Yes! I do the same thing at my local market and it's crazy how much you can save. Last hour everything gets slashed and I've walked out with bags of squash and corn for like five bucks total. Vendors would rather sell cheap than haul it back home.

My buddy did the same thing near Damascus and ended up sleeping in a ditch.

Man, I heard a guy on a podcast say almost the same thing, that the fixes we swear by for customers are the first ones we skip on our own stuff. He called it the mechanic's blind spot or something like that. I laughed when I heard it because I do the exact same thing with penetrating oil. I'll tell a guy to soak a bolt overnight and be patient, then I'm out there cranking on it two minutes later cussing up a storm. There's something about being under your own hood that makes you rush and skip the steps you know work. Good on you for actually grabbing the torch instead of just standing there staring at it.