Grand Designs

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andrewm

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I’ve just caught up with last week’s Grand Designs and am surprised that it has not been mentioned here. Woodworker built his new eco-house from timber almost entirely on his own. This is not the ‘house in the woods’ from several years ago – this one was up in the Cambridgeshire Fens so not too far from me.

Really quite an impressive achievement and interesting to note that he was using quite a few ‘cheap’ tools PPro for example.

Did anyone else see it?
 
Oh yes, I love Grand Designs and my hat is well and truly off to that chap. I noticed the tools too, given that he's a professional chippie by trade.

V.
 
I was impressed with that house. I liked his creative style particularly where he decides to copy the design into the door with a router freehand . I think the camera may have flattered some aspects of the build a little. I think you could pick holes in the quality of some of the details (the hip rafter joints Kevin was enthusing about were OK but didn't look tidy enough if'twere for me).

A 'looser' freeform style of building has it's charms though.

Ike
 
The quality of his kit against the quality of his workmanship does rather suggest many of us here have our priorities a bit wrong.

That "etching" of the reeds with the router (a brand & type most folk on here would not touch with a barge pole) amazed me.

Must admit its surprising he has all his "bits" still intact, given his disregard for basic safety. Did anyone else count his fingers??
 
lurker":1oeybkg0 said:
That "etching" of the reeds with the router (a brand & type most folk on here would not touch with a barge pole) amazed me.

That is the bit that impressed me. No way would I take a freehand router to a solid oak door that I had just made. PPro or otherwise.

Andrew
 
the interior looked like something that disney would be proud of it looked a bit ott for me, but yes it is supprising what you can do with cheap tools and the should no be overlooked.

woodbutcher
 
Saw it too although I think the freehand routing up close would have looked a little different.

Surely the point of cheap versus quality power tools is not that the cheap ones cannot do the job, but that they do not do them for as long or with the same degree of accuracy?

Steve.
 
It's kind of galling when comparing what this one chap can achieve with a bit of inspiration for a fraction of the cost of the tat that the regional 'affordable housing' agency automatons can manage with a standard bricks and mortar build.
 
I saw it too and thought it was pretty awe inspiring. I've love SWMBO to give me permission to do that... Building the house from scratch and all in lovely oak beams was amazing. Wasn't too keen on the kitchen, but that's just personal taste I guess...

Regarding the tool - I was :eek: when I saw the router he was using, but you can't fault the results it gave. Hand routing those patterns was incredible. In recent years I've bought some VERY cheap tools, some cheap tools, some reasonable tools and some reasonably expensive tools.

I have to say that whilst my faves are the more expensive tools (my Bosch sliding mitre saw is great) I have bought some bargains that are still working well and serve their purpose very well - a £20 Ferm biscuit jointer from Screwfix for example (don't use it THAT often and it does the job perfectly well).

If I was a pro doing woodworking full time every day (I wish!) then I'd go for the more expensive / accurate / reliable tools, but for the average Joe hobby woodworker there's a lot to be said for cheap tools. You get to experiment with things like routers, biscuit jointers etc without spending hundreds of pounds and you can always upgrade at a later date.

Some people can even build houses with cheap tools, you know...

:lol:
 
Well I have to admit that I rarely buy cheap tools - the reliability issue is all to me. The £50 saving you make when you buy a cheap tool is lost if you turn up to do an install and the machine fails and you then spend half a day ringing round trying to get a replacement turns the cheap tool into a very dear bargain :twisted:

But that's a trade perspective. I do have some cheap tools which have been a disaster - like the Forstner bit set which can't cut hardwood for more than a single hole without blunting, but on the other hand my LIDL vacuum cleaner is a star as is the cheap set of chisels I had from them - they stay sharper for longer than the Stanley's they replaced, and if they get nicked or damaged I'm going to be a lot less hung up about losing £6.99 than I would be about having £30 to £40 worth going walkies. (and a big thanks to JasonB for putting me onto them)

Scrit
 
Very impressive but it took him nearly two years to do it - most of the time on his own!

I do not think the CDM Regs (Construction Design & Management) - H&S apply to domestic building work? Which is well considering the lack of safety measures. What about the tractor and the mobile scaffolding platform?

Rod
 
The corn design on the door isn't that hard to do.....he adapted a version from Patrick Spielman's early routing book- I'll dig out the reference if anybody wants - PM me.

As to the provenance of tools, a lot of people seem to have completely forgotten the oldest maxim in the book:

"It ain't what you got, it's how you use it."

I learned this very early on in another life as a photographer and was strongly reminded of it reading Derek Cohen's thread on his Krenov plane over on the Ozzie forum. Ol' Jim had planes that looked like a bear's behind, but used them like a virtuoso and created smashing, wonderfully immaginative pieces with them. This modern habit of out-doing one another in claiming increasingly expensive purchases of 'names' is baffling to me - it's a version of "how high can YOU pee on the wall?"

This guy in the prog. created a house with his own two hands and a limited budget in fairly ardous conditions. Who the hell gives a stuff if he did with a sharpened spoon and a rock? He did it. Let's celebrate craftsmanship, diligence and perseverence and not be so damn narky and carp at the lack of tinsel and glitter.

Oh, and Yes, I DO admire good tools, ones that do the job; My Mondeo and Multipla were both well capable of carrying my family, I COULD have bought a used Rolls Royce for the same price that I paid for the Multipla, but why should I have?


Rant over, bet the Moderators cull this 'cos of all the near-expletives.
 
SammieQ":2donyir0 said:
This guy in the prog. created a house with his own two hands and a limited budget in fairly ardous conditions. Who the hell gives a stuff if he did with a sharpened spoon and a rock? He did it. Let's celebrate craftsmanship, diligence and perseverence and not be so damn narky and carp at the lack of tinsel and glitter.
Actually, this was exactly the point that I was making when I made the post in the first place. Namely that the work that this guy had done with the tools that we saw him using belies any theory that you need expensive tools to do a good job.

And, I agree with you about photography. I often look a photos taken in the '50s with equipment that was a lot less technically advanced than my D70 but which are far superior to anything that I can produce now.

Andrew
 

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