Years ago, how did they .... ?

[ToughButterCup]

• secure screws in a wall
• patch a bit of plaster
• replace a broken hammer / mattock / sledge hammer handle
• bed foul drainage pipes
• make up a bit of mortar / concrete 
• make a safe working platform at eaves height
• sharpen a saw

These are all items involved in the process of doing little jobs - long time bottom of the list jobs - for which normally I would have: bought a new handle, bought some patching plaster, ordered a lorry load of gravel, ordered some scaffolding, bought a new saw: in other words by buying stuff.

 

Except now I can't.

 

Which made me wonder  - how did my dad or his dad's dad manage to do those tasks?

Or better put, can we learn from how they used to .... 

 

My dad made what are now called Rawlplugs out of wood.

He sharpened a stick chopped it to length, hammered the stick in the hole and then broke it off at the wall. Perfect. No need for Rawlplugs. Easy.

 

But sharpen a saw? Mix up a bit of mortar? What would do as a temporary 'fix' ?

I bet there are loads of folk on BH who know a quick, cheap, accessible way to do some of the smaller jobs we commonly face while building a house.

 

Ideas?

[PeterW]

11 minutes ago, AnonymousBosch said:

But sharpen a saw?

one for a quiet evening when you have nothing better to do but find Paul Sellers channel on YouTube ... he is my go to for all things woodworking related 

 

Here is his video on saw sharpening. 
 

 

[nod]

Half of those would be same as now 

I used to take my panel saws to Berry’s at Leyland to get them sharpened £2 each 

Now they will sell you two says for £8 

I can still remember rendering a gable using sky hooks 

Brick Knocked out for each one Then hooked into the cavity patched in as you moved down 

A couple of planks standing between you and serious inquires 

Hardly any site HSE back then 

 

[Onoff]

For some reason I didn't think you could sharpen modern "throw away" saws.....something to do with the teeth being hardened?

[nod]

Just now, Onoff said:

For some reason I didn't think you could sharpen modern "throw away" saws.....something to do with the teeth being hardened?

No they where the old large panel saws Whit the timber handles 

Looking back I reckon they would have been around 20 quid to buy 

[Cpd]

43 minutes ago, AnonymousBosch said:

Except now I can't.

Living in a remote location and having always loved being self reliant I have found that the corona virus lockdown - beyond income - has had very little effect on my daily life. Repairs and maintenance has always been normal to me and I love becoming  more self sufficient as the years rock by. Since lockdown  there has been nothing that has cropped up that has made me think..... aha if it wasn’t for lockdown I could have done xyz.....  sure something will crop up but so far so good. 

[Oz07]

Clay drainage doesn't need bedding. Your trenching has to be good 

[ProDave]

Years ago, before my time, to make a hole for a rawl plug, you had a round chisel that you hit with a hammer, rotted it a bit, hit with a hammer and so on. Could take hours to make the hole.

 

When i started my apprenticeship we had a hand drill for drilling easy stuff (no cordless drills then) and a mains powered "percussion" drill for drilling brick. I don't think SDS had come along then,.

 

Plaster was surely just sold in bags like now and you mixed however much you wanted.

 

I don't sharpen saws now.  I wait for Howdens to do their "3 saws for £10" offer that they do frequently.

[ToughButterCup]

3 hours ago, Cpd said:

.... sure something will crop up but so far so good. 

 

OK.  Here ya go then...

 

Make good a small patch of plaster.  No plaster in da house baby. ...

You have some soft sand, some  sharp sand a bit of cement, bit of lime , some 10mm stone , water , polyfilla 

 

Go on son teach me summat.

[Onoff]

15 minutes ago, AnonymousBosch said:

 

OK.  Here ya go then...

 

Make good a small patch of plaster.  No plaster in da house baby. ...

You have some soft sand, some  sharp sand a bit of cement, bit of lime , some 10mm stone , water , polyfilla 

 

Go on son teach me summat.

 

How big a patch? 

[ToughButterCup]

Just a bit less than one square metre

[Construction Channel]

Have you got a large poster? 

[PeterW]

7 minutes ago, Construction Channel said:

Have you got a large poster? 

of Jane Fonda ..?

[Jeremy Harris]

22 minutes ago, PeterW said:

of Jane Fonda ..?

 

Or Marianne Faithfull. . . .

 

The shots of her in a black leather catsuit from the film "The Girl on a Motorcycle" are indelibly etched in my memory, together with Mars bars . . .

[Simplysimon]

that was a poor demonstration on saw sharpening, didn't keep the file at the same angle and sharpened them the same amount which may or may not happen. he also only sharpened it with a rip cut, to do a tenon/dovetail saw requires three goes along its length and should never need a diamond hone to finish.

 

@ProDave the tool for making holes was a rawl plugging tool, with three 'lugs' wich gave three grooves for waste material and as you said, hit, rotate, repeat until deep enough. there was then a fibrous material in a long strip which was cut to length and fitted in the hole., then came a plastic strip which them bacame a plastic plug.

damn i'm showing my age!

[joe90]

43 minutes ago, Simplysimon said:

damn i'm showing my age!

I am keeping quiet.?

[Cpd]

1 hour ago, AnonymousBosch said:

OK.  Here ya go then...

Sorry @AnonymousBosch but you got the wrong man...... interior plaster is something I have not got to yet and never done in my life and  in fact the only plaster board i have is in one ceiling as a sound proofing layer and the gaps were filled with acoustic mastic......  look forward to learning when the time comes. My on hand ingredients are 

lime 

cement 

sharp sand 

pretty sure I could make a passable plaster out of that lot (passable to me...,.) 

 

38 minutes ago, Simplysimon said:

the tool for making holes was a rawl plugging tool, with three 'lugs' wich gave three grooves for waste material and as you said, hit, rotate, repeat until deep enough

yes I have used one extensively for drilling 22mm  wide holes into sandstone to hold the steel pegs for outdoor steps......  I was teaching some pretty rough youngsters in Australia how to build Bush land walking tracks and we used no power tools, so huge boulders needed to be split down by hand and turned into stone steps and the timber steps needed pegging and there was a lot of sandstone hence the need to drill..... I could have used power tools but it was a six month project (last chance for a lot of them.....)  and I wanted the kids to really understand what hard work was all about......  it was a very successful project with all ten completing the six months hard labour. I even went on to employ one of the lads for a few years. 

[wozza]

My Old man is a retired carpenter.

 

When I was a lad, I used to watch him sharpen his tools on a Sunday.

 

He had a jig that he made to hold his saws (about chest height). Once the saw was mounted he used a special adjustable tool to bend every other tooth, he would then flip the saw round and bend the other teeth. Then using a file, he would sharpen the teeth.

 

Once the saws were done, he would then open up the his oil stone and sharpen his chisels and plane blades, I think he used to move them in a figure eight pattern on the stone.

 

He used to spend a good couple of hours looking after his tools.

 

I remember he had a hand drill and a brace and bits - his electric drill was rarely used - his tools were kept in two wooden boxes that he made whilst training.

 

I have a couple of screwdrivers  bolsters scrapers wood chisels that I will never let him see - he would probably give me a clout around the ear if he saw the state of them.

 

Tools today are not as well made and a lot are made to be throw away.

 

 

[Ferdinand]

8 minutes ago, wozza said:

My Old man is a retired carpenter.

 

When I was a lad, I used to watch him sharpen his tools on a Sunday.

 

He had a jig that he made to hold his saws (about chest height). Once the saw was mounted he used a special adjustable tool to bend every other tooth, he would then flip the saw round and bend the other teeth. Then using a file, he would sharpen the teeth.

 

Once the saws were done, he would then open up the his oil stone and sharpen his chisels and plane blades, I think he used to move them in a figure eight pattern on the stone.

 

He used to spend a good couple of hours looking after his tools.

 

I remember he had a hand drill and a brace and bits - his electric drill was rarely used - his tools were kept in two wooden boxes that he made whilst training.

 

I have a couple of screwdrivers  bolsters scrapers wood chisels that I will never let him see - he would probably give me a clout around the ear if he saw the state of them.

 

Tools today are not as well made and a lot are made to be throw away.

 

 

 

That rings true - my Grandfather's family used to have a toolmaking company in Sheffield.

[SteamyTea]

5 hours ago, Ferdinand said:

my Grandfather's family used to have a toolmaking company in Sheffield

I did my apprenticeship in toolmaking, was a job for life.

Well until it wasn't.

[ToughButterCup]

6 hours ago, wozza said:

....

Tools today are not as well made and a lot are made to be thrown away.

Well, it's an ill wind that blows nobody any good.

 

Maybe we could use this current horror to help start thinking a little more about sustainability.

 

Thinking about your statement 

10 hours ago, Cpd said:

.... My on hand ingredients are 

lime 

cement 

sharp sand 

pretty sure I could make a passable plaster out of that lot (passable to me...,.) 

 

Let's have a bash then. I'll give it a go later today 

I'm wondering what the proportions should be? 

[jfb]

19 hours ago, AnonymousBosch said:

secure screws in a wall

Bits of wood embedded in the wall make fixing a bit easier.

[Big Jimbo]

3 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

I did my apprenticeship in toolmaking, was a job for life.

Well until it wasn't.

There were a lot of those. Jobs for life, until it wasn't.

[Jeremy Harris]

7 minutes ago, Big Jimbo said:

There were a lot of those. Jobs for life, until it wasn't.

 

 

Weren't there just.  I had three job offers following interviews for my first job, one from Fulmer Research, one from The Radiochemical Centre (then a part of the UKAEA, now this radiopharmaceutical company: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amersham_plc ) and one from a pharmaceutical company developing a new contraceptive pill.  The lowest paid was The Radiochemical Centre, as it was then a part of the Scientific Civil Service.  My father stressed to me that a Civil Service job was a "job for life" with a good pension scheme, so persuaded me to accept the lowest paid job.  I hated it, and moved to work for the MoD, but the "job for life" bit disappeared when Thatcher came to power.  Although I detest the woman, I think that removing the "job for life" thing was probably a good move.  The pity was that pay wasn't adjusted to come into line with any other similar job that could disappear at a moments notice.  Took many years for pay to start to match that in the private sector, and only then because of the privatisation of a very large part of government research and development.

[Ferdinand]

15 hours ago, Jeremy Harris said:

 

Or Marianne Faithfull. . . .

 

The shots of her in a black leather catsuit from the film "The Girl on a Motorcycle" are indelibly etched in my memory, together with Mars bars . . .

 

Found the Trailer.

 

"The thrill of wrapping your legs around a tornado of pounding pistons".

 

 

 

I need to sit down.