The Shed

Often when we think about who and what we feature in The Shed, we think of traditional workshop skills and projects — do you think that way as well? Let’s describe how to build a log splitter, Kon-Tiki, a power hammer, a table, etc. Our minds head to

Paul Clegg of Pukerua Bay won our Father’s Day Ampro workshop 300-piece-plus tool-pack prize worth $3500 late last year. Paul wrote to the magazine informing us what a happy sheddie he is now: “The other day I took a call from the team at The Shed ma

Nothing denotes summer as much as a Cape Cod / Adirondack chair. A low-slung chair with a raked back and wide arms perfect for holding a drink seems to epitomise long, lazy afternoons. This design was created in the Adirondack Mountains of New York S

As shed locations go, it does not get much better than Rudi’s. It sits at the end of a long gravel road, high above Karekare Beach in the Waitakere Ranges where the only sounds are the chorus of tui and kanuka branches stirring in a sea breeze. The c

In the February/March 2016 issue [No. 65] you published an article by Jude Woodside about installing a Hafco 320G lathe in his workshop. He mentioned flushing the headstock to clear the manufacturing crude out. Well, I can go one better. I bought min

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“An average dad with a passion for tools and creativity, to whom nothing in the shed is a stress,” is how Julian Stone likes to describe himself. He might be being a In his lifestyle-block home in the Waikato, while his wife looks after the horses in

There’s off the grid, then there’s really off the grid, then there’s so far off the grid that you have one all to yourself. Australian Ben Carlin qualifies for the third category; from 1950 to 1958 he circled the planet in a WWII amphibious jeep, cro

In early 2020, Paul Cockburn, the general manager of Caffe L’affare, asked me to be part of the small group of New Zealand artists who would do an art piece/study of one of the cafe’s long-term staff to appear on one of its coffee bags. For me, the p

The sculpture was originally called ‘Dark Meccano’, linking Meccano and the innocence of childhood play with a foreboding dread. The name shifted to ‘Dark McCahon-O’ — a play on Colin McCahon’s dark landscapes — then a serendipitous discovery of the

Trying! The camera controls are not easy to get at. Even worse, the viewfinder is not good in low light and the film stock has little exposure latitude — you really have to know and trust your light meter. The worst boo-boo I made was banging off a w

Yep, but it comes with a hefty price tag. I did not have the digital luxury of shooting the hell out of it or reviewing the shots as we went. Generally, there was a nerve-wracking wait of 10 days for the lab turnaround; availability of chemicals and

There are two categories of people who sharpen their own tools: the purists and the more practical. I am very much in the latter group. I use my tools, they occasionally get dropped on the floor — which is concrete — and I have found that, for genera

Different beer styles come into fashion and then some drop out of favour. Early in the craft beer boom, West Coast IPAs were in demand, with the highly hopped bitter beers brewed by nearly every brewery. Now, we seem to be in a ‘hazy’ phase, with the

In his book 1912: The Year the World Discovered Antarctica, published in 2012, Chris Turney wrote about his discovery in the British Library of a memorandum written in 1913 by the President of the Royal Geographical Society, Lord Curzon, in which he

In this part of the series, we face the second part of the software that I developed to manage the four Raspberry Pi 4 — the user interface. As mentioned in part four (The Shed, Issue No. 101), the Raspberry Pi that manages features such as network r

For 10 years, Robin Wilson has held the position of loco foreman at Christchurch’s miniature railway, which is run by the Canterbury Society of Model and Experimental Engineers. The loco foreman has responsibility for the certifying of model locomoti

Whenever railway enthusiasts chat, the talk often turns to the gauge of various lines. Gauge is the distance between the inside of the two rails and has almost limitless variations. The first railways were in mines and made of wood. The tracks provid

Computer-based technology is changing the modelling world just as it is transforming most other areas of life. The ability to use 3D printers to make scale-model versions of complex engineering components relatively quickly and easily has been a boon

The CSMEE was established in Christchurch in 1933. After many years in Addington the club moved to its present location at the Halswell Domain, where it has two railway track layouts, a boating pond, enviable club rooms with an extensive library, and

Rob Wilson uses his Weldtech Proarc 1600 140A inverter to stick weld very thin steel sheet to form the bodies of his model locomotives. For his latest, he had to join the 0.9mm-thick sides to the 1.2mm-thick front. He reduced the current to give the

My cell phone rang. “Ordinary jokers aren’t getting heard,” said the voice on the other end of the line. “Is that right, mate?” I replied. “Yes, we’re not getting a fair deal,” he said. Apparently, this guy has been attempting to access a social agen

The history of this radiogram goes back to 1958. Let me explain. My wife Lorraine and I married on 1 August 1958. I was just six weeks off turning 18 while Lorraine was aged 16 years, 6 months, and 2 weeks. Our first residence as a married couple was

In 1861, James Wiseman came to New Zealand from Tasmania and purchased a saddlery business from J McKerras in Auckland’s Queen St. Wiseman was no stranger to the business as his father was also a saddler and the two had worked together in Australia.

Was the hammer the first tool? Because timber, bone, and ivory all decay and the first stone hammers were unshaped, no one is sure. However, hammers may even predate humans as a number of animals use hammers — for example, chimpanzees and sea otters

If it’s stuck, hit it with a hammer – if it breaks, it needed replacing anyway. Why is it if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail? The largest stone hammer weighs 30kg and was used in a bronze age mine in North Wales. The largest ha

Cherol Filbee tears up lengths of damp toilet paper and shoves them into the bowl of her Kenwood cake mixer. She adds measures of plaster, PVA glue, cornflour, and mineral oil, then turns it on and stands back. The former cake baker is wisely wearing

20-gauge wire, approximately 120cm long Papier mâché mix 6 screw-eyes 1 small cup hook Stringing cord (thinnest Roman blind cord is good) — 5m for a bird without wings or 6.5m with 2x1cm wood for controls, approximately 80cm long Hat elastic, 40cm lo

Router, drill and sander — all Ryobi because of the convenience of interchangeable batteries Scroll saw — also Ryobi; 450mm for cutting angles on leg and arm joints Ozito bench saw — for cutting bases for puppet stands Dremel EZ476 — for cutting groo

1. Assemble control. While stringing, ensure the control hangs parallel to the floor. 2. Attach string to body and thread up through the control at hole A. Secure at a suitable working height (just above waist height for the person who will operate t