Meccano Repairs
Written by Cathy Warrell for our March 2012 Newsletter
Has anyone ever done any ‘Meccano repairs’ to anything?
My husband Chris fixed his Mum’s shopping trolley with Meccano years ago. Both welded (or is it soldered?) joints at the bottom of the trolley had come apart and so he strapped two Flat Girders, about 3½” long, bent through two right angles around the joints and held it together with long bolts. (It lasted for years but he can’t remember whether he retrieved the Meccano before she eventually abandoned it.)
Also, I have a very useful rope pulley that operates our kitchen pedal bin. It’s on the back of the door under the sink. Three ½” plastic pulleys on some brackets are bolted to the back of the door. The string goes around all three pulleys. Before Chris made it out of Meccano for me the string kept perishing, which was a nuisance.
Meccano weights
The other use I have for Meccano is of metric weights for our old balance scales (bought in Bristol market for £18). One piece of Meccano (Chris tells me that it’s a 7/8” Bevel Gear) corresponds to a 10g weight, the other weights (Collars) are 2.5g each. These weights are useful because I managed to lose the other 10g weight from my metric set (plus five small knives and every single soup spoon in our house bar one!).