You can find any old thing on Ebay

That's the blow torch, by his hand.

Cliff has been working on an old blow torch most of the day.  It seems his brother sent it home with him, since it wouldn't work when they needed it the other day.  I was in the shop once and heard Cliff say, "The foot valve isn't working, that's the problem."  
"Hey," says I, wanting to let him know I do sometimes retain information, "the foot valve is what used to go bad on the pump in our well."  
He said yes, but didn't appear to be impressed with my knowledge.   

He fixed the foot valve, but now he's stumped by this part.  

Later I went back to the shop, where he was still fiddling with the gasoline blow torch, although he had fixed the foot valve.  Surely, I thought, he has modern stuff around he can use.  Why does he need that?  It looks ancient.  I asked what the big deal was, and he said sometimes in certain applications when you need to solder something, that kind of blow torch works just right for the job.  
"Why don't you buy another one?"  
"They haven't made these for years," he replied.  
"Remember when you lost  your favorite pocket knife and you said the new ones were no good?  I found an old one on Ebay.  I'll bet I could find one for you."  
So I typed "Gasoline blow torch" in the search feature of Ebay and sure enough, there were several.  Most of them, however, didn't work.  Apparently people collect these things as antiques, whether they work or not.  

Then I found this one.  It works, and the seller is top-rated with 100% satisfaction,  I clicked "buy it now" and it should be on its way by Monday.  

That hasn't stopped him from working on the other one, though.  I guess it's just the challenge that keeps him plugging on.  He hates to lose.