Workbench

Moving is not much fun. Moving pianos is even less fun: you have all the difficulty of moving a 300kg object coupled with the worry that you’ll twist it out of shape, drop it, strain it, or just shake it too much. Moving, however, just round the corner—700yds, according to Google—is at least easier than moving halfway round the world. But moving a piano 700yds is not apparently any easier than moving it 300 miles: you can’t wheel it, not on those little coasters, or even on a furniture dolly. [Read More]

I have a piano to tune. And also to restore: a few hammer shafts to bend, hammers to file, a bit of crud to clean out, bridle straps to replace, etc, etc. The piano cost £40 from Ebay and is in remarkably good nick, and any piano is better than none! But an out of tune piano is no good. Now students, I feel, should not really spend money having their pianos tuned—at least, not students of Theology. [Read More]

One expects a student’s life to have a certain ascesis to it. One, for instance, does not buy rings for one’s napkin, one makes them. And so I procured some cord (the seller considered me carefully and then said that I had a face which permitted me to indulge in sailing, which in turn justified buying cord to tie knots—‘Sailors fiddle’, she said approvingly; though I cannot play the violin). And I procured a helpful video on the tying of 3-lead 8-bight Turks Heads, because I can never remember any of these fancy knots. [Read More]

About five years ago now I stopped dreaming of a proper bench vice and built one from some old oak kitchen doors I rescued from a skip, an old oak drawer, and long M6 bolts. Some day if I find the pictures I might write it up as an example of how not to do it: I dovetailed the two runners on in opposite directions and a whole host of other things. [Read More]

FeCl3 is that stuff we use to etch circuit boards; apparently there are other uses for it too. It etches most things, including, it would seem, the lid of the jar I kept spent etchant in, the M10 studding on the bench underneath, and most surprisingly for me—for my chemistry is rather rusty—the plastic cap of the clamp on the shelf in front of it. Here’s the damage control: Ferric Damage: it really does etch. [Read More]