repairing things

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.

i've just spent about an hour with bf repairing brazilian figurines that have been in pieces for over a decade. Now I'm going to figure out why my bread won't rise!

I broke the pressure cooker last night; I left the inner lid off and it overheated. After some poking around I assumed the thermal fuse had gone (as it should) bought a multimeter to confirm and a replacement fuse. Now it works again. I was pretty pissed at myself for breaking it in the first place but I’m pleased I could fix it.

Ico Letting salt and sugar get too close to the yeast before it starts working can prevent it fully rising. I remember having to put it in a different part of the bread machine when setting up a loaf.

I remember the giddy feeling of walking through my house and checking off the things I had made serious, appliance-saving repairs to: dryer (replaced frayed internal wire), washing machine (replaced faulty control board, and stator motor for the spin), fridge (replaced thermal sensors and fans in the freezer), stove (replaced jets, thermal cutoffs, elements, etc.), stereo amplifier (power supply and signal caps), plasma TV (main power board), plus pretty much every computer in the house ...

Turns out I wasn't giving my bread enough time to rise

It's all looking beautiful now

to revisit the saga of my little library stepladder i am having to busk recharging the battery of my black and decker with the only mains lead i can find in the flat that fits (i have no idea if it's the correct one)

i guess the worst that can happen is that i have to buy a new battery which is probably good sense anyway, i've had the drill like 15-odd years minimum without ever recharging it afaicr

(did it once have a lead? i'm guessing yes. is this its actual real lead: i think no, the conversion factor is not what the internet tells me i need tho who tf kno if this matters that much)

Dryer in new house sounded like an artillery barrage. I’ve never attempted an appliance repair before but decided fuck it. From what I saw online it was pretty clearly the roller, so I ordered a new set as well as a tool I had never been aware of before — snap ring pliers. About $45. Watched YouTube videos. Disassembling the drier wasn’t all that hard but the bolts for the roller axles were rusted on and it took a lot of different approaches before I found a way to break them off (I basically attached pliers to a socket wrench so I could get more torque). Getting the belt back on was also confusing (the pattern of my pulley and motor shaft didn’t match the videos and getting the “zig zag” was tricky). Putting it back together was also harder than taking it apart. But after 3-4 hours and having filth permanently tattooed into my skin, we have a normal, not too loud dryer and I probably saved us a few hundred bucks. And it was kind of fun.

I feel ready to take on a lot of handyman stuff now, much of which I think will be easier than the dryer.

The fuse has gone on the microwave, the 5000v fuse.

Search on Google and it links to a video that looks easy enough but it links halfway through the video and skips the bit about discharging the capacitor containing said lethal voltages.

Anyway, I have new fuses and it's been unplugged for 3 weeks and they reckon it discharges itself within a week so...

to remove all doubt you can get one of those twin probe capacitor discharge units for about £20, but you could probably get a new microwave for the same price these days!

I replaced a wall socket the other week, shit was easy

Yeah I’m looking to do a bunch of those soon - I apparently need to rewrite some of them (polarity is reversed?) and also I want to put some usb outlets in for device charging.

Lol usually apprentice electricians are let loose on second fixing the sockets because apparently it's too simple a task to fuck up!

Although I often seen houses where the polarity is wrong at the incoming isolator of the supply side. God knows how that works, I'd guess motors in fans and vacum cleaners all run backwards etc...

I was thinking of replacing double switches where only one worked effectively or removing the actual switch part of the excess switch after finding myself clicking the wrong one recently.

If you don't have any kind voltage tester, always make sure you don't forget which are the permanent lives, switch wires, two-ways etc because if you get them mixed up while swapping the switch, sorting it out without test leads can be a bit of a pisser!

its not repairing things, but me and bf built a new kitchen table a few weeks ago which was fun.

I've got to switch out a fluorescent fixture above our kitchen sink and really don't want to blow myself up.

oh, i fixed a broken lightswitch! Have never done anything that was directly connected to the mains so was a bit nervous even of something that simple!

it was just fixing a loose wire

There was a time I'd casually fault find on switches when they were live, like touching every arcing sparking wire to the live until we'd worked out which was which. Lol my snips have been hung up for 9 years and I wouldn't dare do such craziness these days. Mind you I have had hundreds of electrical belts over the years. Which some say is either a sign that you are either a shit electrician or working with too many shit ones!

lol u mad bastard

It's not like there is anything complicated about a 2 or 3 gang switch or whatever, but if you lose track of what is what it can become a confusing jumble of wires, especially if there is an intermediate switch on there as well.

YouTube videos and the like have been a godsend when it comes to repairing stuff, but I find it really frustrating when a thing I really need isn't some skill or online help but some obscure screwdriver or other tool that has one use. Looking at you, stuff like snap ring pliers, or Apple, with your funky one-off T5 torx screwdrivers.

uh, it's pretty easy to just buy the obscure tools -- most of which aren't all that expensive, in general. ... the most frustrating thing for me is when I can't find the fucking manual online. ... though I did learn that magic chef refrigerator/freezers are the same as three other brands of refrigerators.

It's super easy to buy the obscure tools! But then you have an obscure tool that you use once. Like my own snap ring pliers, I'm pretty sure I bought them to repair a gear in our stand mixer. And that's literally all I have ever used it for. Repairing that stand mixer, once, 10 years ago or whenever. Was the repair easy? Yes. Did I save a bunch of money doing it myself? Yes. And that was maybe my realization that so many repair shops are really in the end just convenience stores. They're not necessarily selling skill, they're not selling knowledge, they're selling that one weird screwdriver that you don't have or have the time to research and order. I have an oscillating tower fan I once wanted to disassemble to clean. Something like 15 regular screws ... and one weird screw. Why the one weird screw? To make it hard to do yourself.

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.