Lockdown

What do you do with a broken zipper? Especially early in the morning (i.e. around 1am). Here is one way to repair a zip, preserving the latching effect to stop it falling down by itself. The wire rope (from ordinary copper stranded hookup wire) pulls the latching tooth, and the fairlead (made from two very small screws and some more wire soldered in place) converts enough of the tension into downwards force to move the zip. [Read More]

Every project is a prototype, which calls out for a second version avoiding the mistakes of the former. The trick is to give the prototypes away; then one has a legitimate excuse to make another—and one gains an (undeserved) reputation for generosity to boot. After the quick sunrise alarm clock various things happened, including a ’two week lockdown’ to build up capacity in the NHS, which turned into three months. Thus I was stuck in one part of London, and my fiancée in another, and the streets were patrolled by Dobermans with £10,000 fine notices stuck to their teeth. [Read More]

Due to measures to combat the epidemic of bigamous marriages or something of the kind, we ended up having a wedding reception in the garden. Thus we needed tables, and benches, and things of the kind. Time to put the workbench to work. Firstly there was a lorry: Then there was a lot of wood: The short pieces are legs for the benches; the longer will become benches and trestles (and will replace these horrible trestles I made earlier). [Read More]

The first shot at a workbench sat dormant for a fair while. Meanwhile it got cold—very very cold. Then it got wet—very very wet. Then it got hot—very very hot. And how did my nice, carefully chosen unwarped 1" planks look after that? A pretty sorry state. Even the laminated legs had moved slightly (next time for lamination I need more glue). Then I discovered that I could get 6x2s from MKM building supplies. [Read More]

Background This workbench is built almost exactly to a published design and following the videos. One has to buy the videos. This is the first time I have ever done anything like this, and it was a very good idea. Buy them; watch them; copy them. Unless one is very lucky one simply doesn’t get to watch a good craftsman up close very often, but the ability to pause, zoom, replay, and see exactly how to position your hands and body when paring with a chisel, for example, is worth any amount of textbooks. [Read More]

My father’s electric shaver wasn’t holding charge; he asked if I could have a look at it and see if the internal battery could be replaced. Here’s the exploded view: The green battery is a NiMH, not NiCad as I’d expected. I suppose it’s not that old. Which is as well, as I couldn’t find any NiCads in the drawer when hunting around before, and was planning on gutting it and fitting a LiPo battery and tiny charging module. [Read More]