Let’s hear some of your best quick fixes or improvised products.

Saw this thread on Reddit on improvised stoves and got me thinking about how amusing the topic is;

http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/7c3rj/pyro_petes_improvised_camp_stoves/

i see 125 views but no response..is that good or bad?? maybe all our posters have it so worked out that they never have to fall back on a quick fix or they don't want to talk about the screw up they had to patch together..

Began raining at tailgate party.
Attached umbrella to my chair using alligator clips of my jumper cables.
Continued partying.

Out trick-or-treating.
Plastic bail of DD's candy bucket broke.
Repaired it with bandaids from EDC kit.

-Blast

When the aluminum external frame of my backpack broke, I slipped a couple of green tree branches in the tubes to join them and voilà!

While camping, I use a cheap sleeping pad. I can cut parts of it for many emergency uses.

Cut the tongue off my leather belt and used with chewing gum as gasket material for leaking water pump housing.

I have a folding Kayak from Folbot, basically a drysuit with a rigid pole frame you sit in. One of the poles broke I went down to the hardware store and found a dowl rod that fit into the pole for strength and a self threading coupler to hold the pole together.

My French Canadian Father-in-law snapped his fishing rod in half on a remote lake (#@%*&!%$#@). He used a pencil and the black electric tape from around my PSK to join the 2 pieces back together; then he outfished me 3:1!

Mike

Did you know the drive shaft of a Maytag washing machine is just the right size to fit inside the base post of a microphone stand ?
Fixed two that way. Had to build a Video Camera View finder mount (that's for a 5 inch studio finder) on site out of a peice of wood and lots of gaffer's tape.

Fixing stuff is so common and normal for me that it's like you're asking what I had for lunch last Monday. It's just part of the flow of life.

I did notice that I needed my soldering iron for something 4 weekends in a row. (car wiring harness, washing machine wiring harness ground, radio diode replacement, < something else>) It was unusual in that I hadn't needed the iron for a year or more before.

The only "survival" thing that comes to mind is that the pump on my Coleman Feather 400 backpacking stove was squeaking while on a trip so I used a little fly floatant to lube it.......

Holding one of the lenses in my glasses w/ a piece of wire to replace a stripped screw until December 15th.