Stuff you've learnt the hard way

[OakLeaf]

Today's lesson: 12-year-old rusted bolts are really difficult to remove...

Did you get them off?

If you have enough clearance behind the bumper to pull the bolt out from the back, the easiest thing to do is drill off the heads.

[Owlie]

Did you get them off?

If you have enough clearance behind the bumper to pull the bolt out from the back, the easiest thing to do is drill off the heads.

Yes! WD-40 left overnight did the trick for all but one of them. The remaining one had a nut on it, and they had rusted to each other and to the little Y-shaped metal thing that holds the lower two bolts. We somehow pulled the plate off without undoing that bolt. My car is legal once again!

[skhill]

Always wear gloves when shelling black walnuts. If you can't find any around the house, run out to the store and get some.

BTW, does anyone have any suggestions for getting rid of the stains on my hands? I've been trying to get rid of them for 3 days now...

[OakLeaf]

I don't know, I had a friend in high school who was a fiber artist, worked a lot with natural dyes, and you just never knew what color her hands would be on any given day...

Maybe try a pumice scrub and just take off the stained outer layer(s) of skin???

Hopefully you won't need a surgeon the way I wound up needing for that thorn. (Just a local anaesthetic and a couple of little scalpel cuts, but too small for my PCP to deal with in her office.)

[redrhodie]

Vegetable dyed shoes stain. My cats will have furballs onto those shoes just to make sure I remember.

[OakLeaf]

Heh. Back in my racing days when I rode rain or shine, I had this pair of Duegi shoes that never stopped turning my feet and socks black every time they got wet.

I kept expecting that sooner or later they would run out of dye, but I burned out on cycling before that happened, and by the time I came back to riding, my feet are three sizes bigger, perfect excuse for new shoes.

[Sky King]

speaking of stains... the gilles berthoud saddle I had to abandon due to wrong size for my sits was stained black, so was fine with my black biking shorts but if I rode in street clothes I ended up with an unflattering saddle mark stain that was really hard to wash out. Why they chose that dye is beyond me.