Did I miss anything?

That went well :(

Bought a bit of worktop to be a desk in my office.

Shut the PC down.

Cut the worktop to fit (it was 3050mm, and the walls are 29-something).

Tried to put it in, and doesn't quite fit.

Cut a bit more off.

Tried to put it in, and it doesn't quite fit.

Cut a bit more off.

Now it's half an inch too short :(

All fitted up, holes for the plugs to go through drilled, painted with Danish Oil (and I wish I'd put that off until the summer) set everything up again, and

Damn PC won't turn on.

Much hacking about and I find that while the PSU will fire up when I tell it to that doesn't make the motherboard run, and the motherboard isn't telling the PSU. Take everything out, and still zilch.

Well, it's a core2. So I bought a new one, put Ubuntu on it, and it's taken me a month to get News running again - it was last on the list.

Did I miss anything?

Andy

Reply to
Vir Campestris
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Reminds me of that Candid Camera (or spinoff) episode wher they got a man in to fit shelves in an alcove.

Hea measured. Cut. Too long. Measured again. Cut. Too short. Try again. Etc.

He eventually twigged and managed to get access to the back of the wall. Where two guys were moving the wall.

Reply to
Bob Eager

I'd have at least changed the power supply as although it seems to be working they can be slow in raising the voltage if the capacitors are drying out. As for cutting stuff. I usually cut something like a piece of wire to where I used to mark the cut and test it first. Mind you in this house the walls are bent and not at right angles either, so unless you have a rubber worktop a lump of trim and sealant is nearly always needed.

Bah humbug. In a way its OK now I cannot do it myself any more as then I can moan at somebody else! Brian

Reply to
Brian Gaff (Sofa 2)

Doh! ;-(

We have a full length worktop on one side of the (galley) kitchen and I nibbled a bit out of one wall (the same profile as the worktop) to allow it to fit and it still appear to be a straight butt fit.

The issue (of course) being that if you lifted one end into place onto the battens and then tried to lower the other, it appeared too long, but cutting or even chamfering at the low end it to allow it fit, revealed this 'shortage' (or would, had I done so). ;-)

I think I slightly undercut the high end as well but only as much as could later be lost behind the tiles. ;-)

Cheers, T i m

Reply to
T i m

I use to have (broken now) a tape measure which had marking pencil leads built in to the body. So you could 'measure' an alcove etc than transfer directly to the shelf, etc, in one go, without needing the reading. It was so useful, I'm surprised it is no longer available.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

I expect it's possible to 3d print a snap-on bit to do that. I don't know whether it's still patented or not.

NT

Reply to
tabbypurr

In message snipped-for-privacy@googlegroups.com, snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com writes

I have, but rarely use, a combined tape, pencil holder and notepad.

Came as a freebie from ITS London or some such.

Smiths golden rule. Measure twice, cut once:-)

Reply to
Tim Lamb

The beauty of this one was it used ordinary propelling pencil leads built in so easy to replace. Or use the provided steel scribe. And it was the same size as any other small 5m tape.

Called Mark-O-Matic.

There are others that claim to have some of the functions, but none with all of them. It's very odd for me to like a tool that others didn't find excellent too. And simply disappears from the market.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

Fitting shelves and worktops into alcoves with wonky walls is almost impossible to achieve a good fit to all three walls so I concentrate on the sides mainly as those are the bits you are most likely to see. Measuring only the back and front only tells you how much overall you need to remove but not each individual end. Having fixed support battens to the back and sides, I fasten a board at least as wide as the shelf or worktop onto the back batten with one edge as best fit at right angles to the back wall and if possible on centre but it does not have to be central as it is only a datum line. Measure left and right from the datum line at the back and at the front. Mark a datum line on your shelf material and repeat the measurements on the shelf cutting to your marked lines should now give give you a shelf that fits nicely between the sides. This works for angled but straight alcove sides, if they are undulating then using two boards scribed to each end will produce a left and right template and these just need to be positioned correctly apart on the shelf to achieve the same result.

On kitchen worktops just use any side of a base unit as a datum measure into the back corners and at the front in a similar fashion, mark the datum on your worktop and repeat the measurements to get your cut lines. If creating templates you might even be able to use them as guides for a router.

Richard

Reply to
Tricky Dicky

Try a hultafors talmeter, not pencil leads, but a marking blade, also has a retractable end that offsets the body length directly between the two sides of an opening.

Reply to
Andy Burns

I'll look that up, thanks, Andy.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

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Reply to
Andy Burns

Or the d-i-y version. Two pointed battens and a small cramp:-)

Reply to
Tim Lamb

vs £30+ for the 6m hultafors !!!

Reply to
Davidm

I think that to work this assumes that the alcove is symmetrical. I have recently done a similar desktop exercise and the walls in the room are neither entirely true nor absolutely parallel.

An added source of buggeration, of course, is that the desktop has to be presented exactly flat to settle as a snug fit. Fine if it can be slid in front to back from a wider area. Otherwise there has to be enough of a gap to allow the desktop to settle into its final position from an inclined state. So a small gap is almost inevitable.

Cheers

Dave R

Reply to
David

Not really. You can capture the angle(s) using one of those pivoted 'set squares'. Then measure the width at the inside and outside of the alcove.

If the wall along the major axis isn't true, you're going to have to do some scribing.

But none of that reduces the usefulness of that tape measure. I can only assume few have tried one.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

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