Sean Briggs, Oamaru Stone carver from Shed Issue 75, Nov/Dec 2017. Photographed by Juliet Nichols
24 April 2018
Spend a few minutes with Sean in his mobile carving shed
Spend a few minutes with Sean in his mobile carving shed
Back in early March of 2018 a Sheddie was challenged to rebuild a Johnson 25 HP outboard motor that has been stored as a box of parts for 44 years. A few weeks later…
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.
New Zealand has been slow to adopt the electric bike revolution that is sweeping the globe but a couple of keen Kiwis (and a Canadian) are using their ingenuity to create e-bikes with a difference.
Chris decided the solution was build an outdoor bathroom featuring two baths so he and Meg could both enjoy a long soak together.
If there’s one sort of person that cannot resist a challenge that’s a Kiwi backyard inventor. When a mate sent Dave Hunger an internet photo of a giant wheeled contraption and a challenge to reproduce it, Dave rose to the task.
Don’t try this at home. In the town of Niagara Falls, you are heading along a street. You suddenly overfly a car, then a bicycle travelling along a path near the water. In an instant you are over the lip of Niagara Falls. In a scary moment you find yourself looming over the precipice and then zooming away across the face of the thundering water.
How hard could it be for a couple of seasoned and more-or-less professional Kiwi do-it-yourselfers? When the kitset tin garden shed—3.45 metres long by 1.75 metres wide— arrived in a tidy package after being ordered online, it comprised pre-cut, mostly pre-drilled and numbered parts. All you needed for assembly was a drill and a screw-driver.
When we planned the renovation of our 1986 rental property one of our aims was to use products and materials that were both affordable and kind to the planet, as outlined in earlier articles in this series in The Shed magazine. We found it was possible to do both with little compromise.
Chris Vesper is an Australian tool maker who has enormous respect for his ancient craft. I met him at the Timber and Working with Wood Show in Sydney earlier this year. He makes some of the highest quality tools available anywhere in the world, working from a large shed on his parent’s property in semirural Victoria.
I’ve discovered you don’t have to be New Zealand-born or a male to enjoy this experience, says Natalia.Ever since I have known my husband Nigel, I wanted him to build a small hovercraft for me so that I could drive and handle it myself.
The goal of this Eco Design Advisor series of articles in eleven issues of The Shed magazine has been to show the stages of turning a cold, damp 1986 cottage into a warm dry one, using good eco design principles. We wanted to convert the cottage from a mouldy dump into a bright, healthy home that would need little maintenance for the next five years
Stephen Snedden has been described as the inventor’s inventor and on meeting him it’s not hard to see why. He has an infectious enthusiasm, a can-do attitude and a willingness to share his knowledge.
A natural bent for engineering made the transition from farming to gunsmithing easy for Invercargill gunsmith Nelson Collie. It was a career change that has earned him and his business, Status Guns and Engineering, an international reputation for innovation and high-quality workmanship.
Sounds of grinding, sanding and sawing at 292 Wicksteed Street announce that work is in full swing at the Whanganui Men’s Shed. Through the open door, a visitor can see men bending over machines, cutting and turning various lengths, shapes and colours of wood. There’s an airbrushing of dust and the scent of freshly worked timber.
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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