Following the huge success of the first dedicated Silverline Power Tool Drag Race last year, a second event is being organised for Sunday 10 August 2008 at Haynes International Motor Museum.
Power tool drag racing requires competitors to take a hand-held power tool, turn it into a mean machine and race it down a 75ft track. Enthusiasm for power tool drag racing swept across America and is now gripping the UK. Competitors in the USA…
Make time for organisation
While I was working, there was never enough time to set up or maintain a workshop. Since leaving the rat race, however, I’ve finally been able to convert my garage into a proper workshop which has been a source of enormous satisfaction. Apart from the luxury of being able to manoeuvre easily and find everything when I need it, I’ve realised that organisation + self-discipline = efficiency. It’s…
If, like me, you use traditional hand tools you know how important it is to sharpen them. The more work you do using your own motive force and wits the more you become aware of the value of a sharp chisel or saw.
Why do I do it? Sometimes I can understand it, although I can’t offer a full explanation! Just take a look at Pic.1 below. Working from the top left, you can see how my index finger locates the tip of the saw (top left), then helps to keep the saw vertical (top right). Finally, this finger holds the square’s blade down while the other three fingertips use the recess to grip the stock, and on the marking knife, it applies pressure to…
Attractive, hand-cut joints are more or less a prerequisite of quality furniture. This is largely to do with aesthetics, but at the same time, there’s an appreciation for the ingenuity of joints like the secret mitered dovetail. Precise joints can secure a piece of furniture with only the additional use of glue, and even the early, relatively crude, mortise and tenons needed just twin wooden pegs to strengthen them.
Once I saw the size of the bottle and read the instructions I couldn't help thinking that this new organic rust remover wouldn't be successful from the 250ml of Restore mixed with 4.75lts of water ..yes, that's right, water, a 19 to 1 ratio would remove all of the rust from my 30 year old tools.
Well, here's how it went. Firstly the safety gear. Rubber gloves face shield/goggles and all the windows open for ventilation just…
I first became aware of pocket-hole techniques after watching Norm Abram use a very expensive system to cut them. Norm’s system was clearly way out of my league, a huge piece of standing machinery with integrated router, drill and clamp, it was way more suited to a production environment than my humble shed but the technique looked very simple.
Ah, Sheffield. Built on seven hills she may be, but she’s not a beauty like Rome. The “ugliest town in the Old World”, George Orwell famously called her. “And the stench!” he went on. “If at rare moments you stop smelling sulphur it is because you have begun smelling gas.” Surrounded by sources of coal and iron, and powered in the pre-steam age by the water of five rivers, Sheffield grew up with dirt…
Squeezing past the carcases of half finished furniture, and threading between the makers who’re wielding hand tools, working at a huge tablesaw and around a state-of-the-art vacuum press, we finally reach the narrow design office that is the nucleus of Matthew Burt’s industrious workshop. He lifts his eyes briefly from his drawing board and shakes hands: “Hang on a minute. I just have to finish this layout; I’ve got a…
