DIY - Hobby Corner

I was browsing the launch copy of Practical Householder for 1957 looking for carpentry tips when this ad caught my eye: Home Made Petrol!

Unfortunately it was an article exclusive to Modern Motor Magazine, an issue which I'd just missed by some 53 years, but at least it got me thinking more about home renovation projects.

Recently I have also been wasting time looking at TikTok (a Chinese short video platform) featuring, as far as I can make out, a lot of lonely kids desperately wanting fame, and presumably fortune, if only their two-minute videos would go viral.

Clearly this isn't going to happen because 99% of the uploaded material is rubbish. Kids seem to rely more on the remote chance of a viral video than on the basics: how to make an excellent product that includes something clever, interesting, outrageous and above all, is well produced. But I digress. I like the lockdown project videos because of the DIY and carpentry content. For example, I've never seen so many cutting board videos - don't be surprised if there's a tidal wave of cheap chopping boards just over the horizon.


Since I began posting ideas about lockdown photo projects (like many others), I have also started to ramp up my home-based carpentry projects. Restricted to home detention has provided an additional impetus to finish projects that have been on the back burner for too long - plus time to start a few new projects...

Even better, I recently discovered a source of inexpensive timber for some of these projects: a glass business that receives heavyweight packing cases that, once unloaded, are discarded. Mostly into the back of my car.

There's some satisfaction to be had in scoring a load of free timber. It's also great to be able to re-use materials that would otherwise end up as landfill. Perhaps the only disadvantage of such a freebie is that it's hard to dismantle onsite, and is time consuming to prepare. But, it's free, and the company is only too happy to have me remove it from their back yard.

One of my first projects was to make a pair of trestles - Bunnings sawhorses are cheap and easy to use, but they are only 650mm high - so low they give me backache. The new design is 900mm high thus providing a more comfortable working height. It took an afternoon to remove the screws, nails and staples from the rough pine timber. And another afternoon to plane the boards and slats flat and smooth with a planer thicknesser. Now I have a pair of reasonably solid softwood timber trestles standing at 900mm off the ground.

Another project has been to make up a HiFi cabinet - partly because my DVD player died, but mostly because I inherited some lovely cherry wood timber at the end of last year, and this seemed the perfect opportunity to use it up.

Although it looks a bit coffin-shaped, I inherited the (lower) desk part of this large reception unit - the rest, the shelf and upright back section (highlighted here) made from cherry wood veneered particle board were subsequently earmarked for the HiFi cabinet project.

Close up details
I added four $5 plain timber legs ($5ea. from Bunnings) to give it a mid-century feel (that's last century, not this one)

Front view: one fixed shelf and one adjustable shelf. A 3-inch hole in the back panel serves to accommodate the cabling and a/c power cables from the amplifier and DVD player. 
Led Zeppelin third album CD case in place to check case height.

The finished article installed
  A mid (last) century design HiFi cabinet, wired up and ready to play.
Total cost: $25 (inc $5 for varnish and glue)