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It was local to the area, of course, but in that time too, but the Boeing Surplus Store was a magical place for me as a young tinkerer. I probably have a box o

It was local to the area, of course, but in that time too, but the Boeing Surplus Store was a magical place for me as a young tinkerer. I probably have a box or two of random interesting looking electronics I bought floating around with the hope to figure out how to make it blink again. Not to mention one of my first PCs being some random office worker's PC that had been upgraded. I'm still bummed they closed it down.

tomcam 5y ago
That place was magical. Sheets of titanium, amazing industrial-strength steel scissors for a dollar, military steel desks, all encircled by those amazing paintings of airplane prototypes.
hadlock 5y ago
Boeing Surplus Store felt like.... wandering into Doctor Who's garage. Yeah we came home with some plate titanium, giant sheets of memory foam that got repurposed on our boat, we bought a trailer designed to haul bar steel, then converted it into a canoe trailer for the local boy scout troop, my dad would buy brass bar stock and turn it into POG slammers on his metal lathe that he also got at Boeing Surplus. Just acres and acres of weird cool stuff.
PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
I remember trying to pick up a piece of stainless steel "pipe" there. The piece was about 18" in diameter, maybe 24-36" long. The "pipe walls" were nearly 2" thick. At the time, I could lift one end of an upright piano in the sense of getting both wheels off the floor. I had never experienced the sense of utter futility before trying to lift that pipe. The complete and overwhelming sense that I would never be able to make it move even 1mm off the floor.
- VLM 5y ago
  V = pi r squared times height so figure about 3 times 18 squared times 36 thats about 35K cubic inches if solid, or 2 inch thick walls means subtract 3 times 14 squared times 35 thats about 21K cubic inches. So a good 14K cubic inches of stainless. Engineering rule of thumb to one sig fig (I mean we are assuming pi=3) is stainless is about a quarter of a pound per cu inch, so that pipe weighed about 3500 pounds. A good engineer should be able to do all this in his head; to one sig fig that pipe weighed about as much as a lightweight F-150 pickup truck (not the extended bed super crew cab LOL thats probably 5000 pounds) World record squat lift was 1036 pounds as I recall. LOL No not my record, my heaviest set on Friday was 480 and 8 reps.

tomcam 5y ago

That place was magical. Sheets of titanium, amazing industrial-strength steel scissors for a dollar, military steel desks, all encircled by those amazing paintings of airplane prototypes.

hadlock 5y ago

Boeing Surplus Store felt like.... wandering into Doctor Who's garage. Yeah we came home with some plate titanium, giant sheets of memory foam that got repurposed on our boat, we bought a trailer designed to haul bar steel, then converted it into a canoe trailer for the local boy scout troop, my dad would buy brass bar stock and turn it into POG slammers on his metal lathe that he also got at Boeing Surplus. Just acres and acres of weird cool stuff.

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago

I remember trying to pick up a piece of stainless steel "pipe" there. The piece was about 18" in diameter, maybe 24-36" long. The "pipe walls" were nearly 2" thick. At the time, I could lift one end of an upright piano in the sense of getting both wheels off the floor. I had never experienced the sense of utter futility before trying to lift that pipe. The complete and overwhelming sense that I would never be able to make it move even 1mm off the floor.

VLM 5y ago
V = pi r squared times height so figure about 3 times 18 squared times 36 thats about 35K cubic inches if solid, or 2 inch thick walls means subtract 3 times 14 squared times 35 thats about 21K cubic inches. So a good 14K cubic inches of stainless. Engineering rule of thumb to one sig fig (I mean we are assuming pi=3) is stainless is about a quarter of a pound per cu inch, so that pipe weighed about 3500 pounds. A good engineer should be able to do all this in his head; to one sig fig that pipe weighed about as much as a lightweight F-150 pickup truck (not the extended bed super crew cab LOL thats probably 5000 pounds) World record squat lift was 1036 pounds as I recall. LOL No not my record, my heaviest set on Friday was 480 and 8 reps.