Mirror or Picture Stand for Renters

As a renter, I cannot drill holes in the wall to hold this heavy Mexican Mirror.

So I built a leaning “A-Frame” stand from square steel tube, and it’s almost invisible.

The trick in designing a stand like this is to make sure the “toes” that touch the floor are quite some distance from the wall – this forces the top to lean back into the wall and it won’t fall over.

To hold it together, I used random bolts that I had lying around, some off-the-shelf brackets and angles, and a couple of old feet from a previous IKEA project. Luckily, the landlord had left a pot of wall paint for touch ups and repairs – so I used that to match the wall colour exactly.

This turned out to be a quick one-day project, and I am really happy with the result.

My original concept design. I changed the height of the cross piece

Restoring Grandpas Little Oil Can

I always liked the look and feel of this little oil can.

My Dad inherited it from his Dad, and now I found it in a box of rusty old stuff.

My first thought was to bring it all back to polished bare metal, but that just didn’t look right, so I painted it with a blue hammered finish.

This was a simple project, but I took my time and enjoyed the process of brushing away the old paint, sanding, reshaping with a mallet, replacing the seal (which was probably originally made of leather) and finally painting it.

I love the way it turned out.

Except – it has to be the absolutely worst oil can I have ever used! It dribbles, spurts, and leaks no matter what I do. Maybe it’s designed for much thicker oil (I filled it with cutting fluid which might be too thin).

In any event – this is a great way to spend an afternoon in the workshop.

Side Tables with 240v and USB power outlets

My family visits with a bunch of digital devices – phones, iPad, and hand held game systems.

I built a set of side tables for the living room sofa – so they can sit down, plug in, and enjoy the visit !

I also added 240v for all the other power bricks and assorted 21st century necessities.

I only used hand tools (oh, plus a cheap router that I bought for the project) to make these.

I bought an 850W Router

I have always avoided using a router.

They just seem to be sharp and unpredictable. I imagine they’d run amok and slice me up.

Apparently not. I bought this cheap 850W plunge router and put it together without incident.

I had a specific project in mind – which required making a lot of grooves in a cupboard frame, to fit plywood panels – so I finally relented and decided that I needed a router after all – despite all the dangers, imaginary or real.

I had to do a bit of experimenting with setting up jigs and clamps to position the grooves in a predictable and consistent placement, but once that was sorted, this new tool just worked exactly as advertised.

I did break one router bit very early on – this was because I had the speed too low and then had to push sideways too hard on the bit, to make any progress. Once I turned up the speed, the new bit worked without incident.

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 😉