One step up from home brewing your own beer is distilling your own spirits, whether whisky, vodka or a liqueur.
It’s okay to do this by law in New Zealand at home and for personal use although there are restrictions in Australia and many other countries
Making a hammer head is a project not really worth doing financially, given the cost of a handle alone vs. a new hammer and how easy it is to get an existing hammer and re-forge it to suit your special needs.
Having said that, mere project economics never stopped a true Sheddie.
Great news for all our Australian Shed readers, the Jan/Feb Issue 88 is now on sale nationwide.
Click on this link to see what’s in this issue https://the-shed.nz/home/2019/11/27/the-shed-januaryfebruary-2020-issue-88-in-shops-now
Down the garden and over the lawn
Pop wonders off each day
Unlocks his shed and opens the door…
This easily made set of drawers may be just the answer in your home workshop and it can be made in a day. I have seen many versions of this set over the years and, because of its simplicity, it is easy to make the size and number of drawers to suit your particular requirements.
Enjoy this short video of our first upcycling project in The Shed. From Issue 87, upcycling a milliampere meter.
The thought of having an electric bike is very tempting and makes the idea of reaching that café far more appealing but the cost of replacing your bike has you thinking twice about making the jump.
Besides being a bit dusty you have a good bike that cost a few dollars in its day and it seems a shame to banish it to the corner of the shed forever. What if you could turn your bike into an electric bike without breaking the bank?
Philip Solomon has years of experience putting up large sheds and his top tip is that shed aesthetics are important.“A lot of people just focus on what they want to put in the shed until it goes up and then they say, ‘Oh, I don’t like that’,” he says.
There are several New Zealand-designed and created fishing kontikis on the market but when I thought about having one, I wasn’t going to buy it.
I had the ability, so I did what any good Kiwi would do, I decided I would make one myself.
The metal-based hand plane must be one of the most enduring and useful tools in the kit of any aspiring woodworker.
Those of us who take the hobby a little more seriously will have several of them and we will probably argue that we use them all. I have six or seven but have never bought one.
When I first looked at building a tipping trailer, I wondered whether I would be building a trailer with a hydraulic cylinder under it, or fitting a hydraulic cylinder under a trailer. After due consideration, I realised that a trailer is a trailer, regardless of the frills.
As a project, a weather station is a great one for beginners and advanced woodworkers alike. It can be as simple as taking a really attractive piece of timber, sanding and finishing it to a high degree (even leaving the edges natural) and attaching one or more brass instruments to the surface.
A bench needs clamps, a second pair of hands to hold the work still and stable.
Traditionally, woodworkers have used a holdfast and the most popular of these was the Record holdfast, now sadly out of production.
David Thompson is a builder. When he wanted a new shed big enough to fit a car hoist you’d imagine that he would knock one up himself. Not so.
The balisong, also erroneously called the butterfly knife, has been around since approximately 1200 BC where it played a part in the Filipino martial art form, Escrima.
Although some commercially available ones have been around for many years, they never really caught on until the 1970s.
I know one knife-maker in NZ who makes balisongs exclusively. The reason for the balisong’s popularity: four pins, two handles, one blade. No springs, screws, rivets.
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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