Confession Time

[Guy King]

The message from Huge contains these words:

I've only got a couple of Tilleys. And a couple of large Optimuses and a small Optimus and an old reflector lamp of dubious provenance.

[The Medway Handyman]

That takes yer back! Jumpers for goalposts! We made us own fun in them days!

I was trying to explain this to my 23 year old daughter the other day. About how we all went round to our mates houses to watch TV.

That was when they introduced the 70mph limit on Motorways to save fuel wasn't it?

Them were the days..........................

[<me9]

It was 50 on motorways. 70 was introduced much earlier by IIRC Babara Castle, or was it Ernie Marples (must go)? I suspect he introduced the 50 limit on bank holiday weekends. They seemed to drop this when it was made public that bank holiday weeks were no worse than other weeks.

I know of the 50 of the winter of discontent, as I was done for exceeding it.

[Guy King]

The message from "The Medway Handyman" contains these words:

And then you get twits like Alistair Campbell on Who Wants to be a Millionaire stumbling over things like "Which country launched Skylab in

1973?" with the options as USSR, USA, UK or France.

He and his partner quickly eliminated USSR and France but struggled over UK or USA. I find it worrying that a politico can forget that in 1973 we were in the throes of the 3-day week and in no fit state to be launching space stations.

Perhaps a blindness to past mistakes is one of the qualifying features for political office.

[lairdy]

Quite ;-) Measure three times, cut once.

[simonsmith.uk]

its the "cutting to size" that caused the problem, I'd laugh if I hadnt sawn into a plastic toolbox WITH A HANDSAW :)

[Guy King]

The message from [e-mail] contains these words:

I once superglued my foot to the floor. I was building a glider fuselage and had to hold the tail end together while the glue set. I hadn't noticed I was standing (barefoot) in a few drips of glue on a nice clean vinyl floor until I decided time was up and tried to walk away.

Had to sit and wait till the sweat from my foot released me. By which time the wife was just coming through the front door.

[lairdy]

I expect you are referring to the miners strike or 3-day week, etc. '72-73 ? The Winter of Discontent (a wonderfully British piece of understatement) was a few years later.

[Huge]

Probably. It all blurs together after this length of time.

[marvelus]

I followed advise on here to put down salt where I'd seen slugs in the house. this meant for me all the floor boards under the kitchen units unfortunately I used the only salt I had, low sodium salt ... Doh!

[John White]

I needed to cut a short board to run some wiring.

I carefully levered up the board and checked under it for pipes and the like. Finding none, I used a couple of bits of wood to prop it in place so I could use a circular saw to cut through it.

The saw cleanly cut through the board - and the microbore heating pipe I had levered up with it. :-(

John

[Ian_m]

Luckily only workmate. My mates got a nice new steel patio table bought by SWMBO and when only 2 weeks only he put a nice 2 foot cut through the edge and top whilst cutting some board for kids shed. Only got 2 foot before circular saw became blunt and would cut no further forcing him to investigate. Whoops.

[Guy King]

The message from marvelus contains these words:

That should work just as well.

[Jim Hatfield]

I needed to trim 1/4" off the bottom of the bathroom door as SWMBO was complaining that it caught on the mat. I measured the distance between the edge of the router cutter and the edge of the guide as

1 7/8" so set a batten at 2 1/8" from the bottom of the door. No problem.

A trial fit revealed that a teeny bit more trimming was needed so I decided to take another 1/8" off. So I carefully set the batten at 2 1/4" - it was only after I'd cut 6" or so that I realised what I'd done.

Still, there's plenty of clearance now!

[Guy King]

The message from Jim Hatfield contains these words:

Don't ask why, but I once trimmed a door-frame instead of the door.

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

[Pete C]

For this sort of thing I've invented the Brain Saver(tm)

First cut into some scrap a little way using a guide, then take 2 steel rules, turn the first upside down, place against the guide and stick the second to it with double sided tape where the edge of the cut starts.

It's then easy to measure off what you need to cut, and the other side can be used more easily as a normal ruler.

cheers, Pete.

[marvelus]

No doubt, but can you see the down side? I didnt :)

[Jan Larsen]

I would go so far as to state that stripping any kind of cable with ones teeth is an activity best avoided.

Using silly instruments is also best avoided, I was in an advanced state of refreshment when I was changing the connectors on a very large and silly "audiophile" speaker cable known as a midnight II, around an inch thick and full of little conductors, using the scissors in my Victorianox swiss army knife, this resulted after a minor slip in a rather deep furrow on one of my fingers, a minor scrape of the digit in questions bone and a rather nasty stab from the inside of my palm through to the other side of the hand miraculously missing the tendons

//J

[Jan Larsen]

I am not seeing what you mean at all here, is it because the low sodium salt is expensive or?

//J

[Guy King]

The message from marvelus contains these words:

You mean apart from it being expensive?