Knotty Pine ceilings

Hi folks,

A friend of mine was installing Knotty Pine ceilings and he found that it was difficult to knock in the panel pins to hold the boards up.

I thought about it for a while and we decided to do 2 things:

Firstly:

We made “T” clamps that reached from the floor to the ceiling to hold the ceiling boards in place which then left our hands free to knock in the panel pins.

Secondly:
I cut the head off a panel pin and used it as a drill to drill through the ceiling boards into the cross members of the roof supports where we were putting up the ceiling. This gave us a pilot hole to insert the panel pin into, thus not having to hold the panel pin whilst knocking it in and avoiding hitting our fingers.

We found the job of fitting the ceiling boards took ½ the time, one of us drilling and the other hammering in the pins behind.

I hope this helps you with your ceiling problems and of course this principle can be used for numerous other jobs.

Waterless car cleaning

Goodday,

I have been away for a few days on a trip to the coast. A total journey of 3000km and as you know your car can get very mucky and dirty picking up insects, oil splatters from trucks and tar from all the road works.

When I got back my car looked as if it had not been cleaned in at least a month and was an insect graveyard. I thought to myself, “This is going to be an all day job to get Gypsy (my car’s name) back to her normal sparkling self.”

I went down to our local car spares shop to get some car shampoo and wax to clean Gypsy and was going through all the various car cleaners and waxes when a spray can caught my eye. It said waterless wash and wax, which intrigued me so I picked up the can and read on.

It claimed it could remove all the grime I had accumulated on Gypsy and more, it could also clean my windows, car rims, chrome and plastic parts and wax her to boot.

I thought to myself, “Well if it can do what the can claims I have a winner”, all I needed was one can of spray instead of dash cleaner, mag cleaner, chrome cleaner and window and tyre polisher. I need only buy one product instead of 3 – 4 products to do the same job. Why not give it a chance, if it worked WOW! What a saving!

I got a can of the FW! Racing formula and off I went home to clean my car with only one can of spray on cleaner instead of a whole packet of goodies, not too sure of the outcome.

When I got home I read the instructions on the can and started to clean Gypsy as instructed. The whole cleaning did not take more than an hour and I was delighted with the results. I found that the formulation also had UV protection in it so it will protect my dashboard and paint surfaces from the sun.

You can carry a can of in the trunk of your car and if you pick up tree sap, tar or road stains on your car you do not need water to clean the dirt off your bodywork.

Apparently it is also suitable for boats, bikes, aeroplanes, trucks and even the kitchen sink, which I have not tried yet.

Watch this space for more information on if it works on other things too.

Hi again,

This past weekend I had to do some odd jobs in and around the house, like tying up the climbing roses and tightening up the odd loose screw on the light covers. Fixing the handles on the sliding door and fixing the window frames.

Instead of having to carry around a whole tool box to do all these small household jobs I found a multi-tool that I was given as a present was enough to do almost all these jobs.

I have a John-Benzon tool and it has the following tools:

1. Long nose pliers with wire cutter and a cut out to grip longer objects.
2. Long bladed knife
3. Short bladed knife
4. Bottle opener with large flat screwdriver.
5. Can opener
6. A small saw for wood, file on the 1 side and 2½ inch ruler on the other.
7. Socket attachment for the 3 star point screwdrivers, 3 flat point screwdrivers and 5 hex Allan key set.
8.  A small chisel point tool

There are many other makes out there such as Leatherman and Swiss army knife.

Some of these have variations to mine, they can come with a small hammer, vice grips or crimping pliers. If you are looking to buy one first find out what tools they have and pick the one most suited to your needs.

Not only has my multi-tool been very helpful for fixing items around the house but it is also useful when we go on outings where someone has forgotten a bottle opener or a can opener. I have used it to cut meat strings and pulling out fishing hooks to doing minor repairs to boats, caravans and cars.

Now days I don’t go anywhere without it, it comes in a handy pouch which attaches to my belt. If you need a do-anything, go-anywhere tool. I recommend a multi-tool. Every man should have one!