Recent content by Stuart Moffat

Maplin catalogue was my favourite when they only had one shop.

The “lace” is a steel wire, and in my experience the steel wire outlasts the rest of the boots, and my boots have quite a hard life every day. But we’re the steel wire to snap some how, it probably would be hard to repair. Stuart

I long ago gave up buying any sort of footwear that requires you to tie them to your feet with string. 21’st century… laces?! Boa fasteners are available on lots of makes of safety boots nowadays, with a wide range of costs. They are simple and a must for me. Stuart

Whenever I make shelves, and I have made a lot of book cases and the like, I always use the rat. Sure dominoes would be faster, but the sliding dove tail really resists shelves sagging. If you have 3 shelves or more, they would all have to sag. In practice none of mine sag at all although fully...

I was given 4 little ring neodymium magnets a few years ago, but only recently heard of this use for them. I needed to find where all the rafters were in a ceiling with no access to the roof space. The magnets find every single nail, and on some the magnets would actually hang to the ceiling...

We have ropey overhead supply that is not reliable, and because we grow a lot of food, have 3 freezers. We have a Hyundai 3800 I think, which easily takes care of the freezers, some lighting, and we made the power to the oil central heating system powered by a 13 amp plug. So it can also be run...

I don’t use the nozzle, but normally dip anything from a 1” panel pin to a nail or screw into the bottle which gives you a fine point to apply with precision, and a tiny to quite large flow depending how far you the thing in and if you use a screw or a nail. I’ve always got nails etc in my metal...

Make a go-kart track in your garden?

Ollie if it’s in a conservation area and not listed, you can ignore everything I said! Stuart

Is it a listed building? Is it a Church of England church? If the latter then the process for building control is essentially delegated, and the answer to your question would be proposed by the church’s appointed architect, and then approved by an appointed person that covers the whole diocese...

We have miles, and miles per hour. My car tells me my average miles per gallon. But we don’t buy gallons of petrol any more. Hmmm.

I was given a small ask to go on my key ring. I found it really useful from time to time. Then I went through airport security and had it confiscated. Bought another one so as not to have to admit how stupid as was to swmbo. Next work trip same thing, replaced it again. Next work trip was to...

I recently bought the jukebox one. I’ve done quite a lot of doors in recent years, but I was installing an internal pair of very tall and heavy oak doors. The design is asymmetric which had a few oddities. E.g the flip over 3mm stop to position the top hinge with a 3mm gap between top of door...

I inherited a rotavater from my dad some years ago, with a briggs and Stratton motor. Because it gets used early in the season, not at the end like the mower, I always forget to run it dry. E10 . Yet every year it still fires up after one or two pulls!

America is the best half-educated country in the world. (Butler) There are holes in the sky where the rain gets in. But they’re ever so small, that’s why rain is so thin! (Spike Milligan)