It started with a teddy bear, then an American Greyhound bus, a wind-up Sherman tank and an aeroplane. Alastair Allan held on to his toys long after others would have put them aside. He’s still got them, along with several thousand other items that he has bought or acquired over the past 70 years or so. He declares he is holding on to the past for the future to tell the story of how people lived in North Otago as far back as 150 years ago.
When life deals you lemons, make lemonade: a business collapse led John to build a new, bigger business based on his passion for motorcycles
“I really want an old dairy factory”– that’s what John thought when contemplating the move from Katikati to Taranaki a few years ago.
He sat down after his divorce and thought: “What do I need for the rest of my life?
“Well, I need a shed, a bed in the corner, and a place to stuff around with my motorbikes.”
John’s search took him all over the North Island; he was looking for something that was cheap enough. It didn’t have to be flash, as he wanted a few bob to help his kids to get on the property ladder as well as to be able to follow his passion for building and customising motorbikes – something that he had been doing for a long time.
An old garage in Patea came into the picture but, although it met all the criteria, it became too complicated to purchase. Then an acquaintance told him of a house he had for sale in a small town a little further up the coast. In the end, that turned out to be the perfect location.”
Kaizen is Japanese for a philosophy of continuous improvement, or working methodically seeking to achieve small, incremental changes in the process of improving. This term has been particularly championed by Toyota Motor Corporation as a process to facilitate change within that organisation.
For me, it epitomises my woodworking journey since retirement. I had dabbled in bigger stuff—from building and construction to boat-building (three launches) and fitting out—as sidelines and sanity savers during my years in corporate life.
But when I turned to small and delicate it necessitated a rethink. Thus “kaizen,” which seems to have been driving incremental changes in what and how my projects have evolved.
Broken blades, tired tools, worn washers, grimy gears. These are sorry sights for most sheddies, but for Bruce Derrett they are the treasures of his trade. The Motueka metal artist combines his skill wielding a MIG welder with a highly fertile imagination to turn other people’s junk into quirky creatures, funky furniture, and striking sculptures.
Bruce, who ironically failed metal work at school, has always had an eye for mechanical bits and pieces. “As a kid I was always pulling things apart, like clocks and radios. It used to really frustrate my mum,” he says. Now he puts things back together again, albeit it in a very different form.
While laser cutters are now practical for home-build projects, they are not something that everyone will want to run. They take up bench space, need care and feeding, get expensive in large calibres, and if you don’t use one that often you might well be better off letting a company like Wellington-based Ponoko cut things for you.
Ponoko stock a wide range of materials and are experienced with using their laser cutters on them. Handy, but scarcely unique given the number of engineering outfits that are out there that’ll do pretty much the same thing.
Archery is a satisfying sport that has its roots fixed in the primal skill of hunting. As a woodworker it is an added bonus that you can make at least part of your own bow yourself. A bow like the one in this project is called a recurve and consists of a handle, or riser, two limbs (the flexible parts that bend), a string and an arrow rest.
This simple and effective rebar anchor is perfect for small boats and kayaks and is the result of welding $30-40 worth of materials. If you are a small boat and kayak enthusiast, fabricator or just want to learn some new metalwork skills, this two-hour project will be great for you; it needs few welding skills. Remember that the construction is modular and can be made to fit your needs.
With a net weight of only 7 kg, the anchor will not weigh down a boat or kayak. Anyone can pull it up, but it will still catch the seabed.
I just love nosing around other people’s workshops to see what they are making and what gear they have, and I’ve just had the special opportunity to look at a manufacturing workshop that was about to be sold up and, as a bonus, learn about its history.
Macdonald Refrigeration surely has a place in Auckland’s heritage as a pioneer in its field. The factory has been closed for some time now and it has been hard for the family to let go of all the gear, but it is filling a lot of valuable space.
A ministry of sound
An under-the-radar icon of New Zealand music history tells how it all happened
Larry Killip’s love of playing music dates back to 1966, when he first jammed rhythm and blues with schoolmates in a band called the Zarks.
Since then, he has played in various iterations of that band; performed solo at the Nambassa festival to a crowd of 30,000 right before the headline act, Little River Band; been featured on the compilation album 20 Studio One Hits Volume 2; released seven albums and plenty of singles of his own; made appearances on Happen Inn, Telethon, Shazam, Drop of Kulcha, and Radio with Pictures TV shows; mastered the first two albums by Indie rock darlings, The Beths; and performed a medley of his best-known advertising jingles on the TV show 7 Days. With more than 500 jingle writing credits to his name, Larry laughs when he says he is “Possibly the most famous person that you have never heard of”.
Over boats, cars, trains and everything else in scale-model construction, I have chosen aircraft. Flying is super-exciting and heart-stopping…for everyone. My flying skills move between non-existent and highly incompetent, but I manage to get by. I enjoy the winter days and summer nights in my workshop building them, either from a kit or from scratch from a plan. In summer, during the better flying months, I repair the ones that partly survive.
The first thing you need is a workshop, preferably with enough stud height to hang the planes up. You need plenty of light and you can’t have enough work benches. I have miles of small tools, all available from the big hardware stores, and I use a small drill press, bandsaw, coping saw, belt and disc combo sander, plus the various drills, rotary tools etc.
When Des and Kath Thomson decided to take to the road in their retirement, they wanted a campervan that was comfortable. They didn’t want to be clambering up ladders, tangoing at tea-time in too-narrow aisles, or struggling to turn tables into beds at night. But nor did they want to trundle around the countryside in a cumbersome mobile mansion.
They wanted a small, manoeuvrable vehicle that had masses of space inside. Space for everything, including the kitchen sink plus another in the bathroom, a separate shower, toilet, cooker, microwave, barbecue, table and chairs, wardrobe, drawers, hot and cold water on tap, plenty of storage…oh, and a queen-size bed.
Gary Wells has a shed that isn’t quite your normal sheddie bloke’s shed. It is still a place of work but a recent extension, after a quick clean-out, now doubles as a well-appointed entertainment area complete with bar and luxurious sofas which Gary made from the backs of two Ford cars. It could also be the old 1950s petrol station at Makarewa, once a small township and now incorporated into Invercargill to the north. A quick glance around Gary’s shed at the old-style petrol bowsers, the weather-beaten, corrugated iron wall, advertising placards and oil dispenser puts you back in the days when petrol was actually served to customers.
If you have followed our Metalworking Lathe 101 series in The Shed magazine, you will have a grasp of the basics, so here are some helpful tips to improve your lathe experience and make those projects a bit easier to do.
Quite often the material or item we need to hold in the chuck is delicate, either due to a fine finish that we do not want to put chuck jaw marks on or due to it being thin walled. For jobs with a surface finish that you need to protect it is handy to have some strips of aluminium to put between the chuck jaws and the job material. These are mostly used when holding in a 4 jaw chuck as the job will need to be “clocked up” using a dial indicator to get it running true.
The thickness of the aluminium strips cannot be relied on to be consistent as they squish up a bit with the tightening of the chuck jaws, so when using a 3 jaw chuck the auto centring effect is not so good.
These tips are a random collection of thoughts that I have grouped under the classification of things that relate to working at a bench using hand tools, rather than using a lathe, mill or other machine tool. So if you have only a workbench with some hand tools in your shed, this is meant to be useful for you too.
The exact origins of metal spinning are unknown but the craft can be dated back to ancient Egypt where examples of spun vessels have been found. Metal spinning today differs little from the past with the only real advance being that an electric motor is used to drive the chuck instead of manpower or water power.
Before the advent of power presses, metal spinning was used to make almost all round sheet metal objects such as pots, pans, lampshades and wheel rims.
The principle of metal spinning is simple: a disc of metal is clamped between the tailstock and a former or mandrel. The disc is spun and the operator then uses a lever to manually work the metal down onto the mandrel. The process helps maintain the structure of the material and does not stress it, resulting in a stronger and more stable product than if it was pressed.
While metal spinning by hand does not generally alter the thickness of the material, hydraulic-powered tools can be used to flow-form products making sections thinner where required.
The Shed magazine is eclectic, informed, and always fascinating. Aimed at those with a few tools and perhaps a few clues: this is the magazine for real sheddies.
Packed with ideas, projects, advice, and peeks into other people’s sheds providing inspiration, ideas, and techniques, or just for the sheer enjoyment of the sheddie’s endless inventiveness, The Shed is the project enthusiast’s bible.
Sign up here to The Shed monthly email newsletter for exclusive reader offers.
Sign up here to The Shed monthly email newsletter for exclusive reader offers. For signing up, we’ll send you a free copy of The Shed, just simply put your postal address in the form.