Rust reference

Today I am sitting here feeling sorry for myself as both Sue and I are suffering from a stinking cold. It always seems to happen to us as soon as we get a chance to relax. In the past, it would be because we would work all year and as soon as we took the foot off the pedal, to wind down for Christmas and new year, we would catch something. Last year we had a busy year and we also hosted a family gathering on the 30th of December, so we had been full on for a few weeks. On new years eve, I sat down and said to Sue that we can now relax for a bit before getting on with the new workshop. That was it, almost immediately the nose was running and the coughing started. I think we are over the worst now, and work will continue with the garden buildings next week, weather permitting.

For now, I have been keeping busy doing my second favourite thing, research. For a while now I have been thinking about doing a spot of plastic scale modelling. Years ago, as a teenager, I was very keen. In fact my first job, after leaving college, was working for a publisher who published a model magazine. 

Looking at the the current model scene, things are very different now compared to my active days, fifty years ago! Today it is more about the painting than the modelling. There is a kit available for most subjects and with the mass of after-market accessories available, most things are catered for. Take a look on Youtube to see some remarkable creations in paint. Some of the rust effects look fantastic, but there seems to be one thing missing to me - they are flat. Take a look at the picture of a container below. The paint is flaking around the the rust and leaving a raised edge.      

Real rust!

An old-school method of doing this is to use salt as a mask. The model is painted in a rust colour first, and then the salt is applied damp in mounds. This is left to dry before spraying with the final finish, building it up around the salt. Once dry the salt can be carefully removed leaving the topcoat gently lifting around the rusted area. Today's chipping and weathering effects can be added to enhance the look. I intend to explore the art of 'grot' modelling soon. I will post the results here.

Ralph.  

Time to revive this old blog...

The past few years have been nothing like I had expected them to be, when we left London, nearly five years ago, but now I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Very soon the new workshop will be up and the journey can continue. 

Where does the time go? Does it really go faster the older you get? These are not questions of fact, merely questions based on conjecture. I am sitting here on the North Kent coast just short of five years after leaving the house we lived in for over 40 years, in an area I had lived in since I was born, 63 years earlier. That time seems to have meandered along from one year to the next in a sedate orderly fashion, punctuated with one Christmas after the other. 

We moved here to Herne Bay in June 2019. Two months later, my mother joined us. This had always been the intention, but just not so soon after moving in. She had injured her hand rather badly in the infamous hand blender incident, giving a whole new, and unintended, interpretation of the machine's name.

As it turned out, it was just as well she had decided to stay with us, as a few months later we were in the grips of the first Covid-19 lock-down. Since then the world, well at least my world, has completely changed. Sue and I are now retired, and yes, the fast cars have even given way to a Volvo estate, our second one! We are now officially a couple of old fuds. We have even been known to fall asleep on one of the benches for 'old people' to sit on and look out to sea. The problem is, my brain still has me down as a thirty-something.

I can't believe I have not had a workshop for over four years. The old one is still in bits and will be used for other things as we managed to acquire a very nice log cabin that will make an excellent workshop, albeit slightly smaller than the one we had in London. This is not a problem as we have built another shed that will be used as a store for all the stuff that used to clutter up the old workshop. Another building will be a machine shop and house a couple of new-to-us machines we picked up just before Christmas, last year when we got involved in a house clearance - we only went there to collect a few bricks... But that is another story.

With no workshop to house the tools and stock, stuff has been in storage all over the place, some of it is miles away. I can't wait to get my stuff back in one place. At the moment I can't find half of the tools I want and the rest are buried in awkward places. Their retrieval usually resulting in a cascade of boxes and some expression of frustration along the lines of "Oh dear, what a nuisance" or words to that effect. 

Remote working has been all that has been possible. Most of that has been mending things rather than creating anything.     

Ralph.

 

A few weeks ago, I bought a bike...

I had always said that I was going to buy a bike once we moved out of London. The bike I purchased was a cheap one and is excellent for just getting about, but it has a few issues. Not least of all, the tyres. Although they looked alright when I bought it, once they were inflated to the recommended pressure, they showed visible signs of being perished. I also knew it had been standing for a while, outside, by the look of it, but for what I paid for it, I was happy.

So now came the quest to tidy it up and check it out. The first thing I noticed was the lack of traditional old nuts and bolts. Although this bike is by no means new, it is getting on for, if not already, twenty years old, it is totally devoid of familiar fixings. My old dog-bone shaped 'universal' cycle spanner is now far from universal, in fact, I don't think there is anything I can use it for. Mind you, the last time I used it was getting on for fifty years ago. Things have moved on a bit since then.

Deep breath, time to spend some money. I bought some new tools. Having committed myself to do a fair bit of peddling around, I needed something that I understood and could fix if it went wrong. A bit of an investment on new tools is not something I needed to think about for too long, after all, for me, part of the fun of owning an old bike is restoring and improving it. A bit of a clean up and adjustment resulted in a nice tidy, non-descript bike.

That'll do, at least for now...

While looking for some new tyres for my bike, I came across a listing, on a local social media selling site, for a couple of bikes that had been stripped, with the intention of combining parts from the two, to make a single hybrid bike. This plan had caused the owner more problems than he could solve and so, decided to sell the lot and move on. After some negotiation, I bought the whole lot for fifty quid. Now the fun begins...

What a lot of bits!

What have we here? The answer to that is akin to a jigsaw, or rather two jigsaws, mixed up in the same box with a few bits missing. The bike at the back is an aluminium-framed hybrid that was being stripped for parts to fit on the blue frame. The blue frame is entirely devoid of any marks or maker's name. One wheel had been fitted with a new road tyre, the other tyre had not been fitted. The other bits were supplied in bags. This was going to be a bit of a challenge.

As I said earlier, this is my first delve into this new world of bike fettling. Last time I worked on a bike, I was still at school. Measurements were in inches and bikes had nuts - not hex-head bolts, holding them together.

For some reason, both bikes had their front wheel attached. My first job was to refit the rear wheels, temporarily, so the bikes would be easier to move about. Simple task, or so I thought. It was at this point, the reality that my cycle engineering was fifty years out of date. Words like 'Skewer' were just not part of my vocabulary back then, at least not related to my bike. For those of you who don't know either, the 'skewer' is the name of the rod that passes through the hollow axle when a quick-release system is employed to hold the wheels in the frame.

The grey bike has the aforementioned quick-release wheel fixing. Once I had worked this out and discovered most of the bits were missing, I managed to buy a set of new skewers, complete with fittings, and refit the wheel, albeit without the chain and derailer. The blue bike wheel had no nuts, so another trip to the local bike shop produced a couple of second-hand nuts. Now I could refit the wheel, once I fitted the tyre.

Another new discovery is that these bike tyres are directional. They need to be fitted the correct way around. I now need to remove the rear tyre and refit it. I thought I had it the correct way around, I must have turned it while struggling to fit it. I am getting better at it and some of the old 'tricks' are coming back to me.

The blue bike is getting there - slowly

The strange folding mountain bike is coming on. The road tyres have been fitted, although I have yet to turn that rear one around. I have been trying to work out where the cables go and I think I am almost there I just need to get to grips with the brakes and derailers.

As for the grey hybrid bike, I need to use some percussive maintenance on the handlebar stem. It seems that it has corroded and jammed itself in the fork tube. I may have to cut/drill it out. This is no sacrifice as the front clamping plate is also missing. I might as well replace the whole thing as getting a clamping plate will probably be nigh-on impossible.

More on the bikes to come...

Ralph. 

A few weeks on...

The move to the coast has been an experience, to say the least. Just don't ask me to do it again. Since we have been here, all sorts of things have happened to slow us down. Finally today, four weeks after the official completion, we are starting to see the light, literally.

I was looking for a comfortable life. I had all sorts of illusions of moving in, unpacking a few boxes and getting on with living our new life. That turned out to be a fantasy that was just not going to become a reality. Apart from the fact we were moving from a large Victorian terrace in London to a smaller Victorian house that has been modernised, it is also a fair bit smaller than we are used to. Cupboard space is at a premium as the kitchen has far fewer units than we had, and we are a whole utility room short. This we knew about, but it has been much harder to fit it all in.

Logistics aside, there are all the niggly little things that need attending to. Our London home had been two flats when we bought it in the 1970s. Over the years we completely re-plumbed and re-wired it. We also installed the central heating system. If anything went wrong, I knew where the problem was likely to be. There was not a pipe or wire that I had not had a hand to over the years. Consequently, I knew where everything was, and if something stopped working, I could locate the source/cause quickly. Not so here.

A bit of a shaggy dog story...

Over the first few days, we were getting used to where the light switches are, and there was a light over the stairwell that was out, and we could not work out what switch was supposed to turn it on and off. We eventually worked out which switches were supposed to operate it and decided the lamps must have blown, one at a time, and as it is in an awkward position, over the stairwell, the previous owners had not got around to changing them. Removing the bulbs proved this to be wrong as all the lamps were in good condition. At this point, I decided to remove the fitting and fit a temporary pendant fitting and a new lamp. I could see nothing wrong with the original fitting, and it proved positive for all continuity checks.

By this time, a day had passed, and no satisfactory conclusion was within sight. The switches were the next suspect. At first glance, nothing untoward there. The next port of call is the wiring. One of the things I liked about this house when we viewed it, was the fully boarded loft. Standing in the attic looking at the tongue and grove flooring panels, I was now not so keen. To get to the wiring of this light, I was going to have to lift half a dozen boards. An hour later, I was looking at the wire coming through the ceiling from the light fitting. The wiring meandered all over the place with long loops of wire here and there, apparently intended for other fittings, put in by the first-fix electricians before all the ceilings had been boarded during the renovation. Following the wire around the loft, it eventually disappeared into the void over the back-extension, of which there is no access to.

Now, hot and somewhat bothered that such a trivial thing was causing so much grief, I retired to the kitchen for a cuppa and a think. Not wanting to get involved in cutting holes in the ceiling in the first week of occupancy, I was searching for another course of action. It was then I realised that the upstairs switch to this two-way circuit was in fact not wired as a two way, but it is a double-pole switch, wired as a crossover. For those not so versed in lighting circuits, that means it is not two way, but three. The search was on for the third switch.
Outside the bathroom is a downlighter that did not work either along with a dimmer switch on the wall. I had just assumed this was only a single light and switch. As this is in the back extension, maybe this is where the wires are running, and this downlighter is not independent, but on the same circuit as the fitting over the stairwell. Removing the switch-plate confirmed my suspicion. The switch and downlighter was indeed part of the circuit I was investigating.
What's more, there was a wire off in the back. Replacing the wire in its correct position still did not rectify the position. Before I committed myself to install a new loft hatch into the ceiling of the back extension. The dimmer switch was reading continuity on both positions when it should read open in one position.  I swapped out the dimmer for a conventional two-way switch-plate.

Not believing this would sort the problem, it could not be that easy, I closed the breaker in the consumer unit, and then there was light! It was the switch all along. Thirty-six plus hours after starting to tackle this problem, It was sorted, and all for the cost of a cheap switch-plate (45p on special offer from Homebase - two-pack for 90p). All I had to do then was to relay the loft floor!

Cooking - or not!

The saga of the light is just one example of how silly little things can escalate into significant upheaval, especially when the layout of the house is unfamiliar. The more irritating things are those that directly impact on our day-to-day living. The cooker in the kitchen looked cheap and nasty, but we assumed perfectly serviceable. Nothing was mentioned on either of our two visits to the house. If there is a cooker there, I expected it to at least work.

On the first day, I tried to light one of the hob burners. It lit, but as soon as the igniter was released, it went out. Even prolonged ignition did not allow the burner to stay alight. It was apparent to me that the thermocouple needed replacing.  Had it have been just the one at fault I might have considered having it replaced, for the time being. We had always intended to replace the cooker at some point, just not straight away. As it turned out only two of the five burners actually lit. One of those was the wok-burner, and the other was the fast-boil burner.

After a few days of sticking everything to the bottom of the pan, we decided to call it a day on the cooker and order a new one straight away. Two weeks later it arrived, that was Friday of last week. I know from experience, the cooker we bought was going to be heavy as I had fitted the older model twenty years ago to our kitchen in London, with the help of a qualified gas engineer. There is no way I could have done it these days, especially as I have pulled a muscle in my right arm while moving a steel plate that is part of a lathe I have just bought.

Now we can eat!

Now the cooker is in, we can start cooking again. We love cooking and having to eat out most of the time for the past few weeks has been a chore, aside from being expensive, even if it has only been lunchtime at the local cafe.

I could go on about all the unexpected niggles in and around the house, but that would probably give the wrong impression. I am really pleased, we did it. Moving out of London to the coast is something I though I would never do, that's for old people... Wait a minute, maybe I am old!

Due to all the things that have had to be fixed and the odd acquisition, work on the new workshop has been delayed. That is no bad thing as it has given us time to reflect on how we actually achieve our goal. Since moving here, we have had the opportunity to purchase a new (to us) lathe that came with a vast selection of tools and a vast selection of wood in the form of blanks and seasoned rough turnings.

Part of the plan was to buy a bigger lathe, I was thinking along the lines of a Record CL4. A nice lathe with electronic speed control, capable of handling larger pieces than the lathes we have at the moment.  That all went out of the window a couple of weeks ago, when I noticed a post on Facebook's Market Place for a "Complete woodturning setup" curious to find out more, I contacted the seller, who turned out to be an ex demonstrator/instructor who was now moving on to peruse art as health problems meant he did not want all the heavy work his type of turning and wood collecting entailed. To cut a long story short, we did a deal and I bought the lot, lock, stock and turned blanks.

As we drove away, Sue and I realised that this was going to change everything. The lathe is an Apollo Pro. This is a monster of a lathe with a huge bed and stand built from 4 x 2 inch, box-section steel.

Ralph.
  

Somthing new...

Finally the move has happened. Here we are, residents of Herne Bay. The workshop is now a pile of timber awaiting reconstruction, in it's new even larger form. Yes, I will be able to build an even bigger workshop in our new garden... But that is another story and will start in earnest, next week.

For now I have another new project. One of the things I wanted to do was to get a bike. Nothing fancy, you understand, just a bike to get me from A to B. I intend to use it to go fishing on and for trips to other local places along the coast. While sitting chatting with my brother, while out fishing the local estate lake, the other day, he was banging on about Shpock, - a social media based buy and sell portal. He said they sold all sorts of things and it was all local. Asking me if there was anything I was after, I said "Yes, a bike" within seconds he was showing me a bike for sale just a couple of miles from where we were sitting. "Buy it" I said and we did, collecting it on the way home.

The 'new' wheels...

The bike is a good, sound cheap example that needs a spot of TLC. It Is a Raleigh Max, 30-inch wheel, mountain bike. The last time I messed about with a bike must have been fifty years ago, it was all a bit different then. Now I need a whole selection of new tools and a different set of skills. First job is an inspection and a really good clean up. That chain and those sprockets look as if they need a bit of a clean up and some de-rust treatment.

To be continued... More in a few days.

Ralph.

Gone!

...and then it was no more

 It has gone! All but the floor that is. This was first thing this morning, after a quick dash to Sheppey with yet another load of timber. I have spent the rest of the day de-nailing the wood from the frame and starting on the floor. I hate de-nailing. There is no pleasure to be had from being destructive, although the act of de-nailing does mean the pile of sticks is transformed into reclaimed timber ready for the next project, the new workshop.

The floor this morning

 The frame has now been de-nailed, and I started on the floor, but sore hands and old age stopped getting that done tonight. Tomorrow will see it finished.

Ralph

Progress

Meet Watney. This little fellow seems to like watching what's going on

Today, it was supposed to rain all day, so we were going to take a van-load of stuff down to Sheppey. On waking, this morning, it was dry. I took advantage of the dry weather and got cracking on the rest of the workshop dismantle. The first job was to deal with the last of the rafters and get de-nailing. Once done, it was on to the cladding. Within a couple of hours, the back was stripped and Sue, and I go to the de-nailing, all this while dodging the showers. All this was being watched by our resident fox. One of many, he seems to be the bravest of all of them. None of the other will let us get this close.

The cladding is being stripped off

After rain forced an early lunch, we managed to get the front stripped and de-nailed. While Sue was finishing off the last of that, I attacked the window lining and sills. Lots of hidden screws and copious amounts of construction adhesive made this job a lot harder than it looked. A bit of sawing and the use of a 36 inch Gorilla-bar soon sorted out the stubborn frames.

Just the frame to go and it will be no more

All in all, a good day's work and a long way forward. With luck, the rest should be down and de-nailed by tomorrow evening. That is, weather permitting.

Ralph.

It is getting easier...

The roof is coming off and the plants are getting in!

A trip to our storage with a van load of 'stuff' including all the wall covering MDF, meant the morning was written off today. That along with some paperwork and a long conversation with BT regarding the telephone and broadband move, resulted in me not getting out to the shed until late afternoon.

With the rain seeming gone for the foreseeable future, I was keen to get on with it. Out with the ladder and up onto the roof, claw hammer in hand, I started to remove the roofing felt from the back of the roof. This is the side adjacent to the neighbour's garden. Not wanting to disturb her to gain access from her side, I was pleased that removing the felt was easier than I had suspected, fighting with the overhanging vegetation aside.

The old felt rolled up easier than I was expecting

Disposing of the used felt is a bit of a pain, so, for now, it is being rolled up and will be transported to our storage until on the Isle of Sheppey after the move, when I can take it to the tip. With only a week or so left until the move, that is one job that can wait.

With the roof covering removed, the plywood sheets are pried up and dragged over the roof to be slid down into the path alongside the workshop. These are a bit tatty around the edges and full of nail holes. Today in this world of up-cycling and reclamation, they can be described as having 'character'. As such, they will be saved and have a new life in the future. For now, they too will be transported to 'The Island'.  It will be stored for disposal later. That is, unless I can think of a way of recycling it. Any ideas? Maybe the roofs of a few bird tables, perhaps? Either way. It is something that can wait for now.

Not too much achieved today, but at least it is starting to look as if something is happening. Once the last of the roof covering is off, the bet will be the windows and door, and then the rafters, ridge and collar-ties. That will probably be Sunday as tomorrow we have our goodbye drinks, so I assume not much will happen above maybe getting some more sheets off the roof. 

The double glazed units will be recovered for use in the new workshop

  Ralph.

Rain

Letting the light in - And the rain!

It has been raining for the past couple of days, but before it set in, I did manage to get some more of the felt off the roof and get another sheet of ply removed. I am so pleased I had only used 12mm ply on this roof. When I built the workshop, some fifteen years ago, I had not envisaged I would be taking it apart. The plan was to convert it into a home office for the new owners, whenever that might be. As it turned out, I have ended up dismantling it and taking the component parts with us, as the people we have sold the house to were going to demolish it. By offering to do it for them, I get to keep all the material to build a new workshop at our new house.

Now all I have to do is dismantle it and move it. Sounds simple if you say it quickly!

While it has been raining, I don't fancy clambering about on the roof so I have been lifting the floor so the rain can go straight through. I have also been cleaning up and de-nailing any timber that has been laying around. Hopefully, the weather will be dryer for the next few days, and some rapid progress will be the subject of my next post.

Ralph.

A few days in...

From the outside, nothing has changed

Work has been continuing at a pace, although from the outside it looks as if nothing has changed. All the work has been on the inside. All the wall coverings have been removed to expose the insulation, which has been removed and bagged up, ready to be transported to our 'holding facility' in deepest Kent.

Stripped out ready for the roof to be removed

The interior is now completely stripped out with only the lighting left in place. This will be stripped out next, and the roof removed. The empty space will still be used as a 'field' workshop; hence, the saw-frame set up waiting to accept the full sheets of ply that make up the rood covering. Some of these have suffered water damage over the past winter, where I held off recovering the roof as I was not sure what was going to happen to it. I am so pleased I did not get around to doing it last summer as it would have been a total waste of time and money, now it is being dismantled.

Now all the interior has gone I can take off the roof and not worry too much about it raining, after the lighting has been removed, of course!

Ralph.    

Dismantling the workshop begins...

The wall covering and insulation is going first

As I mentioned in my previous blog, we are dismantling the workshop so we can take it with us to our new house. Now it is almost empty, the first job is to remove the wall covering. The walls are clad with 12mm MDF to provide a firm base to fix to without having to revert to special fixings. It was screwed to the wall studs using carcass screws, countersunk and filled to present a clean flat wall surface. At the time of building, I had no thoughts of ever removing the boards.

In order to remove the boards, each fixing hole has to be drilled out and the head of the screw 'picked' clean before the driver can get a grip. An old brad-point bit chucked into a cordless drill does the job and made it easier than I had expected.

Drilling out the filler to expose the screw heads

Once the boards have been removed it is time to had over to the 'insulation recovery officer' AKA Sue. The Insulation is recovered intact, three sheets at a time.

The insulation is in surprisingly good condition

The insulation is a 'fit' between the studs and comes away without any drama. Sue's gauntlets were purchase specifically for this job and prevent the fibres contacting with her skin. Personally, I don't find the fibres irritate my skin, but it is still wise to wear protection when handling this stuff, or better still, get the missus to do it instead!

Rolling the insulation, nice and tightly

As the insulation is perfectly serviceable, we decided to recover it for re-use in the new workshop. It is rolled tightly and then stuffed into a black bin-bag.This is not as easy as it looks and requires a qualified engineer with the appropriate experience; decades of stuffing bed quilts into covers.

Experience matters. Sue makes it look easy

Once tamed, the insulation is sealed in its bag ready for onward transportation. Each bag contains three strips, enough to insulate four feet of seven feet high wall. We will have a fair few bags of it by the time we have finished.

Another one sealed up

More of the same for the next couple of days and then we will be on to the windows, door and the roof. The only problem is going to be disposing of the roofing felt. I might roll it up and see if I can flog it on eBay... Wadaya reckon?

Ralph.

A year on, and what a year it has been...

A few days after my last post here, back on 20th May 2018, I was feeling a bit strange; listless and a bit achy. I was just not feeling my usual cheery, happy-go-lucky, self (my description of my general demeanour - some may disagree). I decided to visit the local doctor. This was not as simple as I first thought.

Back in 1999, Sue and I were looking after her father's home, after his death, until it was sold. As we were spending most of our time there, we had registered with the local doctor. Since then, I had not had any reason to visit a doctor, so I was doctor-less. I had to re-register with my original surgery. This I did and was instantly booked in with the nurse for a blood pressure test and sent off to get a blood test. This I did, and the next day, I received a telephone call asking me to have some more blood tests and to make an appointment to see a doctor. Not reading anything into this I just did it, thinking it was all just the NHS catching up with my medical notes.

A couple of days later, I saw a doctor, who asked me "Did you know you are diabetic?" "What!" "You have type two diabetes" I was utterly gob-smacked. While I was computing what he had just said, I was aware of him telling me to "stay off the milk-shakes". He made several other unhelpful remarks and told me I needed to cut down on my sugar intake and eat properly. This coming from a man who was obviously overweight himself. He told me to make an appointment with the nurse for more tests a few days later.

I was so shocked that I did not think about his assumptions that I was a fast-food eating couch potato, until afterwards when I got home and was talking about it with Sue (My other half). I went to see the nurse, who was most helpful and explained I should try and lose some weight, eat fewer sugary foods and fewer 'bad' carbohydrates. By now, I had read up about my diagnoses and was starting to understand the implications. She also booked me on to a one-day course that explained exactly what type two diabetes is and how to deal with it. She also booked me an appointment with the practice's diabetes specialist, who just happens to be the principle doctor at the practice. He is all together a much better doctor than the first doctor I saw, who must have been a temporary addition, as I have not seen him since.

All this was happening just as we were thinking of putting the house on the market. It was also the start of the hottest summer we have had, here in the UK since 1976. Once I understood what was happening to me, I took it all on-board and set about doing as I was advised. The biggest problem was the medication. The side effects were far worse than the condition, and it took me a full six months to get used to the medication.

This meant the house did not get on the market until November. We had a buyer by December and accepted an offer in January. Since then we have been mucking about with solicitors, surveyors and all manner of questions. Finally, we have exchanged contracts, and completion is now just a matter of a few weeks away, very few!

Over the past year, I have lost several stone in weight, six inches off my waistline and taken up regular exercise. My last trip to the doctor, a couple of weeks ago, confirmed that I am now in the 'normal' range as far as all my test results are concerned and I am no longer classed as being diabetic. The doctor was amazed that I had reversed my situation is just a year. I am now off the blood pressure medication, and the stuff for diabetes has been halved for the next six months, to get me off of it more slowly, rather than a sudden stop. To say I am delighted is an understatement. I feel so much better and have much more energy. That is apart from the stress of having to replace my entire selection of clothes. The only things that still fit me are my socks! Even my fishing hat falls down over my eyes. Who would have thought it possible to lose weight from around one's head!

What next for the Workshop?

When we put the house on the market, I had decided to leave the workshop behind as a home office for the new owner of the house, and build a new one from scratch at our new house. To my surprise, he has decided he does not want it and was going to have it demolished. I jumped in and offered to take it away for nothing. He was delighted, and I have all the materials I will need to rebuild it at the new house. It will not rise again in its current form, in fact, I am not sure how it will end up. At the moment. We also have a small shed that we use as a woodturning shed, that will stay behind. We will have to decide precisely what we really need. The current workshop is big, and we don't really need a space that size in one building. Maybe we will have two or three smaller workshops to cover the various thing we want to do in future. The jury is still out on that one, and no plans will be made until we are ensconced in our new abode.

Now the clock is ticking, it will be a race to get the workshop down before completion, but I do like a challenge! I will shoot some pictures of the workshop being dismantled as I go and post the story here. I had planned to cut the cladding to manageable lengths as it will not need to be as long as it is now. That way, it will fit inside the van and negate the need for a roof rack. However, today we have just booked a 7.5 tonner, and that will be more than long enough to take the full length so I will not make more work for myself unnecessarily. De-nailing the tongue and groove cladding does damage the surface, and it will only be reused on the back and out of the way places of any new buildings. We have already decided to use new material on the sides that are in view. Just what we are going to use remains, again is something that is yet to be decided upon, but whatever we do it will not be dark 'shed' brown this time.

Ralph.  
            

Mixing it...

You join me half way through this project... Well, what turned into a 'half' project, if you like.

The story starts way back in the early 1980s when the younger version of me was doing a spot of DIY, well, rather a lot of DIY as it turned out. We had recently bought the house we still live in today. At the time we were slowly converting it back from a couple of flats to a single dwelling. Money was tight (when isn't it?) so laying out £145.00 for a cement mixer was a big decision. In those days it was relatively expensive to hire mixers, and it would not have taken very long to spend most of the cost of a new one. For once, I picked the correct path and parted with my £145.00.

We were laying a patio and building walls to retain the garden. That job alone repaid the investment in one go. We had weeks of use out of it mixing mortar and render. Since then, although it has had long periods of just sitting there, it has seen hours and hours of work over the past 35+ years.

It started life painted a bright orange colour, as all Belle mixers do. After several years of use, it was getting a bit tatty so one weekend it got a make-over in 'Buttercup yellow', I could not buy orange paint easily, and a bright yellow seemed like a good alternative at the time. From that point on, it became known as 'Buttercup'. I am not usually happy with giving inanimate objects names, but for some reason, this silly name just amused me at the time. That must have been well over twenty years ago. Since then it has lived outdoors more than it has been under cover.

16A IP44 plug and socket

For the past few years, the power lead has been missing. Not needing it, I had not had a reason to locate it, but while hunting through a box of 'stuff', as I cleared the workshop, I came across the plug devoid of its lead. For some reason, it must have been removed. I have no recollection of this heinous act. The only thing I can think of is that I had intended to upgrade it to the current 16A IP44 system of connection. This I will do, but for now, I just wanted to see if I could get it going so I have repaired the existing plug and rewired it to a length of three-core, blue 'Arctic' cord.

 

The bit I did not photograph...

Making the new lead led me to have a go at firing it up. Bearing in mind, it has been exposed to the worst of the weather for a decade I was not overly confident that it was even going to run. With the mixer connected to a supply, protected by an RCD, I gingerly switched it on. To my surprise, it ran well, if a bit 'dry' sounding.

Repaired, rusty and replacement fixings

Full of confidence I set about looking at stripping it down to give it a bit of a service. The first job was to attempt to undo the rusty and painted over fixings. Not only had I painted them with a good thick coat of brushed-on 'Buttercup' but it had been sprayed orange after its assembly by the workers at Belle. A touch of paint stripper and a good soaking with what Sue calls that "Magic Juice" (a twenty-year-old can of Plus-Gas) and I managed to remove all but one of the original bolts intact, all be it in poor condition.

The bit I did photograph...

Some of the metal work is in a bit of a sorry state having been ravished by the deep, destructive action of rust eating away at vulnerable steel and cast iron. This was cleaned and treated with Rust Remover (sold by Machine Mart) Although reasonably ugly looking, in all cases, there is enough good metal left to maintain strength, at least for now. I will probably fabricate a complete new bracket, I have always wanted to have a go at welding, now I have the perfect excuse - how hard can it be? Honestly? I have no idea, but I intend to do a bit of research, ask a few mates who have experience and, if I feel confident, I will give it a go. If that does not work out, I can always get one fabricated for me! I do intend to do a proper refurbishment of this faithful piece of mini-plant in the future, but for now, a coat of primer and the plant-rat look will have to do.

The cast iron gearbox seemed to shed a skin or two as the rust was peeled away, but was still solid and after being treated with a liberal application of Rust Remover, washed and dried off, it was given a couple of coats of Hammerite Smooth - great stuff for this sort of job! It can be seen in the picture below.

That will do for now - Where're the spanners?

Late in the day, I thought it might be worth photographing the progress so far. I found some replacement nuts and bolts (technically set screws, but the common description of bolts will do) of similar thread sizes, and just cut them to length. The large bold that is used to mount the motor bracket to the gearbox was in good enough condition to reuse as I did not have a suitable replacement to hand. It got a soak in the Rust Remover overnight and cleaned off to be paired with nice new full thickness washers and nut.

The original plug and socket - soon to be replaced with a modern 16A version

The motor got a good scrub with a wire brush and its internal residents, live and deceased, were 'encouraged' to evacuate with a blast from the air-line. I did not bother to repaint it for now.

It all went back together well, and a quick test proved the fact. Although not in too bad a state, the drum has some deposits of cement left inside. Ten years of rust took care of most of it, and a few clouts with a rubber hammer removed some more. Finally, I ran it for a while with a slurry of pea shingle, sharp-sand and water to polish off the inside. Although not perfect it is now very serviceable as it is, at least for the meantime.

In motion. The mixer is being run with a slurry of pea shingle, sharp-sand and water to polish off the inside. It might take a while

I have bought a new drive belt for it, but as the original is still going strong, I will save it as a spare for now, as there seems little point in replacing it for the sake of it. It is a simple five-minute replacement if it does break with use.

I will now use it for the couple of small projects I have to do here in the garden, but it will need the plug/socket replaced, and I would not mind giving it a bit of a cosmetic make-over one day.

Ralph.

Box-olagy

It is incredible how much stuff can be squirrelled away when you have space to do it. If that space is shared with a little brother who was never good at keeping his room tidy, you can imagine how much mess he can make in several hundred square feet!

My little brother (Tim, now in his 50s, but still referred to as LB) has just moved home and his new dwelling comes with the biggest single garage I have ever seen. This means that he has moved out of his lump of the space we share.Now I have more space than I know what to do with. To make things easier Tim has taken everything he wants and removed any rubbish leaving behind the rest for me to pick over and do with as I chose. This has been reasonably fruitful as he passed on a host of power tools and I managed to reclaim most of what he had 'borrowed' of my tools, power leads and fixings.

His stuff was scattered all over the place. Just like his childhood bedroom, it was impossible to find anything. This resulted in new tools being bought as it was easer and quicker than spending hours looking for stuff. I found at least three hacksaw frames and fixings of all shapes and sizes. In an old plastic tray that originally contained bulk chicken pieces, I found the remains of a box of 25mm, 18g narrow crown staples, along with an exploded box. The flimsy box had obviously given out under the less than careful handling it had received, during LBs tenure as custodian of said fixings.

Everything gets covered in dust down at the storage as the floor is loose chippings that are very dry. driving over them just kicks up fine dust that settles on everything that is not wrapped or covered. This open box of fixings had not escaped the layers of dust and just as the remains of Pompeii were eventually excavated, so it was for this little box of fixing.

At around £16.00 a box, it was worth collecting them up for recovery later. The box was loaded on to the van for transit back to the workshop. The first job was to brush and wash the dirt off of the fixings and see just what I had. It turned out to be thirty strips (3000 staples). That is just under a tenner's worth. The cardboard box was laying in the bottom of the open container with a flap hanging off and it had split down one of the corners rendering it useless as it was, laid flat. 

These fixing are very heavy for their size and the boxes they are supplied in, for the most part, are far too weak. I have often strengthened them with a wrap of 'Gaffa' tape. Just for the hell of it, I decided I would repair it and return it to a serviceable box. Yes, I know I am probably the only person to bother to do this, but If a fixing has an original box I much prefer to Keep them in it.

Repairing the box

The split box was washed off and left to dry overnight

The box had spilt down one of the folded corners and in order to be able to repair it properly I needed to separate the glued up seam. This I did with a scalpel.

As can be seen, part of the box remains on the flap, stuck to the original glue. This is no problem as it will be glued back together and become reunited making the same thickness as it was originally.

One of the flaps needed some repair as it was almost torn completely away

Water-resistant PVA glue is used to join it back together

More glue is added to the join where the box had been split.

Brown Gum-Arabic tape is used to reinforce the joint, the glue is activated with water painted on with a brush.

It is left for about 15 minutes before being burnished to remove any air bubles

The tape is trimmed to length before the glue has set completely

A final pat with a dry tea towel removes any excess moisture.

It is sandwiched between a couple of pieces of glass, weighted down and left overnight to dry

The repaired fold is scored using the handle of a scalpel and the box was assembled using PVA glue on the flap 

There we have it a serviceable box containing there best part of 3000 narrow crown staples ready for use. Note the additional strip of tape added to reinforce the outer corner where the box has been repaired

I know,I could have just put them in something else, but that would not be any fun. I have now achieved something and the original box will sit alongside the other couple of million air-nails/staples/brads that I have in stock.

Ralph.

And finally...

Not so smart, smart-phone.
I mentioned above that I refer to my little brother as LB. My current communication device has (as I assume most do) a talking mode. E.g. "Fred calling" I hardly ever use this feature but one day I was messing about with the settings and I must have inadvertently turned the voice on. A while later, the lady in the phone announced "Pound Calling!" ... What?  "Pound Calling!" It then dawned on me, I had entered 'LB' in the directory as the identifier for my brother's number. The dumb-phone thinks it is the abbreviation for pound weight (lb).

Look what I found!

I am almost there with the clean up of the workshop, boxes and boxes of 'stuff' have been examined and relocated. Amongst them, I found a box full of Meccano Steam engine parts awaiting refurbishment. Originally I had planned to do full-blown restorations on all of them, but after doing

several of them, the novelty wore off. I have sold all the ones I had completed, and I am not planning to do any more for the time being. Rather than just sell off the bits, I have decided to clean and rebuild as many as I can into shabby but fully working machines.

A box of chassis, fire boxes and boilers...

...and a tray full of more bits and pieces

I have already rebuilt and tested one. A really good clean, and a bit of a polish, makes them look so much better. Lapping and polishing the valve gear and piston, refitting missing or damaged washers and stripping the burner down to remove any debris that has accumulated over the years, soon had it working again.

From scrap to a runner - Serviced and working correctly, if a bit tatty around the edges

That will be my work for the next day or so. Getting them cleaned, serviced and working so that most of them can be sold through my internet shop, RalphsShop.com. I have another idea for some of them. Rather than do a full restoration job on them, but do a bit more than just cleaning them up I am thinking Rat-Rod, well rather Rat-Carno.

A Rod-Rat. Perfectly sound but deliberately built to look in need of restoration... Cool (Man!)

Ratcarno

Rat Rods originated as an alternative to the full-blown and expensive Hot Rods that were more intended to be looked at than driven. Rat Rods are built according to the owner's abilities and with the intention of being driven.The unfinished bodywork is all part of the look. Rust is stabilised but is not removed, dents are, and damage is rectified to a point, but there is nothing wrong with the odd bullet hole being left in place.

A similar concept can be taken with Meccano. There are the collectors, who seek pristine, unused parts and if they do build anything it is adorned with hundreds of brass washers to protect the paint and displayed with 'look, but don't touch' notices. I was always a builder and a great believer in using Meccano for what it was intended for - to build with. The idea of using old Meccano to build with is not new to us. We were doing it for years, albeit using Meccano that was in reasonably good condition. We do own a selection of old pre-war dark red and green Meccano and have built using it to build models from the period. Steam wagon a prime example.

The Steam Wagon from the 1929 steam engine manual, built in period dark red and green parts and in our favoured scheme using more modern light red and zinc parts

This, however, is altogether different. What I am planning to do is put together some pieces rescued from the scrap. Clean them up and try and get a 'uniform' degree of tastiness. Starting with old bent, creased, painted and tatty parts, the first job will be to select a few parts and begin to clean and straighten them out, see what I have, and attempt to unify the finish.

The seed that started all this was a ridiculously bent and buckled plate that had been severely mutilated with all its edges bent along their length as if it had been used as a screwdriver to tighten slotted bolts far beyond what they were designed for. The plate was also severely buckled and twisted. So bad was this plate, I had written it off as being destined for land-fill within days. It was so bad I did not bother to photograph it. Mistake. Below is a picture of the plate after a few minutes of 'percussive maintenance' Nobody was more surprised than me that not only had I managed to get the bends out of it, I also managed to flatten it and remove the twist (spring) without resorting to heating and cooling it.

You would not believe how buckled this plate was before I started to flatten it - I wish I had photographed it!

It may not be the prettiest part on the plaint, but it is now more or less flat and very usable. We have a considerable amount of very tatty scrap Meccano in all sorts of condition and colour. Lots of it is rusty with little original paint left. I think this will be the ideal material to experiment with. I will let you know how it goes.

Going back to the steam engines, what about this for the basis (mock-up made from bits found in the box) of a Ratcarno steam engine?

Hmmm... Has potential?

Have I got you interested in Meccano steam engines on a budget? If so you might be interested in a post I made a while ago showing how to prepare and fire one of these engines - See HERE.

Ralph.