My dad passed away some years ago. One of the little mementos I have is his old cigarette lighter, a Ronson. Dad was a Ronson man, he would buy Ronson flints and lighter fluid for it. Any brand flint (i.e. Zippo) and fluid would work, but he always used the Ronson brand. I remember this lighter from when I was a little kid. It is at least 50 years old, but probably is 60 or more years. Some time ago I screwed up the flint spring and in my attempt to repair it totally destroyed the spring. I've been looking for a way to fix it, but alas there are no repair parts for it. Well, this past week I was going through the drawer where I keep it and ran across it again, so I decided to do another internet search. I found that Zippo bought out Ronson about 4 years ago, so I decided to take a look at the Zippo site and see if they have any repair parts. "We don't sell repair parts (why would they, if your Zippo ever needs repair you send it to them and they repair it for free) but if you need a flint spring let us know and we'll give you one". That was music to my ears, so to speak. The flint spring arrived in today's mail. I had to take it off the screw because the Zippo screw is a larger diameter than the Ronson, but I was able to reattach it to the Ronson screw that I still have. Now dad's old Ronson is working again, although I'm sure he'll forgive me for using a Zippo spring, flint and fluid.
A small victory, for sure, but it makes me feel good.