Bench by CrapBag posted 17 Jun 2026 at 17:34 My neighbor asked me to refurbish an old bench where all the wood had rotted and the frame was mostly flaking paint and rust. About an hour with a grinder and a flappy disk sorted the paint chips and rust out and then it had two coats of hammerite, its still pitted but looks much better. The wood was left overs from the stable roof they had built, she chose to have the back rails on the back side to wake the seat a little wider. Came out ok and shes probably going to oil the wood. The frame was actually made for and used in a horse drawn carriage before it go benched.
I'm looking for a certain type of catch/latch as i have no idea what its called. Basically it would have a screw thread on one end to go into wood (or metal) and then the pin would go through a hole in the next panel with the hinged part folded in line with the pin and then once through you would flick it so its at 90 degrees stopping it from being pulled back through. Anyone have any idea from my vague description
Sounds very similar to those plasterboard mounting things where they go through folded and then you turn a screw to open them out. I've got some somewhere, I'll try and find them to take a photo.
Kind of but not those. Ah found what I'm talking about but would like one end to have a wood screw type thread on it, might not even exist. https://www.norelem.co.uk/en/Produc...ng-pins-steel-with-folding-latch/p/agid.32816
Finally got the guts up to use my hot air solder station. (only had it for 5+ years) Always been too scared to use it in case I blew everything off of the board. My flip car key stopped flipping plus the car kept telling me the battery was low so while replacing the battery i thought i would take the key apart and find out what was wrong and in the process of trying to load the spring mechanism i managed to severely damage one of the micro switches. Long story short the connections were so small that i had no hope with my standard solder station so used the hot air one and to my surprise it melted all four solder points at once and the switch came straight off, tinned the traces and easily soldered the new one back on. Fitted a new case as the plastic flip button had broken and bingo I hopefully have saved myself approx £169 and gained some confidence.
This interests me - is it fairly easy to use? My soldering skills are severely lacking and I often end up burning PCBs (and anything nearby) when trying to do it properly. Which one do you have? I'm thinking I could test drive one from Amazon, next time I have a need.
I recently finished this stocking, my aunt had made them for all the children but was too infirm to make one for my sister's daughter so I made her a replica. Honestly haven't done any cross-stitch since Primary three
That's wicked! I'm trying to get my Mum to teach me how to use a sewing machine at the moment. My excuse is Chris Pratt used one in Terminal List, so it must be an essential skill for today's urban male.
That stocking looks amazing very neat. @ModSquid Tbh for a first use I found it very easy, had to tweak the settings a few times to get it right but once I did that the button came off easy. I'm just very wary of dislodging other components. If you had some old knackered boards or something then you could practice on those. You also need some sort of magnifier and decent tweezers, Lidl have a big set of them at the moment. This is mine and apparently it now comes with tweezers and an extra nozzle unless I've lost one. https://www.amazon.co.uk/YIHUA-Stat...8363415572-B099JRNGRR-&hvexpln=0&gad_source=1 I've also recently started learning to use a sewing machine again, I have taken up my wife's trousers and more ambitiously patched my wife's holey jeans which involves unstitching the inner thigh seems and then after sewing the patches you have to see the seams back together using overlooking. Not perfect but not bad for a novice.
Aye go for it, I don't often use mine but it's a real labour saver, and gets perfect results. Scares me more than the table saw, mind
Soldering is all about efficient transfer of heat; you want to heat up the components you’re soldering without damaging other nearby components. Most of the time you actually need a larger tip than you think you do; the larger the thermal mass, the more efficiently it can dump heat into components you’re soldering. A smaller tip needs longer to heat those components, so it can risk transferring heat to other nearby components or damaging pads. You can get away with a relatively large tip even on very fine SMD parts, the board’s solder mask will help ensure solder flows only where it’s supposed to, and solder wick can clean up any accidental bridges. Hot air stations and heat plates can be very helpful when you have large ground planes to deal with. But I’d recommend liberal application of kapton tape when using a heat gun, it’ll help avoid disturbing areas where you don’t want to reflow solder. But the biggest tip I could give for soldering is to steer clear of lead-free solder. Stick to leaded solder with a flux core, it’s much easier to work with than lead-free stuff… just make sure you’re fastidious about washing your hands afterwards…!
Oooh Kapton tape I hadn't heard of that before. We used to use masking tape back in the day and this was for military applications. I'm going to get some of that, thank you.
