Author Topic: Tales from the Wobbly Workshop  (Read 186067 times)

Kim

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Re: Tales from the Wobbly Workshop
« Reply #525 on: 27 April, 2020, 08:31:07 pm »
 :thumbsup:

Re: Tales from the Wobbly Workshop
« Reply #526 on: 27 April, 2020, 08:37:42 pm »
That is excellent!
Quote from: Kim
^ This woman knows what she's talking about.

Re: Tales from the Wobbly Workshop
« Reply #527 on: 27 April, 2020, 08:37:56 pm »
That is fantastic!  ;D :thumbsup:
Miles cycled 2014 = 3551.5 (Target 7300 :()
Miles cycled 2013 = 6141.4
Miles cycled 2012 = 4038.1

fuzzy

Re: Tales from the Wobbly Workshop
« Reply #528 on: 27 April, 2020, 10:42:26 pm »
Nice one!

Re: Tales from the Wobbly Workshop
« Reply #529 on: 28 April, 2020, 07:43:51 am »
Some quality tool use going on there, impressively square on.  :thumbsup:

Re: Tales from the Wobbly Workshop
« Reply #530 on: 30 April, 2020, 01:04:41 pm »
Well done!

Re: Tales from the Wobbly Workshop
« Reply #531 on: 05 May, 2020, 10:17:14 pm »
As mentioned on the 'Fettling thread', I emptied and dismantled my garden tool shed yesterday, and stained the sides and back (ran out before I finished the front), and cut some fence posts for a frame for a new floor.

Today, I varnished the shed sides and back...



Relayed the slabs and screwed the base frame together



Cut the floor planks (Was the damaged roof of my daughter's shed) on the compound mitre saw



Screwed them down and cut them flush with a router



Reassembly



And refilled it with gardening crap...



Compound saw is living in there at the moment as I will probably be using it again later this week.
If it ain't broke, fix it 'til it is...

Re: Tales from the Wobbly Workshop
« Reply #532 on: 07 June, 2020, 09:43:51 pm »
This was to enable grandsons to drill and screw them together to make a basic soapbox.  :D

That's great.   

Heavens, the hours of fun we had as kids clambering in, over and around council rubbish dumps [doesn't bare thinking about what we got up to as kids far as H&S goes!] scavenging for old pram wheels etc to make go-carts [as we used to call em].
Fantastic fun with stacks of cuts and bruises in the process.
Garry Broad

Re: Tales from the Wobbly Workshop
« Reply #533 on: 13 June, 2020, 06:55:53 pm »
One of the things I have been gradually working on is a mini lathe for the workshop.

The mains motor for these are an 85/60 Watt one that failed and is expensive to replace. As it would have been difficult to upgrade the lathe to modern safety standards, and it wasn't really suitable, it was due to get scrapped - so I ended up with it.   ;)

I have stripped it down, cleaned and reassembled it; mounted it on a new base, found a 100 Watt 24V dc motor that would fit directly to the original mounting plate; and ordered an fitted a 24 V PSU and speed control (about £17.50 for both).

I had to drill and tap a hole in the motor pulley, for a grub screw (M5 -taken from a broken twist grip), and I used some scrap mahogany to make an open-backed box over the PSU, to which I will probably add a couple of small 12V cooling fans (in series) when I can get to my work scrap box (for that is where several currently reside).  :smug:

Photos for those that are interested:





BTW, I have lots of accessories inc, top slide and vertical milling setup!  :D

If it ain't broke, fix it 'til it is...

Re: Tales from the Wobbly Workshop
« Reply #534 on: 27 June, 2020, 01:03:02 pm »
I thought you might like this: My Y4 Grandson is supposed to be studying the 'Water Cycle' (no, not that sort of cycle), so I devised a practical experiment for him to do - A couple of cm depth of water with food colouring in a bucket. Sit a clean empty glass jar in the middle. Cover with cling-film, so it is sealled, and weight the middle of the clingfilm, above the jar with a stone. Leave it in the sun for a couple of days - the water evapourates, condenses on the cling-film and runs to the middle where it is weighted, and drips/rains into the jar. Because it is a type of distillation, the water is clear distilled water (assuming everything is clean).  :D



If it ain't broke, fix it 'til it is...

Basil

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Re: Tales from the Wobbly Workshop
« Reply #535 on: 27 June, 2020, 01:07:56 pm »
Which, I believe is how to get a drink in the hot desert.
Make hollow, piss in it. Jar, plastic, stone.
Wait.
Admission.  I'm actually not that fussed about cake.

Re: Tales from the Wobbly Workshop
« Reply #536 on: 27 June, 2020, 01:15:39 pm »
Which, I believe is how to get a drink in the hot desert.
Make hollow, piss in it. Jar, plastic, stone.
Wait.

Would that still work?

Re: Tales from the Wobbly Workshop
« Reply #537 on: 27 June, 2020, 02:35:12 pm »
Absolutely. I'm sure I've read tales of shipwrecked mariners on rafts doing precisely this, but with sea water.
Rust never sleeps

Kim

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Re: Tales from the Wobbly Workshop
« Reply #538 on: 27 June, 2020, 03:20:43 pm »
It works, but you need a lot of surface area to obtain a decent amount of fresh water...

ElyDave

  • Royal and Ancient Polar Bear Society member 263583
Re: Tales from the Wobbly Workshop
« Reply #539 on: 02 July, 2020, 08:09:58 pm »
if you can find any kind of vegetation that works as well, or a very large plastic bag tied around live branches and weighed down at the end to collect the water - remember it for your next x-rated audax
“Procrastination is the thief of time, collar him.” –Charles Dickens

Re: Tales from the Wobbly Workshop
« Reply #540 on: 16 July, 2020, 09:02:59 pm »
The grandsons visited today, and we got a little trike time...  :D



Elliott's new helmet is still a bit too big for him.  ;D




A couple of days ago I took them for a 7.8 mile ride - James on his BMX, and Elliott on a trailer bike.  :smug:
If it ain't broke, fix it 'til it is...

Re: Tales from the Wobbly Workshop
« Reply #541 on: 27 July, 2020, 08:52:35 pm »
You may remember, a page ago, I mentioned a young Norfolk tallbike builder I had heard about. https://tallbikenorfolk.weebly.com/

I have just seen his latest (almost finished) creation - a triple tall BMX. Note the novel chainline, so that all wheels and cranks turn = I haden't seen that before!

https://www.facebook.com/alex.sidney.796/videos/1236547900011084/
If it ain't broke, fix it 'til it is...

Re: Tales from the Wobbly Workshop
« Reply #542 on: 21 September, 2020, 08:55:09 pm »
A local lad posted, on social media, an appeal for old bike bits to make a trailer to transport tools for the gardening and woodworking business he was starting.

As I had an old trailer, built from tower scaffold and wheelchair wheels, that I did not need, I offered it to him.

I also found he needed a bike to tow it with, so found a fly-tipped one and stripped it (to bare metal  :o) resprayed and rebuilt it for him.

He made a wooden box for the trailer, from decking offcuts, and today he sent me a photo of his biggest load so far (I only gave him the bike and new trailer hitch last Sunday!):



 :smug:
If it ain't broke, fix it 'til it is...

Re: Tales from the Wobbly Workshop
« Reply #543 on: 29 November, 2020, 07:05:26 pm »
You may have seen, on the 'Carried on my bike' or 'Caption it' threads, that I carried my scythe back from the allotment (over my shoulder while cycling  ;D).

The reason was that it needed repairing.

I think the scythe came from a skip about 15 years ago - it had a rusted away shaft, and I bent up a heavier shaft to my prefered curve, and made handles and other parts from seat tube clamps and hardwood turned on a lathe for handles.

Part of the blade clamp snapped when I used it a few years ago - I don't often need it on the allotment, but I want it to cut down my mustard 'green manure' before rotovating it in.

I happened to have some aluminium blocks, pre bored at the 25mm diameter that will fit the tube, but I needed to saw them into 2 parts and then sculpt the blade sided 'half' to clamp the blade. Here are the bits of the broken clamp, with the aluminium block sliced across the bore, sawn and chain-drilled to start sculpting the blade 'half' of the clamp



Then I chop with a cold chisel...


...to remove the waste


After cleaning up with a file, it fits


Here's one of the handles using the seatpost clamp from a scrap frame

If it ain't broke, fix it 'til it is...

Re: Tales from the Wobbly Workshop
« Reply #544 on: 29 November, 2020, 07:16:51 pm »
While I had tools out, I did a bit more on a project I have been working on - I hadn't taken many photos up to this point, but I am adding electric power to a previously foot powered device...  ???

I had hole-sawed a 92mm hole, in a 3mm thick steel plate, a couple of days ago, which I needed to deburr and increase by a mm or two, and also tweak the other mounting holes...
(Hammer for scale)

...so that it fits the face of the motor.


Then I drill a 20mm hole, with a step drill (one of the most useful tools I have bought). I need to find or make some 20mm bore washers/spacers before I can get much further.
If it ain't broke, fix it 'til it is...

Re: Tales from the Wobbly Workshop
« Reply #545 on: 29 November, 2020, 07:23:40 pm »
BTW, Yesterday's 'things I have fettled' were:

  • Stripping down, cleaning and much tweaking of the motor, a HO gauge Flying Scotsman (my eldest grandson is obsessed by the Flying Scotsman - and we picked up a bargain loco & carriage set, but they were not in as good condition as they first appeared.)
  • Re-fitting a few panes of greenhouse glazing, including trimming a couple of inches off a 4ft x 2ft reclaimed sheet of perspex to fit...  witha Stanley knife!  :o
If it ain't broke, fix it 'til it is...

Re: Tales from the Wobbly Workshop
« Reply #546 on: 12 February, 2021, 02:53:02 pm »
My eldest grandson is into trains and has a model railway which he has to piece together on the dining room table, and the conncections to the transformer are difficult to connect and come off easily.

So I made him a layout on a board - A repurposed 5ft x 4ft interactive whiteboard, which I 'rescued' from the work skip some time ago.

I got a load of track from someone in the village for £5 and fixed it to the board with very small screws (sold specially for the job - and I used 102 of them!) with some grey matting (free offcuts) to look like ballast and deaden the noise a little.  :)



(The track on the right was rejected  - I used all nickel-silver railled)

To supply power I used a reversable PWM speed control board (just over £5 from ebay), and built it into the panel of the whiteboard, after stripping the original electronics out. Supply to that is from a 12V 'wall-wart' power supply that plugs in the socket on the board.  :smug:





I loaded it onto the back of my son-in-law's truck a couple of weeks ago, to send it over to grandson.  :D

Works okay, but the Flying Scot doesn't like the points sometimes.

Grandson can lean it up against his bedroom wall when not in use, and just has to get it down and plug in when he wants to play with it.

https://youtu.be/FKLKcGIgJ5k
If it ain't broke, fix it 'til it is...

Kim

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Re: Tales from the Wobbly Workshop
« Reply #547 on: 12 February, 2021, 06:30:38 pm »
Not much room for a sleeping audaxer in the middle, thobut.

Re: Tales from the Wobbly Workshop
« Reply #548 on: 01 April, 2021, 07:14:13 pm »
I've not been doing much worth posting recently.  :(

Today I needed a break from reviewing risky cessments, so I had a walk over to the D&T block to make a couple of sporks tools for pricking out seedlings, from an offcut of nice hardwood an ex-student luthier gave us.  :smug:

If it ain't broke, fix it 'til it is...

Re: Tales from the Wobbly Workshop
« Reply #549 on: 10 April, 2021, 09:30:25 pm »
Fings wot I has been making:

I'm getting into the bushcraft side of camping a bit more, so got a bit of leather scavenged from a skip-dumped sofa to make a couple of simple pouches to store fire-starting tinder in (I'll probably replace the drawstrings and toggle with proper leather and horn ones when I get the bits) :  :D


Son-in-law got a branch-holder for cutting logs. It was just some box-section welded together, and I looked some up online. The Makita 'Smart-holder' style looked the best, so I based my homebuilt version on on that.  :smug:


I made a new strawberry bed late last summer, using the base of an old greenhouse frame as the edges. Today I started on a frame to hold netting to keep the birds off - 21.5mm overflow pipe.  ;)
If it ain't broke, fix it 'til it is...