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The Do-It-Yourself Tool Shed Thread vs Duct Tape Fixes EVERYTHING

here is an outfit that has quite specialized and high quality hand tools for woodworking .
storehouse of information for the toolist

http://www.leevalley.com/US/home.aspx

some things are so expensive that i just copy the design and fabricate or scrounge a similar tool .

i have the cheapest dovetail fixture ever sold but get excellent results because i reworked it in order to achieve first degree accuracy. which brings me back to felix's accurate comment about learning from mistakes made in joinery . formerly i made the pins and tails with hand tools, so i am a blaze on the dovetail fixture with my big bosch router.
 
hobhead said:
some things are so expensive that i just copy the design and fabricate or scrounge a similar tool .
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hah, i know exactly what you mean. i hadn't even heard of (or realised i needed) a thing called a depth gauge or ruler fence till i looked through the catalogue from this website:

https://www.rutlands.co.uk/

DK1010_b3.jpg


pure woodworking tool pornography. i've just made my own custom built ruler fence with some stainless steel nuts, bolts and corner plates. still to be squared up and calibrated but it'll do the job!

====

i'm discovering a fundamental property of wood by my (repeated) mistakes. newsflash: it's not metal. it bends. it can be shaped, within reason. you (or rather, I) can obsessively jig up, clamp, mark up, and drill holes in 30 apparently identical pieces of wood. but if you drill an M6 hole in all of them, it doesn't mean you'll get a long M6 bolt to fit through them all perfectly.

long story. :| when i've fixed it i might post a photo, hah. ;)
 
BTW a jigsaw isn't really suitable over the length of that door, unless you go very slowly and have a steady hand. As others have said, rush the jigsaw and the blade will inevitably deform.

I'd get one of these on it:

18653914.jpg


Use the rip guide to maintain a consistent depth. Use a bid of sandpaper to clean the edges.
 
tambourine-man said:
BTW a jigsaw isn't really suitable over the length of that door, unless you go very slowly and have a steady hand.
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i do everything slowly, with a steady hand. ;)

Law of the instrument

wiki said:
The concept known as the law of the instrument, Maslow's hammer, or a golden hammer is an over-reliance on a familiar tool; as Abraham Maslow said in 1966, "It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail."
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\guilty

i don't have a circular saw, or a table saw, or a band saw, an old school jig saw, or even the movie Saw on DVD. but i know i could do a nice job on that with a jig/sabre saw. maybe we should step it up and tell the guy to invest in an industrial planing machine. or perhaps what i probably would have done; which is to have the hinge slots facing the wall. :D
Mora Fiend said:
Where I am from we call that ^ a power saw, just in case we get all tangled up in differential lingo from across the pond =D
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no, i'm sure it's only your mum that calls it that. :D

in other news, i got that design book today, which is excellent. i also just got a Rotring A3 drawing board.

31q9hLZw6yL._SL500_AA300_.jpg


i'm now remembering just how much i loved technical drawing at school. but they didn't have boards like this one in those days; we had to chisel things out of solid granite. this board is a bit of a revelation and i think i'm going to seriously get back into drawing again.
 
felix said:
...or perhaps what i probably would have done; which is to have the hinge slots facing the wall. :D
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lol... then you'd have the slot and hole made by the latchbolt plate showing.
felix said:
i'm now remembering just how much i loved technical drawing at school. but they didn't have boards like this one in those days; we had to chisel things out of solid granite. this board is a bit of a revelation and i think i'm going to seriously get back into drawing again.
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What you gonna draw? Isometric porn? Do share.`

Oh, in related news, I hired a jackhammer on Good Friday and took out the foundations of an old garage in our back garden. Naturally, I'm immensely popular with our neighbours for ruining their glorious long weekend with the monstrous noise those things produce. :D

BEFORE
gardenrenovation1small.jpg


AFTER
gardenrefit005small.jpg
 
Total redesign.

Although that area will probably be paved with either blue slate or Indian sandstone, depending on how competent I am at rendering the retaining walls which will be put in.

Speaking of which, anyone any good at rendering?
 
tambourine-man said:
Total redesign.

Although that area will probably be paved with either blue slate or Indian sandstone, depending on how competent I am at rendering the retaining walls which will be put in.

Speaking of which, anyone any good at rendering?
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Good work on the jackhammering!

If I were you I would go with the blue slate, it really accentuates any greenery that may naturally be around.
 
tambourine-man said:
lol... then you'd have the slot and hole made by the latchbolt plate showing.

What you gonna draw? Isometric porn? Do share.
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Ah, fuck the guy's door. it's not as if it's in our living rooms, so if he's happy so am i. :D

i haven't been drawing too much yet, just a couple of "simple" projects so far. i'm off work with tennis elbow at the moment so i'm having to take it easy with the actual woodwork right now. :X so most of my drawing is just for practice, re-learning what we used to do at school and also learning how to use the new board. i know it's "just a board", but those germans have thought of everything in the design and it's an amazing piece of kit.

my main project right now (and long overdue) is a wee foot-stool measuring 330 x 240, consisting of 38 pieces of wood, 12 M6 x 150 machine bolts, 24 M8 washers, approximately 12 dowel pins, and a massively complicated and time consuming design and manufacture process. thanks to my too tight drilling tolerances, when i assembled the thing (with difficulty) it became a cuboid of pure kinetic energy with all the tension in the wrong places, just waiting to explode outwards. hence my comment about re-drilling all the holes wider, countersinking the tops and bottoms further, and using larger washers. it'll be

i'll post an 'as-built' isometric when i've finished it. :D

other projects are a much simpler shelving unit for the workshop, and i'm also going to design a nice wooden desk tidy.
tambourine-man said:
Total redesign.

Although that area will probably be paved with either blue slate or Indian sandstone
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TOP TIP: when laying paving or building walls, the surface needs to be perfectly flat. you know, flat flat, perhaps like an old garage floor.

OH WAIT =D
 
felix said:
TOP TIP: when laying paving or building walls, the surface needs to be perfectly flat. you know, flat flat, perhaps like an old garage floor.

OH WAIT =D
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Try opening a garage door when there's a stretch of 4cm paving stones infront of it.

OH WAIT :\

Been over the idea of retaining the floor, but it wouldn't work - either the door would need replacing or customising (which I'd inevitably fuck up or cost a fortune) or even with a new door, the exterior floor level would be higher than the interior... which means flood control problems and difficulty with frost heave.

Besides, when the opportunity to mash something up with a jackhammer comes along, you don't question it too much. :D

Oh yeah, do share pictures of your stools. ;) Arf, arf!

I may be tempted to get one of those boards. They do remind me of my school days.
 
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you should have jackhammered 4cm off the bottom of the door instead. or if you insisted on it being a neat straight cut, a chainsaw may have been more suitable. OR to save any of that hard work and avoid flood control issues, simply raising the entire garage by 4cm would have solved all your problems.

damn n00bs, always over-complicating things. ;)
 
Well instead of being in front of a computer all the time I've had the DIY head on since handing over the modstick.

Painting my son's bedroom with the worst bloody paint known to humankind (I'm blaming the wife ;) ) from the the big DIY store where you think it would be decent. 6, yes 6 coats on the one wall & it still looks fucking awful. Time for a new approach in there I think.

The other thing I've been doing is rebuilding my Mum's greenhouse that has fallen into a disgraceful mess. As she is on a tight budget, buying a new wooden one would be out of the question & an Aluminium type is useless next to a harsh sea wind. By the time I removed all the rotten wood & broken glass I was left with a shell of 2 ends & a tiny wall holding them up. I think I've replaced exactly half of the whole damn greenhouse. In hindsight I should have just built a whole new one while I was at it!

I've stood on a nail, put my hand through a pane of glass, both hands are severely splintered with metal from the screws & of course from the wood itself. Tomorrow I have the job of attempting to attach glass to the new framework.

Standing on a nail fucking hurts :(

What's everyone else been up to then?
 
cletus said:
Painting my son's bedroom with the worst bloody paint known to humankind (I'm blaming the wife ;) ) from the the big DIY store where you think it would be decent. 6, yes 6 coats on the one wall & it still looks fucking awful.
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Why, what's wrong with it?

Patchiness? Cracking? Bobbling?
cletus said:
The other thing I've been doing is rebuilding my Mum's greenhouse that has fallen into a disgraceful mess... an Aluminium type is useless next to a harsh sea wind.
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You're supposed to bolt them into the foundation/platform you build them on, otherwise they do tend to become airborne.
 
6 coats sounds like a lack of preparation, haha. reminds me of my former living room that needed about 5 coats of 'one coat' emulsion that looked like mayonnaise. google 'sugar water' and 'elbow grease', cletus. ;)

btw tambo, our mum's former aluminium greenhouse was blown over the garden fence during a severe storm, and it had definitely been bolted onto the foundations. we couldn't speak to her for about a week afterwards, bad times man. :|

i've almost completed a garden bench. lots of finishing to do yet though.
 
^Yeah, I can still hear the scream when she realised what had just happened.

The paint is from B&Q and mainly blue with a hint of silver through it. The wife chose this shit & well you know how it is :\ A couple of years ago the walls were re-plastered (skimmed), they are clean & perfect for painting on. I've painted my fair share of walls, but I'm damned if I can get this paint to go on properly without coming out all uneven. It has eventually settled, but like I said it has taken 5 or 6 coats & I'm quite sure it would like another for good measure.

What design of bench did you go for then?
 
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