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Engineering

All hands to the tanks

18 June 2026

The call goes out. The volunteers pour into the military camp at Waiouru in the centre of the North Island. The only war, though, is going to be on rust, handbrake cables,
driveshafts, seized brake systems, the battered cylinders of tank engines and the ongoing tussle to turn out new truck engine parts.
Here is a group of willing sheddies who meet about once every six weeks under the keen oversight of George Pycraft. Their job: to continue repairing the heritage vehicles of the Army Museum at Waiouru.
Their “shed” is a group of four storage sheds housing 85 vehicles in various states of repair. They are as diverse as tanks, the 24-tonne M41 Walker Bulldog, the Centurion, and Valentine tanks (the latter still in World War II Pacific theatre camouflage), a 1941 Canadian Pattern Chevrolet gun tractor, an MB Jeep still wearing its 1942 Long Range Desert Group livery, an M113A1 Armoured Personnel Carrier (APC) painted in UN colours and of the type used in Bosnia, a 1943 Ford F30 truck, a 39-inch searchlight and an M816 recovery wrecker truck made by American Motor Corporation in 1969.
Pycraft, the museum’s Assistant Curator – Technology, says with the help and dedication of the museum’s volunteers they are slowly coming closer to having a complete running collection of heritage vehicles.

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A weighty subject

12 June 2026

One problem with working alone in the shed and having a liking for large pieces of Victorian cast iron is the difficulty of safely moving or lifting them.
They can be moved with load skates and pipes as rollers, but how do you lift the weight onto the rollers? Trying to push down on a crowbar while arranging pipe rollers under a machine is inviting trouble. A toe jack allows you to lift and hold the weight in the air as you arrange the rollers and put in safety blocks. It is not intended for great weights or high lifts due to stability, but it allows you to lift the weight.

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Westland Industrial Heritage Park: From trash to treasure

30 April 2026

The West Coast has a history as rich as it is rugged, with a past steeped in mining, logging, and dairy farming on a forest-clad strip between the mountains and the sea. Up by Hokitika airport is a sheddies’ paradise where relics from this past are being resurrected by an enthusiastic and capable band of volunteers.
“It all started back in 1981. Everything was going by train out to scrap, so we formed a club to stop it,” says Mort Cruickshank. The “we” were four young men – Spike Jones, Jim Straton, Mike Rooney and Mort. They formed the Westland Farm and Vintage Machinery Club and started salvaging old machinery that had been destined for the dump. With no premises, they kept it in their backyard sheds and met sporadically to plan the future.
Four decades on, and the Westland Industrial Heritage Park, spread over several acres up by Hokitika airport, is packed with machinery, sheds and enthusiasts. It is a hub of community activities, has a Menzshed on site and is increasingly a drawcard for tourists.

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Hot stuff in Taranaki

9 April 2026

Hot rods – we see them rumbling round the highways and byways, big V8s burbling, immaculate finished body and paintwork and obviously someone’s pride and joy. Many people don’t realise the work that goes into customising one of these gleaming machines. Some are old cars reshaped and rebuilt, and some are made from scratch, often using the classic designs and lines of cars built in the 1920s, 30s and 40s.
In the little town of Normanby in South Taranaki there’s a workshop set up to create these beasts. We caught up with guys from three businesses in a row having smoko together. An upholstery business, a custom fabrication shop and an engineering shop. All mates who work in together in a way that can only happen in a small town.

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Racing motorcycles – the art of engineering

12 March 2026

Chris Gordon has been devoted to the internal combustion engine since his earliest days, when his next-door neighbour was a motor mechanic.
At 14, he was a crew member for Ron Collett, who successfully ran a Top Eliminator class dragster at strips throughout New Zealand. His Chris Gordon Racing Team won the 1998/99 125cc New Zealand Road Racing Championship, with well-known rider Dennis Charlett riding a Honda RS125 that Chris owned and prepared. Chris and his team ran the bike in the 125cc class at the Australian MotoGP at Phillip Island in 1999.
Chris has also, from a very early age, made things: models, an electric bicycle, an electric go-kart; a fibre-glass, road-registered, scratch-built car; and a 500cc V8- powered grand prix racing bike. He has a minimalist approach to tools and equipment, but to make the racer’s V8 engine, he had to buy and master a small lathe and a serious, large and highly capable milling machine. The alternative would have been to get the machining and development done professionally. Chris calculates that this would have involved thousands of hours of very expensive machine time – say, 3000-plus hours at $100 per hour. That’s a lot of money.

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Choppers with pedal power

5 March 2026

Geraldine High School technology teacher Alan Minnear built pedal-powered choppers with his Year 11 students because he wanted something to capture their interest. He says he initially got the idea for the choppers from another local teacher but then discovered the Atomic Zombie website (www. atomiczombie.com) which opened his eyes to possibilities with the clear instructions available. He paid for and downloaded the PDF files for the two choppers named Vigilante and Overkill that caught his eye.
Because of their relative inexperience, the students basically followed the book for the choppers they built. However, the book gave no measurements, wanting builders to create their own design from the basics.

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On the move

26 February 2026

Farm life, even on a pocket-handkerchief farm like mine, means that you will need to move stock from time to time. I run a few cattle beasts and a few goats. I plan to get a few sheep soon, too. The issue with stock is moving them. Moving the cattle is a different story but for the smaller stock I could carry them either on the tray of my ute or my trailer if either had a stock cage.
I decided that building a cage could be an easily achievable project and so it has proved. It has value even if you don’t have stock – it certainly increases the options for your trailer. It is a lot easier collecting firewood with a cage, even transporting rubbish, or green waste. In the case of the latter you might want to make the end hinged rather than incorporate a gate to make it easier to unload the waste.

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Metal and wood shelving

21 October 2025

No matter how much storage space you have, there is always a need for more. One solution is to make better use of existing cupboards and wardrobes. In my own house the third bedroom is used as an office, so the built-in wardrobe was an obvious target for conversion into a storage place for files and computer supplies.
I had already tackled one shelving upgrade. We have a hallway cupboard used for many things that don’t have a place anywhere else, including toys for the grandchildren when they visit. The space was not used well. My solution was homemade shelving using frames of steel with plywood shelves.
For this cupboard, we had to allow for a basket of toys and chillibin on the floor level and picnic items and other bits and pieces on other levels. Once the shelves were installed, better use of space meant more room became available. One of Murphy’s Laws soon came into play and other items found their way into the open spaces, making good use of the variety of shelving.

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Recreating history

9 October 2025

It seems the Phoenix Bus Company was well named, as like the phoenix bird of legend, the new bus has been reborn from the ashes of the old, so to speak.
A former principal of Piopio College, a local boat builder, and the whole community rallied around to recreate the Model T Ford bus, identical to its forebears.
It began when Brian Tegg, an ex-principal of Piopio College, found a 1921 Model T Ford restored transport truck for sale in Auckland and brought it on impulse three years ago.
Realising it was a unique opportunity to transform it into a bus, he got the Piopio College Trust and the local community behind the project.
Local fundraising by the Piopio College Trust, a Givealittle crowdfunding campaign, and support from many local people and businesses made the project happen.
Piopio is a small town of just 400 people but they have pride in their history.
Local boat builder Max Laver became involved in the project, transforming the truck into an exact copy of the early buses.

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Forging ahead – take a knifemaking class

3 October 2025

Knifemaking has undergone a resurgence in the past few years. It may be the fact that it requires only a modicum of equipment. You only really need a file and gas torch.
Of course the more elaborate the knives you make, the more gear you will need but this is one of those hobbies that can grow with you. Naturally, having a forge, some sort of anvil – even if it is only a lump of hard steel or a bit of railway line, a grinder, and a hammer will extend your options and none of these are particularly expensive. There are a number of knifemaking classes springing up all over the country to cater to this interest. Shea Stackhouse runs classes in basic knifemaking, making Damascus steel and blacksmithing

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On the move

18 September 2025

Moving machinery and heavy items around the workshop is a common job for most sheddies, especially those with an addiction to Victorian-era cast iron.
While using a bar or pipe for rollers works, as shown by the builders of the Egyptian pyramids, they won’t work if you have feet or obstructions, and are difficult if you are working by yourself.
Load skates are small, heavy-duty roller skates that fit under the load and you will generally need a set of four. This load skate is made from 100x50mm steel channel with rollers made from 40mm pipe with ball bearings. The bearings are cheap 6004RS model bearings which are a snug fit into 40mm pipe, and cost $2-3 each from online suppliers.
As this project was built out of materials to hand, I only had tapered flange channel so I used my horizontal milling machine with a side and face cutter to remove the taper.

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Getting a grip

29 August 2025

I’m currently making a mould for a rotational moulded boat. It’s a complex project with barely a square angle in it and dozens of folds and welds. It’s the sort of job that requires precision and the often needs more than two hands.
Clamps are useful but they are usually fiddly and can have a tendency to slip at the last moment especially where there aren’t any flat even surfaces to get a purchase on. So I wasn’t expecting too much when I was asked to try the Strong Hand utility clamps.
They are lighter than cast clamps so I had some doubts that they would have the clamping strength I needed for the more difficult pieces.
I was a bit dubious about the sliding action, too. It’s unusual to use sliding F-clamps in engineering but I’ve seen them used in boat-building and woodworking.

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Letting off steam

21 August 2025

“Steam is the only way to go,” says Win Holdaway, a Blenheim-based enthusiast who builds working models from scratch in his backyard shed.
Over the years, Win has spent thousands of hours constructing immaculate scale locomotives, including an 1870s’ Baldwin Standard TE, BR standard class 9F, and a Burrell Special Scenic Showman’s road locomotive. He is currently working on an inch-and-a-half scale 1925 Pennsylvania A5S 040 switcher, complete with tender. “It’s one thing to make a model that looks authentic and another to make it work,” says Win, whose working models can all hold 90-100lb of steam.
Win reckons he spent around 5000 hours building his Burrell Scenic Showman’s road locomotive alone. It is fittingly named Lynette after his wife. While he probably spends more time in his shed than the house, she is his greatest supporter. “It’s more than a hobby. This is his life,” says Lyn, a legal annotator who knows the importance of precision.
“I’m out here most days,” admits Win who, if not in his own workshop, can often be found down at Brayshaw Heritage Park with fellow model engineering enthusiasts.

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In pursuit of perfection

5 August 2025

If David Curry was to be summed up in a single word it would almost certainly be precision. But that’s not enough – it would be absolutely vital to add artistry. Putting them together amounts to a search for perfection, so perhaps that’s the word to use.
Here’s an example: David is at present building a dauntingly complicated perpetual calendar skeleton clock, which has 38 gears, one with 165 teeth, all of which have to be individually machined. Clearly precision is paramount. But the levers and some parts of the frame look a little utilitarian, so he’s redesigning them with a few artistic flourishes. For inspiration he looks to a skeleton clock built in 1855.
“The engineering has to be right so that the parts work properly, but they also have to look right,” he says.
The clock tells the time, has a second hand, notes the day, date and month, and knows whether the month has 30 or 31 days. David is adding a second chiming system so that the half hour, three-quarter hour and quarter hour chimes have different tones from the full hour strike.

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Race cars made in NZ

31 July 2025

Craig Greenwood is one of the best examples of someone who turned his passion into a business. He is also one of New Zealand’s most prolific racing car builders.
Craig got into motor racing in the early 1990s, progressing from competitive cart racing to Formula Vee (now Formula First). The class is based on a 1200 cc VW motor and uses a collection of stock parts to form a competitive car from the engine, transmission, front suspension, brakes and wheels built into a space frame.
The body is fibreglass or carbon fibre. It’s a racing class that allows an enthusiast to build and maintain his own car. Craig bought his first car but soon decided to build his own, working nights and weekends in a cramped single garage with little more than an oxy-acetylene welder, a hacksaw and a hand-held drill.
“I wasn’t all that successful at first. Of 18 starts I made, I only finished four,” says Craig.
“I realised that just knowing how to weld a chassis wasn’t enough, so I started to read about designing and building race cars.”

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