My Dad taught us kids to be proficient in home/household repairs simply for self sufficiency.
If I recall, Shania Twain did a song where she sings something like "when I burn it black, you'll tell me
you like it like that" or something similar.
My first real stick built home was equipped with appliances when purchased. Gas stove/oven.
My wife at that time was really struggling with baking in that new-to-us oven, everything came out of the oven as black charcoal/cinders. One day when helping clean up after dinner while wiping off the stove/oven, I happened to notice on the rotary oven knob, that the aluminum "ring" that has the oven temperature settings in degrees was not permanently attached to the black plastic/phenolic knob.
It kind of floated on a viscous film of congealed stove/oven grease. So random at best.
I pulled the knob off of the gas valve shaft and washed it real good in hot soapy water.
Then degreased it using brake cleaner.
I believe that the aluminum ring was originally glued to the front face of the knob.
With the oven gas valve obviously turned off, I got some JB Weld epoxy and epoxied the aluminum
ring back onto the knob, and lined up the word 'OFF" with the little arrow on the stove.
Just like that, the oven temperature erratic charcoal/cinders producing performance was good as new and I mentioned that "no more cinders would be a good thing" but much to my youthful surprise,
It appeared, that statement was the incorrect thing to say. So while the oven was repaired and continued working correctly as long as I lived in that house, the "big picture" overall result was a failure.
And while we are discussing that particular stove/oven, after the first child was born, my Dad had given us a really old fashioned baby scale, for measuring baby weight gain/loss. Triple beam balance style.
It was old, had been painted, probably multiple times. That house/kitchen didn't have a lot of counter space, and I can only assume that the newborn baby was in a baby seat on the kitchen table.
That reduced the somewhat limited kitchen flat surface working area.
The Ex decided to clean off that new-to-us baby scale, and without thinking about the consequences,
decided to do it on top of the kitchen stove. That stove had continuously running pilot lights for igniting the range top burners. For those of you "cringing" now, she managed to spill/tip over a pint + sized bottle of denatured rubbing alcohol (using it for cleaning the baby scale) and just like that, BFF.
(big @%#$&~^ FIRE!!!)
I came home from work that day and the airborne fire extinguisher dust was everywhere.
No other damage to personnel or property, other than the dry powder fire extinguisher dust.
As newlyweds just starting out, we bought a secondhand natural gas clothes dryer from a newspaper ad.
We went and picked it up and brought it home in my pickup truck.
$75 for the used dryer and $5 pickup truck gasoline.
I recall my Ex dropping her side of the dryer when loading it, which destroyed an "adjustable" foot on the dryer, and it sat on a chunk of cinder brick on that corner for the rest of it's life.
It worked great for a very long time, until it didn't.
By this time, I was divorced and had custody of my two young sons. Daily laundry was a way of life.
Sometimes in the evening I would fall asleep while waiting for the load of clothes in the dryer to finish.
One morning, I went down in the basement and was expecting dry clothes, and they were still wet.
Off to work, kids to school, and laundry to be dealt with that evening.
That evening, I started the dryer again, and went and checked later, still wet.
So I restarted the dryer again, and sat in a chair in the basement near the dryer and watched it.
About 10 minutes in, the fractional horsepower electric motor in the clothes dryer started audibly
slowing down, after a minute of so of straining, it stopped, and within another minute, tripped off the gas valve due to the motor no longer blowing air and the high temp safety disk switch shut everything down.
I had worked on the dryer before, disassembling for lint cleaning and had replaced several igniters.
I had the electric motor out on my basement workbench in short order, and expected to lubricate motor
bearings/bushings and would be back in business again. That proved to be incorrect.
The electric motor was double ended for output shafts.
One end had a pulley, for the belt that rotated the dryer drum.
The other end had the fan impeller that moved the air.
The motor had bushings, not bearings, and the drive belt end had a side load from the belt/belt tensioner. I pulled the belt side end frame off the motor, the bushing was completely destroyed/wallowed out and the bushing contact surface on the motor rotor shaft was also destroyed.
The next day, I made some phone calls, and much to my surprise, none of the electric motor repair shops would touch anything less than several horsepower rated motors. Nobody stocked fractional horsepower
electric motor parts. I then called an appliance parts supplier, and found out a replacement motor for my well used clothes dryer cost almost as much as a new replacement dryer!
At the time of the dryer motor failure, I did not have my machine shop that I have now.
So repair abilities/options then were rude/crude/primitive.
I ended up taking the belt drive end frame of the motor (cast aluminum) and taking a hand held hacksaw blade, cut out the aluminum "spokes" that supported the section of the casting that supported the destroyed bushing. On my lunch hour the next day, I went to a store that specialized in selling ball and roller bearings. I found and purchased one ball bearing that was slightly larger than the worn shaft for ID, and would fit inside the hacksawed spokes on the motor end frame for the ball bearing OD.
I used epoxy to attach the new ball bearing inside the hacksawed spokes on the motor end frame,
and once the epoxy had cured, I "gooped" the ID of the new ball bearing with Loctite Stud & Bearing Mount and slid the motor end frame down onto the motor rotor shaft and into the motor field coils case.
After the Epoxy and Loctite Stud & Bearing Mount had fully cured for several days, I bench tested the electric motor before reinstalling it back inside the clothes dryer.
When I eventually sold that house, that same clothes dryer was in the basement operating as it should
and the new owners/young couple wanted it along with the house.
I believe that was my best ever household repair as far as the maximum gain, for the least pain.
edit: one word for spelling
