It's the same with appliances and phones now, right? Everything's built to be thrown away.

Oh nice. That dental pick trick is a lifesaver. Reminds me of trying to get a pin into a cramped avionics bay connector. Ended up using a tiny flathead from an eyeglass repair kit. Just had to be super careful not to slip and scratch the housing. Those little pins can fight you.

That "shovel by hand" part brings back some sore memories. We had our big reclaimer belt snap right as we were ramping up for a long run of cores. Our backup was always to keep a couple of old, small rotary screen reclaimers in the back corner. They're slow, but you can wheel one over and at least keep some reclaimed sand coming in. It's not perfect, but it beats a full stop until the new parts come in.

And the time you save is worth way more than the cash you spent.

Actually that's the best kind of praise you can get. Means it fits in so well it looks like it was always there. If a deck looks like it grew out of the ground, you did your job right. That guy saying it's not going anywhere meant he trusted your work completely. He wasn't looking at a new deck, he was looking at part of his house.