Grind yourself a nipple driver from an old screwdriver. Its half the battle won. I’ve only ever built one pair in a jig. The rest have been built in a frame or fork. Blue tack & a nail for your guide. A clothes peg too, for when the wife calls you in for your tea, you can keep your place.
And don’t fret over a mm of spoke length either way.
Run your combo through a couple of online calculators to check your length.
Always oil your nipples well before you start.

As above, avoid alloy nipples. Nipple driver gets all the spokes to the same tension quickly. It’s my preferred method.

Legend. RIP.

Excellent, truly excellent.

Re: the chap mentioning its 2 days labour to lift the body off, there’s a chap on YouTube, salvage rebuild UK, who has done this twice, albeit on a Range Rover Sport. A bumper, 4 wheel arch, liners a dozen multi plugs, 4 brake lines & 8 or so large bolts & the cab lifts off. I’m sure he timed it at around an hour!!! :-)

Move on. Life’s too short.
Bit of luck he’ll brake check a foreign 40 tonner with a tired driver & iffy brakes.

Currently liking this:-

After seeing them support The Twang at Xmas.

The Twangs album “If confronted just go mad” is a favourite at the moment, particularly this remake:-

Listening to The Vaccines of late, in particular the “What did you expect from The Vaccines” album.
Really liking this:-

Niner do (did….) an XS size, which was about 13”. An odd looking thing but one of their team riders did ok on it,

We had a Ute till the boys outgrew it.
It is the one bike I really regret selling. I never found it overly flexy, even giving the Wife’s girl friends drunken backies around the park.
If it’s for ferrying kids to Nursery or School it’s perfect. Some of these cargo bikes are great if you want a true car replacement (& the de-rigeur trip to the tip), but try getting a bakfiets on the train..,!!!
If you just need something for commuting it’s great.

They look like metal panels to me, the same thing those horrid Argos metal sheds are made from.
They suffer horrendously from damp, so be sure it isn’t just damp first…

I’d pop down the builders merchants & get a roll of heavy duty damp proofing membrane/polythene. Roll it over the top & secure it with battens around the sides. It will at least give you a dry garage till summer. Make sure it’s got some ventilation though.

Then I’d leave it as is, board it over with OSB & cover it with EPDM.

Or, for something a bit different, how about a couple of YouTube video series back to back…

Dangerous Dave’s Big Fat Canadian Freight Hop

The bloke who walked across Wales in a Straight Line.

Both eminently watchable, even my wife found them interesting.

Ride the Divide.

I was surprised how accurate even s ham fisted oaf like me can be with a 2mm disc in my cheap angle grinder.
I bought it to cut the flimsy steel channel on our Venetian blinds, a job it did brilliantly.
A colleague used it to cut a section out of an old washing machine drum, to make a fire thing.

I think it depends on the service you receive local to you…
For example, our local Morrison’s is awful, it’s feels dark, almost dingy, cramped & the majority of people in there seemingly go in there to use the Cafe, which is….ok.

Our local Tesco Extra on the other hand is, in my opinion, very good. It’s spacious, usually well stocked & the staff are very pleasant & friendly. It’s not an unpleasant place to go. It has s brilliant ability to rinse you if cash, but then they all do to some degree.

I think for most folk you’ll subconsciously veer towards somewhere that “feels right” for you & then get used to it. And that’s a combination of factors, your first impression being important.

Food quality regionally can differ widely, especially fruit & veg. The fruit & veg in my local Aldi & Lidl is poor, little choice & it just doesn’t last as long. Yet we’ve used Aldi & Lidl when away on holiday & they’ve been excellent, yet some Tesco branches are crap. (The one in Aviemore…dear lord).

I quite like CoOp of late, staff always seem busy but friendly & their food is decent. Locally, I prefer Lidl to Aldi but our local Aldi is just not a pleasant place to be. The staff are treated like slaves, (my niece works there). Our local Lidl is very good, bakery is excellent & staff always seemed friendly. But it’s only just turned a year old & I’ve heard a few say they are losing that customer focus that our local Tesco seem to have kept.

Who are Harry & Meghan ?
Ok, of course I know who they are but can honestly say I’ve not one care in the world having not followed what they get up too.

I wish them well, just as I’d wish anyone well who is seeking a positive change for their family.

A few years ago I had a short lived road bike foray, using a cheap Declathlon Tri-Ban 3 (alloy frame-carbon fork), but built with some reasonable kit. It was awful & I just couldn’t get in to it. It was bone jarring!!! Try as I might, every time I went out on it I spent the whole ride wishing I’d built a gravel bike or just gone out on the hardtail.
I think it was a fit thing though, 54cm just felt too cramped for me at 5’9”.
I think the fit of a road bike is more critical than most mtb’ers think.

Get (lots) if beer & nibbles & settle down with both series of “You”.

Watch the top tube & head tube lengths, I tried it a few years ago, with an old Inbred, but the top tube was way too long. Ended up with a very stretched out ride…….. :-)

Of late I’ve been looking at my SIR.9 with the same idea. The older (& more decrepit) I become the more I look at the upright position of a Fargo or Gryphon, so I sketched it out in CAD.
I’d need something like a 100mm x 80 degree stem.!!!
It could possibly work with a smaller size MTB frame but you’d need a longer seatbtube.

13thfloormonk came to the same conclusion, with a flat bar & some Ergons with the built in bar ends.

If ever there were justifiable grounds to go tv shopping this is it. ;-)

I bought my Sons a basic 32” smart TV each, for about £130-£140. They have Netflix & a host of other apps built in, but having YouTube on the TV is a game changer.

But a NowTV box will get you up & running. 👍

To fully appreciate each of them you need to swap occasionally.
Me, I prefer the hardtail.

It’s pretty shit. Stayed through to the very end. We were eye to eye through to the point his glazed.

Did that.
I held Fatty McTavish as he entered this world (born backwards- Mum struggling).
And held him as he left this world, 16 years later.
Kissed & stroked him until the vet said he’d gone. Christ, I’m filling up typing this.

Sorry for you loss Op, thoughts to you.

An old Hope Vision jobbie here.
Hope replaced all the leads FOC, & I openly told them I had bought it s/h.
On that basis I’d buy them again.

In a rush to make it waterproof for the winter, I bought a piece big enough to do my half of a shared garage. (Neighbour had had his done a year or two previous).
I bonded the edge to my neighbours epdm roof using the special bonding strip, then rolled it across over mine & over the edge. I then put the trim strips on to hold it down.

It’s still there now, 4 years later.
I never got around to rolling it back & gluing it. :-)

I’ve done it a few times, bought keys from the back of an old laptop that is.
Never had a problem or a knock at the door.

Im sure somebody from the Singletrack Pedantry Dept will be along to put you on the right track. :-)

https://www.moneysupermarket.com/mobile-phones/sim-only/#/?contractLengths=&data=Any&deviceCondition=New&deviceType=&giftCategories=&handsetColours=&handsets=&includeExistingCustomers=true&includeExistingCustomersHandset=&includeResellers=true&internalStorage=Any&isExclusiveDeal=&isFiveG=&merchants=&minutes=100&monthlyCost=Any&networks=&phoneCost=Any&productType=simonly&simType=Any&sortBy=Monthly%20cost&texts=Any&variants=

mwleeds, a fellow Lichfield’er. :-)

Have you tried asking on that Lichfield Facebook group ? Plenty of people on there, someone may know of a worthy cause. I can borrow a trailer from Scouts if you need help shifting it.

Beard & sandals alive & well here.
SIR.9 with the Niner biocentric EBB.
Puffin with the Singular pinch bolt EBB.

Of the two, the Singular has been rock solid, never creaked or moved.
The Niner has creaked & clicked from day one, wether greased, dry, talcum powdered (yes!!), carbon assembly grease seems to work though.
It is the earlier biocentric though, I gather the latter double bolt version is better.

If the shortish commute (with a diesel) worries you, what about a smaller petrol engine model ?
A (smallish) modern petrol engine will happily tow a caravan.
Faced with the same situation, lots of short local runs, we went with a 1.4 petrol Tiguan as a tow car. Happy to say it does as good a job as the diesel model. Economy is….ok, averages about 34-36 around town.
As much as I’d like an EV, the £15k+ price difference buys a heck of a lot of fuel….

I lost both my Mum & Dad, 2 weeks apart, back in Aug-Sep.
Mum had terminal cancer but mercifully her poorly heart eased her to a peaceful passing long before the cancer had a chance. We were all with her, holding her as she went.
Dad had gone into hospital back in July, a number of issues but not helped by his poor vascular system. He had a fall in hospital, which set him back. Then came sepsis. He slipped away early on a Sunday morning. His last words being that he was off to the pub.

Safe to say I don’t mourn the end of 2019. Xmas day was difficult, but a tearsoaked Facebook post captured all I wanted to say, & the mood lifted after that.

Take it one day at a time is my advice.
Bite off small chunks & deal with it one chunk at a time.

salvage rebuilds UK

Proper old fashioned spannering.
Been following his Rangerover Sport engine rebuild.
And re-rebuild.
Seems a proper down to earth guy.

The short CarWow videos with that Matt chap are good too. Some of the drag races are hilarious.

Fill the rim recess first.
Split open a 24” tube & use that as a rim tape.
Even a Jumbo Jim on an On-One went up with a track pump. (Normally a really baggy fit)

I got my lad an iPhone 11, on EE, for Xmas.
£260 down & £29 a month.
It does come with 24gb of data, the idea being he can split that with my Wife & his younger brother.

I always use money supermarket.
Have done the buying a handset & Gif Gaf SIM before & it worked out more expensive…

Incidentally, EE couldn’t offer the same deal directly when I called them. They said Mobiles.co.uk etc, mobiles123 etc are mostly all owned by carphonewarehouse, who buy in bulk from ES, O2 etc at discount & sell on.
The phones always arrive next day, unbranded, with a SIM pack.

I look forward to the Forest of Dean. We go every year for a week. I’ve got Cannock Chase pretty local but I always love The Forest of Dean as it seems quieter. I can head off for a few hours ambling around on the Fattty. I’ve even ridden in pouring rain, I’d never do that at Cannock.

I started using a trailer extensively when mine were about 18 months & 3.
Two nurseries, opposite sides of the town, then back actually past my house, to work. That was the fittest I have ever been. :-)
But both nurseries allowed me to unhitch leave the trailer in their yard/garden, so I could continue solo.
We plied the streets with the trailer, towed by an old road bike, for a year or so. But things got a lot better when I bought a cargo bike, in our case a Kona Ute. If I were to do it all again I’d get one in a flash. It’s the one bike I regret selling. A proper game changer bike for us. The cargo bit is basically a flat platform, you can add child seats etc. A centre stand makes loading unloading children a lot easier.
Failing that I’d ask the first nursery if you could leave a trailer somewhere, mine was left under a fire escape.

Big Clive on YouTube stripped an Ikea charger & found it to be very well designed & made. They do seem to stand the test of time well.

In the past I have heat-shrinked the cable to connector join on the kids cables, they seem to stand up to abuse better.

My Dad bought me this some years ago.

Up the budget & get him his first G shock.

Plenty of folk paying it at the German market in B’ham the other week.
The price of a Crepe gets me, £5 for a bloody pancake with Nutella & marshmallows.
They took £60 in the 8 mins I was queuing.

My lad, age 3 11/12.
So technically still a 3 yr old.
Show her this for inspiration. :-)

HSBC Yesterday to open accounts for my two lads. Quick, efficient. No complaints. Branch was clean, tidy & open at 1pm on a Saturday. Imagine that back in the 80’s !!!
When the wife & I merged accounts I was impressed from a security aspect that I had to physically visit the account with ID etc.

Lloyd’s were excellent a few months ago when my Dad passed away. Dealing with his accounts was simple &, at what was a terrible time, very sensitively done. The branch was nice, discreet & the coffee was excellent.

Barclays in Lichfield has always been a dog hole. It has wood chip wallpaper FFS. :-)

I did my lads last week, £42 from the bay of fleas. Code link sent quickly, 12 months gold. No issues.