Alistair Allan’s Kiwiana sheds in Oamaru

The Shed magazine visits a huge collection of Kiwiana in some old chicken sheds in Oamaru; as featured in Issue 76, January–February 2018.

Get a short tour around these Kiwiana sheds in Oamaru. photography, Derek Golding

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Build your own tinnie

The aluminium runabout – better known as the tinnie – is the quintessential Kiwi bach boat. Most arrive in the backyard direct from the showroom or Trade Me, but Auckland boat designer Jim Pauling has created a new way of getting a tinnie: building it by kitset.
He has several sizes in his range. This one is the baby, the DIYNO 361, at 3.6 metres long. Thanks to improved technology and lower prices for power tools generally, it is much easier for the home handyman to pick up a welder, have a few practice runs on some scrap aluminium, or do a course at night school, and build his own kitset, 12-foot tinnie.
Pauling is a diehard fan of aluminium as a building material. Thanks to CNC (computer numerically controlled) cutters, it can be accurately cut to shape for sale as a kitset, which saves labour and vastly improves the result.

The magic of mud

Christchurch potter Renate Galetzka draws inspiration for her colourful and quirky pots from her daughter’s stint as a circus trapeze artist and the books of Dr Seuss.
“I want to make people smile,” says Renate, whose pots are fanciful but functional, made to be used not left on the shelf. “I make pots to brighten your day every day.”
German-born Renate met her Kiwi husband, Liam, in the Abel Tasman National Park in the 1980s. “I was on an OE and I’m still on an OE,” she declares, and part of that on-going overseas experience included discovering the art of ceramics. She took hobby classes in Christchurch, followed by “work experience” with one of the grand dames of New Zealand pottery, Frederika Ernsten, looking after her gallery in return for lessons. Renate went on to run and teach pottery at the Risingholme Community Centre.

Getting up to speed

As sheddies, we are known to cobble together machines from whatever we have at hand. More often than not these items are less than ideal and a motor of some sort may run at a different speed to what we need. If we are looking to make a spindle moulder, belt sander, garden chipper, wind generator, compressor or similar item then it is likely that some sort of gearing will be necessary to give the right RPM at the business end.
Calculating the sizes of gears, sprockets or pulleys is a relatively simple exercise. Below is an easy reference to save having to work it out from basic principles each time.