Innehållsförteckning för No 99 November - December 2021 från The Shed

Not only am I one of seemingly few women sheddies, but I am possibly one of the only contributors who does not actually own a shed! I have lived on and off a sailing yacht for more than 10 years, cruising the Pacific, Atlantic, Mediterranean, and Caribbean. Wonderful Whangarei is my home port, and the global Covid pandemic has kept me here — perfectly happily — for longer than I might usually stay, giving me the opportunity to build my first boat in a shed nearby. I am happiest when I have a project and have good skills across a number of disciplines, from dressmaking and sewing to concrete work, carpentry, and all manner of building work. Not only am I practical, but I am creative and have a bent…

Finding a name for a boat you are building must be close to being as agonising as finding the right name for a new baby. It was important to me that my dinghy’s name reflected something about its unique qualities. ‘Punga’ — or sometimes ‘ponga’ — is the Maori word for the silver tree fern that is the symbol for the wonderful, and safe, country that I have been harboured in during the world’s pandemic chapter. Punga is also a homage to the location of the shed which made the build possible and the friends who live there, without whom the whole idea would have foundered: Punga Grove Avenue. I added a painted spiralling koru — also a very common symbol in New Zealand culture and art. This is a…

When his first child was about to arrive, Invercargill-born Mike MacMillan looked around for a suitable place to raise a family. Having itchy feet, he had worked in engineering “all over” New Zealand, including a spell based in Blenheim while he helped build a remote back-packer’s lodge and a couple of houses in the Marlborough Sounds. He even built an Elves’ Castle for a Lord of the Rings movie in Wellington’s Kaitoke Forest park. He liked Karamea, near the top of the South Island’s West Coast, because it was green, and now works there as an automobile mechanic. He took time out from putting a new deck on a truck to talk to The Shed about a power hammer he is building. He has made 10 or so knives from…

Go to the head shed first. If you are musically minded then you know what to look for in a guitar. I wasn’t, so I kept it simple in the beginning, sketched out my ideas, and started with a box, a neck, a bridge, a nut to put the scale lengths on, and tuners to tighten it. Then I was away. It is best to make the first guitar fretless and uncomplicated. I use the best materials I have at hand; take my time — because enthusiasm can take over — make the best possible job I can, and try to better myself from there.…

Several years ago I was at a conference and we were given two different beers to taste and evaluate. The first was golden in colour and the second dark black. We were tasked with using our taste to describe the malt characters in each beer. The golden ale had a good malt backbone with bready crackers and biscuit notes. The second dark beer had similar characters but most delegates also picked up additional subtle coffee and chocolate notes. When the host resumed speaking, we were in for a shock. We were told that the two beers were actually the same beer; the only difference was that a tasteless brewers’ colour additive had been added to one to make it dark. “So how did most of us pick up chocolate and…

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Inflatables have a lifespan of about eight years if they are heavily used, and afterwards take up a lot of landfill space. I thought I could do better than that: create a boat that was repairable — potentially for generations to come — and offered greater possibilities for fun and practicality. There a number of advantages in the nesting dinghy that I have built against an inflatable: a boat that is practical to row — rather than being blown around; going farther afield without smell, noise, or expense; simply doodling around the anchorage for fun, by rigging it for sails. In addition, a 3hp motor is easy to lift onto its transom without a hoist and it goes quite fast enough — planes with one person aboard. Inflatables are famously…

Blacksmiths form steel implements by forging. This involves heating the metal white hot so that it’s more easily deformed and then pounding it with a hammer on an anvil to form its new shape. This is hot and heavy work and blacksmiths were famously muscular — “The smith, a mighty man is he.” The larger the piece of steel, the greater the amount of force needed to shape it, so there is a limit to the size of a forging produced by hand. A hammer powered by something more powerful than human muscles was needed to forge a large object. The earliest powered hammers were driven by water-wheels. The hammer was lifted as the wheel turned and then dropped to bash the hot component. The number of suitable sites for…

There is a point in life when some of the tools you have don’t work as well as they used to. If it is a power or hand tool then the solution is easy — fix or replace it — but in this case it’s not the physical tools but the tool using them. I own a small drill press that I sort of inherited. It was originally purchased for light duty use, but, as with all things mechanical, it tends to be used for things well beyond its capability. Belt drive drill presses require the pulley ratio to be changed to suit the drill bit speed, and the slower the speed the greater the torque. This particular one had three speeds — slow, bearable, too fast — and, with…

I carve and bend the headstocks. I step them down for the tuners as you need to bend your string. I prefer a depth of 50mm as it allows me to carve and bend all within the same piece. Depth of the neck should be about 25mm to stop it breaking. You could take 5mm off at 2–3mm above the neck for slide. Hardwoods are preferable for necks but a lot of manufacturers are using pine now and they still sound cool. The neck should be straight and positioned in the centre of the box. You can screw or glue the neck into your box. Keep the glue off the soundboard/face of your guitar. Save all the offcuts from the neck. They will come in handy later for things like…

www.seekandthrive.com Late Sunday evening the old Wigram Air Base is deserted; daylight is fading rapidly and the old flathead V8 hot rod I’ve taken for a “quick spin” decides to give up on me with no warning. No tools except my lucky screwdriver on my key ring. It’s probably a fuel filter issue. I give that a try but it doesn’t make any difference. I suspect it’s the coil — damn, the only thing I didn’t replace and now it’s come to bite me in the rear; this wasn’t planned. Now I’m looking like a complete idiot standing on the footpath with no backup plan. How did I end up in this predicament? Safe to say, I’m now looking for a miracle. Primeval times This is when I’m reminded of…

MALT • 5kg NZ Pale• 500g German Light Munich• 340g Carafa Special 3• 350g Gladfields Light Crystal• 250g UK Amber• 200g German Wheat HOPS • 10g Citra (60 min)• 40g Centennial (20 min)• 40g Simcoe (flame out for 10 min)• 40g Mosaic (flame out for 10 min)• 40g Citra (flame out for 10 min)• 60g Simcoe (dry hop five days)• 60g Mosaic (dry hop five days)• 60g Citra (dry hop five days) YEAST • Two packs Lallemand Bry-97, or MJ M44 West Coast Ale• Vol 23L• Est OG 1.067• Est FG 1.015• Est ABV 6.8%• IBU 44• Mash 65 degrees for 60 min and a 60-minute boil. (Partial grain recipe) • Replace the 5kg NZ Pale malt with two cans of Black Rock Light. • Use the other grains and…

This building opened in Cameron Terrace in 1898 to accommodate Catholic boarders of all ages and for use as classrooms for primary pupils. The building, called locally Hutchinson’s Folly for its former owner, had plenty of rooms and extensive grounds for pupils to play in. The ‘Villa kids’, as they were known, moved to a new site in Guyton Street in 1944 and their little school was renamed St Monica’s. It closed in 1963. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/whanganui-chronicle/news/museum-catholic-education-in-whanganui/6CY MS3MYHBZTHONEO263CEO5JI/ https:/whanganuiregionalmuseum.wordpress.com/2014/05/28/a-house-with-a-history-hutchisons-folly-villa-maria/…

Well, I’ve done it; I have had my jabs. It was a painless process, other than the sore arm after the first one. Still, I’ve had worse. So now I have joined the herd, received the tracking device, magnetised myself, am tuned into 5G, and all the other absurdities that those opposed would have us believe. What concerns me in no small way is how many of my friends and associates have gone down the rabbit hole. My partner, the Lady of the Grey Havens, tells me I am too rigid in my thinking and I should be open to other people’s ideas and at least listen. To be fair, she has a point; my tolerance for BS is very narrow. No one of my generation should be averse to…

To start at the very end: this is my little two-part nesting dinghy, ‘Punga’, sized and built to be the new tender to my 40-foot sailing yacht Local Talent. It is a Spindrift 10, 3.1m long and plenty big enough for two to four people, made from a design by B&B Yacht Design in North Carolina, USA. I built it in an old boat shed just up the hill from the Town Basin Marina, in my home port of Whangarei. It rows beautifully when distances are not so great, and can go farther afield under sail or motor. However, its seagoing options have also most definitely been exploited for nothing more than fun at times. Discovering solutions One of the chief beauties of making things myself is making them unique.…

This Punga Grove Avenue property was once the residence of Ron Davies who, in partnership with Alan Orams, founded what went on to become the highly respected Orams Marine Services Ltd, now based in Auckland. This major New Zealand marine business began its operations in the very shed that I was working in. When the current owner — and my dear friend — artist Barbara O’Sullivan, heard that I was interested in building a small boat she was tickled by the idea that the shed could come full circle and return to its boatbuilding origins. She had used it as a painting studio for many years, but it had morphed into a storage shed in recent times and my boat project seemed to offer the promise of breathing life back…

Well, an awful lot to be honest. We have used this lockdown to upgrade and completely redesign our website — more categories, and better layout and design for our nearly 2000 posts of projects and sheddie tales. What does this mean to you? Articles and projects will be easier to locate and read while you enjoy a much better layout for your phone, tablet, or desktop PC. As we load even more articles, layouts will improve and give readers a much better online experience. So, what are you waiting for? Check out the new look the-shed.nz.…

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Imaging, as the name suggests, is the complete copying of not just your files and data, but also includes all aspects of your operating system settings right down to your desktop background choice. When I was doing a CAD course some years ago, all the computers in the classroom had been imaged, which meant that I could use any computer in the room and it was identical to any other computer in the room. All software, system settings, and student log ons were identical. This made it much easier for the polytech technicians to update or service them whenever the need arose. Think copy and paste on a much larger scale. But first make sure there aren’t any errors or bugs, as they would also get imaged across the classroom.…

There is a spirited musical revolution ringing out from backyards, lounges, and stages across the planet. It is a joyful, noisy uprising; picked and strummed by a passionate community of makers and players of handmade cigar box guitars (CBG). These humble lo-fi instruments are capable of producing new sounds and unorthodox voices without the need for digital inputs or hard drives. Call it a rebellion against technology; they are innately unique, and can reawaken a sense of musical freedom in any virtuoso. Their reverberations were heard loud and clear — some time ago — by self-taught, Auckland CGB creator, Don Buckley of Bigsmoke Guitars. “The first rule of cigar box guitar making is … there are no rules” Rules, rules, rules In the past half-decade Don has built more than…

Tuners/machine heads are extremely important — they keep the strings in tune. One of the earliest discoveries I made! I found a quality tuner in the Grover Sta-Tite. Don’t scrimp on pickups. Single coil pickups are OK but Humbuckers with two coils are best with CBGs. Humbuckers have a 500K pod. The K is the resistance value, with more treble response as in a ‘brighter’ sound. Remember, the strings will act as antennae; if they are not grounded to the circuit they can produce a background hum. A deeper box generally gives a richer sound. Sound holes contribute to the sustain and can deliver a brighter sound. Sound holes are experimental, really, and are governed by the size of the box. Some people argue for them; others say they are…

It used to be the norm to grind turning tools to shape from stock pieces of high-speed steel (HSS). Then convenient tungsten carbide cutting tools with screw-on inserts became commonplace. However, hand-ground tools still have a place in the thrifty sheddie’s workshop and indeed in commercial workshops where a tool with a particular shape is needed. Before HSS was developed, we had alloy tool steels. They would cut metal parts but would easily become blunt, even at slow cutting speeds. The reason was mainly that early tool steels became soft as they got hotter. The faster the cutting speeds, the hotter and softer the tool tip; the workpiece material was then harder than the tool, and the cutting edge failed. Metallurgists discovered that by adding tungsten to the alloy tool…

Retired landscaper, Fred Frederikse, lives a semi-hippy lifestyle with wife, Deb, in pole sheds beside the Whanganui River. Fred and friends have built the sheds, including a recording studio where he plays in a band. A largely self-taught builder and self-confessed “dropout from the School of Architecture”, Fred works out of his head, without plans. He says he learned about building by demolishing a house, and as a landscaper built anything from fences to decks, to retaining walls, to fountains and waterfalls, to lighting systems. “The next thing you build is always different so you learn as you go. I’m not a conventional builder,” he explains. Fred and Deb used to live much further up the Whanganui River. “[We] lucked into a piece of land and built up there. There…

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