Frugal or just being smug...have you scored a real deal recently?

Robert Ray wrote:I scored another greenhouse. A commercial greenhouse that had ben used at a local WalMart 20x60 with all the side and center shelving. It needs a new skin but that's ok. 26k new picked it up for 2k.

Wow! a 20'X60'. Those aren't cheap! I need to get a new skin for a tiny tent under which I store... all kinds of not-used-for-winter stuff. I have to measure the outside skin, which is what got ripped in the last windstorm.
I remember buying a large tarp made of big advertising panels like they use on the billboards but I can't remember where I got it. What was nice is that you can ask for grommets along the edges and if you want it hemmed, they can do that too. [Essentially, they are repurposing tarp billboards.] These things are really thick, but not transparent, so I'm not sure how it would work. It's kinda nice to see where you are going in the dark...

I live in farming country, surrounded by field crops (corn, beans, peas, wheat, potatoes. buckwheat and lots of orchards, so there 's a whole lot of gleening to keep my freeze dryer going.

Cécile Stelzer Johnson wrote:

Kath Thomas wrote:Not only that Pearl but here in Bulgaria  people still forage and glean to ensure that theres more on the table. In the UK I'd pick nettles to make soup  seen as odd behaviour there, here that's a common practice,  fruit  and nut trees seem to line the roads in and out of the village which people take full advantage of. Here " make do and mend" isnt a hobby but a way of life. Which suits me.

Yep. Gleaning is a practice that unfortunately is disappearing, although if you ask a farmer nicely, they will usually tell you which field to go to and let you glean. When I have enough aronias, and elderberries I invite my friend to come pick up the rest.
2 years ago after the late picking for the potato season, I asked the farmer close to me if I could pick. He said yes. I had so many potatoes [4 big sacks - I could barely carry them out of the field!] that I gave 3 to the local pantry and gave them the tip: If you have a friend with a car/truck, that's free food.
(Now, I wasn't so happy because this farmer does tend to put some chemicals on his crops... I discovered later)
Maybe that's why gleaning is disappearing. This said, it is amazing the amount of potatoes that stay in the field. He said that "just for these few potatoes, it isn't worth the tractor and truck time to do a second picking over the same field. [They also squish quite a few with the truck that follows the tractor]
When we lived in the Alps, in France, mom would send us in the woods and along the roads right after a rain: there were big escargots. Mom would put them in flour for 24 hours: It took care of the slime. Also, when we took them out of the flour box, they had pooped all the green disgusting stuff and were full of flour. So they were already stuffed. [With a lot of butter and parsley, they were delicious... and free].
We also foraged for parasol mushrooms [Macrolepiota procera]. Over there, they grew really big and I have wonderful memories of my sister laughing and I using them as umbrellas. [Yep, they were THAT big]. My sister took to drying them in the sun. Those were really good. In Central Wisconsin, they are so few and so tiny they are barely worth the trouble.
I think that my mother's generation, which suffered hunger taught us to make the most of what comes our way, and I really appreciate her  teachings.

We found this little beauty sitting by the bins when we went to down a couple of months ago.



My son needed a tool box, so we grabbed a handle each, picked it up, and carried it right back to the van!

NICE score.

This is a score my partner made, actually. We were driving  90-minutes out of a city we'd had to visit,  through a "middle of nowhere" stretch — British Columbia has a lot of those, through which some fairly major & well-kept highways run. There are a lot of pine forests along this one, some of them burned over by wildfires if recent summers.

There's a little second-had store in one spot, and they manage to collect a lot of things from an extensive but thinly populated area. For the most part it's knick-knacks, old junky paperback novels, overly common kitchen tools of a poorer quality, etc. But my partner has a keen eye. She spotted a tied bundle of fabric, about the size of an old-fashioned bread box. She asked the lone deskminder what it was, and the reply was flannel sheets. How much? $10.

She pawed at it a bit, and the sheets' fabric looked good. So she paid the $10. When we unfolded the bundle at home, it turned out to be fitted double-bed size sheets, in perfect condition... L.L. Bean brand. Online, the Canadian price was $200. (For10 bucks!)

Excellent scrounge! And FWIW don't feel bad that you might have ripped off the thrift shop or anything like that. I know managers of several charity thrift shops, and they receive 10x more stuff than they can display and sell; most of it is sorted and shipped elsewhere. I am confident that they appreciate your $10 in hard cash to support their causes and pay the bills.

My local recycling centre has a take-it-or-leave-it corner, and over the last few months I pulled half a dozen kitchen knives out of there. Frankly, someone is cleaning out Granny's house and passing things along to others -- that's life. These blades are not junk, either: German and Japanese steel of decent quality, but needing a great deal of TLC to bring them back to life. And I guess they found the right guy who is happy to do that. And when I'm done, I will start passing them along to neighbours who confess they have junk knives. This is all very silly i guess, but it gives me a warm glow.

Love it.

It's funny, how many deals one can come across because others don't know it's a deal.

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:My local recycling centre has a take-it-or-leave-it corner, and over the last few months I pulled half a dozen kitchen knives out of there. Frankly, someone is cleaning out Granny's house and passing things along to others -- that's life. These blades are not junk, either: German and Japanese steel of decent quality, but needing a great deal of TLC to bring them back to life. And I guess they found the right guy who is happy to do that. And when I'm done, I will start passing them along to neighbours who confess they have junk knives. This is all very silly i guess, but it gives me a warm glow.

I guess I'm a Romantic fool, but I like the idea that Granny's old knives (for which she no doubt scrimped and saved) might be passed along to people who will appreciate them. I am just the intermediary, bridging the generational web with the skillful application of a little industrial diamond.

I was just running out of wood chips and scheming about where to get more…

Day before yesterday I kept hearing chainsaw noise all day. I went outside and found an arborist cutting and chipping a tree just across the road. Turns out our neighbor didn’t want those wood chips, so the arborist drove his dump truck over at the end of the day and dumped a ton (literally) of chips in our yard. And he started talking to my husband (who is a mechanic, at the moment) and offered him some side work. All for the price of walking across the road and introducing myself.

I’m so excited. And I’m so glad I married someone who gets just as excited as I do about miraculous coincidences and wood chip piles.

My husband went down to visit his parents last weekend, and they were clearing out a few things. They thought I might like their old coffee grinder as surplus to requirements....

Awesome! I think it'll be excellent for grinding my grains (if I get any to grow that is!)

I bow [very low] to you.....

I'd love that in my kitchen, even if I never used it.

Did score one of the big wheel wheat grinder's years ago for about thirty (and sold it ten years later for a few hundred), but, pretty as it was, it in no way is as purty as this.

Nancy, that is INCREDIBLE!! Utterly GORGEOUS!! Congratulations!

Nancy Reading wrote:My husband went down to visit his parents last weekend, and they were clearing out a few things. They thought I might like their old coffee grinder as surplus to requirements....
Awesome! I think it'll be excellent for grinding my grains (if I get any to grow that is!)

Oh, Nancy!. I am so jealous! right now, I am also looking for a manual meat grinder. I have an great electric one, but to grind one bologna, I don't want to get it dirty for just that. I used to have one. He kept it in the divorce.

A local guy was moving, he had a lot of tools he was letting go of. This NAPA 6v/12v auto-battery charger was one. I believe he was hanging onto another similar one. Anyhow, with this charger he'd cut the clamps off, and put a wood-engraving tool end on it instead. He'd just been using it as a DC power source. He gave it to me at no charge.

I brought it home, tested it for output, and it was fine. All I've needed to do was remove the wood-engraver tool, and put new clamps on the output wires. It's still a little dusty, but hey that can be dealt with. LOL

A new one, same make and capacity, sells for $90 or more in my region!

I scored 4 Ball Fermentation Starter kits for $1.51 each today. I bought every one they had to give one away as a gift. Originally (and still on Amazon today) these were selling for between $15 - $18 ea and I was not willing to pay that, but it still did not stop me from wanting one. Now I have more than one! Yay!  This was found at Ace Hardware.

Scored a gorgeous sewing box, still filled with all of a German grandma's stash. The thread alone is worth more than what I paid for the whole piece of furniture: silk, cotton, linen... plus plenty of fixings like snaps and hooks, ric rac, tons of high quality needles.

All the content went into the deep freezer for peace of mind,  and I treated the box with diatomaceous earth in all the nooks and crannies to eliminate any risk of bed bugs. (I use bed bug traps under the feet, so the diatomaceous earth should force them away if there are any - they hate that - and I would discover their existence before I bring them inside my house)

A few weeks ago, I went dumpster diving at the town dump as is my custom. After finding several stainless steel pots & pans, I keep going at least once a week. What folks throw is unreal! [And they have the balls to complain about the price of everything!]
I scored 2 metal chairs a good leaf rake [I'll have to replace the handle] and also an enormous electric roaster... It was big enough for the biggest turkey I have ever seen... and it works! It was just pretty dirty, dusty and needed a little tender love.
Today I am making a huge batch of Boston baked beans in it. Then I plan to can them in pints. The smell coming from the garage is wonderful!

What some people throw away reaches the point of stupidity.

When my wife's father died, her step sister cleaned the house. Many tools and things went into the dump.

We have a rule, if I die, she's not allowed in my 1,800 shop or the house..

Cécile Stelzer Johnson wrote:A few weeks ago, I went dumpster diving at the town dump as is my custom. After finding several stainless steel pots & pans, I keep going at least once a week. What folks throw is unreal! [And they have the balls to complain about the price of everything!]
I scored 2 metal chairs a good leaf rake [I'll have to replace the handle] and also an enormous electric roaster... It was big enough for the biggest turkey I have ever seen... and it works! It was just pretty dirty, dusty and needed a little tender love.
Today I am making a huge batch of Boston baked beans in it. Then I plan to can them in pints. The smell coming from the garage is wonderful!

Austin took the truck out a week or so back and encountered a slight problem...



He messaged me to ask me to find the battery chain saw and bring it to him while he fetched the tractor. Then we claimed some free rocket fuel in return for the owner of the tree failing to keep the track clear and delaying the start of his work day.

Many great finds over the years... in our Brooklyn days we furnished the apartment from stuff people left on the street, only bought a few things on Craigslist. I found a cast iron fry pan with a basting lid, and a cutco paring knife in the trash there too. Someone had used it once,  burned food onto it,  and pitched it!
In the last few years since we've moved to a mountain in East TN we've scored 2 working roll up metal doors from the dumpster at the local shed-building place (they only had bent brackets) and lots of tin roofing and siding scraps. Someone gave my son 2 MG Midgets to work on, and countless other things as he's always helping fix stuff wherever he goes and is generous with his friends.  It comes back to him for sure.
I get food deals constantly, there's a place 45 min away that gets expired/surplus stuff by the truckload and most of it is "fill a box for $10". Most of it is fantastic, some duds that go to the dogs or compost. Venison, fancy cheeses, hand tailored wool pants and shirts, Asian sauces and organic nut butters, gallons of pesto, it's a fantastic resource for many locals.
We lived 5.5 years on the road in a trailer doing odd jobs for whatever people wanted to pay, and we never quite went hungry or got stuck, though we came close many times.  Some paid, some didn't.  I give God the credit for that working out but it was a wonderful experience.

Last week, I scored a nearly brand new mailbox and one of these white 55 gallon plastic barrel, all nice  and clean. Nothing wrong with either one. On the white plastic barrel, the bungs were missing, but I had bought a few, so I could seal it if need be. The plastic mailbox is an extra large without even a scratch on it. I'm also starting to have a nice assortment of cast iron pans: all they needed was a good scrubbing, with steel wool and a re-seasoning. [Folks who buy these non-stick pans have no idea, apparently on how cast iron works]: You have to season them well and not let stuff burn in them or you have to scrub hard to clean it up, but  it is a great alternative to coated pans that eventually chip [yes, PFA coated, and you eat the chips!].

Bought a $4.95 purse for the outside leather. It would have made a few decorative things. But the wife asked if I knew what I had and asked me to look it up online. Ended up selling it for $495. Amazing what can be found at a thrift shop.

I found a trenching shovel for $2 at a thrift store last week. Just in time too, since I've started to dig up some lines and doing so with a normal shovel is just frustrating.

Two freebies I scrounged at the local recycling centre:

- an 8" bench grinder (1" wide wheels), hardly used by the looks of it

- a 4-wheel hose cart (with repairable 5/8" rubber hose) that somebody threw away because the fitting froze; I'll use the reel elsewhere, and the cart became my new portable heat buggy

Saw a seed box with seeds pop up on fb marketplace last night for $5. It looked to be close by so
I messaged the seller and she was just down our street!
I did a quick walk over this afternoon and grabbed it and am very happy with my haul.
Almost 40 packets, and mostly stuff I can use. ( and the dates are mostly this or last year so they should have decent viability) Plus the box, which is small, but metal so I'm sure I can find a use.
I'll look into a few of the perennial packs, just to be sure I want them, but there are lots I know I do. There is just one unknown but I'm up for trying a cell or 2 of mystery. It kinda looks like a brassica to me.

This wasn't a screamin' good deal, but it was what I needed for a fair price.

I got two exterior insulated steel doors, one with a window and one without, plus a spare window, for the low price of $115 US.  They are even the correct swing, and everything.  They're definitely "experienced", and will need a lick of paint when the weather gets warmer in the spring.

I think I'll install the new window in the door, and try to remove the decrepit plastic frame from the old window unit.  It's an insulated thermal unit, and I'm pretty sure I can salvage it by building a new wooden frame for it.  The frame is very yellowed, cracked and missing chunks.  It may have been in a house where someone smoked like a factory, or it could just be due to sun exposure.  Either way, the glass is fine, even if the plastic muntins aren't.

I needed two 36" wide exterior doors for my composting toilet cum storage shed build, and now I've got 'em!  It was flurrying a couple of times while I was working on it today, so it's probably just in the nick of time, too!

On the other hand, the kitchen end heater which I picked up off the curb, free for the hauling, this spring (wheeled it home on an appliance dolly!) will also go in the storage side of the shed, and appears to be an outstanding deal.  It was out for the spring cleanup junk haul away!  I did my part.

A kitchen end heater (also colloquially called a trash burner in these parts) is basically the fire box and ash drawer of a wood burning cook stove, with two pot eyes.  Not a full cook top, and no oven or water jacket, usually no broiler door into the fire box, either, but pretty much the same size of fire box as a standard cook stove.  People used these after finding that a fancy new gas or kerosene stove, bought to replace the old wood range, was definitely more efficient, which meant it didn't leak enough heat to keep the uninsulated kitchen warm in the winter.  My dad heated his house with one of these, for one full winter.  Not the most efficient way to convert stove wood to BTUs, but they will throw heat, and they have a convectively cooled heat shield cabinet affair around the cast iron gubbins, so close quarters aren't so much of an issue.

This one has a burnt out internal damper plate in the stove pipe boot (with vestiges remaining), but appears to otherwise be perfectly serviceable.  A stove pipe damper plate in the stack, from my big stash of stove parts, will tame the dragon.  This stove has two-position grates - one setting for coal, the other for wood.  I plan to also build a Kuznetsov OIK-14 brick masonry heater (very small footprint, double bell brick) in the shed, with both stoves sharing the same fabricated chimney.  I may port the end heater's stove pipe (with a bypass) into the bell of the Kuznetsov stove.  I've seen that setup done with a small box stove on some Russian YouTube video or other.  It was recommended for dachas, which aren't regularly heated; fire the box stove for some quick heat when you first arrive, but also begin to heat up the masonry heater's bricks for time release heat.  Once the dacha is warmed up, just fire the masonry heater once or twice per day to maintain temperatures.  Trying to get a cold structure warmed quickly by over firing the masonry heater will lead to a rapidly deteriorating heater, with cracked bricks, leaking mortar joints, or worse - even a collapsed masonry heater.

In the very worst case, I'll have a perfectly useful two pot eye cook top (which could be used in some subsequent masonry heater build), and a fire box, fuel door and ash drawer, plus a bunch of enameled sheet metal and stuff.  As the kiddos say, this is full of win!

I just went down to the basement (cellar, really, since it has rock walls, and part of it still has a dirt floor - it's on the list to convert that part to a root cellar, but there's a lot on "The List"!) to check the mouse traps, and was reminded that I picked up a Heller Aller PHB shallow well pump for $20 US, earlier this summer.

It was missing the rod stuffing nut.  I ordered one from Hitzer (the current purveyor of this design), and new set of leathers.  Including shipping, I think it was about $40.  I think I could have made the stuffing nut from a brass pipe plug, but it hardly cost more than a brass pipe plug from my local hardware store, and I don't have my lathe in a usable state, at the moment.  I might have been able to run my milling machine off the generator, and machined it there (chuck the pipe plug in the spindle, and hold the drill in the mill vise), but I just wimped out and bought the finished article.  My machine tools are in a storage unit, awaiting a timber framed garage/shop.  The garage build is complicated by a "constructive" easement of a sewer line which crosses our property diagonally to serve several other dwellings, but doesn't appear on any deed.  "Constructive" in this case just means "it's been there a really long time, so your stuck with it.  Surprise!"

As I mentioned, "The List" is long.

"A man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for."  Robert Barrett Browning

This is a double acting hand force pump.  Pushing the handle down raises the pump piston, pulling up water by vacuum (hence, shallow well).  Raising the handle will force water to some uphill reservoir.  This can allow you to have "pressurized" gravity fed water from a tank in an attic, or on a tower, or wherever.  This pump is even "approved" for potable water by my local health department, because, unlike a standard pitcher pump, it is enclosed at the top.  I'll still throw a bucket over it until I get a little pump house built.  I intend to use this pump at our lake lot (the water table is quite high there), unless or until I get a cistern built/installed at our town house, at which point I may move it to the town house.  We'll see.

These little pumps retail for over $400 US, have a brass tubular cylinder, and are made to a high degree of fit and finish.  It was one of the better deals of the summer, even if it needed some parts.

I was reading Kevin’s post and remembered some excellent dumb luck I had several years back.  I was driving through PA heading back to Illinois and passed a lumberyard with a going out of business sign.  By some good fortune, I was in my truck.  I stopped and grabbed 3 Peach Tree French patio doors for $200.00 each.  Yes they were the size I needed.

Of course, then the question was, “ where do I spend the night without getting this stiff stolen?”   I picked out a small town in Ohio that was 10 miles off the interstate and parked on the town square.   I figured it was safer that any rest area or motel parking lot.  

I treated myself to this pure wool, vintage, locally made coat for €10.

I managed to find a very rare local woman who used to be my size and height, but she's downsized and lost weight and is looking to rehome things she can no longer use.

My son says the photo should be sepia toned because it looks like it was taken a hundred years ago, but I love the red so a good friend of mine modified it to keep the red in the coat. And some of my other English friends say I look like the queen, complete with a long-legged corgi. Well I guess corgis and welsh sheepdogs are both herding dogs from Wales, so it's not far off!

I bought the pashmina-style headscarf from her too and am attempting to learn how to tie it so it doesn't look completely ridiculous on me. I might start a thread on permie ways to tie them for alternative uses, like rodilhas for carrying things on your head. There must be ways to tie them into baby carriers and harvesting aprons too...

Does trading count?
My aunt was here last spring, she's a bit smaller than me, and she's always cold, found Missouri in early spring very cold. I handed her a stack of sweaters etc, told her to use what she wanted, keep any of it she wanted to take with her, leave any of it she didn't want. (Her next stop was farther north, still in Missouri.)  She found a turtleneck that fit her well, wore it a lot. She had a black turtleneck that she had brought with her that was a bit big, and she doesn't wear black much, she didn't like it, someone had given it to her. So when she left, she took the blue one and left me the black one, which fits me well and I do wear black.

I went to wash it.... Merino wool! I SO got the better end out of that deal. I asked her later about it, she said it was a fourth-hand hand me down and she didn't care, and she wears the blue turtleneck all  the time when it's cold.

Thought of this trade this morning, she texted me she's wearing the blue turtleneck again, as it's gotten cold. I'll be wearing the wool soon :D

A couple of more "finds" which were brought to mind by my recent activities:

A few years ago, I picked up a hacksaw frame out of the middle of the road, at a grade crossing - darted right out into to traffic to grab it.  The crossing was pretty rough, and I would guess that it had bounced out of the back of someone's work truck as they crossed the train tracks.  It had been run over at least once, and the tubular steel frame was slightly banana shaped.  I used an arbor press at work, with a couple of short pieces of lumber, to press the frame back into some semblance of straightness.  I also had to replace one of the roll pins which engages the hole in the end of the blade (it was missing - less than a dollar at the hardware store to replace it).  It is a Blue Point (a Snap-On brand) high tension hack saw frame.  It is cosmetically imperfect but fully functional, except that it is missing the tension indicator dial, so I just tighten blades by feel.  Having the ability to really tension a blade well (rather than using a small wing nut, even with pliers) makes the blades last much longer, cut much truer and hang up much less often in the kerf than my lesser hack saws.  Before I had an angle grinder and cutoff wheels, I used this hacksaw to cut up quite a bit of steel for various projects.  It still gets used quite a bit, even though I now have both a 4-1/2" (newer Makita) and a 7" (an old Sioux brand) angle grinder.  I would highly recommend a high tension hack saw frame over the standard sort.

Insulated Dickies brand coveralls:  I gave $12 for them at a local consignment store.  They were clean, and only very lightly worn.  This is at least my 4th winter using them.  They are actually a little too warm for usual winter temps (20s F/- a few degrees C) if I am doing physical work (shoveling/scooping snow).  If I am plowing snow with my garden tractor, then they are about right for most circumstances, since I am still somewhat active, but less so than when shoveling.  The worst downside is that the hip slash pockets "pooch" open when I bend my hip, so if I am on a ladder, clearing snow off the eave of a roof, the pockets tend to fill up with snow.  They also have a pass-though slit at each hip pocket, so that I can fish out any of the full complement of tools which I usually have tucked into my trousers.  I need to make some sort of closure (not Velco, but maybe snaps, or just sew a larger flap down over the opening) for the hip pockets to prevent this snow intrusion.  At $3/year (so far), this has been a bargain.

A 3" socket timber framing slick: a neighbor gave this to me.  It was in a bucket with a bunch of other rusty chisels, screw drivers, etc. in his shed.  He cleans out basements and storage units and so forth as a side hustle, so wasn't quite sure where it came from.  Someone had pounded on the end of the tapered socket which receives the handle (which was long gone) and badly mushroomed it.  I asked if it was a slick (only seeing the socket and the shoulder of the blade) and he said he thought it was.  He just gave it to me, absolutely refused to take any money for it.  I think he was amused that I knew what it was, and that I thought it was actually worth something.  After examining it, I didn't think I could repair the socket to its former glory (limited blacksmithing skills and tools, so far), so I cut off the worst of the mushrooming with an angle grinder, then hammered the remainder of the mangled bit to be more round on my railroad rail anvil.  I worked down the very rusty edge, first with a rough grit carborundum stone, then with progressively finer grit diamond plates, and flattened the back the same way.  The corners of the edge are still a little rough, and the back isn't perfectly flat, but I think it's good enough to be workable, and will be improved by subsequent sharpenings.  After the clean up, it became evident that was made by the New Haven Edge Tool Co. with a laminated blade - high carbon steel edge, forge welded to a mild steel body.  Eventually, I stropped it to a hairsplitting edge with knife maker's green (chromium oxide buffing compound) on a hard strop - an offcut of vegetable tan tooling leather from a friend who makes custom knives and the sheaths for them, glued down to a drop of AC plywood left over from when I redid our kitchen using recycled cabinets.  I replaced the missing handle with a new one, made from a broken shovel handle, which I worked to a good fit in the socket by using some charcoal to mark the high spots of contact, then shaving them off with an old Witherby drawknife I picked up somewhere, since I don't have a wood lathe set up, not even a spring pole lathe (though I do have a light draw compound hunting bow with removable fiberglass limbs, which I plan to scavenge to use for a spring pole lathe).  I still need to make a sheath or edge guard for it.  I haven't actually used the slick in anger yet, though I have a timber framed garage cum workshop pretty well planned out in my head.  I thought this summer would be the summer to build the garage, but maybe next summer.  The longer my start is deferred, the more refined  - and full featured - becomes my plan.  At some point, I will dream up enough features that it may never be completed!  I guess I'd best start soon...

A friend recently gave me a Craftsman badged, but Millers Falls manufactured, hand miter box.  Other than the original paperwork having been nibbled on by some sort of bugs, it is basically in as-new condition.  It has the stock back saw with it, as well (probably a Disston, though it is unmarked - but I am pretty sure Millers Falls used Disston saws; fun fact, my wife went to Disston School, built on land donated by Disston for the factory worker's kids to attend, in Tacony, a neighborhood in Philadelphia).  One of the first projects planned for this miter box is to attempt to replicate Matteo Salusso's tubular rigid heddle (basic intro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tk-96H0dl9w - more in depth, but only in Italian: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLTaOnVlE4c).  I had tried to make one of these a few years ago, using my Pony brand hand miter box (which was good enough for the kitchen rebuild), but the plastic drain pipe (also recycled) ended up with lots of snaggy burrs on the slits when I was done.  Because the tubular rigid heddle is used as a beater to tighten the shots of weft, it rubs down the length of the warp.  As snaggle-toothed as was my first attempt, I knew it would not be workable, and would abrade through the warp threads in no time flat.  I'll try a second go this winter, facilitated by the new miter box.