Indholdsfortegnelse for No 113 February - March 2024 i The Shed

I know this is stating the bleeding obvious, but what this publication is all about is sheds – what some folks do in them, what we can help readers create in them, and the spaces themselves. They look and smell great, and have a timeless beauty – they do to you and me, anyway; not everyone, that’s for sure. Not everyone has our cultured tastes, right? So, this issue has an abundance of sheds – not just folks creating in them as per usual, but also constructing them. One of these articles is about a family shed built then added on to accommodate more family members as their creative needs came of age. The writer of the article, Scott Gavin, titled his article ‘Another shed’, as he thought surely our…

For Arduino, 2023 was a very notable year. After several agreements and partnerships with industrial brands such as Bosch for the Arduino Nicla, the Arduino platforms are expanding, moving from being a popular board for hobbyists and makers to entering the world of industrial applications based on embedded devices. The ‘classic’ version of Arduino UNO R3, based on the AVR 328p, survives, and probably will for many years. However, the most recent Arduino boards implement powerful Arm-based microcontrollers oriented to IoT and embedded machine learning (ML) applications. In this issue of The Shed, I will introduce an Arduino platform that can boost the makers’ creativity. Arduino UNO R4 does not replace previous versions but completes the coverage of the wide range of Arduino scenarios. The experiments presented in these three…

If the walls of the Williams & Sons shed in Rawene could talk, the conversation would be deafening. This corrugated iron hut has been a feature of the Northland town’s wharf and waterfront since 1873. It was originally built as a repository for dry stores, goods, and explosives. During its lifetime, it has moved location along the wharf at least twice before coming to rest in the late 1960s at its present spot, on piles, above the Hokianga shoreline. The building has served all manner of roles, from storage to ferry office, bus depot, and boat maintenance workshop. It is best known to locals as the go-to outlet for fresh and smoked fish. While the shed’s iron sidings may not have the ability to speak, proprietors Nick Williams and his…

“Work inspires him; he is undaunted by learning new processes and diving into fresh pursuits” A cinematic late-afternoon light pours through the corner window of Chris Elliott’s vest-pocket shed. The miscellany of collected artefacts, fabric, and vehicular memorabilia conjures up a neat yet cluttered bazaar in some exotic foreign land rather than an active workshop on the fringe of Auckland City. This concrete single garage is a celebration of creativity and productivity. Swinging a cat – or, for that matter, a hammer – might seem problematic in such confines but, when it comes to fulfilling a wide array of job briefs and cross-disciplinary commissions, Chris somehow makes things come together. It is not size that counts The project foremost on Chris’s mind is the one taking up most of the…

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So, you are thinking of relocating a house to your property; or, you want to build but, having seen those house-relocation shows, you’re thinking it might be a good idea just to move an existing house – perhaps to get a house for less, or because it might be quicker than building from scratch? Well, keep reading. My wife and I moved the lovely old house you see pictured here to our land last year, but it turned out to be way more stressful and much more expensive than expected; it also dragged on for more than nine months. After the relocation, we talked to others who had done the same. Pretty much everyone said they would never do it again. Would we? Well, that depends – if you keep…

In the world of furniture manufacturing, every detail matters. A new product revolutionising cabinet and furniture construction is the Peanut Connector. Available from Jacks, these unassuming yet highly effective furniture connectors are set to become an essential tool in the arsenal of modern cabinetmakers. Peanut connectors offer a host of advantages that speed up and simplify the assembly process, reduce material costs, improve the overall quality of cabinetry, and deliver a more contemporary slim-line look. Let’s explore these connectors and the numerous benefits they bring to the table. What are Peanut Connectors? Peanut Connectors are small one-piece, dome-headed fasteners with a toothed barb. The toothed barb is inserted into part A, while the head of the peanut locates into a pre-milled keyhole slot in part B. As parts A and…

When I was a kid, we made our own toys from the scraps, bits, and pieces that we could scrounge in the neighbourhood. It was also an era when toys were not politically correct: girls played with dolls, prams, and dresses while boys had toy guns, knives, cubbies, and catapults. As an avid consumer of superhero comics, I also had a collection of wooden space ray guns and the like. However, my most cherished toys – because they did something – were the knives and catapults I made from scavenged bits and pieces. Nothing’s impossible The recent index of New Zealand’s knife-makers in The Shed (March/April 2023, issue 107) rekindled my memories of those youthful times when I was an eight year old wandering around the small country town where…

Do you need a bullet-proof shed? We did – and this is how we built one. It all started when we said goodbye to city life and homesteaded up in the hills. For a year and a half we lived in an 18-foot (5.5m) travel trailer while building a straw-bale cottage. There wasn’t much space inside, so all the overflow went into an old metal garden shed someone had given us. Inside it we had a rod to hang clothes on, shelves for dry goods, stacks of five-gallon pails containing bulk foods, chests of tools, and our trusty chainsaw. Right from the start, we began having problems with that shed. The first winter we had three metres of snow, which almost flattened it. I had to shore it up inside…

Sheds and their members decide the projects to undertake. However most sheds throughout New Zealand take on some community projects, examples include repairing toy library stock, building playgrounds for early learning centres, repairing old bikes for community distribution, building planter boxes for the main street of the local central business district, the list goes on. The shed is a great place for blokes to learn new skills. We see builders teaching engineers some of their skills and vice versa. Sheds have been operating in New Zealand since 2008. The last decade has seen the number of sheds across both urban and rural areas increase to 140. We have a team of Regional Reps who attend to sheds and public inquiries: Northland, Auckland - David Broadhead 021 324 762 regrep1@menzshed.nz Waikato,…

My wife is a very keen gardener and I’ve been on a few garden tours with her over the years. These were fundraisers for the community groups that organised them. I asked my wife what her most vivid memories were of the various tours. She immediately recalled one, decades ago, at which a packed lunch was provided. The garden of one of our neighbours was included in a tour organised by the botanical society she belonged to. She said that she got a severe case of the giggles when folk who had paid to visit her (in my opinion very nice) garden turned up and respectfully wandered around, viewing the plants. The last garden tour we went on was a couple of years ago, with my sister and her husband,…

LETTER OF THE MONTH OSH RULES Dear Greg, The bottom picture on page 75 of issue 112 of the magazine (The Shed December/January 2024) is of a very unsafe saw-bench. To see what I’m on about have a look at: https://rollestonshed.wordpress.com/safety-switch-on-circular-saw/ Basically, with all the H&S talked about these days, this should be mandatory. Sandy Ferguson Rolleston Mens Shed The writer of The Shed “Table Saw Sled” article replies: Table saws, while they have the capacity to cause serious harm, are not in my opinion inherently dangerous unless used carelessly. In the Mens Shed blog post [mentioned] (https://rollestonshed.wordpress.com/safety-switch-on-circular-saw/) they have come up with a clever way to turn the saw off. If I still had one of those saw-benches, I might even make that device. It was tricky to find…

Recently, I read an article championing legal standards for product repairability. My recent ‘Off the grid’ ramblings had, coincidentally, included the repair and refurbishment of items; the article induced some further contemplation. Heading on down that track, we find ourselves contemplating around-the-globe efforts to create – or extend – repairability standards; and a parallel push for the recirculation of materials, known as a circular economy. These are interesting trends, with implications for all things sheddie. Some background We have lived through an amazing era – and created some repercussions in the process. Materially, we have extracted, consumed, and discarded – an almost entirely linear process. Competing products became ever more complex as they strove for market share via manufacturing efficiencies. For instance: integrated-circuit manufacturing is apparently down to using UV…

Chris’s job involves designing electrical gear for power-network companies. Most of New Zealand’s electricity generating companies purchase gear from the company for which he works. In his spare time, he makes stuff in his very well equipped workshop. He has a lathe and a large milling machine, a gas set, and a homemade tube bender. Chris says that his projects tend to come together easily. Components turn up at opportune times; things tend to fit together without a lot of modifications. He used to campaign a MotoGP racing motorcycle very successfully, his bike competing in the 1999 Australian 125GP, before realising that he was no longer prepared to risk the lives of the riders he employed to ride these powerful machines. These days, the cars and bikes he works on…