that the refills would fit. Now in order to remove the ink stick you need to use a special little grabber tool that grabs the nib and pulls the whole thing out through the front. We got to the mall parking lot and he realized he forgot the tool. It was also one of those rare occasions I didn't bring my SAK. The nib was too small to grab with fingernails. He tried a number of things to hook the cartridge with and nothing worked as there is hardly any clearance between the cartridge and the pen itself. Too tight for even a paperclip. Then my eyes fell on a sticky sock wrapper from a new pair of socks that I somehow missed and he managed to write on (making it indisposable. His excuse for using it was that it's so convenient, he can just stick it to the dashboard if he needs it handy. Right...). I took the sock wrapper, wrapped it around the nib, squeezed it with my nails and the cartridge came out stuck to the sock wrapper. Problem solved.

This is a prank I hope to use at summer camp this year. I have a battery-powered noisemaker that makes the most horrible buzz you can imagine, so I'm going to take a few batteries, duct tape wires to them with one going to the buzzer, and then to a small metal plate, the other placed over a piece of ice, so that when the ice melts, the circuit will be completed, and the buzzer will go off. This is somewhat like what Mac did in the Escape in season 1 with the PCP bomb. The whole thing will be placed in the vent of another cabin in the middle of the night (I'll make the whole thing on a piece of wood, so it won't fall apart. Ice will be easy to procure).

cruel and unusual punishment.

A premeditated MacGyverism? Isn't that an oxymoron?

I was planning on doing this in the middle of the night, and there's not too much to make a buzzer out of in those cabins...

Now THAT'S creative!! I'll have to file that one away for the next time I lose a button off my pants in the middle of the day.

A friend of mine and I did something similar to drive our literature teacher up the wall only with a mechanical noisemaker. I had this large plastic horse that 'sort of' neighed if you pulled the string. In reality it simply made a very obnoxious noise that maybe in a drug-induced coma would sound remotely like a neigh. One fine day we got really tired of listening to the teacher wax poetic about "War and Peace" (we don't patronize literature written by child molesters, that's true about Tolstoy by the way) and decided to drive her batty. We got the 'neigher' out of the horse, took some duct tape and fishing line and attached the 'neighing box' to the back of a bookcase in the classroom. We ran the fishing line from the pull string to our desk and waited for a moment to strike. We struck with great success again and again, yanking the fishing line and making this most obnoxious noise in the middle of the teacher's monologues, causing a general uproar in the classroom and indignation for the teacher who couldn't figure out where the noise was coming from. We carefully did not sit next to the bookcase. The coverage of material about Tolstoy was successfully ruined and she never figured out who did it.

My purse strap broke today, so I used a small keyring to connect the strap loop and the loop on the purse. It works really well!