DIY Helpless

[Bob Eager]

I couls say something about security Torx and the useful hole up the middle. But I won't.

[Nightjar]

To be fair, I don't know that I could use a plough either. Cook, sew, knit, darn and crochet, yes; plough, I've never tried.

I did see a woman making a real pig's ear of blacksmithing yesterday though.

Colin Bignell

[BluntChisel]

Could the age-dependency be partly due to whether people live in rented accomodation or own houses? Younger people are likely to be living in rented properties, and probably won't need (or be permitted) to do much DIY. Also, they may only have on-street parking, which makes DIY car maintenance more difficult.

For me, DIY has become more practical and cost-effective as I've got older, bought a house with a garage and accumulated tools.

[Steve Walker]

Some years ago, a friend of mine was working away and when he came back he found that his girlfriend had bought some steel, formed some scrollwork and welded up a new bedhead foot end.

SteveW

[Steve Walker]

That was meant to say bedhead and foor end - what is the foot end called anyway?

SteveW

[ARWadsworth]

Nightjar >> us £300 because he drilled through the water pipe" - laughter all

She nailed a horseshoe to a pigs ear?

[Owain]

It's optional if she can cook/sew/knit.

better than blacksmithing a real pig's ear and serving it up as lunch.

Owain

[Nightjar]

She was trying to split the end of a piece of steel to make a toasting fork. To do this, she heated the steel, laid it on the hardened face of the anvil, rather than on the soft table where you should chisel stuff, waited for someone else to hold it for her, then she picked up a chisel, carefully laid it into the groove she had made before and tapped the chisel a couple of time. By which time, she had lost all the heat.

If she had put a hardy into the tool hole, she could have swung the hot steel around, laid it onto the hardy and hit the steel down onto it with the hammer. Much quicker, less contact with cold metal to drawn the heat away and the energy from the hammer going directly into the workpiece. She should have split the steel in two heats, at most, instead of failing to in the half dozen I saw her try.

Colin Bignell

[ARWadsworth]

That's women for you.

[Matty F]

I couldn't even find the spark plugs in my car. The supplied manuals didn't say where they were either. Clearly the owner is not meant to know how to change the plugs.

[Bob Martin]

A fault they share with the chattering classes.

[Dave Liquorice]

These days you only change the plugs once or twice in the lifetime of the car, assuming "lifetime" is somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 miles.

Pretty much all you need to do on a routine basis, rather than "when worn", these days is change the oil and oil filter and possibly a fuel filter. The interval for that can be over 20,000 miles, every other interval change the air filter and somewhere between 50,000 and

100,000 miles change the cam timing belt.`

Long gone are the days of oil changes and all filters, replacement points and plugs, lube all the grease points, etc every 3,000 miles. B-)

[Andrew Gabriel]

That's the trouble with plain divan beds - nowhere to tie the partner to...

[dennis]

You lack imagination.

[Andrew Gabriel]

Can't speak for welding, but for plastering, for me it was a matter of being shown, and picking up a few basic techniques on a 2-day course. Actually, only 1 day of this was plastering/rendering, the second day was other wet trades (I chose peddledash) and repairwork. At the end of the first day, all 16 of us were plastering better than the professionals I had hired before (although not as fast). I couldn't plaster at all before, and I know this because I tried;-0.

Plastering is excellent for DIY brownie points with your friends, because almost none of them will be able to do it. Come to think of it, I've done

3 different friends' bathrooms now...

[Guy Dawson]

For whose benefit are these brownie points? You or your 3 friends!

Guy

-- --------------------------------------------------------------------- Guy Dawson@SMTP - [e-mail] // ICBM - 6.15.16W 57.12.23N 986M

4.4>5.4 4.4>5.4 4.4>5.4 The Reality Check's in the Post! 4.4>5.4 4.4>5.4

[Derek G.]

It's part & parcel of the inverted snobbery aka "Dumbing Down" that is ubiquitous nowadays.

You only need to look at "The Apprentice" to see that despite their "projects" having a big practical element, actual recognition always goes to the slimiest dog-biscuit salesman in the bunch, because it is he who gets the orders that generate cash for the company. Or to put it another way, as one sales manager once said in my presence "No product is of any use to anybody until it's sold".

Or alternatively the female that manages to retain that merest hint of a possibility of being sexually available for the delectations of the boss, for the purpose of "getting the bosses ear".

You can't do ow't about that.

Derek G

[jgharston]

When I were young I were putting all my money into buying a house, not spending it all on booze 'n' high livin'.

I let my tenants do minor works in their flats, curtainrails, swapping electrical outlets, tap washers, decorating, minor patchwork. It's part of being a property occupier. Would you ask your landlord to flush your toilet or launder your bedlinen?

An long-term female friend is a tenant and does all sorts of stuff around her house, only getting an electrician in last year because the new cooker she'd bought had no power cable and no indication how it should be wired up.

The tenants that get on my nerves are the ones that say: my mate's an electrician, he's going to do XXX, and we want you to pay him. What? You want *me* to pay somebody else to do *my* job?

JGH

[george [dicegeorge]]

whilst teens used to spend hours tinkering with old cars and welders and making go carts etc now they stay in their bedrooms tinkering with computers or playing games.

[g]

[Matty F]

To find my spark plugs I have to remove a few panels, remove the air cleaner and two more panels held by dozens of screws that can be accessed by special tools, remove 32 wires to the eight ignition coils, remove the coils and the rubber boots.