Building a mud kitchen

 I have two grandsons and decided to make a mud kitchen for them as a Christmas present. I toyed with the idea of taking a couple of pallets and cutting one down to make the top and sides and the other as the back. Instead of that I decided to make it from scratch using some pallet wood and some stud timber (CLS timber 63x38mm).

I started off with a simple drawing of what I thought it might look like and with some rough dimensions. 

The basic construction used butt joint reinforced with through dowels. The back splash was a separate piece to make getting into a car easier. Although the finished piece was only 1m tall and about 770mm wide.

I took the stud timber and cut the pieces to length before running them through the table saw to square them up. The off-cuts formed the bottom shelf.

The base was assembled sides first before adding the front and back rails. An off cut of the stud timber was used to set the height of the bottom rails and then the other off-cuts were used to make the bottom shelf. These were glued and pinned in place. The spacing was a bit of trial and error using pieces of MDF/ply until I found a good enough fit.

Once this was all dry it was sanded down and painted using a garden paint.

The top and backsplash were made from pallet wood. Several pieces were glued together to form the worktop. The backsplash was pinned and glued to the frame as individual strips.

A simple shelf was added with the "deliberate" mistake of putting the supports in the wrong place! Then more sanding and an exterior varnish to protect the wood.

Next I needed to make a sink and hob. The sink was made from a mixing bowl I picked up on Amazon. I drew round it then marked a line inset from the edge before cutting it out carefully with the jigsaw. The cut-out and a couple of other pieces of pallet wood were made into the hot plates. 

There are many ways to cut circles, but one of the quickest I've found is to use the table saw. A simple jig allows you to trim away the edges. You just need to go carefully. 

The control knobs were cut using a hole saw, a screw and washer allow them to turn freely. The finishing touch was to make the curved top and get a sign made. I used Etsy for the sign.

I'm really pleased with how this turned out. I ended up making a crate as storage space. I hope the boys enjoy playing with it as much as I enjoyed making it for them.

Disciplined Choices: The Search for Good Habits

 I seem the remember reading somewhere that it takes 3 months to build a new habit. I assume that was a good habit because a bad habit takes only a few seconds in my experience! And therein lies the problem. As far as I can tell, and from my own experience, some good habits don't just take time to become fixed, they take discipline. A lot of discipline, and quite a bit of failure too.

I'd argue that failure is possibly an intrinsic part of the process of learning the importance of discipline. You learn, through failure, that will power is the stuff of dreams whereas discipline belongs to the world of reality. Some people think that the two are synonymous, but I'm not convinced. 

When I changed my eating habits some years ago I was told I must have a lot of will power, but that simply wasn't true. In fact I'd say I had very little will power at all. What I did have was a goal, some data and the ability to make disciplined choices. Every day began with a disciplined choice and proceeded with a series of discipline choices. No magic bullet, no trying to suppress cravings. Just a series of choices.

Any good habits I now have are sustained by disciplined choices. That's the essential difference between good and bad habits. Bad habits take no discipline at all. Good habits demand continued vigilance. It's so easy to skip a day which then becomes two days and so on. Being lazy takes no effort, dragging yourself out of bed on a cold, wet, dark November morning to run or walk a few miles requires a massive effort for most of us. Who wouldn't rather curl up under a warn blanket than have freezing rain driving into your face? 

So how do you become a disciplined choice maker? At the risk of sounding trite or simplistic, you just do it. You set a goal, and then make decisions that support that goal. If you want to walk 10k steps a day, then make choices that help you achieve that goal. It might mean getting up 30 minutes earlier so you can walk to the station rather than catch the bus or get a lift. 

Being a disciplined choice maker goes beyond weight loss or exercise or giving up smoking etc. It can be about something as simple of developing a new skill, learning a language. Or it could be about becoming an encourager rather than a critic, reading 10 books a year, keeping a journal. Whatever it is I'm pretty sure that it will take discipline to achieve.

And when you fail? Well you just start over. Every day is a new opportunity to make new choices. If you make it all about will power it becomes easy to succumb to the idea that you just don't have enough of it to succeed. On the other hand everyone has the capacity to make disciplined choices. Even you. Even me.

Quick update on the table

 Here's a photo of the table with the finish applied and the "Egg" installed!

BBQ Table Completed

To be honest it's not really a BBQ table, it's actually for one of those outdoor oven/grill things that look like a rather large egg as I said before, but I'm not sure what else to call it.

In the end I made it from reject scaffold boards, some of which had some significant splits in them. I managed to get everything I needed cut from 5 boards (3900mm long). 

I cut the hole using a jigsaw in the end. Making a circle cutting jig for the router would have given a neater result, but it will be covered by a lip on the oven and any unevenness in the cut adds to the rustic charm!

I filled some of the cracks with hot melt glue, which worked ok, but it needs some slower curing glue if that's possible. The glue sticks I've got set very quickly and it left a lot of clean-up work to be done. I've seen a hot melt system for repairs and filling, so I might look at getting one of those to try for the next project. 

The client is applying the finish and it will be interesting to see how it looks after that has been done and the oven is in place. 

A BBQ Table: The design stage

 I've been asked to design and build a specialised table for a BBQ. Well actually it's more like an outdoor oven in the shape of a rather large egg. You can buy these things with a table, but my client has a very specific space so they need something made-to-measure.

I'm going to try something different and use some scaffold boards to build it. Here's the basic plan:

I'm still working on checking all the dimensions, but the basic idea is a rustic looking, sturdy table into which the "egg" sits. 

Cutting the hole will be interesting. I'll probably make a jig for my router and get a kitchen worktop router cutter and then just take it steady. 

It will need to be made in sections that can be put together on site because I don't have a truck to transport it and anyway I suspect it's going to quite heavy once assembled!

A couple of ideas for simple projects that I might try making to sell

 I'm not sure if, or even whether, I want to try and make money from woodwork. I'm certainly not going to pretend to be a master cabinet maker, but the more you do the better you get. So while watching a few videos recently, I thought I'd have a go at making a couple of things that might have a market if I can find it.

The first is a reproduction of a traditional wine crate. It's approximately 400mm square and it was quite simple to make. I bought a 2.4m board 18mmx144mm for there side panels and cut down some leftover cladding to make the slats. The slats are 40mm wide and about 7 or 8mm thick. 

The hand slots are cut using a template and a router fitted with a bushing. You can of course make them using a forester bit or a flat blade bit or even a hole saw and the use a jigsaw or coping saw to cut out the centre section. 

The second pice I made was a reproduction of an old rustic tool tote. Very simple to make from more of the 2.4m board. 

It's about 430mm long and 140mm wide. The end panels have a corner cut off. The panel is 300mm tall and the cut-off is 40mm in from the top edge and 140mm up from the bottom edge. I set up my tapering jig on the table saw and simple ran the pieces throng on both sides. The handle is 400mm wide and the whole thing is assembled using glue and brads. The end panels are actually screwed and glued to the base panel because they were a little bit cupped and I thought screws would give a more secure fixing for this prototype.

The finish is an "Antique Pine" wax.

The minimum I would want to sell something like this is probably around the £15 mark. I think I could produce them at around 4/hr if I batch processed them. I reckon each one has about £7-£8 worth of materials, so £15 would cover the costs and the time spent making them. I'm guessing the cost of materials would come down a little bit if I were to buy the wood to make say 10 of each in one go. But I'm not sure how fast I could batch them out!

A simple cupboard/enclosure for a hallway

 A friend asked me to build a simple cabinet for them to replace one the was falling apart. They delivered the old cabinet for me to use as a template and I started by doing a simple drawing using Graphic. I've tried Sketchup but never really got on with it for some reason.

Here's the basic idea I developed.

As you can see it's a simple double door cabinet. The challenge was to make it to the same dimensions as the original but because I was using 18mm MDF, the internal dimensions were the critical ones as long as there was space around the outside.

I decided to follow the original as closely as I could because I didn't know what it was covering (some electrical stuff I was told).

The cupboard was only 65mm deep.

I didn't want the rails and stiles on the doors to be too wide because I thought that would make the panel too narrow so I decided on 40mm and that seemed teamwork out okay.

Here's a picture of the cupboard with the doors clamped in place as a test fit before painting.

I think the proportions look okay. 

The next stage was sanding everything down and then preparing it all for painting.

I used a water based primer/undercoat, lightly sanded between coats. The client was doing the final painting, so I did there coats to get it to a reasonable finish. 

Once I was happy with the finish I added the hinges and door knobs. The hinges are simple flush hinges, but that's not the whole story. Initially I went to my local DIY store and got some hinges. Ther problem with them is that they are not that well made and some of the screws do not sit fully into the countersink. In fact so poorly made were these hinges that some of the countersinks barely cut the surface. 

The upshot of which is that the doors don't close properly.

The solution was to buy better quality hinges, sourced from a company specialising in ironmongery. Theres were thicker and far superior quality that the ones from the DIY store.

The inside of the original doors had hooks for keys. This posed a little bit of a problem because the inner panel was only 6mm thick and I had planned to put in some extra pieces into which the hooks could be mounted. Unfortunately 12mm wasn't quite enough to ensure the hooks didn't come through the other side, so I had to add an extra layer. In hindsight I could have designed this better, but I'm not sure how.

The final touch was to add a magnetic catch for each door and the job was done.

The panel doors came out okay. I cut the rebate for them on the table saw rather than setting up the router table. I think next time I'll probably use the router, the table saw was ok but it's a bit fiddly to to get the set-up correct. Still, it worked and the client is happy. 

Simple Storage for the Utility Room

 Our utility room is a mess. We have loads of stuff that needs sorting and the storage is a mixture of old bits of furniture that was in the garage already and shelves that we brought with us or bought to try and make better use of the space. 

The first step was to improve the storage around the washing machine and freezer. This was going to take the shape of some custom made shelves the would store basic item including the cat baskets!

I made this is two parts, a deeper section with two fixed shelves and a shallower version with one fixed shelf and two adjustable shelves (I decided not to have the three I initially put in the drawing). 

In case you're interested the drawing software is Graphic for Mac. It's very useful for creating simple 2D drawings for this sort of project.

The units were built using pocket holes which presented a challenge in the narrow unit because I didn't think about the drill/driver being too big to get inside the unit with the pocket hole driver bit in it. 

I got there in the end, but it was a real faff. The shelf pin holes were made using a Kreg jig. This is a very useful tool. A simple spacer (a piece of ply cut to size) helps to position the jig at its starting point and then you can drill a series of holes equally spaced. If you need more there's a locating pin to reposition the jig. You just need to take your time setting things up properly. I got my jig for about £35.

We've recently bought a battery powered lawn mower so I've attached the charger to the end panel of the unit and the batteries live on the shelf with the charger and battery for the trimmer we were given years ago. This gives us a nice, convenient way to store and charge the batteries.

The next thing we decided to make was a storage unit to fit between the freezer and washing machine.

Nothing too complicated, just a pull-out unit with storage for washing powder, water softener etc. Again pocket holes were used to secure the bottom to the front and back panels, and 30mm brad nails for the rails. 

I found some old castors from a previous project and a handle from a wardrobe I dismantled 8 years ago. The wood from the wardrobe was used to build a cupboard to hide some pipes and to construct one of my benches, so nothing goes to waste if we can help it!

Once finished, the unit slides nicely between the two appliances.

The next job will be to sort out the rest of the storage, making better use of the space. We might even be able to get into the cupboards currently buried behind the stuff we haven't sorted out yet!!

 

Making routed panels for drawer cabinets without a router!

I wanted to do a quick post about making panels with rebates in them without using a router. You still need at least a circular saw, but if you don't have a router you can make these panels using two layers of material. 

I chose 9mm and 6mm MDF because I had some in the workshop. 12 and 6 or two pieces of 9mm would give you an 18mm thick panel which would be the standard thickness I use to build cabinets.

I cut my base layer (9mm board) to the height of the finished panel (800mm) and to the width of two panels plus a bit of waste (1200mm). The 6mm sheet was cut into 1200mm by 74mm strips. I've posted before about how I used a saw board with a circular saw to make treatable cuts.

You need to make some spacers for assembly and I made mine 14mm wide. Just cut one piece long enough to split into three. Oh and I cut a 20mm wide strip to go on the bottom of the panel as a starting point. This also allows me to use an 18mm thick base or stretcher at the bottom and it leaves a 2mm gap to the bottom runner.

It was then a matter of using the spacers to position the 6mm strip, check it for square and glue and pin it in position. Move the spacers and repeat all the way up. Before you start pinning, mark up where you are going to cut the assembled panel into two pieces. I did this on the first 6mm board. This is where you don't want to put any pins! Saw blades don't like nails or screws.

Once the glue is dry you can cut the panels to width and make your cabinet.

So why 74mm? It just so happens that the cabinets I make to go under the benches work on an 88mm spacing so 74mm with a 14mm gap gives me 88mm. Of course it doesn't work with the 800mm panels, but they were made to fit into a different bench. 

If you don't want to use that much 6mm board, you could rip it to say 20mm wide and then use a wider spacer to position it. The starting point is to work out the internal height of the cabinet and then work out how many drawers you can fit in the space. I make my drawers from 12mm material, so I use a runner width of 14mm. 

Say I was building a cabinet with internal dimensions of 722mm, and I want to have space for 6 single height drawers in it. I subtract 2mm for the clearance at the bottom of the cabinet and divide 720 by 6. The gives me 120mm for each drawer space. A 14mm space for the runner leaves 106mm for the drawer. Then it's just a matter of cutting the runners and spacer to watch those measurements. Depending on how you make the drawer, you need to leave 2mm at the top so it doesn't bind on the drawer above.

These are trays rather than drawers but the principle is the same. It's basically a box with a base that runs in the slots in the side panel. Because these slots are made with a router they're a bit deeper than 6mm, but only by a 1-2mm. By sheer chance that meant the the sides of the drawers were 9mm in from the edge, so I cut a couple of 9mm spaces so I could position the sides in from the edge and then squaring it up to the front and back, I glued and pinned the base in place. 

I might take some better photos of a drawer and see if I can explain it better, but it's essentially the same process that I used in an earlier post but without the rebates to square it all up.

Over-engineering a hinge for a boom arm

 Everyone who uses power tools to sand wood and uses some form of hose attachment  for dust collection, knows what a pain it is dragging the hose and cable across the bench. It often catches and pulls off the tool or gets twisted up. Far better to have the power and use dropping from above.

There are lots of ways to do this. My solution was to build a boom arm that swings out across the work space. I thought this would be the easiest and neatest solution, but I didn't figure with the issues I'd face with the hinge system that allows the arm to swing. The weight of the arm and hose produces quite a force on the hinge, pulling it down and away. 

I tired an ordinary butt hinge and a gate hinge, but neither worked well. I then made my own from threaded rod and 18mm ply, but that too wasn't able to support the arm as well as I wanted.

So I went for this:

This is it clamped together for a test fit. It's made from 18mm ply and rotates on a 20mm Aluminium tube shaft. The boom arm (made from 12mm and 6mm MDF in the arm of an I-beam) fits into a couple of slots.

The hope is that the central shaft and the shape of the hinge will offer better support.

I made a wall plate from more 18mm ply along with with a base and top plate for the shaft.

I bolted the whole thing together with M6 bolts. 

In order to make sure everything lined up, I used double-sided tape to assemble the hinge block with a piece of scrap where the boom would be fixed in place. I then counter-bored a 10mm hole in one side before drilling all the way through with a 7mm bit.

The 10mm hole is just the right side to allow the head of an M6 bolt to be driven in and head tight without splitting the ply. It's neater if you line the head uo with the grain, but it doesn't seem to make a big difference.

Once all the holes were drilled I separated the parts and then reassembled it with the boom arm in place and carefully drilled through the arm.

You'll see in the pictures that there are grooves. These are to take top the shape of the beam. To make it easy I added shims to the inner part of the beam so that everything clamped together nice an tightly.

The wall plate and other part of the hinge was again made from 18mm ply. This is all scrap wood I had around the place by the way.

20mm holes bored out using a spade bit and than all screws together with the bottom section glued in place but the top only screwed in to make dismantling a little easier if I every need to do that.

And there it is. It seems to work okay, although I might need to shim the wall plate because the wall in a little uneven. The hose and power cable is simply cable-tied to the arm and I can make connections as I need them. It works really well for both routing and sanding, so I'm pleased with the eventual outcome.

The new thing I didn't take into account is that the roof slopes from to back which means that long ladder you can see is lower at the from of the photo than at the back. The arm just clears the front, but had I set it 5-10mm higher wouldn't have cleared the ladder and I would have had to take it off the wall and repositioned it. 

Thankfully I got away with it, but only just!

Building a flip-top tool cart

 I've seen plenty of examples of flip-top carts and have thought about building one for a long time. I have a disc/belt sander that could do with a more permanent home and I have and simple drill press stand for my old Black and Decker Mains power drill bought back in 19879/80. I made a bigger table stand for the drill years ago, but that could do with improving.

So I did a quick drawing in Graphic of my design. I'm quite tall (1.90m) so I like my tools and benched to be a bit higher than most people. My benches are 90cm tall, so I designed this flip cart to be about the same.

The body is made from 18mm ply with space for a drawer. The top is made from two pieces of 18mm ply  separated by 25mm, the diameter of the aluminium tube on which the top rotates.

The tube was more like 26mm or the drill bit was more like 24, either way it was too tight and needed adjusting. Not easy once the initial hole had been prepared. The moral of the story being don't drill the hole until you've got the tube!

Apart from that it all came together nicely. I used 50mm bolt catches on the four corners to lock the top in place. 

In order to get them lined up I installed the catches on one face then flipped the top and added the bit that receives the the bolt on the other side. I then added the other catches using the receiving bit to set the position of the bolt.

I didn't bother with any fancy drawer slides, just waxed the bottom of the drawer itself.

The belt sander is bolted to the top. I used M6 bolts. I counter-bored from the inside just enough to be able to hammer the bolts in. The drill press was just screwed down.

The top rotates easily and it's already been put to use. There drill press was tucked away in ne corner of the bench and often had accumulated bits and pieces on it, making it a pain to get out and set up. Now four bolts, a quick spin, and it's already for use. 

More storage and workshop projects

 SoI've busy in the workshop. I usually do a few things over Christmas, but we're also in lockdown again so there are more things I can work on. Using the same approach as I did for the storage unit I built a second but this time to had trays rather than drawers in it. 

The plastic box in the bottom was replace with two more trays and then I made boxes for nuts, bolts, hinges etc. Although these units are made from MDF, they slide really easily after an application of wax to the runners and slides. 

The boxes were made from 6mm MDF and hardboard simply glued together and held in shape with some tape while the glue dried. No pins. 

I made different sizes but always in multiples of a basic square. That way they can be rearranged within the tray.

The next problem I wanted to try and solve was dust collection from tools used on the bench. Think sanders and track saw.

I watched a few videos of folk making boom arms and some using hooks, rings and string lines. All of them worked and I decided on an arm.

I thought it would be interesting to make my own I-beam from 6 & 12mm MDF that's lying around the place. 

The length was simply the longest pieces I had available, about 1200mm. Having cut some grooved using the table saw it was just a matter of glue and clamps to put it together. A bit of on-the-fly design and I had a hinge bracket and wall mount. 

A piece of hose and a power cable were simply cable tied to the arm and it was ready to go. It works quite well, although the hinge could be better. I might redesign that later. I don't have any photos of the boom arm.

I came across Woby Design and downloaded the plans for his camera mount. Working in metric measurements meant a few adjustments to drill sizes to use metric bolts rather than imperial. Plus a camera mount is a 1/4" thread, but I found a ball head mount that had two M4 threaded inserts.

My workshop is in a garage. It's about 5mx3m with a concrete floor that's cold and hard on the knees when you've been standing for a long time. I didn't want to move everything out so I laid a rubber mat-like tiled floor. I used something called Assemblemat. It's a bit soft for a workshop floor even though they say it can be used in a garage. If  have to do it again I'll use something like Duramat. 

Star decorations from oak flooring

In the run up to Christmas I came across some designs for star decorations. Using some scrap oak flooring and some scrap from a shed I built, this is what I made. There are more!

I used three basic designs. An overlap style, an open star and a smaller closed version made from the offcuts of the open design.

 

Latest storage project for the workshop

 I've followed Ron Paulk on YouTube for a long time, ever since I first came across his workbench. If you haven't seen Ron's innovative SMART Woodshop then you need to set aside some time to watch him build a complete workshop into a trailer. The way he builds his drawer system is the inspiration behind this project and a previous drawer unit build. 

My goal for my workshop is fairly simple:

1. Be able to find the stuff I need by being better organised.

2. Get rid of all the tool boxes I'd accumulated. 

My goals for myself include:

1. Learning new ways of doing things.

2. Build better stuff.

3. Have fun in the workshop.

So this project involved getting rid of a tool box that has all my spanners and plumbing tools in it (well almost all); providing some storage for jig making bits and my large spring clamps that were sitting in a cardboard box.

Having cut a piece of 18mm mdf  to an appropriate size for the two sides, I began to layout some guides to rout the rebates for the drawers to slide in. (I had lots left over from another project. Normally I'd have used plywood for this, but the mdf was taking up space so it got used).

There was a complicated bit of maths needed because the bushes for the router are imperial and the cutters are metric. But the principle is easy enough. Once you know the offset of the outer edge of the bush and the outer edge of the cutter, you can work out how far apart the guides need to be in order to give your the correct width of rebate. In my case I needed my guides to be 10mm further apart than the rebate width.

It's important to take you time setting this all up nice and square and parallel. To keep the spacing correct I cut a couple spacer blocks and I pinned the guide pieces using 20mm brads.

Running the router up one side and down the other the rebates were cut quickly and neatly. I do have a jig I made for cutting rebates which I could have used, but getting it in the right position each time would probably have been slower than doing it this way. If I had a lot of cabinets to make I'd make a jig the same way Ron does in his videos.

Having cut the rebates I cut the two sides to width and then cut the top and the bottom for the carcass. It's important to note here that the bottom of the carcass goes inside the sides where's theta goes on top. Look closely at this photo and you'll see what I mean.

Using some scraps I checked my measurements for the drawer bases and the width of the drawers themselves. Next I cut a base to check the fit and when that was okay I cut 5 more and checked they all fitted in each slot.

With that done I cut some shallow rebates in the bases (3mm deep) to serve as guides when putting the drawers together. They help keep the drawer square as you glue them together. Again I used 20mm brads to pin the corner joints and then to pin the base to the sides. The front and back of the draw sit inside the sides so that you pin through the sides into the front.

Everything was test fitted before final assembly and I also cut a back panel for the unit from 9mm mdf and glued and pinned that to the carcass. I did thing about rebating the back to inset the panel but this is only a. workshop cabinet after all!

I made some simple handle from scrap, but to be honest I don't think mdf will be strong enough to last long term and I'll either make some from hardwood or just buy some. In my other build I cut hand pulls, but I wanted to try something different this time.

The deep drawer doesn't have to go at the bottom, it fits in all the slots except of course the vey top one. If I ever get to kit out a new workshop I'll make sure all my drawer cabinets are built to a consistent size so that any drawer will fit any cabinet. 

Here's the finished unit installed in the bench and with dividers in the drawer to separate the contents. These were made very simply. The dividers and spaces were cut to give a snug fit. To keep them in place the spacers had a strip of double-sided on the back. 

I'm pretty pleased with the way this one turned out. In a space where there was a metal toolbox and little else I know have all the extra storage for bits and pieces. Eventually I may label the drawers but for the time being I at least know it's in a drawer, whatever it might be!!

Trimming out the new roof windows

 We had some new roof windows fitted and I decided I wanted to trim them out rather than have the window fitters do it. There were moments when I began to regret the idea, but in the end we got it done and it doesn't look to bad. 

The problem was that whoever did the original windows didn't seem to like the idea of perpendicular and square. In fact one is so far out of square that in the end it wasn't worth the effort to try to put that right. 

The decision now is whether to leave them as they are, maybe applying a clear wax or varnish, or whether to paint them. I think paint, Anne thinks leave. Time will tell.

How much of sport is played in the head?

 I played tennis a few months ago. Just a practice hit with another player followed by some points. We played a game we call "21". Each player serves 5 points and then the serve changes. The winner is whoever gets to 21 first or if it's 21-21 then you play a tie-break to 2 points clear.

Unlike traditional scoring you're never really out of the game until it's over, which keeps it competitive to the end unless one player gets way ahead and the other can't claw it back. It makes for an interesting mental challenge. Every 5 points of serving or receiving feels like a mini-game within the game. Can you make inroads on your opponents serve? Can you be secure on your own serve? If you can win the 5 point battles you will win the game.

So here's the breakdown of the game in 5 point groups. The first numbers reflect the cumulative score, the numbers in brackets are each 5 point exchange. As the game progresses it's not just about wining and losing points but about strategies, patterns and a mind set that gets you through the game.

2-3 (2-3); 4-6 (2-3); 6-9 (2-3); 9-11 (3-2); 12-13 (3-2); 16-14 (4-1); 19-16 (3-2); 21-18 (2-2)

I served first but didn't make the best of starts and after three rounds was 3 points down. But it was close and I won the next two exchanges to get to within a point. Then I won 4-1 in what looks like a decisive moment in the game to go 16-14 up. 

But the crucial point actually came next when my opponent made a great return and a mishit to take the next two points and now we're 16-16. For me this was a significant moment. Having got myself back into the game and then in front the next point could undo all that work. I won the point and the next one to make it 18-16. Now I had one more serve left in this set of 5 points and I knew that if I lost it that would mean a single point difference but if I win it I'd be 3 points up and possibly more importantly my opponent would need to win all 5 of his service points to win the game. Keeping your mind clear and focussed in these situations is hard and even at the level at which I play it's important to keep your head in the game and have a plan. 

At 19-16 I know all I need is a single point to take it to a tie-break, but I also only need 2 points to win and anything less than 4-1 for my opponent isn't going to keep him in the game. So all the pressure is on him to win points and my strategy is to make sure he has to win the point rather than me giving it away. 

At this point both of us have to trust our technique. If I become defensive and cautious I could easily give up points and the same is true for my opponent. We exchanged points and I managed to win the match.

What's interesting in all this is how much of the game is played in your head. When you're as evenly matched as we were it might come down to a lucky mishit or a great serve, but even at our level being able to execute a plan under pressure is vital. Hit and hope will only get you so far, you have to have a strategy. 

Let me give you a simple example. From the Ad-court my typical serve is to swing it out wide (I'm left-handed) with as much work on the ball as I can get. Everyone who plays me regularly knows it's coming. I know that if I execute it well then 95% of the time I'll win the point. I know they know it's coming, so the only thing I'm thinking about when I step up to serve is get the process right, execute the plan. If they get a good return, fair enough. I can't afford to worry about what they do with ball and start second guessing where to serve, I just need to focus all my attention on what I'm doing. If I get it right the outcome takes care of itself. 

But here's the thing, and I don't think I'm alone in this. For a moment, as you walk towards the baseline, ball in hand or bouncing it nervously as you walk, every scenario runs through your head.  That's the point at which you make a choice. You either rehearse everything that could go wrong and focus upon that, or you choose to rehearse everything that you've practised. 

As we chatted after the game I asked my opponent what he was thinking at the crucial stages. His reply was interesting. His thought was that he was going to lose. Having been in front and having lost the lead, his overriding thought was about losing. Having caught up and gone in front, my thought was that I could go on and win this now. 

I suspect that had the roles been reversed I might also have thought more about losing than winning, but I've tried to learn to put those thoughts away because they interfere with my process. In fact thinking of either winning or losing, although it happens all the time, can disrupt your ability to play. You must focus on the next task.

So did I win because I had better technique, better mental focus, more matchplay experience, more self-belief (I hadn't lost to him before) or a combination of al these factors? Who knows. But the more I play the more I understand that when you'r evenly matched what goes on in your head can make a difference to the way you play and ultimately to the outcome.

Why do I keep practising?

The simple answer is that I want to get better. I want to be more competitive. Yes, I want to win, but there is more. I like learning. I like trying to improve. I don’t like settling. I could just play social tennis at an achievable level, but that’s not enough. I need to push a bit harder. 

Take the other Tuesday for example. At Club Night I could have settled for playing doubles all evening. I’d worked quite hard in the morning squad session and playing singles is tough, especially when you’re the oldest there by maybe two decades! But the doubles was frustrating because the challenge wasn’t there. It’s fun, but the way I want to try and play doubles is, well, more aggressive, get to the net, attack the ball doubles and having my partner standing in the back half of the court and backing off volleys doesn’t work for me. 

So I ended up opting for a singles match against someone who is probably 20 years younger than me, a lot fitter than me and very fast around the court. I would not be able to out run him so I would need a strategy if I was going to use my superior technical ability against his ability to keep the ball in play. In the end it doesn't matter how technically correct or pretty your strokes are if you don't win the points. Sometimes you have to win ugly as they say!

 The plan was simple. Start well. Apply early pressure and build a lead so that if I ran out of energy after long rallies I had room to recover and a margin of error. Keep the points short and if we got into an extended rally control it if I could by keeping him in one corner. If he started to run then I would probably have to run too because the ball would not be under control. His ability to keep the ball alive would have put me under pressure, but if I controlled the rally, he would have to rally the ball and not make errors.

This is why I practise. I practise so that I can trust my ability to play the shot when I most need to. If you look at the statistics for top level tennis you discover one simple fact: most points are not won by hitting glorious winners, they're won by errors made from the other side of the net. In fact even on the professional tour about 66% of points come from errors. At my level I think it's possibly higher, although our lack of movement and ability to read the game may mean we make space for winners from the other side. I don't know. I do know that if you average more than 1.5 errors a game you are probably going to lose the match.

So practice is important if it enables you to reduce your error count in match play. 

Back to the match. My plan worked well to start with and made a good start, keeping the error count low and building a lead. I did begin to run out of steam but I stayed focussed and won in the end. It could have gone the other way and plenty have, but this one went to plan and that makes all the effort on the practice court worthwhile

Refining and modifying the fence stop

Having designed and printed the fence stop for my simple fence system, I decided that I could refine it and also build a flag stop. There were a few things that I needed to think about and it took several iterations before I got what I thought was a workable design. I use Tinkercad because it's easy and simple. But it is limited, and if you need to disassemble something and make a change, it can sometimes throw everything out. I'd like to get to grips with a better CAD programme, but I've struggled with Fusion 360 to grasp the concepts and methods.

So, here's a screenshot of my Tinkercad design.

I took the basic stop and added tongues to help guide the stop in the aluminium track. Since this version I've made the gp smaller to see if that helps keep the T-nut from turning when you try to locate it in the track. 

The flag stop has a simpler block with a hole and recess for a hex nut in one end. The idea being that you can glue or friction fit an M5 nut or bolt head in it. 

By chance the hole behind the hex recess in the end is tight enough to screw an M5 bolt straight in, so no nut needed. But it might work loose over time so a refinement is probably needed.

At the moment I'm printing a new version with a recess about 6mm in for the end to take a nut dropped in form the underneath.

If it works, then you could add a little epoxy to secure the nut in place but given you're not likely to keep undoing the the flag, it's probably not going to be necessary.

In use the stops and flags seem quite sturdy. There's very little deflection in the flags

Making a simple fence system

I needed to make a simple fence system for a new bench top I made. Some time ago I incorporated an MFT-style top into a bench in my workshop. This is a bench top with 20mm holes set in a 96mm pattern over the surface. It allows precise 90, 45, 30 & 60 deg cuts to be made and the square up assemblies and a whole host of other things. It's quite the versatile bench system.

In the process of cutting some MDF for a project I had a rather large piece of 18mm left over, so I trimmed it to what I thought was a manageable size of 1800x900mm (turned out still to be rather heavy to carry around so not as 'portable' as I thought) and set about drilling it out in the 96mm pattern. I used the Parf Guide system and after a couple of hours I had a nice series of holes across the surface.

I toyed with a few ideas for making a fence and in the end decided to use some aluminium extrusion. I'd used the same type of thing on the bench in the workshop. The question was did I buy some more of the fence-dogs for this fence or did I use the ones I already had-simply moving them from one been to the other-or did I make something new?

Something new won the argument in my head so I made a prototype anchor that held the aluminium against a bench dog. I also made a simple sliding stop using MDF and some M5 track nuts and screw knobs.

These worked quite well. They held the extrusion in place, pulling it firmly against the bench dog and it was nice and square to the rest of the bench. The only problem was that using MDF in this way to make the clams was not the best option. They just felt flimsy and I thought there must be a better solution. 

Then I remembered the 3D printer and got to work designing the parts for 3D printing.

The end result is an effective clamping system and a smooth operating stop. I've drilled a couple of 20mm holes in my bench that houses my mitre saw so the fence can used there too.

All in all I'm very pleased with the end result. 

I swapped the hex head bolts for some with hex sockets.

Extract from The Guardian-April 13th 2020

I extracted this from The Guardian so that I had a record of these things. It is copied as it appeared on the web version of the paper. I am grateful for the independent journalistic voice of the paper.

Epidemiologists and public health experts are divided over how effective the government’s response has been but criticism has been increasing in recent weeks as the UK death toll rises.

Sue Hill, vice-president of the Royal College of Surgeons, said she believed UK deaths could rise to 30,000. She acknowledged that the government has a difficult job but said it gave the appearance of placing “political spin” over action.

Describing the daily Downing Street briefing as “a bit of a joke”, she said: “He [Boris Johnson or another cabinet minister] is sitting there speaking about subjects he doesn’t really understand and can’t answer questions about it. It’s political spin, isn’t it? They’re not doing themselves any favours.

“The thing that irritates me is cabinet ministers are standing up every day, addressing us as if we’re on a war footing and giving Churchillian quotes when they could be doing a few simple things like getting more bits of plastic and paper [which personal protective equipment is made out of] on to wards.”

Prof John Ashton, a former regional director of public health for north-west England, who has previously criticised the government over the crisis, said its performance had worsened.

He said: “It was the failure to convene [the emergency committee] Cobra at the beginning of February that meant everything else flowed from it, the failure to order equipment etc. Now we are into the cover-up. Any journalist worth their salt should boycott this propaganda [the daily briefing]. They don’t answer any questions.

“The chief nurse deflected the question about the number of nurses and doctors who died because of confidentiality. She wasn’t being asked about individuals, she was being asked about numbers.”

He also said that people were dying in care homes and at home without being tested while some were being sent home to die before they had been tested.

“There are probably large numbers of people who are not being counted,” said Ashton.

Dave Prentis, general secretary of Unison, said “the time for excuses has passed” when it came to PPE failures and the deaths of medical and care staff.

“Ministers have been saying for weeks that the PPE situation is in hand. That there’s enough to go around and it’s just a matter of logistics. But it isn’t good enough,” he said.

“NHS, care and other key workers are falling ill in huge numbers. Some have already died – including nurses, doctors, care workers, healthcare assistants and porters.”

Unison said its PPE alert hotline has been told of care workers being told to wash their face masks for reuse, threatened with the sack for using them, having to buy their own stock and having to use watered down handwash.

Labour has tried to strike a constructive tone when criticising the government, but Sir Keir Starmer warned of a “mismatch” between the complaints of medical and care staff that they lack protective equipment and ministers insisting there is enough to go round. The new Labour leader is also expected to press the government this week on gaps in the UK’s financial support schemes for workers and businesses.

Andy Burnham, Labour’s last health secretary, said: “The issue is not whether mistakes will be made, the question is how quickly do you acknowledge them and correct them. I think on certain issues they have done that but on what’s most material – PPE - they haven’t.”

Meanwhile, Labour backbenchers were breaking rank with the leadership, with Barry Sheerman, the Huddersfield MP, saying the government had “failed abysmally” to protect NHS staff.

He had, he said, tried his “hardest to be fair to the government … but mounting evidence of the sheer incompetence of ministers and the grim fact of 10,000 deaths means now the gloves are off”.

Peter Hain, the Labour peer and former cabinet minister, told the Guardian: “It’s becoming crystal clear the government has shamefully abandoned frontline health and care workers to their Covid-19 fate as they battle to save the desperately ill.”

The opposition has called for immediate talks on the return of a virtual parliament. But with the Commons not due to be recalled until 21 April, Sir Bernard Jenkin, the senior Tory MP and chair of the liaison committee scrutinising the government, called for ministers to agree to a hearing this week.

Writing for the Guardian, he said: “Proper, considered, penetrating, constructive scrutiny does really matter. This is not about hauling ministers before MPs to blame them for the problems they cannot instantly resolve.

“Former cabinet secretary Gus O’Donnell should be commended for his searing honesty when he recently admitted, without prompting, that he should have advised previous governments to commit far more resources to flu pandemic planning.

“This crisis calls for the same candour and transparency – that is what speeds up the learning process, leading to better decisions and more effective action.”

Speaking at No 10’s briefing on Sunday, Matt Hancock, the health secretary, insisted that both more testing and PPE were on their way to the care sector but he could not give a timescale for when either problem would be sorted out, saying it was “impossible” to say when the right kit would be in the right place across 58,000 sites.

Admitting the death figures meant it was a “sombre day” for the UK, he also could not give an update on the number of NHS staff who have died, saying the last previous figure was 19. Statements from hospitals and the families of workers show the figure is more than 30.

The usefulness of figures provided by the government in tracking the spread of the virus have also been called into question, with concerns about the lack of tracking of cases – and deaths – outside hospitals.

Dr Chaand Nagpaul, the British Medical Association’s council chair, said with testing only going on in hospitals, it was difficult to draw any conclusions from the government statistics.