Tabla de contenidos para No 105 November - December 2022 en The Shed

It’s funny what you keep from your parents and grandparents, isn’t it? Sometimes it is the oddest things that keep their memory alive for you for the rest of your own life. I have a bread knife and a few plastic containers of my parents that remind me of them daily — no shed projects from my father, unfortunately; he just wasn’t that way inclined. I was lucky in that I had a best mate who was an apprentice mechanic. We used to pull engines out of cars regularly and fiddle with them, so that taught me some workshop skills. There wasn’t anything we were afraid to have a crack at fixing on those ’40s and ’50s cars in our possession back then. As sometimes happens in The Shed, we…

What’s happening online at the-shed.nz? Every week we upload new content onto The Shed website to add to the hundreds of articles and videos already on the site for readers to discover, learn from, and enjoy. Some uploads of the past few months include: Learn the skills to weld with LPG the-shed.nz/welding-with-lpg/ Perfect timing for summer: how to build a portable hibachi BBQ the-shed.nz/build-a-portable-barbeque/ Build a coffee table with a distinctive top the-shed.nz/create-a-coffee-table/ Read all about a global survey on the development of the Internet of Things (IOT) the-shed.nz/element/…

To help you make your painting projects easier, we’ve asked the Resene experts to share some of their top tips: Use a paint pot Yes, we know it’s tempting to just paint direct out of the paint container, but did you know that every time you dip your brush back into your paint you are also bringing contamination and bacteria from the surface you’re painting back into the paint. The best idea is to tip the paint you plan to use into a smaller Resene paint pot and paint from there. This will keep the paint in the original can in mint condition, so if you do find you have some leftover and want to save it up for other paint jobs later, it will last in good condition much…

No more bad vibrations Enjoy smooth, flawless performance with the wide range of anti-vibration mounts from Hi-Q Components. Manufactured from rubber and zinc-plated steel, the quality range includes male and female threaded mounts in a variety of metric thread sizes, from M4 to M16. The female and male antivibration mount sizes range from M4 at 15mm diameter x 15mm high through to M16 at 100mm diameter x 60mm high. Hi-Q has four threaded types readily available from stock — male/male, male/female, female/female, and a tapered mount with male thread. For further information, contact Hi-Q Components on sales@hiq.co.nz, free phone 09 415 3333, or visit hiq.co.nz. No more gaps All those annoying little gaps in kitchens and bathrooms that can be a host for nasties — like mould and water build-up…

As I grow older I’m disappointed by the increasing proliferation of the throwaway society. We have been conditioned to believe that the things we buy all have inbuilt use-by dates. Everything is built to a price with the implicit expectation it will not last. Corners are continually cut to save on materials and production time, and we’re expected to always seek the newest incarnation of the products we purchase. This trend pervades almost everything we buy from clothing and tools to white goods and toys. I’m cynical enough to realise I have no chance of stemming this sinister tide — repeat consumption is the lifeblood of any manufacturer. There is little profit in selling a product only once to a customer in their lifetime. The goal is to have the…

In person, Steve’s mild-mannered countenance seems at odds with the loud and often showy world of motorsports. It is his contributions to the design, engineering, and performance of two-wheel and four-wheel vehicles, on and off track, that speak volumes. Steve’s virtuosity with metal is legend among motoring enthusiasts and racing professionals around the world and, after six decades in the trade, he is still a go-to guy for out-of-the-box thinking and superior craftsmanship. His output has been prodigious; his innovations groundbreaking; his production values and eye for detail next level. Incredibly, most of his work has been conjured, beaten, and bent with ‘basic tools’ — an indispensable 1920s lathe, a homebuilt press, and an ancient wheeling machine — from a modest shed he once shared with his family’s horses, on…

To borrow a line from Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows, “messing about in boats” is a universal pastime, regardless of gender, age, or place in the world. While primarily aimed at mariners, land-borne sailors are not to be excluded, as scale comes into this as well — along with vision. This last attribute has led the Christchurch Model Yacht Club to some interesting adventures, the most impressive being Project X — the sailing of a restored Highlander A class yacht across Cook Strait. Proposed by the late Euan Sarginson — a photographer, model enthusiast, and sailing master — to celebrate the club’s centenary, the event took place on 22 March 1998. Despite being followed by a small shark and eventually having to be hoisted back on to the accompanying…

Already having shouted myself a decent skill saw, a Paslode framing nailer, a Hitachi battery drill+impact driver, and a welding machine from the two garage builds, I now needed a decent drop saw. No problem. However, I also needed an additional ‘something’ to cut the 8x6-inch American logs cleanly in one cut. No drop saw was big enough. So, I had the bright idea of getting a 300mm Hitachi metal cut-off saw, popping on the biggest (fire) wood saw blade I could get, 405mm, and using that — health and safety were always involved, of course. I had to weld a new guard for it. Even with that on, it’s an animal when you pull the trigger! As a former skydiving instructor, I do like a bit of excitement and…

In Part One we created a 17mm A/F, ½-inch drive deep socket. This Part Two shows how to use the work already done to create a slightly different socket. This is one of the advantages of digital drawing. There is no need to start from scratch. By modifying an existing file we can quickly create similar, but slightly different parts. If changes to a part need to be made, then it is easy too. No rubbing out required! The objective, for this article, is to change the socket already created so we have a new 12-point (or double-hex) version. Once the change is made we can save the file as a different part. Then there will be two digital drawings on our file — both the same size sockets, but…

Don has been quietly working away in his spare time for 15 years, pursuing his hobby of finding and restoring rare military vehicles. For most of that time, few people were aware of the steadily growing collection of vehicles in the sheds behind his Timaru home, or the dedication that has gone into restoring them to their prime. Don had been working away so quietly that when his collection was revealed at its first public showing in Timaru, other collectors were amazed. Don chuckles at the memory. He knew a few of his fellow collectors, who had no idea about some of the vehicles he had or where he had found them. Several times they asked, almost incredulously, where this or that vehicle had come from. The cat’s out of…

With the relaxation of Covid rules and the abandonment of the traffic light system, we are seeing the lathes, drills, saws, and routers getting back up to full noise in the nation’s Men’s Sheds. The president of the Menzshed New Zealand national body, Trevor Scott, says he is currently working with four groups aiming to get new sheds up and running, two in the North Island and two in the South. Membership numbers Trevor says “everything was on hold” during Covid times but he fully expects to see membership back where it was in pre-Covid times as people get used to things being back to normal — and to see the number of sheds being set up getting back to normal; that’s about eight to 10 new sheds a year.…

My son Bodhi and I recently became the most admired grandfather/uncle combo on earth by building my grandson his own, custom-made gaming computer. Charlie had saved $1000 and was ready to buy his first gaming computer, which would open the way for a whole level of games not playable on a Playstation or Xbox. Sadly, Charlie wasn’t even half-way there. A new one (and there are good reasons not to buy second-hand) would cost more than $2000. I knew that I could put one together out of new components for considerably less than that. Well, good for me, electronics whizz that I am. Except I’m not. It’s true: it is perfectly feasible to put together a high-performing gaming computer in a hand-made case without knowing the first thing about computers.…

Sometimes there are no major projects to report between magazine deadlines; life, routine maintenance, and other things get in the way. The past couple of months have been such a time, but I’ve also been doing something I’m not very good at: letting go. I’m damned good at collecting; not so good at letting go. Starting the ball rolling It started when number two son wanted a bench grinder, of which I have two. One is the double-ended standard affair I inherited from Dad. The other I inherited from him, too, but much earlier. Dad cobbled it together from a piece of junked machinery from the nearby woollen mill, when he was unable to afford to buy one. It features loose ball bearings with adjustable cups, like those old-school bikes…