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It was the only way they could get enough dough to retire comfortably & circumstances arose at just the right time for them. 30 years of happy retirement, Dad passed away 9 years ago & Mum 2 1/2 years ago, the sale of their house & land has allowed my wife & i to retire as well, so the gift that...

Teak originally came from southeast asia, Burma & surrounding countries, It is still available at a very high price, much of todays teak is plantation grown in Africa as well as countries of origin but it is fast growth & of lesser quality. Iroko is an unrelated timber from Africa, it is similar...

Back when interest rates were 17.5% my parents retired & sold up their house in Essex for 180k & moved to Lancashire, they bought their new place for 80k with half an acre of land. Within two years their old place in Essex had been sold on for 440k & demolished for development. With high...

Our local water company is Essex & Suffolk water previously Anglian, one of the problems round here is that the main sewers were lined a few years back so ended up smaller bore, then more houses get added on to the same network! Mass paving over of driveways so water runoff has nowhere to soak...

My main usage of grinders was boatbuilding, mainly repair work which involves heavy duty grinding back of fibreglass, the dust is a good insulator & clogs the insides of any grinder, its probably the hardest job you can ask a tool to do. We used to blow them out with an airline daily. The best...

Metabo, excellent, AEG used to be good, De walt are a tarted up black & Decker, over rated, I have a fairly recent one & it has always had a tendency to run very hot, I would not buy another.

A small pond like that i wouldnt worry about too much, if its got a liner rip it out & fill it up. What you dont want to do is fill a large pond, My wife & i used to have a flat in a close, 6 blocks of 4, 24 in total. The land about 1 acre had originally had one tiny bungalow lots of trees & a...

I caught 5 minutes of it then turned it off. It was an insult to anyone who aspires to be a craftsman. The level was about that of a year 9 D&T class. The great race to the bottom continues!

I have a sectional concrete double garage, It was hot in summer & freezing cold in winter & everything went rusty. I lined all the recesses in the concrete panels with 30mm celotex with plywood over. Roof was replaced last year with 40mm steel insulated sheets. Doors have been replaced & lined...

Sitting on a shelf near me now is a fine Norris plane. It was given to my Dad by his father on his 21st birthday & cost £12, at that time not long after the war Grandad was a train driver on the Lner, it was damn near a weeks wages for him. Today its worth a weeks wages. The plane hasnt...

So do you! A guy i knew fitted a pot bellied stove to a small yacht he lived on, one winter the Medway patrol boat noticed his boat anchored for some days in a remote place with snow on the deck, they had a look & found him dead in his bunk, It was found that he had shut all the hatches & had...

I must get round to fitting a riving knife to my Startrite table saw, i bought it from a scrap dealer in beat up order with bits missing! My dad had a similar one & used to cut all sorts on it, In fact the first accident i ever saw i was about 7, dad went to cut a small wooden section on the...

I have owned four bandsaws, A big wadkin two startrites & a Rexon. I still have the last Startrite & the little rexon. All have roller guides. The earlier startrite had steel bearing blocks & thrust pin (cheap & shoddy cost cutting exercise) & i converted it to run coolblocks on the sides &...

It is a combination of many things that have coincided at once, lorry drivers used to be well paid like many other trades but wages were driven lower by cheap labour. All our money has been devalued in real terms & is continuing to do so. People get old & you have to have new young people coming...

My wife was just given an envelope full of family stuff, wills, family trees, photos etc. In there we have found some of the airship photos & other memorabilia. It turns out that her grandfather Reg initially trained at RNAS Kingsnorth on the Hoo peninsula in Kent, we have sailed past this place...

It looks like english walnut but mostly sapwood, ie worthless firewood.

My money is on Parana Pine, it used to be used for shelving in schools & was available in quite large boards, It often has greenish or reddish streaks but these fade with exopsure to age. It is quite soft with a silky lustre.

I have an old multico L3 thicknesser, i presume you are talking about the cutter block wedge? On mine they are standard Socket head allen screws. The adjusting screws that set the height of the blade are standard cheese head machine screws with a reduced shoulder turned on the head.

Bosch, I bought my first one in 1983 & used it in my boatbuilding career until about 8 years ago when i got a newer version. Both are still going, Good quality sharp blades suited to the job.

Where do you start? In my collection of favorite users, Paring chisels by Mathesion, James Howarth & sons, Ward, Sorby and others!