Innehållsförteckning för No 120 April - May 2025 från The Shed

One key to a long, happy, and healthy life, they say, is to keep both your mind and body active while seeking companionship and friendship. We each have our own ways of achieving this, but it’s clear that the readers of The Shed excel in meeting these criteria for a fulfilling life. This issue’s cover story is a perfect illustration of that. Des Barnes is a tool collector, and his shed is packed with fascinating and unique hand tools, some of which are extremely rare and vintage. Not only does he collect these tools, but he also restores and rebuilds those he can. Des is an active member of the New Zealand Vintage Tool Collectors Club. You can easily imagine the puzzled looks on the faces of younger people who…

Our local MenzShed is mainly set up for woodwork, and a perennial problem for us is getting quality wood for things like speaker cabinets, furniture and toolboxes. Much of what gets used is recycled timber – mainly rimu or oak – which has its own problems, with hidden screws and nails. There are strict protocols for the use of the Shed’s saws, jointer and especially its thicknesser. All second-hand timber must be tested with a hand-held metal detector by two MenzShed members before it passes through the thicknesser. Even so, the machine’s blades have to be expensively reground on a fairly regular basis to restore the cutting edges after they have suffered damage. An overlooked nail will leave a semicircular divot in the cutting edges which will prevent the thicknesser…

There are a number of proverbs in life that don’t hold up under scrutiny. Such as, “The grass is always greener …”, “No pain, no gain”, and “You need a lathe to make a wooden bowl”. Oh, and “all bowls need to be round”. If you have a router, you have another perfectly good method available. One of the distinct advantages of this technique is that the resulting bowl does not have to be round (although it can be if you want – it can be any shape you like). Using a router to make a bowl is a hand-held router technique and although I am generally not the biggest fan of using a router hand-held, routing a bowl is a particularly easy evolution. I know of classes where this…

Tool collector Des Barnes jokingly calls himself “a magpie.” While he is attracted to an array of ageless apparatus, his initial collection was founded on necessity rather than a predilection for heritage handcraft. Des began buying tools as soon as he started his apprenticeship as a Cabinet maker and Joiner in 1958. He was a conscientious recruit eager to secure the right tool for the job. Needless to say, many of the tools that were necessary for the trade back then are considered collector’s items today. And he still owns them, including a few he made himself. The thing that drives Des’s collection these days is his deep respect for the skill and precision-crafting of traditional toolmakers. His beautifully presented tool displays on seven high glass shelves in his carpeted…

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Sun streams through a large open roller door that signals the New Plymouth MenzShed, located in the Atawhai Industries Building, 38 Mclean Street, is open. The warmth of wood permeates the main space. This is clearly a woodworking shed. Lengths of wood and partially finished pieces lie in waiting to be worked with on four wooden benches, perhaps fashioned on the shed’s comprehensive range of machinery, power and hand tools. These are neatly organized within easy reach on the walls, along with safety gear. A dedicated dust extractor installed by members keeps hair, air, nostrils and lungs free from irritants. Plenty of kit There’s a full workshop kit. The oldest ‘member’ of the shed is a Tanner Jointer and “solid as,” says co-ordinator, Phil Taylor. There’s a thicknesser, table saw,…

Southern California in the 1950s and early 1960s had some very desirable characteristics apart from the surfing beaches and the movie studios: the weather was almost perfect, and jobs were relatively easy to get. Many of the young men who moved there were highly trained veterans of a mechanised war. A lot of these fellows had received training in mechanical skills from the US military. What they were most interested in was cars; the faster and more attention-getting, the better. The hot rod movement was born out of these shade-tree mechanics’ attempts to make pre-war Fords look like custom-built sports cars and to get them to handle and accelerate like race cars. The movement was featured in movies and popular music and gave rise to magazines like Hot Rod and…

Some things last longer than others, the pity being that time has to pass before that longevity becomes obvious. Suddenly, you realise that all its contemporaries have bitten the dust, but product X is still soldiering on. So it is with our 1993 Corolla wagon, just clocking past 400,000km. So it is as well with a veritable fleet of something manufactured in Britain from 1962 until 1976; the Kenwood Chef A701a. I first contemplated them when reading a book by James May called The Reassembler. Then I bought one. Then another. Then, I figured to restore the spare one – as you do. And went down an entirely pleasant rabbit hole – the way the local bunnies do when I stalk them, nowadays … A bit of history Hindsight has…

For most of us, the warmer weather arrived late in the piece, but that also depended on where your shed was located. All Jokes aside, I hope you have had time to get some of those summer jobs ticked off the to-do list before going back to work. Perhaps this may have provided you with a bit of a head start on any new projects. Speaking of projects, I actually needed to focus on my own over Christmas, the back anchors and most of the braking system needed replacement/rebuilding on the wee Sprite. Ordering parts can be a stressful experience, and expecting them to arrive promptly from the Northern Hemisphere over Christmas was highly unlikely. The thought of the car up on blocks when there were shows and gatherings to…

Send your letters to: editor@the-shed.nz Some advice when welding and gas bottle forge improvements Hi Greg, I enjoyed reading the article about the gas forge. Well done. There were a couple of issues that could help make the build a bit better. Yes, you definitely need a floor; it will hold more heat, therefore improving efficiency. Good gloves are a must. When I was working as a blacksmith, we tried a number of gloves and found that leather, no matter how thick, does not work well as it heats quickly and is very slow to cool, this includes the thick-lined welding gloves. We used a cotton glove of the type that had a thick looped design. The cotton dissipates the heat quickly Some sort of a door would also be…

Elevate your outdoor entertainment area with your very own DIY swing chair. This is a satisfying weekend DIY project that you and your family and friends can enjoy for years to come. Swing chair to do list ✔ Prep and prime with the right Resene primer for your materials ✔ Build out the base, framing and construct the chair ✔ Paint with Resene Lustacryl in your chosen colour ✔ Suspend your chair and hang out! View how to make your own swing chair, plus cut lists and step-by-step instructions at masterstrokebyresene.com Visit your local Resene ColorShop for all your decorating needs and the widest range of NZ made paints, wood stains and colours. Watch now!…

Last October, my wife and I were in Perth, where I had the opportunity to attend a TEDx event on the subject of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Now I had previously played a bit with the free version of ChatGPT, the one most people are probably aware of. It has its limitations – as we shall see – but I wasn’t really stretching it in any way. The TEDx event changed all that. There were four speakers, all very interesting and informative about how AI is being used in and around Western Australia. The fourth, however, the one that impressed me the most, was Sean Oldenburger – a young man in his late twenties I would guess – who had started a business advising businesses on how AI could benefit them.…

1 What type of Tungsten electrode would you use for TIG welding mild steel? (a) Pure Tungsten (b) Thoriated Tungsten (c) Lanthanated Tungsten 2 Which type of lighting is the most efficient? (a) Fluorescent (b) LED (c) Incandescent 3 What is the fastener in the picture called? (a) Anti-rotation clip (b) Tractor hitch (c) R clip 4 What is an anaerobic adhesive? (a) One that sets in the absence of sunlight (b) One that sets in the absence of air (c) One that sets in the absence of moisture 5 Is there such a thing as waterproof grease? (a) Yes (b) No 6 If a single-phase electric motor draws 10 amps, how many Watts is its power? (a) 800 Watts (b) 4.6 Kilowatts (c) 2.3 Kilowatts 7 Why do some drill bits have a Titanium Nitride coating?…

Most sheddies when looking for a new home, tend to look for houses with a larger than normal garage. Paul French did it rather differently. He looked for a large industrial building and then built an accommodation wing – three bedrooms, a bathroom and a kitchen – onto it. So his 500m2 shed is also his living room, with internal access, TV, couches, cable-reel table, woodstove and jukebox. Twelve years ago, he bought a shed on the outskirts of a rural town less than an hour’s drive from Christchurch. At that time, the town was not thriving and many of the main street shops were empty – as was the building Paul bought, which previously housed a car wrecking business. The residential wing Paul built runs along the section’s southern…