You're not a real DIYer until --

[Lurch]

On 30 Jan 2005 19:56:07 GMT, [e-mail] (Huge) strung together this:

I've poured orange juice on my corn flakes and milk in the glass before, does that count?

[Andrew Chesters]

That's marginally better than drinking from the paint-pot. Not that my DIY has ever got that bad.

Andrew

[Andrew Gabriel]

My father still has his 1950's B&D drill. Sometime around 1960, it was treated to a new set of windings courtesy of the electricity board, when they changed the mains voltage from 200V to 240V in Reading. They over-stamped the voltage plate, so you can see it has been changed.

I think my Stanley knife is about 30 years old. Also, one of the best screwdrivers I've ever had is now 35 years old. It is a Meccano screwdriver which came with the chiming clock kit. It has a very comfortable handle (used to say Meccano on it, but it's almost completely rubbed off), and seems to be a nice quality steal tip. I have reground it twice now, once after a slight accident shorting out the ring circuit which blow the tip off, and again after general wear, and it came up very nicely each time.

I also still have the Meccano clock although it's in need of a few replacement parts. ;-)

[Andrew Gabriel]

I've done that more than once whilst plastering, so it's the bucket with the plaster slop in the bottom, and usually gets tipped over in the process...

Had a school friend who was in to developing his own photos with a dark room at home. In the dark, he knocked over a jar of fixer (or one of the other chemicals, not sure I ever knew quite which). Anyway, when he'd got the lights back on and finished clearing up the spillage, he finished off his mug of tea. Only after he swallowed it did he realise it tasted off -- some of the chemical had spilt into it. He was ill for about a year after that before eventually recovering and returning to school.

[Mark]

indeed their heavy solid aluminium and indestructible, don't spin very fast but enough torque to lift you off your feet if it stalls. Fabulous for mixing plaster but im not brave enough to drill anything with it. It belonged to my father, ive also got some moulding planes that belonged to my grandfather.

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

It was somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember [e-mail] (Andrew Gabriel) saying something like:

Ah yes. Blithely unaware of the toxicity of developers and fixers, I was happily messing around developing films and prints at an early age.

Just as well nobody else seemed to be aware of the dangers, else my hobby may have been curtailed.

The old sodium metabisulphite fixer doesn't seem to be particularly dangerous if swallowed, so perhaps he knocked back some developer.

Doing a google brings up some interesting stuff in relation to some toxic developers.

This one's nasty...

the old ID11 Ilford b&w developer isn't something you'd want to swallow...

[Mary Fisher]

Well I have some ...

Hey! Don't you think this would make a good - separate - thread?

Mary

[Mary Fisher]

Tell you what, I've just waved off No1 grandson. He knows even more than his father, our son. I can get him to do anything I want!

Mary

[Mary Fisher]

That reminds me of Letters From a Lost Uncle (Mervyn Peake) in which the hero relates that on his first day at school he drank so much ink that he was too ill to go again until the time he left.

Mary

[Lurch]

On Sun, 30 Jan 2005 23:16:06 -0000, "Mary Fisher" strung together this:

Not really.

[Owain]

"Lurch" wrote | >Have you ever dipped the paintbrush in the cup of coffee? | I've poured orange juice on my corn flakes and milk in the | glass before, does that count?

I once confused the little sachets in a fast-food restaurant. Salty tea is not nice, but the chips were okay :-)

Owain

[Andrew Gabriel]

That reminds me -- one of my grandmothers baking a cake when staying with my parents. Suddenly noticed she had just carefully measured out 1/2 lb of dishwasher detergent (fortunately before it went into the mixing bowl)...

[bigcat]

Didnt take long to realise you can do anything if you dont tell the grown ups. We mucked about with blueprinting, which is a cyanide based process. At least the developer is only tap water.

http://216.239.59.104/search?q=3Dcache:Hc58EX5GhioJ:cator.hsc.edu/~mollusk/=ChemArt/photo/cyanotype.html+blueprint+cyanide&hl=3DenNT

[Mary Fisher]

Sounds as though you're older than I thought ... :-)

Mary

[Paul Mc Cann]

My mother once complained that one of the crisps in her bag was very salty.

Turned out she had eaten the little blue twist of salt.

Now, who remembers them ?

[S Viemeister]

I do. Last year I bought a packet of chips (Walker's, but subtitled SmITh's) which contained a little blue plasticy packet of salt. The twists were much easier to open.

Sheila

[Mary Fisher]

MEMEME!

er -what do you mean, remember them? You can still buy crisps, I've seen the empty bags blowing around in the street ...

Mary

[John]

Yes but the salt was nearly always damp in the packets from our village shop when I were a lad

[Peter Scott]

Obviously not a recessive gene then? Hmm perhaps we should look at the genome to see if we can spot the one for diy. Not in the Y that's for sure!

Peter Scott

[Mary Fisher]

None of our children nor their children has recessive genes for anything - except modesty.

Don't know where they get it from ...

You mean you're not sure about the folk you've claimed tax relieve for ... ?

Mary