Unscrewed
Salvage and Reuse Motors, Gears, Switches, and More From Your Old Electronics
by Ed Sobey
Mem. Ed. $13.99
Pub. Ed. $16.95
You pay $1.99
Bonus Content
Unscrewed
Do you like to take household gadgets apart to see what makes them tick—and perhaps create something new out of the components you’ve salvaged? Unscrewed is the ideal resource for all those UIYers (Undo It Yourselfers) out there who are looking to retrieve hidden treasures or repurpose their old junk.
Each of the 53 projects in the book includes a “treasures cache” of the components to be found inside various items, including motors, switches, magnets, gears, shafts, pulleys, belts, lenses, and screws. There’s also a required tools list and step-by-step instructions, with photos, on how to safely extract the working parts.
Ed Sobey shows how items found in an old flatbed scanner can be used to build a desk lamp; how a DustBuster impeller can be converted to quickly prep a charcoal grill; and how the gears, rollers, and stepper motor found in an ink-jet printer can become a robot. The pump from a motorized bubble gun can be refitted to work as a fountain or a pump to irrigate your indoor plants. The tiny motors inside a digital camera can be made to drive very small, solar-powered kinetic sculptures, and the microswitches inside a computer mouse can be engineered to play a chime, turn on a light, or power a motor. Want to build a model car or boat? The solar cells in that old emergency radio could come in handy. Did you know your old popcorn popper can be converted into a coffee roaster? Or that an electric toothbrush contains the parts to create a working submarine toy? Meanwhile, the timing chip inside an old joystick has dozens of uses.
Why pay good money to an electronics store when you probably have what you need in that old VCR, printer, or hair dryer? Unscrewed lets you plunder old gizmos for the good parts inside.
Softcover : 224 pages
Publisher: Chicago Review Press ( June 01, 2011 )
Item #: 13-405809
ISBN: 9781569766040
Product Dimensions: 6.0 x 9.0 inches
Product Weight: 12.0 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Very disappointed 
February 24, 2012
Very disappointed
All this book does is show you how to take things apart. "Ed Sobey shows how items found in an old flatbed scanner can be used to build a desk lamp; how a DustBuster impeller can be converted to quickly prep a charcoal grill; and how the gears, rollers, and stepper motor found in an ink-jet printer can become a robot. " This is very misleading. One paragraph on each section lists what *can* be built but there are no instructions on how to do that. Taking something apart is easy; making it into something else requires instructions. That was the book I wanted to buy.
Reviewer: Joyce H
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