Who's the youngest and the oldest D-i-Yer on here?

careful, someone may read that as factorial.

I'm 80

Likely the turnip is older than that

SH presented the following explanation :

I'm 68

Come off it! If you really were only 54 you wouldn't even know what usenet is!

Nick

I'll let him speak for himself but I've always believed him to be around the same age as myself - which is 76. He and I worked at the same time, I think, in different companies in the same industry for a while and I've always presumed we were contemporaries.

Nick

-- “Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”

― Voltaire, Questions sur les Miracles à M. Claparede, Professeur de Théologie à Genève, par un Proposant: Ou Extrait de Diverses Lettres de M. de Voltaire

Spot on Nick.

Yeah, could be, I keep surprising myself when I am older than most in the news, even Trump

Obviously wasn't true with many I used to work with at work, most of whom have died off now..

I'm 82. Workshops have grown from an 8'x10'garden shed at 15 years to the current 35'x 80'! Sadly, powered machines bought cheaply at auction do not have refinements like DC injection braking, making shared use risky.

I'm 77 3/4 ;-)

I'm not planning any major projects right now, though still feel reasonably able. SWMBO prefers that I limit ladder work, which seems entirely sensible.

I found myself thinking, when I decorated hall, stairs and landing in 2017; it is 17 years since I last did it, will I be up to it in another 17?

I remarked a while ago that my aged Bosch PBS 700 RES drill doesn't get much use these days, but whenever I have to tighten the chuck, the pressure required, on the button that stops it rotating, is more than I can easily provide.

I never had great grip strength, and time is not helping matters.

Sometimes it is the small things that confound us.

Chris

I can top that, I'm 79 and still doing lots of DIY, just a bit more slowly than I used to! :-)

Richard

I'm not sure that it would get past H&S these days but when, many years ago, I was doing a lot of repetitive work with continual drill changes, I used the technique of dropping the drill bit into the open chuck, holding the chuck very tightly, starting the drill and bracing for the moment that the spinning chuck would snap tight against drill bit. That was always tight enough to hold the bit for the work and yet the bit could be released by gripping the chuck and flicking the wrist backwards against the inertia of the drill making the chuck open again.

Mind you, this was with old-fashioned keyed chucks (which I still own and use and which I still tighten up in the same way) so the time-saving was worth while.

Nick

Lack of hand grip, lack of flexibility, and arthritis limit what I can comfortably tackle these days.

I have a shed full (load?) of tools which haven't been used recently.

Noting the Usenet demographic in the responses.

Cheers

Dave R

I am fortunately clear of that by and large,. My problem is extreme fatigue and breathlessness under any exertion at all. Sometimes my O2 levels are in the low 80s

I am doing D-I-Y medical trials on my medications to see if I can ID what is causing it because I don't believe it is simply old age or illness.

Indeed.

I was born under Thatcher. Should give you some error bars :-)

Theo

How uncomfortable. Couldn't your mother have moved her over a bit?