Reminds me of another story.

In another life before I got married and found out about vintage bikes I used to design, build, and fly RC sailplanes.

One of the things I did for myself was cut foam cores for wings, which would then be laminated in a vacuum bag with a balsa or light plywood skin. The foam cores were cut with a hot wire, nichrome connected to a nice big variac with a contraption of my own design to pull the hot wire through the foam with the wire running on templates, made of oil-hardened hardboard, of the wing cross section pinned to the end of the foam block.

The one thing that was expensive was the nichrome wire. I was at a garage sale one day and by a table full of tools were three spools of wire. Turns out to be nichrome wire in three different gauges. Enough wire to last me and everyone I knew that cut cores about 500 lifetimes. I of course bought them and in the course of chatting with the older gentleman it turns out that back in the 50s and 60s he was a sort of professional handyman/repairman. I asked what he would have ever used the spools of nichrome for. The answer (paraphrased):

"Oh, when people's toasters would quit working we'd replace the heating wire with this stuff and they'd get another few years out of the toaster. Mostly toasters but anything that used a heated wire we'd replace with this stuff."

It wasn't until many years later until I understood exactly the implication of what he had said.

My only regret...he had SO many great tools for sale at that garage sale that I wish I could have now... If I had good foresight I would have cleaned him out.