What is the last thing you made? (pics pls)

(the dog likes to think she’s helping).

She is!

*spaniel shown for scale.

There was the use of hammers, red hot metal an anvil and a qualified blacksmith when I assisted in the manufacture of this.

Of all the amazing gifts the absolutely lovely MrsAmbrose has given me, the forging day ranks in the top three. It was just such a wonderful day, making metal change into the shapes you wanted. I made a few hooks and a little hanging rail. Magic.

I’ve just strung this up for the first time. I need to leave it for a week, or so to settle down before I set it up and see if I can make it play nicely.

August 2023

Now

That’s fantastic

That is lovely @tillydog

@tillydog That’s some real talent, kudos.

That is stunning Tillydog 🙂👏

Okay, maybe this isn’t quite up there with Jim’s birds or Tillys guitar but I give you:

Stealth Attack Giraffe

man that guitar is breathtaking. lovely thing

New wheels.

What rims and spokes @Daffy?

Nextie Ultralight 35mm deep and 25mm (int) wide and standard Sapim CX-Ray J-bends.

That guitar is truly a masterpiece, a thing of beauty and a joy to behold! 🥰👏🏻👌🏻🫶🏻

I have neither the ability, skill or facilities to even think about making something like that, and the increasing level of arthritis in both my hands is starting to make even small jobs harder to do.

I did put a design on a tee shirt yesterday, though; I’ve got two King Crimson tee shirts with the cover designs from two of their three 80’s albums, ‘Discipline’ and ‘Beat’, the red and blue ones in the pic, but ‘Three Of A Perfect Pair’ is only available with the name of the band and album printed across the top, so as it’s a fairly simple image, I thought I’d have a go at doing my own.
I found a good quality image, cropped it and printed it to about the size of the others, spray mounted it onto one side of a Cornflakes box and very carefully cut it out as a stencil. After lots of digging on the interwebz, I found one bottle of blue acrylic fabric paint at Hobby Craft in Bristol, put some into one of those little plastic pump spray bottles and watered it down a bit. I lightly sprayed adhesive on the back of the stencil and got it all lined up and flat, on top of an old wooden drawing board with everything else masked, and sprayed it carefully a couple of times, to avoid it puddling.

For such a half-assed setup and for a first attempt, I’m really pretty chuffed with how well it’s worked out! I’ll be wearing it to the pub tomorrow evening. 😁

^Looks smart.

Thank you all for the kind comments about the guitar. I’m pretty chuffed with it myself.

increasing level of arthritis in both my hands is starting to make even small jobs harder to do.

I sympathise with you. My eyesight is showing signs of age which I find tremendously frustrating. I’m trying to get this sort of thing out of my system while I still can.

I absolutely love this thread, as on one hand (and one page!) you have custom handmade guitars, and then stealth giraffes also. And both are absolutely mint!

This week I have made* the Earth so on Sunday I trested

*Okay, it was a kit but still quite fun to put together. The globe rotates when you turn one set of gears, the viewing lens moves up and down so you can see the detail of a specific area and the is an LED loop inside so it illuminates if you want.

Kingfisher in maple, cherry and walnut. The base is yew

That kingfisher is a lovely thing.👌

I approve of that kingfisher muchly.

also, that’s not just any old walnut on the beak, that’s American black walnut innit? Quite familiar with it as I built a drum kit out of the stuff and have all sorts of jigs and fixtures around my workshop made out of the offcuts.

that guitar is insane.  Even if that’s your day job the level of finish, fitting and inlays are perfect.

That’s American black walnut

yes, it’s laminated from about 12 layers of veneer. I have found that works best for the beaks as they are stronger

There was the use of hammers, red hot metal an anvil and a qualified blacksmith when I assisted in the manufacture of this.

Watched a guy doing a nail-making demo; he also made some tenterhooks, which entirely logically are hooks for a tenter. Fascinating demo

Anyone displaying anything on here is skilled, the birds and guitar are my recent favourites 👍

I made my first proper thing on my lathe.

A stud to mount a quick change tool post.  Not the most exciting thing but now I don’t have to mess around with shims to set tool height every time I change tools.

https://i.postimg.cc/KzGsMKTD/PXL-20240608-151333069-MP.jpg

https://i.postimg.cc/XJs1cVcS/PXL-20240608-154220577-MP.jpg

https://i.postimg.cc/gjrSgfNw/PXL-20240608-154230428-MP.jpg

EDIT – FFS how do you post images these days?  The image link thing isn’t there any more, pasting in the direct links doesn’t work and the upload keeps telling me the pictures need to be JPEG and under 10mb which they are.

The image icon is available for me on IOS. It has been absent on a couple of occasions so it might be worth logging out then in again ?

Good to get the stud made, QC tool posts make things much easier

This thread popped up while I was sitting in my wife’s birthday present:

The main fabric is a throw I got from Vinted which was an ideal size and saved me some work.

There was a bit of trial and error with sizing, lengths of rope, etc. (a lot of which I think is specific to the fabric because of its weight and stretchiness) but the design itself is pretty simple. Basic idea cribbed from here but ignored the dimensions as per the comments.

Had to replace one of the cross members above the deck with a wider one so I could hang it without worrying about sudden landings!

@jonm81 nice lathe work! Wish I had room for one.

HTML tags work for images, so copy the HTML embed code from postimg if it has the option, or just wrap < IMG src=”linky”> around it (without the space after < ).

E.g.

The image link thing isn’t there any more

You need to enable the “fancy editor” in your account settings.

Thanks folks.  Fancy editor enabled now so hopefully it’ll work next time.  I did try the  [ img] link [ / img] that used to do the trick but they don’t seem to work any more

Wow, guitars, birds, art and now a sex swing!

I use a Fiio DAC with my headphones on my phone, attaching it to the back of the phone with heavy-duty Velcro, but it’s not very stable. Then I had a bit of a lightbulb moment. My phone has MagSafe built in, so I bought a couple of Ringke MagSafe cases, and cut the bottom out of one of them and attached the DAC to it with No More Nails adhesive tape – works like a charm!

Im desperate to get back into this but completely lost my mojo for it.

I keep buying machinery, tools and things but after they arrive and are unpacked, they basically just sit there unused.

Example of this is i bought a dedicated morticer, but 6 months down the line I’ve not even bought chisels for it.

I sometimes wonder if ill make anything again 🙁

You will mate, you will. It might not be as soon as you’d hope but it’ll happen when the time is right.

Massive lathe envy here. I’ve had a couple of ‘that would be a perfect job for a lathe’ moments lately. In one case just ‘embiggening three holes’, they just need to be concentric to the OD and I don’t trust myself with a hand drill!

That said i haven’t used a lathe in anger since school and it attempted to take my finger off so perhaps it’s for the best!

Not exactly up there with the precision of that *exquisite* Gee-Tar above, but the stability and levelness of a chunky planter I made for Mrs Merman made me stand back with folded arms and nod quietly to myself in knowing satisfaction. She requested a free-standing planter to be made for a very specific location: on an uneven lumpy path that sloped in two planes, so no two legs could be the same length or have the same footprint. Yes, I suppose fitting some adjustable feet might have been an option but hey. The trough was made from some half-rotten scaffold boards I found at the bottom of the garden, and the legs are a 75mm fencepost. The plugs which conceal the screw heads are short lengths of broken drumstick. Et voilá!

👍🏼

Needs grouting up and then I’m boxing the wall in with timber to give a square edge and a sitting/table the length of the patio.

Never touched doing anything like this.  Its been a learning curve. Must have shifted tonnes of dirt and the old 3×2 corporation flags…..

I relaid my cooncil slabs.

Because despite being s nightmare. It was easier than carrying the **** up a flight of stairs.