Less than 750g weight and less than 25mm thick: post office.
Other wise cheapest option on parcel2go, I use drop off usually.

Those options are usually myhermes, parcel locker, parcelforce,
depending on weight/size. If you send anything large don’t use my
hermes collection, in my experience they have stopped collecting
large parcels and will even refuse to collect them from a parcel shop.

Also, cleaning them is a pain. Don’t be tempted to stick needles down the holes, the holes are quite small and you’ll probably ruin the jet.

I worked with a bloke who always stuck an air line on them, It often worked but loads of times the little ball got blown out; it was usually the expensive ones he had sent the little ball flying across the garage.
If it’s the jet that blocked I always cleaned them with a welding jet cleaner, not much different to stuffing a pin down them really;-)
If they have something growing in the tube, try blowing down the jet and hopefully the blockage gets blown out of the tube, if that fails take the tube off and blow it clear.

About 10 years ago we were given an ancient HP laserjet
Still works perfectly every time. Only downside is no wireless printing so looking at ways to get that working.

Get a jetdirect card and have it connected to you router.

We have two of the Bulfinch blow torches one is about 40 years old and still working great.

Some of the Michael Moorcock books are good.
As are some of the Frank Herbet books.

pies n cake

I put a load of CDs on Discogs a few years ago. I sold a dozen or so the first week
and it dropped off to a few a month since. I am wondering about flogging my records, but they lived
though the 70’s and most are probably in what would be considered the worst condition.

I photographed the key on the last laptop I chucked in the bin.

I will have  a look for it.

Ruby Tuesday by Melanie

Trollbundin by Eivor

My compressor uses the finger flappy valves, they are a spingy stainless and they do break sometimes, but the current ones have been in use since ~1990. I wouldn’t go sanding them down, more likely to break. Mine are Ingersol Rand finger valves and are easy to buy.

If I needed a head gasket I would try something like Klinger C4400, If you have  gasketmaker near you they have
lots of scraps.

Woodruff key, you cut them from a bit of round bar.

voodo Chile being released as a single in the UK just after Hendrix died . Singles at the time cost 9 shillings and 11 pence in old money but Voodoo Chile only cost 6 shillings and 6 pence so unsurprisingly , given the low price and the recent demise of Hendrix , it went to number 1 in the charts .

Being a young whipper snapper I don’t remember that. I do remember Camembert Electrique and Relics, 99p albums every house you went in had a had a copy of both. We knew a girl who worked on the record counter in Woolies, so  singles were free.

The single was Voodoo Chile Slight Return.

Voodoo Chile.

So bent we had to screw the **** in.

I had a motorbike collected for me by them, it was moved from Bolton to Gatwick. I was given prices as low as a third of what the bike movers quoted me!
I took one of the cheap quotes and was very happy with it. I gave the driver the sellers phone number and left it to them to arrange collection. He dropped the bike off when he said he would and took good care of it.

Which one a Bugatti or an Alfa, mmm, The alfa probably.

Try anyvan.com

I had a motorbike collected by them. It was a good price and the bloke really careful with it.

I bought a £10 Claud Butler, put new tubes on it and rode around for
two years. I didn’t oil the chain or cables and after two years it sort of
died. I looked on Gumtree and found a £10 Marin Muirwoods to replace it.

At a pub in Mickleham, the willy the forth,  badgers used sit on the raised bit
at the edge of garden and watch the drunk people.

Silver soldering, try silver-flo 55 rods and easy-flo flux.

I have been welding and brazing since the early 70’s, but I had never silver soldered.

I bought a stick of silver-flo and some flux last week. I made some lathe ball centres, I
soldered a steel ball bearing to a steel rod, couldn’t be much easier to do. Heat source
was a normal propane torch

I have a similar problem every time I have to wear a suit, in 1979 I shelled out 20 quid on a suit and it didn’t fit when I went to a funeral in the 80’s. So I went to Oxfam and the old ladies in there picked a suit, shirt and tie; one of them even took up the leg length, all in it was a tenner. I have done the same a few times since then.

Give your eight year old kid a handsaw and have him cut it.

My dad made car ramps from sleepers, I cut more than half of the bit’s of sleepers
as he was doing the measuring and nailing together. We used an old hand saw.

My little brother was bought a gerbil when the hamster got down the hot air heating and died in a heating vent;-)

The hamster was fine the gerbil spent all night chewing it’s way through the bars, noisy little git.

Bloke with garadoor..

What you do to pull the springs out is is tie some nylon string around the wire string, tie a loop in the nylon, put you foot in the loop and push the string  down. You will find the springs extend pretty easy.

Comes from spending every day for 40 years in a garage with garadoor doors I have replaced strings loads of times.

That drum looks interesting, I must look up how it works.

A mates son is a cameraman on Love Island. He told us and we all said “what’s Love Island?”

I use KMC chains and links. I have never had a link removal tool, I do it by hand.
7, 8 and 9 speed chains are different widths, measure the width over the pins, the split link
has the number on it, I think they are 7.4mm, 7.1mm and 6.6mm.

I take chains off to clean, oil and check the lengths of them.

If it’s plasterzote your after it’s made by zote foams. They used to have a factory in Redhill, I used it for bike seats and I just took sheets of it out of their skip. They told me to skip dive for it when I said I wanted a bit big enough for a bike seat.

I was told plasterzote was probably suitable for seats by a nurse, I can’t remember what they used it for but the
hospital used loads of it, but it was pink.

the aged parents have a a largish garden, about 3/4 of an acre of grass. The honda they
have is about 10 or 12 years old, it was very cheap on ebay, delivered from the states I think!
Is there a Honda Harmony? If so that’s what it is. It’s pull start only but starts with a slight pull.
It gets the oil changed and blade sharpened once a year and cuts the lawn twice a week.

Guess I was about 22 or so. I got a mate to give me a lift to buy some leathers, I had a drag bike. Gray made a stop to look at a Challenger he was interested in, the bloke had a manky 67 mustang in the corner of the garage. I started it and had to have it.

I have taken quite a few out. I am quite happy with it taking days.

Strength of mix. Put 150cc[work out how much you need] of water in a cup and sprinkle a little caustic in the water and swirl it around. I mix it in a paint mixing cup and you can feel the temperature rise. Add more caustic until it gets hot but not to hot. If it gets to hot it’s to strong. I did take one out and check the temp as I did it, it was something like 50C was OK. To strong and it boils when it hit the aluminium and squirts out of the frame.
If it gets to hot in the cup put it down, if boils it will burn you.

I remove posts from assembled bikes mostly, I tip them over and pour the caustic in the bottle bolt holes.

Cover anodised alumninium, if it squirts out and hits anodised ali it takes the anodising off. Cover stickers if it runs over a sticker it will take the dye off them.

I add the caustic and you can feel the temp go up as the caustic eats the ali, once the frame has cooled down it’s more or less stopped doing anything, drain it and add fresh caustic. I tend to do it a few times in an afternoon and do the same the next afternoon.

Cut off seat posts I do through the bottle holes, I made a rubber bung that I jam in the tube/top of seat post. I prefer cut off post really as it’s easier to drain the caustic out. I sometimes drill a drain hole in the post and block it with a jubilee clip over a rubber gasket.

Last post I took out was from a Marin Mount Vision, ali in ali. I used a Cengarette saw and made
half a dozen cuts almost though the post and crumpled it. Took about fifteen minutes.

If the temp doesn’t go up when the caustic is on the ali and you bought the caustic from the pound shop don’t be cheapskate go and buy proper stuff.

My first tape deck was similar to below, I still have it and it was still working till I pulled one of the motors out when a nephew wanted a 12V motor. It made hundreds of tapes and ate quite a few. I bought it in 1974 and if you bought an album you can bet half a dozen people wanted tapes. The sony deck cost me £12, you could buy a Binatone for half that. I replaced it in ~1985 with a philps deck, which I still have but haven’t used for years.

Did anyone have a battery record player?

Methylene chloride will take carbon deposits off, this is what’s in proper paint stripper.
I haven’t used it for years, I used to take heads round to a mates, he did headwork and had a sink of methlene chloride he cleaned heads in; he left them overnight and then cleaned them with a pressure washer.

I wouldn’t go near any aluminium with any sort of powered wire brush, I use a gasket scraper and other scrapers
ground from machine hacksaw blades. Once clean a rub with scotchbrite gets small stuff that won’t scrape off off. If you want something in a tin look up wurth gasket remover, I am told it strips powder coating so might well take carbon off.

I wouldn’t run a hone/glaze breaker unless your stripping it and reringing it, just scrape the carbon off.

Here’s some pistons I recently cleaned to flog on ebay. They are just scraped and a rub with a scotchbrite.

I used to bolt a bit of flat stock to the hanger and use a pair of stilsons to tweak it.

But I had a odd bit of box left over and decided to make a hanger tool.

I also made a chain whip, mainly as the scrap of metal seemed to look like one.

I didn’t really have any problem indexing with moderately bent hangers, but I hated looking down and seeing a cage pointing all over the place.

Standard mate desktop covered in files.

I setup a desktop with a pic of my bike in 1995, I patted
myself on the back for finding the desktop config files and editing it.
Then I covered it in files.

As someone said an old front axle and a bit of steel with a 10mm hole.

If your passing by gatwick airport I will do it for nothing. I had a bit of square tube left over from
something and made a hanger straightener;-) I used to use a pair of Stilsons and a straight edge!

Get a cheap one from ebay that has a big hole or takes a 1/2″ square drive.

I don’t think there is any controversy. You shouldn’t touch a metallic before putting clear on.
I don’t like to wipe or tack a metallic basecoat,  any upstanding metal will get get moved and show when it’s cleared. Just get the clear on and deal with any issue afterwards.

I liked a softish rubber block, about the same softness as a squeeze, I got it
from brown brothers and I never saw them again. I used the hard rubber blocks and
they work fine. You can see how your doing as you just remove the guide coat.

I use 320 or 400 dry on a plasterzoate block now.

Not dead as you can always fix them.

I think I am going to have to get a car/truck.

I decided to get an RC plane a few months ago, well I bought a sim programme and a transmitter, I was told the sim is very good and it saves lot’s of mending planes. After lot’s of trying I can’t keep a plane under any sort of control!
Start with a car I think, how hard can it be;-)