Building a great deck for typical Kiwi indoor-outdoor living is on every home-owner's list at some point. The deck we are building here is a fairly normal slatted timber deck less than one metre high. This article is an overview of general steps in building a deck and is intended as a broad illust...
In creating a fully automated target, with spring-back target buttons controlled by microprocessors, I was able to compare the workings of Arduino and PICAXE. Arduino and PICAXE are two very different devices—like comparing a revolver and a shotgun. There are smaller Arduinos and bigger PICAXE...
When designing a house, first build your giant shed where you can make joinery for the house-to-be. That was the thought of Julian Pirie. But he was to take a special route—he decided to model his barn-like “shed” on old-style English oak barns, typically housing Aston Martins in magazines p...
Without knowing electronics, it’s easy to tackle this small robot which demonstrates how a machine can be programmed to back off obstacles it hits. Mark Beckett helped to construct his daughter Hayley’s easy-to-make “HaloBOT” which is controlled by PICAXE. You can follow the building proce...
Restoring old motorbikes and cars is Dad’s passion. The garage is home to four of Dad’s prize beauties all lovingly semi-restored in various stages of TTI (Time Till Ignition). The projects in question are two cars: 1956 Wolseley 6/90 Series 1 and 1935 Hudson de Lux 8 (side-valve, straight-eig...
This project to make a stool was developed as a way of introducing students to a number of basic wood-bending and shaping techniques, whilst also giving experience in several useful applications of the router. The stool consists of two legs in the form of continuous steam-bent hoops or arches, whi...
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December/January 09
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It’s easy to move on from oxy/acetylene welding in the shed to oxy/LPG. Many sheddies weld and cut with the oxy/acetylene, a gas combination that has been widely used in home workshops. The hire or exchange cylinders used by sheddies invariably were oxy/acetylene as this was one of the most common processes for welding, cutting or brazing. But there is an alternative—liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and oxygen.
It is now possible to strap yourself into a small jet propulsion outfit and literally lift off and this holy grail of powered, personal flight really is a Kiwi invention. 
Since building the pizza oven (see “Pizza oven pleasure renewed,” Feb / Mar 2008, The Shed) I have become more and more interested in different ways of cooking food. My pizza oven now produces a variety of breads and succulent roasts. As the oven sears the food with heat to seal in the flavours, it produces the succulence. Conventional cooking dries out food because it is a relatively slow process. Those of you who built the pizza oven will know that the cooking process can be measured in seconds rather than hours
A small steam engine has long been the ultimate aim of every amateur engineer. They are an extremely attractive toy and fairly easy to make in the average workshop. I have divided the project into two areas. The boiler construction is covered first and then the engine. The reasoning behind this is that the boiler can be used with any similarly sized engine and vice versa, so once you are hooked who knows how many beautiful little models will be gracing the shelves of your shed.
For centuries, man has been stitching materials together so he can float on water, creating everything from coracles to ocean-crossing curraghs and catamarans. Some consider stitch-and-tape plywood projects without finesse but fine boats have been built using this method.
When the meat lovers among us think about carving up Daisy the cow, we’re picturing the Sunday roast but Lilach Paul sees bare white bones: blank canvases to be brought to their full potential beneath her Dremel drill. To date, she has created more than 700 one-off pieces of jewellery which began life as bare bone.