The Shed Issue 83 on sale today throughout Australia. Find your nearest stockist here.
https://www.theshedmag.co.nz/home/2018/9/5/find-your-local-australian-the-shed-retailer
Many of the old crafts that had been around for centuries have been almost lost in our modern age. Among them are the crafts of those who used hand tools and tapped into centuries of passed-down knowledge, the blacksmith, the wheelwright and the coachbuilder.
Coachbuilding with wood has been around for more than 500 years. The restoration of vintage cars is helping keep this craft alive in New Zealand—just—and there are only a few people here who still have these skills. One is Neil Carter of Normanby in South Taranaki. He specialises in restoring veteran cars (made before the end of 1918). These vehicles had wooden frames and bodies made by coachbuilders in the days when the horse and carriage ruled the highways.
The toys are made from kiln dried, pine, kindly donated. PVA glue holds everything together. I avoid metal hooks or eyes, which may be unscrewed or cause injury. The toys are undercoated, painted with acrylic paint and finished with a coat of Polycrylic ™which gives a gloss finish for cleaning. I find the Resene™ test pots a worthwhile ‘investment’.
Over the years I’ve tried sails, kites, giant bags, kayaks and surfboards to get hooks out where the fish are. After watching torpedos on the beach, I find it is now obvious that there really is only one way and it requires 12 volts and a motor.
Of course every challenge is only really about what you can learn in the process, so I set about building a kontiki torpedo and winch from scratch for as little as I could. I had to enlarge my capabilities especially in aluminium casting, plastics forming and in electronics.
Entries are open for the Fieldays Innovations Awards, a unique chance for agricultural innovators to test their ideas, gather information, launch products, and make connections.
Award categories include the Prototype Grassroots, for new innovations, the Prototype Established, which recognises product development, Launch NZ, which is for innovations ready to go to market, and International for launching innovations globally
Although daunting at first, it is fairly logical if tackled a small step at a time. The use of a lathe is desirable but with a little lateral thinking it would be possible to make it without one.
First the cylinder is made from a short length of 12 mm round brass rod. Mount this in the three-jaw chuck of your lathe and face off one end. When turning brass it is necessary to grind the tool with a negative rake (see diagram). Brass is extremely brittle and the point of a tool bit with a positive rake would bite and snap off, being thinner and weaker.
In the March/April 2019 Issue 83 of The Shed we get stuck into that huge home job that, when you do yourself, can save you thousands of dollars – house painting.
We talk to to the paint and filling product manufacturers to get all the latest technical info and arm you with advice on how best to undertake this very important part of home maintenance. With the current paints, technology and fillers you will learn techniques and methods that may amaze you.
Originally devised as a plaything for young boys, they quickly became the sort of toy that a lad was only allowed to play with on special occasions. They returned for a brief period of popularity during the 1960s and 1970s but even then were more adornments for a bookcase rather than well-used toys. This was probably due to the exorbitant cost of the product rather than any regard for safety.
One of our favourite jobs here at The Shed magazine is giving stuff away to our loyal subscribers. So here is the lucky winner of our subscription prize in Issue 81, a stunning Charmate Offset Smoker Pack worth $1300, is Dennis Hastie of Taranaki. Congratulations Dennis, time for you to go low & slow cooking.
If you want to get in on our subscriber prize draws head to https://magstore.nz/…/the-shed-magazine-subscription-options to sign up.
I have used a lot of beech for furniture over the years but sadly the quality of what I can now obtain has deteriorated. I now need to spend considerable time selecting the timber at the supplier’s yard. The staff are always accommodating and let me pick through the racks as I gradually load my trailer. The cost of the beech plus the pine for the bottom slats was around $450.
Some time back I built the excellent pizza oven featured in this fine magazine and it provided weeks of building pleasure. We have had many evenings of entertainment where we cook everything in it we can think of (in the learning stages, I use the term “cooking” very loosely).
It was almost a shame to finish it and I I have pined ever since for something like it. There are just so many pizza ovens you can fit in a backyard. As keen try-hard fisherman and someone who lives for spicy food, I wanted to get into smoking fish and salamis as well as cheese, sausages and hams, with taste and preserving the product being the main goals.
An outside fire can be larger than the usual indoor version, though that consumes more wood. But it should have visual appeal and a certain “wow!” factor. I opted to make the opening 700 mm x 700 mm, so I can put on a reasonably chunky piece of ti tree without constant refuelling but also leave a few trees standing on the property. I made the hearth about 600 mm above ground level, as most people will be standing in front of it.
I regretted losing the Dyco as it was quite clear the newly acquired, imported machine I had purchased was nowhere near the quality. I bought the Tanner because I had an idea to build a small vertical slotting machine to cut small keyways and splines inside gears for my old motorcycles. I had made up a rather ugly prototype for a slotter as a proof-of-concept test which seemed to work OK.
But a very good friend of mine had recently built such a unit using an old unwanted drill press so this was the main motivation for this purchase.
This raises the possibility of casting wheels in aluminium. Casting aluminium is not as complicated as it may seem; common sense is the main ingredient. In the case of a tractor or traction engine which has two small and two much larger wheels, the contrast between the sizes is important. Further, the large wheels need to be wide but have thin tapered spokes.
As a passion, my bookmaking is certainly the creative challenge for which I feel I’ve been preparing myself for many years. I still see myself as serving an apprenticeship at my Book Art Studios as there are so many areas of this fascinating art yet to be explored but I will continue to have many more hours following my bliss whilst I’m doing it.
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.
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