The process of making what is commonly known as damascus steel has, in some ways, been a little shrouded in mystery. If you try to make damascus remember it is a process. You may not have instant success but look at what you are doing and try to evaluate what you may change in order to “get it right.”
Getting off road on a motorbike and racing against others on the dirt is an adrenalin sport
and fun activity that’s been enjoyed by many for the last 100 years. It’s nothing new; the thrill of dirt bike racing goes back to before World War I, when motorbikes first became popular.
Many people of the baby boomer generation will recall the freedom kids had in days gone by. You hopped on your bike and headed off to find your mates to explore and have fun. Building huts, playing cowboys and Indians, forming gangs, co making bows and arrows, playing war games, catching tadpoles, climbing trees—the only rule was to be home in time for dinner.
New Zealand’s space programme sounds like an amusing caption or billboard slogan but Rocket Lab’s Peter Beck is absolutely serious about making our small country a leader in the commercialisation of space.
When I was asked to clean out my late father-in-law’s workshop, I knew that it would not be an easy task. My father-in-law was not one to suffer from an iron deficiency and his workshop was proof of the amazing amount of equipment you can fit into an otherwise-ordinary, prefabricated metal garage.
With a gas welding set or your own MIG or TIG welder at home in your workshop or shed, you need to understand gas cylinders and how you need to look after them.
FOR A SPECIAL piece of wood craft in the home, a smoothly finished bowl with its rough natural bark retained on the rim will always have extra appeal. The best timber for this kind of bowl is any fruit tree, the flowering cherry tree, olive tree or any tree with not too thick bark. Pohutukawa is a good wood, but the bark is fragile.
Anyone flying into New Plymouth airport may look twice at a hangar on the western end of the airfield with an unusual tail of a large aircraft poking out. Few would realise what’s within: ZK-PBY, a 1944 Catalina flying boat, the only airworthy one in New Zealand and a remarkable aircraft with a remarkable history.
SOME TIME ago I decided to resurrect an old three-wheel bandsaw from wood-cutting to metal-cutting. This entailed changing the blade and, more importantly, changing its cutting speed. I sat down and worked out a simple system involving the change of a pulley for a larger one.
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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