The Night Mail

[Adam88]

Just now, simontaylor484 said:

Thanks for that these have already been turned once there is still a bit of life in the blades but not much

 

Reminds me of an interesting conversation I had on a train once with a complete stranger.  His firm had a contract to replace the paving and steps outside St Paul's.  They wanted to save money by turning the steps over but found out that the Victorians had already beaten them to it.  I guess that it was worth trying though.

[Tony_S]

37 minutes ago, simontaylor484 said:

it was my Grandads

I have my Great-grandfather’s plane but it isn’t power anything other than human power. It must be 19th century. My Grandfather was born in 1899 and his Dad worked as a carpenter though it was said he didn’t do much real work after the First World War. I only have the plane as after my dad died Mum was going to have a clear out in his shed.  I know Dad used the plane when building a boat. The body of the plane is wooden. I think the blade is adjusted with a wedge. 

[Happy Hippo]

30 minutes ago, polybear said:

 

Bear predicts that Big H will be spending the very near future dusting the upstairs in order to avoid certain death from SWMBO.  And cake is now off the menu for the foreseeable....

I couple my belt sander to the portable workshop dust extractor....

[Happy Hippo]

1 hour ago, Tony_S said:

A friend mentioned that due to their new carpets they had to remove wood from the bottom of their doors. I said I could bring my circular saw over as that was what I had used. Her husband didn’t want to borrow a saw, in case he broke it, so went off to one of the DIY warehouses to buy one. The assistant advised him against a saw and said he should use a power plane. So he returns home and managed to powerplane the knuckles on his left hand. He was left handed too. Needed surgery to restore use and plastic surgery to allow the skin to look normal. 

Without wishing to sound nasty (but it will) if he was that incompetent with the power planer, he was lucky the shop assistant persuaded him against the circular saw.  He'd probably have lost digits or even a complete hand.

 

The only dangerous tool is the one operating the machine!

 

I'll wager he had the door on its side, without any clamps to hold it steady and was using one hand to hold the door and the other to operate the power plane.  Everything got wobbly and it started sliding off the bench/table and instead of stopping .....

 

It's a very hard way to learn a lesson.

 

The best way to trim the bottom of a door is clamp on a guide fence and then, as Tony said, use a circular saw, or a router with an extra long straight cutter.

 

If you haven't got an extra long cutter for the router, you can trim half using a normal straight shank cutter and then turn the workpiece over and use the rebate you've just cut to act as a fence for the next cut which you make with a flush trim cutter. This has a bearing that works against the face which is exactly the same diameter as the cutter.

Edited May 25, 2021 by Happy Hippo

[Adam88]

1 hour ago, Happy Hippo said:

Without wishing to sound nasty (but it will) if he was that incompetent with the power planer, he was lucky the shop assistant persuaded him against the circular saw.  He'd probably have lost digits or even a complete hand.

 

The only dangerous tool is the one operating the machine!

 

I'll wager he had the door on its side, without any clamps to hold it steady and was using one hand to hold the door and the other to operate the power plane.  Everything got wobbly and it started sliding off the bench/table and instead of stopping .....

 

It's a very hard way to learn a lesson.

 

The best way to trim the bottom of a door is clamp on a guide fence and then, as Tony said, use a circular saw, or a router with an extra long straight cutter.

 

If you haven't got an extra long cutter for the router, you can trim half using a normal straight shank cutter and then turn the workpiece over and use the rebate you've just cut to act as a fence for the next cut which you make with a flush trim cutter. This has a bearing that works against the face which is exactly the same diameter as the cutter.

 

Could use this sort of system:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0hlm6-gnaM

 

[simontaylor484]

When we first bought this house we had the door replaced by the builders. You could virtually walk through the gap in the bottom half between door and frame 

[Stubby47]

Not long after we moved in we fitted a new carpet in the bedroom. Of course, the 4 bi-folding louvred doors now dragged on the carpet, so I took them off, measured the amount needed to be removed and promptly cut the right amount off the top edge.

 

A quick readjustment of the hinge positions and all was sorted.

[PhilJ W]

4 hours ago, Tony_S said:

I have my Great-grandfather’s plane but it isn’t power anything other than human power. It must be 19th century. My Grandfather was born in 1899 and his Dad worked as a carpenter though it was said he didn’t do much real work after the First World War. I only have the plane as after my dad died Mum was going to have a clear out in his shed.  I know Dad used the plane when building a boat. The body of the plane is wooden. I think the blade is adjusted with a wedge. 

My grandfather (b. 1894) was a cabinet maker. When he died my mum inherited his tools. He had served his apprenticeship under his father and grandfather who were also cabinet makers. Most of his tools were given to him when starting or during his apprenticeship some of which were already pretty old when he received them. I remember a pair of hand made clamps made entirely of wood including the screws. Sadly I do not know what became of them. I do have a hammer that probably dates back to Victorian times but thats all.

[Happy Hippo]

3 hours ago, Adam88 said:

 

Could use this sort of system:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0hlm6-gnaM

 

I've seen it demonstrated in various forms over the years, but I've never seen anyone offer their hand!

[Adam88]

6 minutes ago, Happy Hippo said:

I've seen it demonstrated in various forms over the years, but I've never seen anyone offer their hand!

Indeed.

[Tony_S]

7 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

He'd probably have lost digits or even a complete hand.

They did have to have the carpet and walls cleaned of blood. A local handyman was employed to finish the doors. 
Tony

[Dave Hunt]

The vice on my main workbench belonged to my grandfather. I was chatting to the local priest one Sunday morning after church about model engineering and just as the local Mary Whitehouse type walked past I said something like, "Of course, the best vices are the old ones handed down in the family." The look she gave us was something to behold and I don't think she ever spoke to me again.

 

Dave

[Florence Locomotive Works]

10 hours ago, Tony_S said:

I have my Great-grandfather’s plane but it isn’t power anything other than human power. It must be 19th century. My Grandfather was born in 1899 and his Dad worked as a carpenter though it was said he didn’t do much real work after the First World War. I only have the plane as after my dad died Mum was going to have a clear out in his shed.  I know Dad used the plane when building a boat. The body of the plane is wooden. I think the blade is adjusted with a wedge. 

My Grandfather grew up in a dirt floored shack on a farm in the Louisiana bayou. After they sold the best milk cow (yes, really) to put him through medical school he eventually became one of the first pathologists in Oklahoma, and after he semi retired built himself a modern woodworking shop in a new build victorian looking "garage." He made hundreds of things in there, such as my crib. I think from memory he had two lathes, one a very modern one and the other a giant ancient cast iron thing which I think was made in Sheffield. Both were wood lathes. I only remember the modern one operating, but I do remember pretending I was driving a deltic with the cast iron one as it had a handle for locking the carriage that looked just like the throttle on a deltic. I think the cast iron one did work as I remember one summer he and my other grandfather (the scouser) spent several days getting the motor to a good height as it was having belting problems. The motor looked like it had come from the bottom of a EMU.

 

He died when I was 7, and two years later the majority of what was in the shop was sold off, bar stuff needed for maintenance of the property. We do have one significant piece in our garage, a enormous and very heavy carpenters bench he carved from a solid tree trunk it appears. Fantastic thing. I also have a wooden model of a bobcat or "skid steer" we made together. 

 

Had I been a few years older though, I would have made a valiant attempt to save one of the lathes, or some of the nicer hand tools. His chisel collection from memory was kept in a highly polished state in a velvet line drawers!

 

ramble over. 

 

 

Douglas

Edited May 26, 2021 by Florence Locomotive Works

[Happy Hippo]

As I reported yesterday, the furniture got shifted and the curtain rails were put up in the now completed spare room.

 

Of course, nothing is ever totally straightforward, and whilst working on one of the beds I found that one of the lathes that support the mattress had fractured.  I suspect that a child bouncing on the bed may have caused this to happen.  Had the bed not been in bits, it would not have been noticed, so the complete set of lathes (connected together by some form of strapping to which they are stapled) has been removed for repair.

 

If I have a suitable length of wood, I'll cut a new lather, although PVA glue and some cramps to hold everything together whilst it sets will probably make a repair that will last a few more years.

 

I now have to get the 4 wheel trolley out of the roof as we are taking a collection of unwanted books to Attingham Park for their second hand book shop.

 

This will be followed by a walk around the grounds.

 

This afternoon, as the weather has improved over the past 24 hours, will see the lawns finally get a cut after about a month of rain (well it feels like that).

 

On the subject of lawn cutting out next door neighbour's son cut the grass that separated the road from MH(F).  He also came up our part of the drive and cut some of our verge.

 

Unfortunately he also  managed to mow down 50% of the hawthorn plants and cut down all the long grass where the snowdrops had been planted in March.  Fortunately we bought extra just in case there were some failures, so they can be transplanted.

 

But you do have to question why, knowing how I am fastidious about strimming and mowing, why I had put in marker stakes along the edge of the new hedge and why I'd left all this island of long grass, where the area around it was clipped reasonably short.

 

As you can imagine, it will be me who has to dig out the clipped hawthorn plants and replace them with new ones. So that will be the best part of a morning's work.

 

I'm turning into a right grumpy old git!.

 

 

Edited May 26, 2021 by Happy Hippo

[Dave Hunt]

11 minutes ago, Happy Hippo said:

 

I'm turning into a right grumpy old git!

 

 

Turning?

 

Dave

[Dave Hunt]

When Jill came home yesterday my score on the JG marking system* was only par. Either I'm getting better at SP** or she is mellowing significantly.

 

Dave

 

* The Jamie Guest system of post-SWMBO absence fault finding.

** SWMBO pleasing - a little known ability of husbands to avoid hyper-critical  assessment of performance during SWMBO absences.

[Winslow Boy]

1 hour ago, Dave Hunt said:

When Jill came home yesterday my score on the JG marking system* was only par. Either I'm getting better at SP** or she is mellowing significantly.

 

Dave

 

* The Jamie Guest system of post-SWMBO absence fault finding.

** SWMBO pleasing - a little known ability of husbands to avoid hyper-critical  assessment of performance during SWMBO absences.

 

May I offer my congratulations on your achievement but would say still room for improvement.

 

PS. Have you considered a  e third option that it might it be a bit of both.

 

[jamie92208]

2 hours ago, Dave Hunt said:

When Jill came home yesterday my score on the JG marking system* was only par. Either I'm getting better at SP** or she is mellowing significantly.

 

Dave

 

* The Jamie Guest system of post-SWMBO absence fault finding.

** SWMBO pleasing - a little known ability of husbands to avoid hyper-critical  assessment of performance during SWMBO absences.

Congratulations  Dave on achieving a par score. I must admit that I did think it would be rather well above par.  This was due to the fact, that instead of just a 20 yard walk from car to front door, you were vulnerable  to critcism for the whole journey from Stoke to Hunt Towers.  Perhaps a handicap system for assessing scores needs to be introduced.

 

Jamie

[Dave Hunt]

Presumably you would have to submit score cards to a governing body in order to acquire a handicap? The BJGHA*?

 

*British Jamie Guest Handicap Authority

 

Dave

[New Haven Neil]

21 minutes ago, Dave Hunt said:

Presumably you would have to submit score cards to a governing body in order to acquire a handicap? The BJGHA*?

 

*British Jamie Guest Handicap Authority

 

Dave

 

British?  Wot with Jamie being some kind of exile and all......surely the eurovision Jamie Guest....oh perhaps not, we'd never win.

[jamie92208]

31 minutes ago, New Haven Neil said:

 

British?  Wot with Jamie being some kind of exile and all......surely the eurovision Jamie Guest....oh perhaps not, we'd never win.

At least the UK has won Eurovision, neither France or Fraggle Rock have.

 

Jamie

[Tony_S]

4 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

 

As you can imagine, it will be me who has to dig out the clipped hawthorn plants and replace them with new ones. So that will be the best part of a morning's work.

 

I'm turning into a right grumpy old git!

Have you had a quiet word to explain the error?

[Happy Hippo]

11 minutes ago, Tony_S said:

Have you had a quiet word to explain the error?

Yes I've pointed it out to his mother.

 

An apology would be nice, but another low flying pig just shot past the window!

 

[Tony_S]

When Aditi has been away for a while it was either field trips or staying with her Mum so she is usually so pleased to be home that any minor faults are not even noticed. While she was away at her Mum’s a couple of years ago I fell down the stairs and bruised my rear end so instead of me going over to to Enfield for the day Aditi brought her Mum here. She didn’t even notice I had replaced the 40” TV in the lounge with a 55” TV. The old one in a spare bedroom was what made her notice. 

[Tony_S]

2 minutes ago, Happy Hippo said:

Yes I've pointed it out to his mother.

 

An apology would be nice, but another low flying pig just shot past the window!

 

The final 12” of our lawn (like many down the road) is actually our neighbours.  When they moved in I said I would be happy to carry on cutting it but had no problem if they wanted a fence , hedge or wall like some others had. The then new neighbour said “carry on please”. We like Tom!