Introduction: Rare Earth Magnet in a Bottle

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About: Retired Firefighter 1966 to 1986; Retired Wheat Farmer 1987 to 2003. Drapery Sales 1969 to 1987. 21 year Quintuple Heart Bypass Surgery Survivor; 18 year Melanoma Cancer Survivor. 86 years young.

I use rare earth magnets in my shop mostly for gathering up steel filings and picking up screws and bolts I drop that get swept up in the trash.  The trouble with this is it takes a lot of time to clean them off the magnet.  Some of this stuff is needle sharp, so I get some of it poked into my fingers.

MY SOLUTION:

I take a small plastic pill bottle, punch a hole in the lid, fasten the magnet to one end of a small brass rod, and let the other end go thru the hole in the lid.  I then bend an "L" in the top of the rod.  I can now pick up the filings or any other steel, letting it stick to the bottom of the pill bottle.  To eject the steel, hold the bottle in one hand and pull up on the top of the brass rod with the other hand.  

It works great and costs nothing if you have a magnet from a hard drive or some other source.  They also sell new ones on eBay.