Going solar
Solar power seems like a great idea; who doesn’t want free power, right? But, what to choose, and what are the pitfalls of solar?
Regular The Shed writer, Andrew Broxholme, has just completed a large solar installation on his property and shares all the good, the bad, and the ugly aspects of his solar power journey.
I’m environmentally aware, but am not an environmentalist, so I’ve gone solar for only one reason, because it makes good financial sense to do so, that said it isn’t necessarily going to be right for everyone and its impact on your power bills will depend on where you are in New Zealand and the orientation and design of your house relative to where the sun rises and sets.
I’ve been interested in renewables for many years. I first looked at it while living in the UK. The early systems had promise, but really didn’t make financial sense as the cost of installation and ongoing maintenance wasn’t offset by big enough reductions in power bills. They wouldn’t repay that investment during their service life, which at the time was 15–20 years (maximum).
That’s no longer true, with higher volume, the equipment has got a lot cheaper, it is more efficient, but we have also seen huge increases in energy costs; this, in particular, changes the economics dramatically. That doesn’t, however, mean that you can buy the first solar system presented or recommended to you. Read on to find out why.
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Two-stroke tsunami in B-Town
The latest Syd’s Run may have been the best attended ever. The event is for small motorcycles or anything with a small single-cylinder petrol engine. Some were modified motorcycles – one had a skateboard for a seat, another had a body accurately modelled on a Watties Baked Bean tin.
Free to a good home – a Bruce McLaren sculpture is looking for a savior
Once upon time, a larger-than-life tribute to West Auckland racing legend Bruce McLaren, graced a West Auckland roadside not too far from where McLaren once did business.
Built with recycled steel components and called Oblivion Exprezz 3 (OXPRZ3) this was artist Frank Womble’s third piece of ‘assemblage’ car art.
Making a dirtsurfer – a simple wheeled board makes a great school project
About ten years ago my son attended a “have-a-go-day” at the Tauranga domain.
He came home so excited about a new, wheeled board thing that he had seen. He described it to me and I duly made one. It turned out to be a dirtsurfer. He rode it for years and got quite skilled at using it. My son then left home and the board got left in a cupboard. Until recently.
One of my Year 10 students happened to be surfing the net and came across a site showing a video of these people doing some radical things on what was called a ‘dirtsurfer’. He had been to all the bike shops and sports stores in town and could not buy one anywhere. Most places had not even heard of them.
Then I remembered the dirtsurfer that I had made ten years ago, got it out and soon half the school wanted to ride the thing. The faster they go the easier they are to ride. Students learn to ride them in seconds.
I then came up with the idea that this would make an excellent technology project for my Year 11 class.
Make a mandolin; from keyboard to fretboard – from code to craft
Malcolm Locke is a computer programmer by profession, but his passion he undertakes from the other end of his work-from-home shed. Nigel Young follows Malcolm’s creation of a mandolin from its green timber beginnings to an instrument that works beautifully for Irish and Appalachian tunes.
At the back of Malcolm Locke’s house is a long, narrow shed.
At one end, Malcolm – a computer programmer by profession – has a workstation, while at the other end, he has a workshop. One profession uses a keyboard and is about logic, predictability, scale and robustness. The other, however, is about fingertip touch and tone, materials that mix and vary, moisture and humidity control, and the sort of precision that goes when aligning variables with handcraft and the exacting requirements of a musical instrument – in this case, mandolins. “It’s also about repeatability over accuracy,” he explains, and the ability to iterate over small batches.
Restoring a 1952 AJS – part eight
Peter finds that his restoration is taking much longer than he had hoped, as those snakes and ladders are still present to frustrate him, and, as usual, more snakes than ladders. His goal in this part eight is to get that engine started and hear that throbbing piston music – but will he succeed?
The 1952 AJS 500 is slowly coming together; much more slowly than I had expected over a year ago.
I knew that the bike is a bitzer, but along the way I have found that it is way more of a mongrel than I expected. But you can still love a mongrel, and the upside is that I feel little pressure to keep things genuine. For example, I’ve nickel-plated bits where chromium was originally used, and I used part of a barbecue to fix the motor; see earlier articles.
My last article ended with the discovery that I had several leaks in the preferred and now, prepared fuel tank; probably to be expected with the bike’s 50 years of storage in a relatively damp shed. I had been hopeful that I had eventually got to the stage where, after what seemed to be like a year-long game of snakes and ladders, I could at least fire up the engine: a bit of throbbing to lift the spirits. Alas, any throbbing had to wait.
Photography software
Fix that pic – easily and for free
Do you enjoy manipulating your digital images but find Photoshop too complicated to use, and very costly? Well, there is a great option for you, and it’s free. Time to bring out the GIMP.
Have you ever looked at a photo in a magazine featuring some ageing celebrity with apparently perfect skin and thought, “I wouldn’t mind someone airbrushing some of my far less complimentary snaps?” (Although, as we’ll see, airbrushing has nothing to do with it.) Or had a great photo ruined by some intrusion or accidental artefact that you would otherwise happily have printed and hung on a wall?
As the world knows, the universal tool for fixing such snaps is Adobe Photoshop®, a pricey professional app that is both too technical and too expensive for casual amateurs like us. What the world does not know is that, thanks to the international Open Source movement, there is an entirely free, downloadable app that does the same job, and that most of what you might want to do to fix your special snaps requires only a couple of its many functions.
With those and a very small amount of practice, you can pull off the same tricks, leaving no traces of your handiwork.
See the before and after pics as proof – all done using a couple of easily mastered functions.
Learning how to Veneer
Master craftsman Edward Prince joins The Shed team to share his woodworking skills and vast knowledge. In this first article, he shows how a piece of furniture can be transformed by using veneers. The skilful use of veneers can transform a dull but sound carcass into a dramatic display of craftsmanship.
This article arose from a project modifying the top of a college project
The bare bones were fine, but tired and dated. The result shows how a piece of furniture can be transformed by using veneers. The skilful use of veneers can transform a dull but sound carcass into a dramatic display of craftsmanship, with beautiful woods and artistic expression using images or patterns.
The dictionary defines a veneer as a way to cover up shoddy work. Yet nothing can be further from the truth. Using thin slices of wood enables timber that has no inherent strength, is too fragile and delicate for structural work, too hard to work in its solid form with deeply interlocking grain and highly decorative, rare or expensive timbers to be used in a non-structural way to cover a suitable substrate that enhances an object with stunning impact.
Off the grid– castles in the air
Tree huts are a lot of fun, and children love them. With Christmas approaching and his grandchildren set to visit, Murray sees the perfect opportunity to build a tree hut in a tree he has been eyeing for a couple of years. And boy, didn’t he enjoy this project.
Like many of my generation, I grew up building huts at all altitudes; underground, overground and aerial. The best were aerial.
Although we were urban, there was a stand of big old macrocarpas behind the house, topped in the distant past and interestingly shaped as a result. Before I reached double figures, I could traverse the row without descending and knew many branches well. As we siblings grew, aerial huts developed from a few randomly-nailed sticks to more formal structures. Those early joys never leave – it’s probably why I still enjoy freehand chainsaw joinery. This story is about a grandfatherly dream, an interestingly-formed macrocarpa and a reversion to said childhood.
Model museum – it’s a small, small world
A deathbed promise to brilliant modeller Royston Lake and his father Bob Walters by Phil Walters has meant some rare, stunning and valuable models have been preserved for us all to enjoy. But what will happen to this jaw-dropping collection in the coming years? Chris Hegan is fascinated with this extraordinary collection of models, the likes of which will never be repeated.
It makes sense that Phil Walters’ model museum is in the Kaukapakapa backwoods, not far from the Old North Rd, which used to be the main highway to the north before the Auckland harbour bridge came along.
No one goes that way anymore, and it is just as likely that no one will make the things that fill his cave of wonders in future, or at least not in the way these incredible objects were created. In the days of CAD design and 3D printing, why would anyone wanting a perfect scale model of, say, a 1927 Austin 7, pick up a block of wood and a set of chisels? Talk about doing things the hard way.
But wandering from model to model, jaw hanging open, I see no comparison between a perfect plastic scale replica and these extraordinary works of art embodying thousands of hours of devotion, ingenuity and craft.
The Shed Shrink: Monozukuri – made with purpose
Our Shed Shrink discovers that it’s not about delivering a product or service that counts the most, it’s the attitude with which they are delivered that really counts and meticulousness and care in all tasks.
I came across this expression ‘Monozukuri’ and, as with all things Japanese, there can often be layers of meaning to it (more than meets the eye), and no, it’s not a new model of motorcycle from Suzuki either.
The term combines ‘mono’ (meaning things) and ‘zukuri’ (meaning to make or to produce). While often translated as manufacturing, its true essence goes far beyond that simple definition. Its core principles: craftsmanship and skill:
A focus on mastering techniques and developing deep expertise. Innovation and perfection:
A continuous search for improvement and an ambition to achieve excellence. Pride and respect:
A sense of pride in one’s work and a reverence for materials and the creative process.
Confessions of a boxaholic
Coen comes clean and discloses his total obsession with making boxes. In his final article, Coen reveals that he was a sheddie through and through. His passion and projects will be sorely missed.
As a sheddie, I am often called upon to undertake a range of small activities hardly worthy of the name “projects.”
Dismantling a defunct microwave to rescue the two large magnets it contains, upgrading the security of the external rooms in our boarding cattery, or making a picture frame to hold a photo of our dog (who has recently returned to the eternal darkness). None of these really deserve to be written about in any detail, and I am sure readers of The Shed can also recount countless similar activities they have undertaken as part of their sheddie lives.
The hardware store of your dreams
Remember those cool old hardware and motor parts stores? The good news is they are still around, and we found one just north of Auckland that has the kind of products you thought you couldn’t find anymore.
Helensville is in the sweet spot – close enough to Auckland to make the big city accessible but still a proper rural town.
As such, it draws people doing odd and fascinating projects, restoring and building every kind of vehicle, inventing the next big mechanical wonder, but still with a full complement of farmers. They all, sooner or later, turn up at the hardware shop of their dreams, and once found, they keep returning to it: Thrifty Auto Supplies, a local legend for near on half a century and now spreading out on the internet for the benefit of mechanical tinkerers nationwide.
Rangitaka Island Military Display
A military museum set up in Geraldine holds a military revival every Labour Weekend with impressive, realistic mock battles. The Shed was there, in the trenches, capturing all the action.
Two years ago, Don Pelvin set up the Military Museum in Geraldine as a retirement project. He is pretty happy with how things are going, with an average of a thousand visitors a month, especially as his museum is one of six in the small South Canterbury town. He also organises the Rangitata Island Military Revival on the Saturday and Sunday of Labour weekend every year.
This is a combination of a display of military vehicles and gear, and reenactments of actions from WWI and WWII, and it all takes place at the Rangitata aerodrome, an airfield owned by a local farmer. About 50 reenactors turned up in their historically correct uniforms with their suitable weapons, after word had spread in the tight-knit military history world that the event was happening.
Know your stuff – The Shed Quiz No. 6
You’ve got a shed, and you know how to use it – but do you really understand how everything works? Test your sheddie knowledge.
Plus: The Shed Cryptic Crossword No. 3 – by Maya
Immortalised in steel
A “Jack of all trades” has found his forever shed in rural Taranaki. He lives there with some treasured horses and his best mate, Boulder the staffy. He makes metal works of art for fun, not for sale and lives and works in an old hay barn with his Harley. Bruce Aldridge is one contented sheddie.
Dominating the far end of Bruce’s country-sized studio is a life-sized sculpture of a rearing stallion, with a dog on its back. Bruce has been working on this for some months, and when we visit, it is almost complete and ready for installation. The horse is modelled off his actual horse, a 15-hand-high grey named Billy, and the dog, a Staffordshire Bull Terrier rescue named Boulder. “He was supposed to be a little handbag dog”, says Bruce, who was hoping to find a smaller dog to take on his horse adventures but found Boulder instead. The nugget-coloured Staffy has taken to his life with Bruce and is even proudly learning to ride the horse by himself.
Getting the proportions of a horse in the rearing position right has come naturally to Bruce, as he has spent much of his life working with them. At one time, he had a horse-trekking business. Nowadays, Bruce just has two horses, ‘Billy’ and a Kaimanawa named ‘Spike’. While the proportions are correct, getting the weight balanced has been a real challenge.
Back O The Shed: the little red tractor
Every summer, a sheddie’s thoughts turn to farming. Well, for rural-based Jude, they do, and he gets to drive his tractor as well!
On my little piece of land I occasionally get to do farm things.
My place is used as a runoff by my neighbour for his rams. They help me keep control of the grass except in summer. In summer the grass gets very long as it throws up seed heads and sheep don’t care for long grass, so the paddocks begin to look like wheat fields. It helps to top the grass, cut the seed heads, to make the grass grow again. After I have topped the paddocks they come away again after the first rain. Farmers do this by grazing cattle on the fields as the grass gets tall and then graze sheep after the cattle.
One of my favourite farm things is topping the paddocks.
I get to start the old Massey Ferguson 35 and roar around the paddocks, imagining myself a farmer. My real farming neighbours smile indulgently or just laugh. They don’t bother to top their paddocks but then they have cattle and sheep so they don’t need to. They also have quite steep hill country that I wouldn’t want to drive a tractor on.
