How to modify an office chair seat

This was a 3 hour project, where I modified a gaming chair into a flatter seat for home office use.

What I hope you will learn from this video is that the mysteries of chair construction and upholstery don’t remain mysterious once you just dive in and take off the coverings.

This sort of project only requires very basic hand tools – I used a screwdriver, pliers, scissors, hacksaw, and some water pipe. (And a cheap angle grinder but the hacksaw would have worked)

And what you learn here can be applied to other sorts of upholstery like reshaping and recovering a motorcycle seat. Or car seats.

My Dad’s Old Yellow Screwdriver

I discovered this ratty old screwdriver in a box of my Dad’s old tools.

It seemed appropriate to restore it to its former glory.

Over the years he used it, this was probably not used so much as a screwdriver, but more as a general purpose – poke – lever – tweak – stir – device!

I cleaned off all the layers of paint and rust and grime, filed the pointy end back nice and square so that it worked as a screwdriver again, sanded it with fine paper, and applied WD40.

A simple little project, but a nice memory to have of my Dad, who taught me how to work with tools when I was very young.

Fixing a boot zipper

The technique I used was very expedient (i.e. quick and dirty) but the upside is that you can do it with almost any kind of zippers – boots, jeans, backpacks, dresses.

The basic idea is to take the “end stop” off one side, and thread the teeth through.
Once you have the zipper back in roughly the right place, you can zhoozh it back and forth to settle the teeth in the right formation, then replace the “end stop” with a few windings with needle and thread.

The (what should be closed) bottom end has a nasty habit of re-opening from the wrong end sometimes when the zipper is closed. So we sew that together as well.

This week, my daughter got a pair of boots delivered with the zipper only attached to one side of the teeth. Perfect example. So I made this video in roughly half an hour.

I used some magnifying glasses, and some tiny pliers this time, but I’ve done it many times before with almost no tools except a regular needle and thread and some brute force. Broken a nail or two doing it as well, hence the pliers this time 😉

Starting an Aberdale 1947 motorbike after 62 years in a shed

After 62 years in a shed, we get an Aberdale Autocycle to run again!

It might look rough around the edges, but it is now officially a running machine.

Built by the Aberdale firm of London between 1947 & 1949, this Villiers Junior powered 98cc autocycle was typical of lightweights built during the immediate postwar era.

The 98cc Villiers engine hung from the frame and it had petroil lubrication, direct lighting and blade girder forks.

It had basic brake, clutch, throttle, decompressor controls, a bulb horn, drum brakes and a speedometer.

The motorcycles were manufactured in the Bown factory in Tonypandy in Wales. In 1949 they were re-badged and marketed under the Bown label.

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Upgrading my gas burner – part 2

This week I took the basic parts that I made last week, and got them to fit the stove top.

Then a few bits of MIG welding, followed by some more grinding and filing to make everything look like I knew what I was doing.

The inevitable rust conversion, and spray painting with some high temperature engine enamel.

In the end, I am very happy with the result.
No more uneven cooking surface, no more toppling frypans or little saucepans.

Upgrading my kitchen gas burner

I have spent the last year or two being aggravated on a daily basis by the stupid design of my stove top burner.
It has only 4 support spots, whereas a professional commercial gas burner has 8.

So obviously, I need to fix this.

Today I took the first step – to come up with a solution, buy the steel bits required, and fashion a few rudimentary bits ready for fabrication.
I’ll fuse them all together next Monday at my TAFE welding course.

Then “goodbye to the toppling frypans”, and no longer having to rescue raw eggs from the floor… or for that matter, boiling butter from the little saucepan that refuses to sit on the 4 fashionable but badly designed supports.

Brakes (front)

Here’s the condition of the front brakes when I got the bike.
Despite appearances the brakes actually worked.

I bought a new disk rotor and disk pads, and rode it like that for a year or so.

I replaced the hand lever and hydraulics with an eBay unit.

But I definitely bought the hydraulic line from a local professional supplier (it cost more than the original bike, but I’d like to know that my brakes will work in an emergency)

As an added bonus, the shiny braided finish works well with the brushed metal tank. It’s all about the aesthetics.

Ready, Set, Go!

About a week after getting the bike running, the starter motor blew up.
Well, not literally blown up – it just make a horrid clunking sound instead of turning over. I took it out of its housing, and discovered that the permanent magnets had come loose, and were rattling around in the casing. Most undignified – bits had chipped off and the whole thing inside was a mess of dirt, rust, and magnet fragments.

I took everything apart and cleaned and polished whatever I could find.

I couldn’t figure how to glue the magnets in place, so I decided to build a couple of packer pieces using a heat-resistant epoxy putty. It’s lasted for over 4 years so far – I guess it worked.