repairing things

I fixed and painted my garden gate, I am happy with it but wish it could earn me money some day. Guess I won't have to pay for a new gate now?

my 14' telescoping pole saw was stuck at full extension, but I fixed it by C-clamping it to our deck rail, spraying the locked-up part with WD-40, and wrestling it loose with channel-lock pliers

any day I repair a thing is a good day

14 feet? holy crap!

now I have no excuse for not pruning some trees

you could cut off a basketball net from the free throw line!

or wait...no you can't. sorry, that's 15 feet away (plus 10 feet up). gonna need a longer pole saw, 14' just won't _cut_ it

I can't fix shit and even without a quarantine I don't like to go anywhere, so if I can't mail it in I'm gonna order a new one, alas.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ENhudYfU4AAgN4o?format=jpg&name=4096x4096

When my Simplyhuman pedal bin stopped working (the plastic hinges broke through wear and tear) rather than buying a new one I sliced some wine bottle cork and superglued it into the hinge. it worked a treat and the hinge is good as new.

omg great repair!

i need to repair my sheepskin slippers that i have had for probably around 12 years, there is a hole coming through from my big toenail. i think some kindof linen thread darning, but it will have to look nice, and i don't have any linen thread, although I was wondering if a weft from some line fabric would work. probably not, but possibly if I wound three together?

Stevolende to thread!

Man I love "fixing" things (or modifying, I guess, for things that aren't technically broken). I've rebuilt every bicycle and rewired every single guitar I've owned to some degree, swapped out a fried diode on guitar amp, switched out resistors on a 1979 Princeton Reverb to make the tremolo crazier and swapped out a potentiometer while I was in there, fixed laptops and chairs and cars and parts of houses and so on. I'm not necessarily great at it but it's so incredibly satisfying.

Our dryer stopped heating a few weeks ago and I got a new heating element and set of thermal fuses and thermostats to fix it, as well as a new belt and belt roller to replace while I'm in there. I've been sick so I haven't gotten around to it yet but for like $50 and maybe two hours of work it'll work again vs. several hundred dollars to have it repaired.

how would you rerepair an acoustic guitar where the bridge is starting to peel away from the body of the guitar? is there a correct glue to use, does it need to be properly peeled off and glued all together?

Luthiers tend to use animal glues, IIRC. There are repair kits available online, that have a purpose-made clamp. Do check underneath to see if there are loose fittings - it might not be simply a glue issue.

THought I'd messed up my sewing machine for a while a coupl eof days ago. Wound up taking part so fi t apart that I hadn't done before.
Wound up with the handwheel getting really stiff which had me wthinking I'd damaged something nastily.
Had another go at it the next day and got it back working and it seems to be working pretty smoothly.
& now I know there is a section under the bobbin case/needleplate area that I have access to and had a lot of lint in and bent pins and things and gear wheels and things taht had a load of gunk on them.

Probably needs a service, probably has done fora while . Could do with learning how to do that .
Especially if thisicurrent situation drags out.
Have wanted to for a while anyway.

BUt now hjave 2 new pairs of trousers. & I think I need to learn to actually draft rather than just customise clones.
SDhould be doing real bespoke jeans in like one go instead of several fittngs.

& now I know there is a section under the bobbin case/needleplate area that I have access to and had a lot of lint in and bent pins and things and gear wheels and things taht had a load of gunk on them.

yes! that section! removing the gunk from that area is often the problem w/r/t sewing machine problems.

re: plax's slippers -- my thought would be to pad/patch from the inside with sturdy materials privileged over aesthetic, and then join that to the exterior to make that look nice -- could maybe do a double layer to reinforce?

Thinking about doing my first oil change -- OOH, my honda is approaching the needs service mark, OTOH I'm barely driving it so it could be a while before it actually gets there

guess that's not technically a "repair" though

i made my dad teach me when i was like 19. i like doing things myself but he tried to convince me it wasn't worth it and he was right. you have to have a place to take the oil to, also, don't you?

I used to change the oil myself, but then I bought a new car (my current VW Golf) that requires expensive synthetic oil in a weight so rare that Pep Boys didn't stock it until recently. Since buying my own oil + filter cost almost as much as paying someone else to do it, it became pointless DIYing this. I've done only the most basic of maintenance on this car myself - rotating the tires, changing the wipers, adding fluids, changing light bulbs.

I’ve never learned what the oil does, or why you need to change it.

When you have a big long shaft-like thing repeatedly sliding in & out of a receptacle sleeve, you need proper lubrication to prevent discomfort and damage.

Why does the gasoline explode but not the oil

Why they hide the bodies under my garage

Tombot explain cars to me

just put oil in your gas tank too it's fine and cool

it's all made of carbon, it's the same

I mean, right?? Why not put fullerenes in the tank

That's how I changed the oil in my first car. Enough of it would leak through the dry-rotted gaskets (from sitting in my grampa's garage too long), burning out the tail pipe. I just had to dump a quart of it in every month or so.

But yeah, I don't change the oil in my cars anymore myself either.

But I did fix these nice vertical blinds we have the other day! One of the little plastic rider/worm screw assemblies got jammed. I pulled it all apart and fixed it. Feels nice.

Mostly I appreciate that my previous house owner was a completely crazy fixer, making a giant welded cast-iron i-beam workbench I still use. He was also a dangerously incompetent electrician, but the house is still standing,

That's how you changed the oil in old "foreign" cars with two-stroke engines - just pour a small amount of oil in with the gasoline/petrol. Some small engines that power lawn mowers or chainsaws still work like that.

stevolende, dm me yr email and i will send you the best trouser draft I have ever found online. alternatively you can find it on the cutterandtailor.com forum which i highly recommend checking out regardless

sarahell, that sounds much smarter than my plan. and now that you mention it i could probably do something with a fairly large patch....

I replaced the igniter in our old clothes dryer when someone wanted $300 to fix it. My wife told me it was such a turn on, lol.

I am good at electrics but wish I could do plumbing. I don’t know if it counts as repairs but I am pretty pleased with myself for putting a sensor and timer on the hall light so it comes on when we come through the front door.

Embarrassed that I had to get a guy out to fix the dishwasher and it turned out to be a blocked waste pipe.

Not a sparky, but I’ve been doing electrical stuff for years at work ( I even had a guy working for me for a bit that sat on the committee that writes the wiring rules for Australia). I get electricity and I can stay safe with electricity, with plumbing and water I just don’t have the same intuition. I really want to put an outdoor tap on the deck on the water line that feeds the boiler, but I don’t even know where to start.

dishwashers are a lost cause often. I had a dishwasher that broke my heart repeatedly. i had to replace the same seal on it over and over again.

the rollers on the drawers had corroded, meaning the drawers no longer lined up properly and thus new seals got busted after only maybe a month of use. I eventually got rid of it. my current dishwasher is great!

"I even had a guy working for me for a bit that sat on the committee that writes the wiring rules for Australia"

as an ex-sparkie I've met plenty of these reg-worm types who can accurately quote amendment 1 section 274 blah blah.. but they are basically incapable of doing the most basic electrical installation work! You are right about plumbing though, it's much harder than it looks.

I was hearing a few stories about people's attempts at attaching bidet hoses on podcasts a couple of weeks ago. People thinking they would be able to do it withouit hassle and then finding the attachments didn't seal properly or something similar.

Would be a good skill to have though. Plumbing like. Always useful.

there is no amount of pro-tips/online guides that is a substitute for the skills you attain doing the same shit every day.

I've worked at a few companies that had a mechanical side as well as electric but never talked seriously with plumbers. It took me years to realise you turn both the taps off where the silver flexi pipe connects the boiler with the water main when you need to add water because of low pressure fault. I'd just turn the secondary tap off where it connects to the boiler so it was slowly adding extra pressure to the boiler! I'm a fucking idiot though.

I remember having a big existential crisis about calling a plumber to seat a toilet - I’d done it once or twice but always fucked up the wax ring in the process and I didn’t want to worry about it leaking. But it’s such a straightforward thing that I felt like a sucker hiring someone to do it for me.

The plumber was a youngish guy and we talked for a while and it was cool - he told that he’d installed hundreds of toilets and me paying $100 for the peace of mind was totally worth it, and that he had no idea how to do my job and had no shame about that. It made me much more comfortable deciding what I was comfortable with and what I wanted to entrust to experts.

I'm shit around the house but primed and painted the box around the gas meter and laid some matting (all in the porch) and goddamn I feel good. Also bought myself a laplander saw with no real idea what I'm going to do with it.

My old man was a gas fitter and plumber, the father-in-law was all manner of shit: made ship's lanterns, fitted out gas tanks, carpet fitter. I'm generally in awe of tradesmen.

Currently fixing not being pissed.

Also listening to Outfit by the Drive By Truckers and weeping about being shit with a paintbrush.

if you ever wanted to bang some extra sockets in a stud wall with fast fix boxes your laplander saw is your friend. When I was in the game we called them "pad saws" but there is a lot of different names for that particular tool.

Yes! Also great for fiddly jobs in the garden (like dealing with rhododendron in tight spaces, I've found). The thing is so pretty and compact.

i need to re-affix one of the metal struts to my little library stepladder (with just one i think i am asking too much of it when it clamber into it)

a professional carpenter and refurbisher who i know a little -- but have somewhat fallen out with via unrelated ambient internet beef -- said i should drill out the hole the old screw was in, completely fill it with broken-off matchsticks and superglue them, then allow to dry. this would hold any new screws fine.

however the old screws are lost and he replacements i have seem too long for the drilled-out hole as is. i've tried screwing them further into the unscrewed original wood at the bottom of the hole, but it just seems too hard to be screwed into, even using an electric drill and phillips head bit, or even just to drill further into this wood :(

might fuck around tomorrow and drill out all the match sticks and glue, then try and drill out more of the old hard wood with a larger bit, then refill with matches and superglue -- then (eventually) screw into this

I wonder if I can replace the screen glass on my 2010 MacBook Pro ... judging from YouTube videos, it's a pain in the ass to do, but the replacement glass is pretty cheap

I would attempt many fewer DIY repairs if not for YouTube

i know, there is no way i ever would have started disassembling my laptop for repairs if it wasn't for youtube

fyi i have been watching The Repair Shop on iPlayer and crying at the stories

xp my job includes repairing laptops and I'd be stuck without Youtube teardowns.

https://www.404media.co/apple-endorses-california-right-to-repair-bill/

"Apple told a California legislator that it is formally supporting a right to repair bill in California, a landmark move that suggests big tech manufacturers understand they have lost the battle to monopolize repair, and need to allow consumers and independent repair shops to fix their own electronics."

nice

bring back radioshack

one of the most common reasons for the useless "Check Engine" alert to activate was because of a worn out gas cap seal.

which can lead to your car failing a smog/emissions test ... so not 100% useless ime

Had a microwave poop out on us the other day, which I diagnosed as the door switch (the fuse-like thing inside that makes sure the door connection is sealed before it puts out heat). Wasn't something I was comfortable fixing myself, but it didn't matter, since, at 10, they no longer make out model or parts for it. We had a guy out who apologized for being unable to do anything with it, so I had to get a new one, though I was able to reinstall the trim (it's an under the counter model).

Weirdly, at the same time our top loading washing machine broke, or specifically, the hubcap-looking wheel/agitator came loose, which thankfully just means swapping out for a new one. Pretty straight forward.

Shit like that *always* happens at the same time. Rule of threes and all that.

Our overflow pipe has been pissing out water for the last couple of weeks - the one from the water tank in the loft that comes out under the eaves of the roof. I've worked out how to turn the water off in the street, so I did that, then got up in the loft, removed the ball valve and bent the metal shaft down slightly, hoping that means the tank will fill slightly lower and not reach the overflow.

It's currently the hottest September on record in the UK and fuck ME was it hot up there. I was running with so much sweat I couldn't see and when I came down I smelt like a swamp. It's not dripping right now, so fingers crossed...

when I was doing an electrical apprenticeship I sweated out in so many dusty lofts. The worst one was the housing office in Bradford during a heatwave. All the dust sticks to you. I constantly felt like passing out, knowing that if I did there was only a thin piece of plasterboard between the widely spaced ceiling joists protecting me from a 50 ft plummett to certain injury or death!

Nothing like an existential threat to keep you conscious!

toilet leak, the seal where the pipe from the cistern enters the bowl has worked use over the years and now it trickles along the outside of the bowl when i flush. but a) it's clean water and b) it's only during the flush, so like an eggcup-full.

landlord's plumber has been around and because it's boxed in and access is difficult he's proposed replacing the entire thing, cistern, bowl, etc. and the *unrelated* vanity unit when it's really only one seal that needs attention.

he's also the gas check man and had already talked about replacing the cooked (doesn't meet current regs) and the boiler (inefficient).

ironically, the one non-working thing in the flat is the washing machine, none of the above is fatally broken. so all basically off-topic, sorry.

which can lead to your car failing a smog/emissions test ... so not 100% useless ime

― sarahell, Saturday, September 9, 2023 2:48 PM (two days ago)

that's cause you live in commiefornia

this is essentially what happened to me a few years ago and i wound up paying something like £800 for the parts and labour, it was totally insane. i feel that i got completely swizzed. but if your landlord's paying for it...

xpost

i can't help but feel that these several thousand pounds worth of changes (most of which don't really need doing) will affect my rent sooner or later.

(next door's rent was put up 17% after she complained that the water pouring through her ceiling was making the pace uninhabitable. 6 months later the flat is for sale and she has to find somewhere new)

got a new washing machine and half way through its first wash cycle was getting the error code for water issues and was furiously convinced I'd been sold a dud. Couldn't find any kinks in the hose or waste pipe, and even heard the water rushing into the tank when I turned the it on. I spent a fruitless hour fucking about with the machine and then the same booking a hotpoint engineer. Then I checked again because you get charged £70 if the engineer finds out the fault is your own dumbass doing. After further investigation I discovered when the machine was out of the bay the hose was ok and then was being stressed back into a water blocking kink out of my sight when it was pushed back towards the wall...duh. So now I realise in future: don't turn the water on until you've pushed the machine back towards the wall in the bay because at least then it won't even start a wash cycle if this irksome shit happens and you'll know what the problem is straight away.

the plumber took the cupboard door off its hinges to give himself better access. (he then left it outdoors for 3 weeks until i brought it in, but hey). four and a half months later(!) he has finished in the cupboard but the door is still unattached. the screws, god knows where those are.

i went and had a look for new screws yesterday. i need exactly 9, they sell them in packets of 250.

There's an old-school hardware down the street that sells screws and bolts individually, for 8¢ or 12¢.

And each time I go in, this old man follows me back there and watches me like a hawk as I pick them out from the giant drawers.

What's the worst that's going to happen? I grab a handful and make out like a bandit with $1.56 worth of stock?

I think taking them out and putting them back but mixing them up would be worse!

local hardware place sells screws individually and because they were visibly different i got enough to replace the hinges on all 3 doors, not just the one that's currently unhinged. so, 27 (actually 30) rather than 9. £2. which is a bargain until you consider they were only £3.50 for 250 screws which makes this v expensive on a per-screw basis.

(42p for 30 at box prices so i paid almost 5x)

door now attached. hadn't figured on having to jack the door up a bit to get it to reach the hinges but it was nothing a few bits of cardboard couldn't cure. had forgotten how cock-eyed the door used to hang anyway because, like every single thing in this flat, it was done on the cheap.

(another example of this is the line of blue tiles in amongst the 5 lines of white tiles in the bathroom, one colour metric, the other imperial so the joins don't line up)

(another example being the bedroom door, which is an old front door, compete with yale lock)

What's the worst that's going to happen? I grab a handful and make out like a bandit with $1.56 worth of stock?

have been working on my pops kitchen sink/dishwasher situation lately, and patronizing his local home depot

and it is fascinating, the usual sales associates wandering around, but also there are no checkout lanes, only individual self checkout stations however each station has a cashier, just kind of standing there to scan your things

could be a geographical anomaly but I suspect theft is such an issue that we don't deserve hardware stores anymore

As per the commentary on the 'continuing with CDs' thread, my kid got given a CD player. It had a 3-pin connector plug on it, so I figured I'd just cut that off and put on a regular UK plug. But there's no earth wire in there - just the blue and brown ones. I've wired the thing up, just to see if the CD player works as much as anything but am I going to a) give someone an electric shock or ii) burn the house down?

I've done some basic Googling and not *all* devices require the earth wire apparently - saw things like electric drills and vacuum cleaners mentioned.

If it is expecting a 120vac 60 Hz power input and you hit it with 230vac then option ii is a possibility. But if it expects UK power and not weedy US power, then no.

Option a can happen with an ungrounded device and also don't touch any capacitors if you are poking around inside the guts.

there's a bunch of interesting details in the link from the other CD thread where this came up

https://www.hifiwigwam.com/threads/what-sort-of-plug-is-this.122336/

It's probably not modern compliant, but it is to British Standard. The design means the earth pin connects before the others. The non-compliant bit is that the sockets aren't shuttered. IIRC, the socket is part shrouded, so the pins are covered when they're live and not fully inserted, so safe enough.

Thanks Jaq and sleeve (and NickB elsewhere). This place continues to be the sanest place on the web.

Interesting! Thanks for that link sleeve, have never seen one of those.

This is good:

https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/4/24090828/oregon-right-to-repair-sb-1596-parts-pairing

too bad for the owners of 2013 Audis, which apparently are exceptionally stupidly designed with proprietary parts and manuals.

cars are an entire thing, though

I recently repaired a sewing machine on behalf of a community repair café where I hope it will be used to repair many clothes and homeware items. I was lucky to find on ebay a random lot of parts that happened to contain exactly the small part I needed. It runs beautifully.

wow. yes!!!

That's so cool! Bravo!

Also cool to find out repair cafés are a thing. https://www.repaircafe.org/en/cafe/long-beach-repair-cafe-ca/ There's one close that reopened yesterday after 3 years.

~Hope to repair to the repair cafe soon~.

was gonna say plax that’s just a lovely thing to have done, both repairing the thing itself and the ends to which it can now be used. fantastic.

Thanks everyone for the nice replies. I'm looking forward to seeing it in action at then end of the month. The repair café is at a community garden that a friend helped found that is really incredible and connects all kinds of local groups they do all kinds of interesting activities. Its very active and has birthed all kinds of initiatives. My friend is really involved with several orgs for asylum seekers and refugees so that is a big part of it.

I serviced all the machines they already use and someone used one to repair a costume that was in the St Patrick's day parade in Dublin. The one I repaired is a new acquisition - a 1960s Brother that is closer to an industrial machine than today's domestic plastic nonsense. Before returning it I will be redoing the topstitching on all the jeans I altered for my bf recently.

There is also a guy who sharpens knives and repairs garden tools.

That's great, plax! Some people I know in a local town are wanting to do something like that and planning their first "repair cafe" for June. They just started recruiting repairers, hope their message finds those people.

I'm still banging on about visible mending but can only hope to brush the hem of former ilxor elmo argonaut's garment in this regard. I hope to spend more time on sashiko and also machine sewing this year, but I'm finding that it would be nice to have some company and conversation to go with this hand-work. Why sewing circles have been a thing since forever.

I'm told it's a good idea to have people sign a disclaimer in case anything happens when repairing, although this is yet to be implemented.

I love a good stitch and bitch.

I've got a newer plasticky Singer sewing machine that I have been too timid to use on jeans myself. But I took two pairs of jeans to alterations to have them patch kneeholes and other assorted rips from the inside with denim from other jeans. So it's visible patching but neatly done with denim. Very happy with my 2 latest repaired jeans.

Oh you can definitely use a domestic machine to patch/darn denim! By all means if the alterations people do a good job I'm not telling you not to give them your business but your machine should be able to handle it. I'm talking about redoing the top stitching over the flat felled seams, particularly at points where a flat felled seam meets a flat felled seam and I lose count of how many layers of denim there are!

You know one thing about repairing clothes (and other things too) is that the crappy stuff is hard to repair.

I rate myself as 'barely competent' at sewing but I am happy to do basic repair tasks. However, I've decided its just not worth it to bother with fast fashion stuff at all. Same thing with poorly made electronics etc.

Re clothing, I have to think about how to make repairs still "formal" -- like as soon as I fix something, no matter how cool it is, it turns into a piece of casual clothing, because now it might be "artsy" but it's not professional. I need work clothes. I need to think about how mending can still be elevated. And I don't mean starting with a super high fashion garment which is always going to look elevated. Maybe there's too much casual clothing out there that only looks "nice" when it's brand new.

I'm a curvy person, I need clothing to have swing and ease, and things are going to rub together and wear out. I know people say "buy high quality and it will last 10/20/30 years" but moths happen and wear happens and no matter how great the fibers and construction are, nothing lasts forever.

Maybe there's too much casual clothing out there that only looks "nice" when it's brand new.

yes! i feel good stuff only really becomes mine after a year or so of washing and wearing. the good clothes look and feel and wear at their best then.

agree on formal mending though - i have no skill in this area at all, so if necessary i'll send it out to get done well (luckily being in london there are some good services for this). frequently though I'll just ask the local dry cleaner to do it. i don't mind a bit of visible mending on my clothes, but as you say it does move them from formal work wear to informal at home wear.

i would love to be better at formal mending. i made an instagram account lately and it 25% gives me repairing videos. I've seen some techniques that are just amazing and would love to try.