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

Its called decor and i’m good at it?

Didn’t think that through…. Edited.

As someone who detests frames, cushions, doorstops and anything else adorned with cringeworthy phrases, I heartily approve of this.

It was really a bit of a laugh to fill an empty frame until i fill with the output from my darkroom.

Liff Laff Luff is a standard joke in this house.

I wanted to put barends back on my bike but didn’t want to crush the carbon bars.  Rather than buying the £15 Specialized expanding bar plugs I have a lathe and some brass……..

First needed to make an arbour for a slitting saw

Then turned the bar end plugs

Nice slit. Brass can be lovely to turn

What is the frame? I’m seeing a Lefty fork attached to something interesting and (custom?) steel…..

Cheers Mick. Brass is really nice to work with. I much prefer it to aluminium.

Slitting and milling will be much easier once I get this machine up and running.

The frame is one I made a few years ago. Columbus Zona tubing with PMW sliding dropouts. Built up with a carbon Lefty and a Rohloff for doing long distance rides.

I was sad enough to recognise a head tube and hose guides probably from Ceeway…….. so not surprised it is Columbus tubing. I also use Zona as a reasonably priced and reasonably strong tube (mostly just for top and down tubes as I bend my own stays and seat tubes from 1.5m lengths of Gara cro-mo).

Feels a bit wrong not using Reynolds, but for occasional frames it is more convenient to get it from one place whilst buying 44mm ht, bb shells etc

Every time i see a lathe on here i am reminded i should really bolt the flywheel for my treadle down do i can use it.

No-hammer press fit bottom bracket remover:

The outer part is an old brake piston bored out to fit over the OD of the press-fit cup. The inner part can be fiddled through the spindle hole and then flipped up behind the cup. Tightening the bolt draws the cup out in the most civilised manner.

BB was well past its best!

Took about an hour to make the tool and about 30 seconds to remove each cup!

Very neat solution

More repair than build

More repair than build

Do you mean me?

I made the extractor – didn’t take many photos of the work in progress though.

@ jonm81

QR tool post mount was the first thing that I made for my lathe.

Not quite so simple as just making a threaded stud.

I cant claim ‘all my own work’ though.

I had to remove the cross slide as that required modification so I could not use my lathe for the next steps. Borrowed some time on a friends big lathe.

Turned 1 mm off the top face, but left a boss as the same diameter as the inside dia of the new QR tool post.

Had to buy an M14x1.5 tap to thread the crossslide to take the new 14mm QR post stud.

Then had to ‘lap’ the tool post to the boss. Some very fine grinding powder mixed with some thin oil (Luckily I had some SAE 5 hydraulic oil), and just a ‘few’ rotations of the post had it moving round very smoothly.

Last job……Very careful cleaning, including a dip into an ultrasonic tank,  of the cross slide and tool pust to remove any traces of the grinding paste.

Certainly removes the tiresome task of setting of the tool height.

No pictures unfortunately.

Any makers here made under stair drawers? Pretty keen to do this and seen a number of methods online. Trying to decide between building a frame from Ply (3/4 probably) or regular 2×4. I suspect the Ply would be pricier, but maybe neater and easier to position drawers.

Anyone done it? Lessons learned and advice?

How big is the space you are filling with the drawers? What are the drawer fronts going to be made from? You might find 12mm ply suitable or possibly even 15mm MDF. Jointing 2×4 to make a suitable frame would probably involve more work in the long run depending on the size of the whole project

It’s not a huge space, around 1.2m long x 1.5m tall, full width until about 0.8m high before angling for the stairs. I’m not too worried about the fronts, it’s more the material pros and cons of making a strong frame for deep drawers which could exert a lot of leverage on the frame. I’m sure both will work, but from what I’ve seen, making in ply looks a lot neater than a scaffold, but with probably a financial penalty.

Ply would probably be a lot easier and quicker, especially if you can get most of the sheets pre-cut. You would basically have a set of pre-cut shelves and then just add the uprights. The drawers could then just slide in and out on the shelves. Also would allow you to miss out drawers or have different size ones to cope with those awkward shaped things you need to store.

Just my idle thoughts

B&Q are good for this. You make up a cutting list and they’ll use their wall saw to cut it all to size.

One time I found it cheaper to get them to run off 2 8’x4′ boards at 8’x4″ strips that i ran across the router table to give them a top round over, rather than buy pre-made skirting which added up to about 200 quid for the same amount. MDF strips, 22 of them cost me at the time about 50 quid.

OK bit of work, doing the moulding, sealing and painting them, but still a considerable saving

B&Q are good for this.

I think it depends if you get someone good on the saw at the time or not

At least in your case it wouldn’t matter as long as they are consistent 🙂

Barn owl in Maple

I wanted some hooks in the garage for bags and coats. Also didn’t want it to look like a bought one.

I think I met my own brief.

I made/finished a car port and installed some bike hangers in the corner. The frame and groundwork was originally done last year by my ex and I finally finished it this summer (roof supports, roof, side supports, side panel, paint). I only have to paint and nail up about 35 strips of läkt to make the sides look the same as the shed and then learn how to park so that the van actually fits all the way in it.

And then build an extension for wood storage.

And then build an extended wall and rof for the entrance to the shed.

Ok, not very finished.

@kiwijohn I may plagarise that at some point!

@willard good going, it’s more than I’ve got!

Up until this morning, I was making Ash frames for pre war cars.

Turns out the bloke I worked for wasn’t really a people person and this morning I left for good. I’d only been there maybe 2.5 months.

The end product (Blue Train Bentley) is frikkin awesome looking, but actually, virtually every step that you do woodwork-wise is kind of the exact same process so was sadly never that exciting to do (not to mention the weird unfriendly atmosphere I felt) but i thought maybe a few carheads on here might like to see it anyway.

A fully finished one

(image taken from a Google search)

One that he had made the framework for quite a while ago, had been out for the metal panelling and trim and engine work etc. coming back to the workshop for interior fitout.

A few images of various stages of building up the framework on a chassis. The chassis stay at the workshop and just the framework goes off for the next stages when complete.

A finished frame removed from the chassis

More

More

You can see all the templates hanging up on the wall. Basically, every stage really is, plane up a piece of Ash to the appropriate size, mark the shape off with the template, bandsaw near to the line, sand to the line with disc sanders and linishers, fit joints etc, screw together with flat headed screws, rinse and repeat.

Fascinating, looks like a similar process to that used by Morgan when I visited the factory in the 1990’s, although there was some use of laminated sections there

Yay! the like button works.

@kayak23 – sorry it didn’t work out for you, but thanks for the interesting photos.

I’ll be adding flat headed screws to the disproportionately cross thread too . Laughing emoji

So.. you cross-threaded the screws??

Good luck with a new adventure kayak23.

Classic car people can be a tad funny to work with

Made this at the weekend from an old bit of pallet, can you tell what it is?

Ferret holder?

For holding wine glasses ? middle hole attaches to something.

For holding wine glasses ? middle hole attaches to something.

ME : Would you like a glass of wine
Wife : Aren’t you a clever dick!

Didn’t take too long to guess 🙂

@kayak23 how are the joints made? They surely aren’t just screwed together?

@kayak23 how are the joints made? They surely aren’t just screwed together?

A lot of them are mortise and tenoned, a lot of them are housings, a lot of them are mitre-housings or mitre-bridle joints, a little like the sketch below

All screwed and glued.

You can see a little of that below.

With the English wheeled steel panels on top and everything else, it’s very strong, though I suppose a little bit of flex is desirable in a road going structure.

@kayak23

Im going to be a bit critical here, but aren’t the curved sections supposed to be steam bent ?

There’s not a lot of strength in short grain.

That said, maybe int he original construction methods of coach built, with most of those methods being transferred over from coach and carriage manufacture.

But very nice all the same.

What’s next, Morris Traveller ?

Well yes. To be honest myself and the bloke has a few issues early on getting along.

I come from a background where I want to question things and how they’re done and always want to look to improve on things.

I asked those same questions. ‘could that be steam bent?’ ‘could that be laminated?’ and instead of welcoming my interest and questions, he seemed to take everything as an insult or an insinuation that I thought what he was doing was rubbish.

That was of course absolutely not the case. Anyway, he is absolutely down the line traditional and doesn’t want anything done differently to how it’s always been done. I’m not really like that and so I am where I am.

We actually did the same degree course(though several years apart) so our starkly different approaches are kind of interesting to me.

Didn’t take too long to guess 🙂

As this is STW, I should have added that some means of easily carrying a bottle and 2 glasses over a lawn in such a poor state as that is definitely needed 😀