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

I doned a wall

Coping stones yet be determined

The conventional picture frames are cheap and easy so I thought I would make it difficult and make my own. Here are my first two attempts at ‘something different’

I really like that bottom frame. So simple yet effective.

It’s my lad’s 21st birthday party in a few weeks.

I had an afternoon spare today, together with a few pallets and some worktop offcuts that had been in my garage for years.

DJ booth / garden bar!

Love the bar 😊👍

Nice Wall thestabiliser. Can it be seen from space?

Giving our old Coalbrookdale stove a refurb.

Solidwork’d some 10mm laser cut replacement grate bars.
Made a mould for casting refractory side firebricks.

Fashioned a handy wheel jig out of a bit of 6×2 and a coach bolt…

Three more picture frames from me.

They’re some lovely grate bars RNP

They’re some lovely grate bars RNP – Welds need grinding off at the thick end…

…says WCA, master of the pigeon shit weld technique

These two frames let you slide the painting in and out if you want to swap them around.

I felt the wider plain frame suited this painting

The orange sky did not look great against plain wood to I got my blow torch out

@WCA. You could benefit from a mitre trimmer. They’re not all expensive and you can usually find one on ebay or gumtree 2nds. Makes a massive difference, plus its quiet and extremely safe in use.

I agree – they are about £200+ new and couldn’t find any local ones going cheap. If you scroll up to the first pair of frames you see I avoided the issue, same for the bark edge one and the one where I laminated a few strips of wood together. I thought I would get bold and try the mitre cut but none of my power tools have an accurate enough gauge for 45 degrees to hold true on all four corners and don’t even ask about my hand sawing abilities. I have just planked up another few oak posts so should be able to try some new ideas. I will be avoiding mitres though 🙂

If theres only £200+ versions about, I’d suggest you look at making yourself a shooting board for 45 degree.

Very wet clay soil and a dog

I have that too,still wouldn’t have artificial grass. That’s gonna be howling come summer. Parents and their neighbours have learned that lesson.

Depending on what kind it is it can also get incredibly, dangerously hot on sunny days.

Auricula theatre for the other half.
Made with an old silk screen printing frame, some recycled painting and decorating trims and some old wiggle tin.

That’s gonna be howling come summer. Parents and their neighbours have learned that lesson

Already solved for that. Rather than using sand under the grass as a base, you use grano dust instead. Sand sticks of dog piss, grano dust doesn’t. Was absolutely fine during the summer

Tried to post here several times but it just disappears, so this is a test…

OK, so that worked. How about if I serialise it?…

Regular readers may remember my bike rack system from a while back:

I knew this system would have its limitations – squeezing 5 bikes into 4′ of horizontal space is never going to be ideal – but it started to annoy me pretty quickly, and I was scraping pedals/chainstays/spokes every time I took a bike in or out.

Regular readers may remember my bike rack system from a while back:

I knew this system would have its limitations – squeezing 5 bikes into 4′ of horizontal space is never going to be ideal – but it started to annoy me pretty quickly, and I was scraping pedals/chainstays/spokes every time I took a bike in or out.

So I decided build something similar but where the hooks could be easily slid across while loaded, to make a bit more room to get one in the middle in or out. I knew unistrut was the way forward having seen a few ideas on here, so ordered 3 1.25m lengths of 21x41mm (about £27 delivered off eBay).

I thought finding bearings the right size to go in the channel would be easy, but having worked out the maximum diameter to fit in the slot, the minimum to contact top and bottom lips for stability, and the maximum thickness to allow for a fastener, I couldn’t find anything. I considered some PTFE or nylon blocks as linear bushes, but they were going to work out quite expensive cut to order, and I wasn’t sure how well they’d work. Eventually I found these nylon wheels with a 626 bearing on Aliexpress, which looked the perfect size. £13 delivered for 10, so I hit order and waited patiently.

In the meantime I thought about how to mount the rails. The board I’m mounting this to is a divider at the front of my garage which creates a seperate area for the bikes and keeps sawdust, swarf, etc. off them. But it hinges out of the way in case I ever need to get something large into the garage (which is also the access to the back garden). So I didn’t want to just screw them on, but I also didn’t want to have a joint in the middle where the “wall” hinges, and keeping the unistrut in one piece makes the whole thing more rigid. I also needed to not foul the rollers carrying the hooks.

I decided the solution was some “saddle” type clamps, one at each end, so the strut can slide out without removing them. Had a rootle in my box of scra-, sorry, valuable materials and found some box section that fitted two widths of unistrut neatly, so I sliced it down the middle and welded some plate on each side:

(I could have MIGed it in half the time, but it was a good excuse to practice TIG)

Then I drilled some holes for mounting bolts and sliced it into 6 brackets. A bit wonky, but a perfect fit and plenty strong enough:

The wheels arrived from China and fortunately fit perfectly into the unistrut. After some more rummaging I found some M6 cross dowel bolts that were roughly the right length and would fit in the channel after a bit of grinding to reduce the head. A couple of full nuts fix the tension on the bearing and space it out of the channel:

I ended up using some short lengths of aluminium angle that I had lying around to support the bottom end. Ideally I’d have had more wheels, but didn’t want to risk buying another set in case they didn’t fit.

The hooks are mounted with roofing bolts – cheap and have a low profile head that doesn’t catch the tyre. I made the boards longer than necessary so I could set them at different heights to avoid handlebar clashes.

All mounted up:

I probably could have got away with only two rails since the aluminium angle slides fairly easily without the rail, but I designed it with the previous system in mind, so put it up anyway

Loaded with 5 bikes, with 4 squished into the corner leaving maximum room for the 5th (my partner’s commuter):

Got more complicated than I thought, but when was the last time a project didn’t? Time will tell how much of an improvement this is (I wanted to make them hinge too to make loading/unloading even easier, but couldn’t think of a neat way of doing it… will see how this works for now) but it works as intended in that the bikes slide easily.

Got there in the end.

Good work that. It looks like a great system to minimise used space.

@thenorthwind Nods at the Northumberland flag top cap. Where might I get such a thing?

Thanks @colp.

The Giant shop in Prudhoe. I saw one on a friend’s and had to get one too.

Very neat that thenorthwind 👏

thenorthwind
Full Member

Thanks @colp.

The Giant shop in Prudhoe. I saw one on a friend’s and had to get one too.
Posted 5 hours ago
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Sadly it’s a long way to Pruhoe from Aus.

Nice job on the bike storage rails. My in-van bike rack using the same uni-strut sliders is getting on for 4 years old now and is still reliable. 👍

@mahalo – excellent idea, thanks, I’ve copied it

@mahalo – excellent idea, thanks, I’ve copied it

im glad!. so simple, but ive used it loads since making it.

you wouldnt lace a whole wheel with it but for changing tyres and tightening spokes its a dream!

@uphillcursing assumed you were local! Originally though?

Thanks @tthew. First time I’ve used unistrut for one of my own projects, but can see it appearing again.

@THENORTHWIND Yes local for fourty years, now banished to the Antipodes. Whats the shop in Prudoe called? I might give them a ring.

https://www.giant-newcastle.co.uk/gb
There you go. Despite the Giant branding, it’s a fairly standard bike shop, I think they’re just franchised.

BTW after I bought it, I realised the top cap design is just a sticker. It seems good quality so no complaints, but wonder if you could get something similar done locally.

You can get anything you want on a stem cap Here.

Made a memorial surround for my dad in 2010 and before I knew it there were messages left on the memorial asking where I’d bought it from. Ended up making quite a few for people.
Made from cast acrylic and bonded. I sketched it out on autocad first then cut using a festool track saw.

I’ve knocked up a wall rack for my lad’s room in Uni to store his bikes out of the way.
Just 2 screws in the central vertical section holding it to the wall.

That’s wicked colp 👏

Cheers fella!

@flyingpotatoes.Respect. Well done. 👏 👍🏼

Already solved for that. Rather than using sand under the grass as a base, you use grano dust instead. Sand sticks of dog piss, grano dust doesn’t. Was absolutely fine during the summer

Interesting. Cheers!