Phil's Workbench

 

According to the top of the bottle, the big one here was made 03.11.2021, and the small one 03.12.2024. 

And on the back, it says that the shelf life it 12 months from date of manufacture. Interesting. The big bottle is past its best, and we have a couple more that are pretty poor now. 

I'd never really thought of PVA having a "best before" date, but there's obviously something in it. From now on, 500ml is enough, I'll probably use that up while it's still at its best. And if I don't, well, the stuff is cheap enough, and the next bottle will be good for 12 months too!

 

This is a Hozelock retracting reel. It's a nice, neat way to have a hosepipe, and gave me a whole heap of pain on a very hot Saturday, trying to fit to the wall. Definitely one of those jobs that looks simple and descends into a nightmare. 

In theory, all you do is drill four holes, pop the rawplugs in, screw the support to the wall and it's job done. 

Of course, you have to get all the holes in the right place, and that's tricky as the plastic bracket gets in the way of marking things. 

The solution - make a cardboard jig. 

Ideally, do this before drilling a series of wrong holes and using up all the plugs supplied. 

This reel is heavy. 17kg as supplied, but it will get heavier when full of water and then even worse - it's the ideal perch for next-doors cat, and he's not small. 

So, you need really strong plugs. The ones in the kit have little barbs. 

None of the plugs in our garage had these, so when we hung the support on the wall and fitted the reel, they started to pull out again. I'd put all the supplied ones in the wall, so couldn't take one to the local DIY shed to try to find a replacement. I went anyway, and nothing they had in the very limited stock, was any better. 

Fortunately, Hozelock sell spare packs, and I don't care they are six quid for four screws and four plugs, I bought two. Delivery was quick, and the reel was soon fitted to the wall. So far, it hasn't fallen off, although one of the very long screws supplied has bottomed out in the hole, but it's at the bottom so doesn't seem to be effecting things at the moment. 

Fingers crossed, and let's hope the cat doesn't put on any weight...

I wasn't confident I would have enough plants to fill my garden railway display and decided a little more colour would be useful, and ideally, something amusing. 

Our garden is home to a number of concrete ornaments, normally nicely painted by myself. I use cheap acrylic paints, the sort bought from The Works for a quid a bottle, and even though these figures live out all year, the paint usually lasts for three, before they look tatty. It then takes at least another two for me to do something about it. 

The little dragon climbing out of a manhole cover was well overdue for refreshment, and since he occupies a reasonable area, but without being too tall, I decided that his time had come to make a public appearance. He's always been one of my favourites too. 

An hour of painting with cheap brushes and some sponged highlighting and he really looked the part. The paint needed a little thinning for the black cover to make sure there weren't any bald spots, but basically, I squirt it on a plastic lid and use straight from the bottle. 

Although around the back of the display, a few people spotted him. Maybe I'm not taking the hobby properly seriously, but then I think it's all about having some fun!

lthough around the back of the

I like taking apart mechanical things, especially those with chunky fixings. When the catch on our front door stopped working properly, after being allowed to slam shut in the wind a few times, it needed investigating. 

OK, it needed replacing with an identical one, but after that I took the old unit and had a play. 

The basic device is simple enough, there's a bit that turns which shoves a cage back and forth, on to which is fitted the brass tongue bit that locates in the other side of the unit to hold the door shut. Obviously, I've not looked up the correct technical terms...

The fault was that every so often, the handle inside the door seemed to lose contact with the slidy cage and flop around. My first thought was that the cage could move out and miss contact, but there didn't seem to be a problem there - no obvious wear in the plates holding the thing together, and the two, chunky retaining screws were tightly fitted.

Eventually, after about half an hours tinkering, I spotted the cage was slightly distorted. Slamming the door on the latched unit had whacked the tongue and moved the metal. Five minutes with pliers (it's quite soft) and a hammer and the whole thing moves silky smoothly. As good as new. 

Now, we have a spare front door lock all parcelled up in the garage, where it will probably manage to vanish if we ever need it. 

Anyone else like this sort of job?

 

A couple of weeks ago, I wasn't having a good day. Every so often, the news really gets me down and I can't concentrate on anything useful for work. Trying to do some modelling, or pretty much anything isn't going to happen, but I was lucky, there was one job that I was confident I could do. 

My sister has a shed/studio at her cottage and one of the windows had broken. She had specified a plastic replacement and a sheet was ordered from the same shop I get my baseboard wood from. 

I picked this up along with a couple of lengths of quarter-round strip. Oh, and some pin nails as I'd forgotten to pack some. These, and some tools, headed to her place and within 20 minutes, the hole was filled. Quite nice and neatly too. 

Oddly, it was a really satisfying job. Not difficult to do, but definitely "a good job done". We all need this sort of task occasionally I'm sure. I know I did.

My Mum's wheelbarrow has a knackered tyre. Years of living outside and being used without the correct amount of air in it have killed the rubber. The wheel itself is OK, but replacing both is a lot easier. We couldn't find a tyre on its own anyway.

Step 1: Oiling up


Unless you treat your barrow with the reverance normally applied to a classic car, the bolts will be rusty. Spray with penetrating oil and go and make breakfast. Spray again and go for a cup of tea. Clever people will spray and leave overnight, this stuff is good, but needs time to work.

Step 2: Unbolting


One side of the bolts has a 13mm nut, the other a pointless slot in the head. No screwdriver is going to hold the head when the presure is applied, but a set of molegrips will do the job. It's time for brute force! Actually, thanks to the oil, the bolts undid pretty well.

Step 3: Remove the axle


Engineers will say they "drift the axle out", I just whacked it with a mallet as the new wheel doesn't come with one. A shot of the penetrating oil isn't a bad idea before you start belting things, although this one wasn't a tight fit. There are two spacers lose, one either side. Don't lose them.

Step 4: Reassembly


Clean and grease all the bolts and carefully put everything back together. Then remember the spacers on the axle, take it all apart, put them in and reassemble. Make sure the U-brackets are the right way around. Grease between all the metal-to-metal joins in case you want to do this again in the future, but wipe all excess grease away as it will attract dirt.

Step 5: Pump up the tyre


Use a footpump to inflate the tyre to whatever it says on the side and then the barrow is ready for use. Buying new barrows is a hasstle (they don't fit in the car very well) and chucking an otherwise servicable tool away a waste.

The new wheel came from Torrys Hardware in Warwick. If you manage to get just a tyre, the steps are pretty much the same, you just need to remove and replace the rubber bit as well.

Faced with a "garden room" (posh shed) requiring a coat of yacht varnish before winter, I headed to the local DIY store for some new brushes.

I've always been pleased with the Harris "No Loss" range. Unlike slightly cheaper brushes, they don't seem to moult hairs as you paint. To be fair, they are better described as "a LOT less loss" and on the shed, I reckon I lost about 4 or 5, but then it's big enough to need a full large sized tin of varnish, so that's not bad going.

It was certainly a lot easier than picking bristles out of the varnish. That game gets old pretty quickly and you end up trying to shove them somewhere they won't be spotted rather than experiencing another dose of sticky finger bristle picking.

The only disappointment is that some muppet has re-designed the handles to be a bit more streamlined. Very pretty, but the end is now quite a bit sharper than it was before and once you hold it half way down the handle for fast application of lots of varnish, it digs in your palm. The old, blunter ones didn't do this.

Overall though, they are well worth the money. I've given a old set lots of stick and they still work OK. It's worth taking time to clean them properly, but even there you don't pull out handfuls of hair, which makes a messy job a little more pleasant.

OK B&Q - the yard broom at chez Parker is looking more than little tired. To be honest, it lives outside the back door and the wood has gone rotten. Trying to sweep the recent fluffy snow away before it turned to ice defeated it.

However, the packing for new brooms presents a challenge. The head comes attached to the handle with this plastic bracket.

You can't slide the handle out, the prongs prevent easy movement and when you reach the end of the handle there is either a bit of rope for hanging the broom up, or the plastic thing that screws into the bracket on the head.

Cut that away with some flush wire snippers and you are left with the plastic bracket stapled to the head. A screwdriver won't go in under the staples until all the plastic is cut away with a Stanley style knife. OK, it's pretty soft but so is the wood underneath.

And those staples are long too.

Anyway, the broom is now assembled, plastic bits and staples in the bin, and treated to a coat of varnish ready to go outside. It just seemed to be more of a faff than it ought to be.

Recently, I offered to help assembled a TP Wooden Multiplay Playhouse for a friend's 4 year old daughter. Being told that it was a wooden garden toy that came in pieces, I couldn't resist the chance to get involved.

Before getting started, I asked for the details I could pack a suitable toolkit. This photo duly followed:


Not too bad. I added some glue and sandpaper to the box. Looking at the reviews, these seemed positive with the fastest build time being 3 hours. This mattered as we planned to start at 2pm and the daylight deserts us around 5pm. My favourite was the "we got a box of sticks and had to pay someone to build it for us!!!" one - what exactly did they expect?

To help me, I enjoyed the assistance (or maybe I was the assistant) of the recipients grandfather, an engineer who enjoys some seriously high-quality woodwork. He also arrived with a more generous toolkit than the instructions suggested. We've both been caught out before...


Construction started well. The basic platform went togehter easily enough. There are a few things to pay attention too - the floor isn't in the middle of the uprights so you need to make sure you have everything the correct way up.

Most of the holes are drilled which is a massive help, but the screws are sometimes long - up to 16cm in several cases and my Bosch cordless screwdriver wasn't quite up to the job. Fortuantly, John's version was rather more powerful, saving loads of time, even if it didn't allow him to use his collection of Yankee screwdrivers very much.

We made a couple of mistakes along the way - the floor planks have cut-outs for the corners and so these were pushed well in leaving a lip along the edge over the main beams. This is wrong and we had to undo a little work to shove the planks over. Not a biggie.

We also (OK, I also) got a bit confused attaching the outside plank walls and managed to build one 90 degrees from where it should be. As it happens, this only required the removal of one long plank and it's replacement with a short one.

I enjoyed the build. It went together well, but you have to pay attention as you go. John insisted on being properly precise, marking wood with both pencil and square so we lined things up properly.

Build time was 2.5 hours - a world record but we don't want to boast about it. To be fair, the 2 cups of tea and 1 of diet coke were drunk as we worked so no breaks for us.


One modification we made was to fill in a hole in the side with a bit of spare plank (you can chose where the slide exists and have to shorten a plank to do this, leaving a bit of spare wood). It's not high and any landing would be on grass, but it's better to keep small children inside.

The big mystery is, why did we need spanners? There were no nuts and bolts in the pack and no indication any optional parts that would use them. (Update: The same tool list is in the swing set instructions as well and this DOES use bolts - presumably it is a standard graphic used for each set of instructions.)

If you are contemplating a build like this, get a massive cross-head screwdriver and a really powerful screwdriver. Ideally, you need 3mm drill bits about 6 inches long but we managed with normal ones - just.

The kit is well designed and all the parts numbered with little stickers that you can see on the finished building. Some de-stickering work there for Mum I think.I'm told the little one is thoroughly enjoying it though, so that counts as success.

I can't stand seeing people messing around with the wrong tools for the job, especially when the right tools are easily available.

Which is why I confiscated the rotating brush head from our Henry vacuum clears from my dad as he prodded and poked at it with a large screwdriver. It might have been the right tool for undoing the screws holding the two halves of the casing together, but not for de-fluffing the inside.

Carefully stripping down the mechanism was great fun. The fan blades which drive the brushes were removed using a vice and large hammer gently applied. Fine pliers pulled out rubber mounts and gradually extracted all the muck from inside.

Eventually it all went back together. Sadly, to no great effect. The cover over the drive belt has worn through in two decades of use and jams the unit so it looks like time to go and buy a new one. Still, taking things apart is fun!

From xkcd earlier in the week.

I don't like things I can't repair. One pet hate is those stupid plastics that don't react to any known glue so once broken, can only head towards land-fill.

Another issue is shoes. Occasionally, the sole starts to come unstuck from the top and needs a little glue to fix the join. It was glued originally so repair ought to be easy.

Trouble is, the join has to flex. You can't use epoxy as it's too stiff and after a few feet of walking, starts to break down. Evo Stick, being a rubber glue, ought to be better but never seems strong enough to me. I'll confess that I've even had failures when having repairs professionally carried out. New soles pulling away from perfectly good uppers for example.

A while ago, I bought a tube of Unibond EXTREME glue. It claims strength and flexibility so I gave it a go.

I can report that on one pear of shoes, the join, at the toe, was effective and allowed me to cover many more miles before I wore the soles out. More recently, it's been used to re-fix a boot sole which shows no evidence of glue being involved in the manufacture and this seems OK.

Two tricks: Open the gap with a screwdriver so you can squirt the glue well into the join. Second, a paper towel dampened with white spirit wipes away splurges of glue from the sides, leaving a perfect join.

Years ago, I bought a computer monitor shaped clock from someone on eBay. I've always liked clocks and have to stop myself building a vast collection of them in all shapes and sizes.

The Nokia monitor is only 10cm wide and sits on a shelf by my real computer. When I first bought it, monitors were this shape. Now the one I type on is thinner than the clock!

Anyway, given out as a freebie at some show, it wasn't built to last and the mechanism stopped working after a couple of years. Sensible people would throw it away but I'm not, so I didn't.

Instead, during a recent trip to Ikea, I bought a VÄCKIS alarm clock for the breathtaking price of 80p. I don't even want to think how they produce something with mechanical bits so cheaply...

(I tried the "Ask Anna" link on the page by the way but she wasn't very helpful on this point)

Taking both clocks to pieces was a matter of some cross head screwdriver work and prising the clear plastic out of each gently with a tiny, tiny, screwdriver under the edge. Hand and adjusting knobs bulled off the back of each.

Sadly, the Nokia hands won't fit the Ikea mechanism but its own hands don't look too bad.