Will No-Nails hold electrical boxes?

[The Natural Philosopher]

Halfords do car body stuff that is a lot cheaper than the chemical mortar.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Don't be sloppy with the cutout then :-)

[:Jerry:]

You're sounding like Andy Hall, except that, I suspect, he would not (now) allow himself be seen dead in a 'Pound Shop'...

[:Jerry:]

Probably not, but it will have been glued to the wall with a scientific cleanliness and application - real world condition never match the theory...

[Andy Hall]

[Andy Hall]

For Drivel, I think that the first spelling is the right one.

[Andy Hall]

What's a pound shop?

[:Jerry:]

You could have fooled us!

[George]

A place where junk is a pound or less. :-)

[Andy Hall]

Let's face it. Anybody could fool you....

[:Jerry:]

They used top be called '50p shops', but with Blair's/Brown inflation they had to be renamed as 'Pound Shops' - everything sold is 1ukp or less. Not that I use them, I just knew people who did.

[dennis]

Some prat nailed mine in using big cut nails. Takes half the block out when you pull them out to fit doubles.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

A bank?

Seriously it's a place where everything costs a pound. And can be bought in Tesco for less.

Tesco is a supermarket. ;-)

[John Rumm]

Works quite nicely on brick or cinderblock walls here as well (solid not cavity though).

Failing that a bit of bonding plaster. The solvent based gripfill stuff also works, but takes too long to set.

[Stuart Noble]

It's where everything costs five quid

[dennis]

The most precise thing I have DIYed is a telescope mirror.. about 1/10 wavelength of light using hand tools that I made myself. After that anything else really isn't very precise.

[Andy Hall]

Even things that are only worth a pound.

The concepts of average selling price and average margin are not new ones any more than average quality.

[Andy Hall]

That's true. However, in between there is a whole spectrum of requirements.

For example, at the weekend I needed to produce some joinery components for a DIY project. These form a four sided polygon where two of the inside angles are 90 degrees and the third is 42.5 degrees. Because the long dimension is a great deal more than the short one, accuracy of the angle cutting was paramount or the pieces won't meet correctly when joined. The next requirement was having the material a precise width so that there would be longitudinal alignment as well. Finally, there are ten of these and they had to be identical.

Given geological time, I could have fashioned these pieces with hand tools. However, this wasn't available and the fact that precise geometry is involved, the obvious solution was to machine the components. It's really not interesting to do that by hand.

This was possible quite easily on the combination machine and the sliding compound mitre saw. Although these are settable fairly accurately using their own scales (e.g. 0.2mm on thicknessing) I prefer to run test pieces and measure with a caliper. Then I can sneak up on the exact size. Most importantly, there is reproducibility without needing to check after every cut and a very clean finish.

There are certainly projects where I prefer to use hand tools, but that is where a particular effect is wanted which doesn't lend itself to machine tools and where there is the time to lavish on it.

[Andy Wade]

What would Drivel want with a hyperbolic cosine?

[Stuart Noble]

Which means what exactly?

I can buy a SCART lead for £1 or pay a tenner in Dixons. What would you do?