Learning new Skills Part 1

Learning new skills is not something to be concerned about as it is essentially little more than adapting existing skills you have and thinking about developing solutions to problems and mixing and matching these to give you a solution, once you begin thinking about things you will become innovative and independent and problem solving becomes second nature.

Are you good at metalwork but think you will be no good at woodwork? Think again as many of the metalwork processes transfer to woodworking and you will find woodworking generally a breeze after metalworking, inversely transferring from woodworking to metalworking will be harder as you are transferring from an easy material to work with to a more difficult to work material. Let’s look at some of the basics, measuring applies to both materials as does marking out and while you may use a joiners pencil for wood, you would use French chalk or scriber for metals so you have a clearly defined line to work to with the differing processes. Cutting wood may be done with a ripping saw for cross grain cutting or a second cut for cutting along the grain, of using a finer saw such as a tenon saw or a Japanese saw for finer cuts, for metals you would use a hacksaw and a Junior hacksaw would be used for smaller or thinner metals while a full size hacksaw would be used and instead of the 7/8TPI (teeth per inch) of a first cut ripping saw the hacksaw would have anywhere from 16 – 30 TPI. This is because metals are harder to cut and finer teeth are required and each cutting tooth removes less material than a ripping wood saw, but it removes many more of these small pieces making it easier to cut metals.

These types of skills are transferable to many hobbies or industries as well as DIY as measuring and marking out are an integral part of making or modifying anything and if you cut wood you need to follow a straight line so mark and cut some wood in a straight line, a basic quality saw costs around £7-8 from Toolstation and clean wood is everywhere, so cut exactly to the side of the line. Now get a hacksaw and mark some metal and repeat this with the hacksaw and follow the line and you will quickly learn several things, if you but at 90° to the item you are cutting your saw will wander from the straight line, change the cutting angle to 45° and it is much easier to follow the line. This is because the cut itself is much longer and the front of the cut follows the line and this means it is so much easier for the rear of the cut to follow the line as the cut groove essentially becomes the jig.

What happens if you fail? Nothing except you have expended some energy and what you have done is to get a feel for the tools you are using and the more you use the correct cutting tool correctly, the easier it will become as you are learning to feel and then finessing, or feeling the saw and letting it cut rather than trying to force it. In simpler terms it also uses less energy to apply light pressure to a saw and let it cut at its own rate for 5 minutes than it does to apply heavy forces to the saw and cut for 3 minutes. You will also learn to use the full cutting length of the saw and for a 12” hacksaw you will ideally use at least 10” of the cutting length and for a 22” ripping saw for wood you would use at least 20” of the cutting length and you will instinctively find you get into the cutting rhythm and do it naturally.

You may find you have a car with a cracked plastic bumper and you need a cheap and effective repair and you think of using a polyester resin repair kit and buy the kit for under £10 which contains the resin, hardener, glass tissue/mat and instructions for mixing and using it. You begin with cleaning the rear of the bumper around the crack and heavily abrade it and mix a little resin and paint it on to prime the abraded surface and its summer so it goes off in about 10 minutes, you cut a little glassfibre mat and mix some more resin and apply a second coat and push the glassfibre mat into the wet resin and paint some more resin over the matting and stipple it to fully wet the mat, and leave it for 15 minutes to cure. You cut some more glassfibre mat larger than your last piece and mix more resin and paint your abraded bumper and stick this mat to the resin and overcoat the matting with more resin and wet your matting out and let it cure and repeat this again with another larger piece and wet it out and leave it overnight to cure and you have structurally repaired your bumper for peanuts and you turn to the front and apply some body filler to the crack, sand down and refinish and it’s an invisible repair from the outside.

Why is this important? Because you will make mistakes and the usual ones are that you don’t get disposable paint brushes and you need a new one for every resin application; you get mixed resin on your hands and it takes a week to wear off, you get it on your clothes and you have hard spots on your clothes or you throw them away. You mix too little resin and don’t wet your matting out sufficiently, you mix too much resin and don’t use it and this is wastage and you don’t have sufficient containers such as paper cups to mix in and these are the classic mistakes which are made and you learn from them. You learn to get the sets of disposable brushes and you can use them and throw them away and you potentially get some acetone to clean them as well as for removing spots of resin from your clothes and hands, you wear a pair of latex gloves on each hand and only remove the outer glove when you replace them and you learn how to judge your resin mixing and you ensure you have sufficient containers to mix your resin in.

You may progress into finished panels and apply a gel coat first and then apply your resin so you have a finished surface and you find out you haven’t prepared your mould properly and your finished panel will not release so you ensure you polish it properly next time and apply plenty of release agent and you cut your finished panel down to fit its application. You may make a simple mould by using cardboard and a carpet showroom will have lots of them lying around and they will give them away if you ask, if you cut it in half lengthways you have a semi circle and if you stick it to more cardboard sheet you can mix some resin and coat it, then coat it again and lay some fine glassfibre mat onto it and repeat this several times you now have a lamination consisting of several layers of glassfibre and it now has some strength. You can go onwards and make your moulds from anything and cardboard is ideal for a single component as once it is dry you can wet the cardboard and it literally drops off your finished lamination. You can stick pieces together using water based glues such as ordinary PVA which is NOT waterproof and you can possibly use ordinary plaster which can be cut, filed, and sanded to shape and can be soaked with water to release your component.

You may decide to move on and use something similar and this is carbon fibre and instead of glass mat it uses carbon mat and shaped sections and the resin is not polyester resin as this changes to epoxy resin and you quickly learn this is much lighter for a given strength or much stronger for a given weight and you suddenly notice the differences. Polyester resins and glass mat are not waterproof and contrary to popular belief you cannot use it in water as it begins to delaminate and this is where water gets into the plies or layers and it comes apart; you overcome this by applying a gel coat first and then your glassfibre matting and the gel coat cures by excluding the air which the glassfibre does. By comparison carbon fibre systems are waterproof as the carbon mat or shapes absorb the epoxy resin and this, by its very nature is waterproof and this is why they apply two gel coats to the moulds of a boat hull as this is traditional gel coat which requires the air to be removed for it to cure and the mould does this one side and the glassfibre does it on the other side. Recent advances have produced an air drying gel coat and you can make your moulding and paint air drying gel coat on the side exposed to water, problem and solution.

My experiences were based upon a specific car which I loved solely for its shape and this was the E31 BMW 8 series and my first was the 840Ci from 1995 in blue which was an excellent colour and this was followed by a trade up from the V8 engine to the V12 powered 850CSi with its 5.6 litre V12 engine and 375 BHP and a glorious car to drive, fuel economy, who cares.
These cars had a specific problem and this was the shark nose front which was exposed to both impact and chip damage and the dealers replaced the nose cone for an absolute fortune and I developed a solution which was to remove the nose cone and repair it and my engineering expertise and materials knowledge provided the answer. These had two types of cracks and these were the single crack and the star crack and work began by drilling the ends of each crack with a 3mm drill to stop them spreading and grooving a vee groove between all the drilled holes, along the cracks; and now came the real magic as I was working on a long contract for an aerospace company at the time and had access to some trick kit. We used epoxy resins and I found one with similar characteristics to the plastic nose cones and it was injected and had a special non stick plastic backing stuck to the item to be repaired which the resin didn’t stick to and this was stuck to the rear of the panel and totally covered it, most of the front was also covered with just enough left to inject the resin into. Resin was mixed and put into a syringe and injected into the grooves and they filled all the grooves on both sides, and all the drilled holes and basically formed a lattice on either side of the panel and ran from the front face to the rear face of the panel and really gave it some strength when it cured and it cured faster with Infra Red Light.

This system was developed from an old established method of repairing things such as heavy castings which couldn’t reasonable be welded and couldn’t be replaced cheaply and the method of repair was called “metal stitching” where the gap was closed by force, usually clamping and metal straps were fitted across the crack and special stitching rivets were inserted.
Now we had an established metalworking technique used to stitch something using a modern epoxy resin using more established techniques to stop the crack/s from spreading and using a modern non stick plastic taped to the panel which allowed all the grooves to be filled and give it a dimensional repair. Someone learned of this technique and made their own repair kit and marketed them at the home repairer and they are still available, so both my BMW 8 series cars were bought cheaply because they had cracked noses and the engineering manager of the aerospace company also had a standard 850 with a split nose and his was repaired in a day, at work, without removing the nose cone as the crack was located in a position in which we had rear access to the panel.

Now we can see some applications of different skills and we can combine these skills and as an example you could make a wooden frame and clad it in carbon fibre or glassfibre panels and you have combined woodworking and laminating resins to form a structure and this is exactly what they do with caravan manufacture. You could replace your woodworking with metal working and form lightweight aluminium structure and use it as reinforcing for a carbon fibre construction, but they already do this in aircraft and racing car manufacture or you could manufacture a wooden framing and reinforce parts with aluminium and you have combined all three of the mentioned skills.
Learning new skills is not daunting if you go in with the correct mindset and one of our recent Learning new skills is not daunting if you go in with the correct mindset and one of our recent projects was to get people gardening and not for flowers unless they were cauliflowers and this year we produced more of our salad bars then previous years and they were distributed to most of the community who wanted them. Unlike commercial operation’s we didn’t do a one size fits all system and made them customisable and this was for good reason, many users were elderly people, many were disabled, and many were unsurprisingly, children and our designs of salad bar accommodated them all from height to size and some even had seats built in.

When we made them we sourced all the wood from recyclable sources and pallets were surprisingly easy to obtain and many come in standard sizes which makes them easier to use as the boards are fairly uniform and they accommodated our variations, many disabled people came back and said how easy they were to use and liked the fact we provided the home made compost for free, along with the seeds. We also have a seed supplier who donates a quantity of seeds and things like the standard salad crops are abundant and easily grown which is extremely useful for beginners and especially children as they can see the results and eat them.
Word soon spread throughout the salad bar users and they used one packet of seeds all season when they found if they just removed a few leaves from each lettuce and didn’t lift the plant, the leaves would regenerate and the same plant regrew and one plant yielded a large proportion of the lettuce they needed and a full packet of seeds yielded many plants and just picking a few leaves off each plant meant all the plants lasted all season.
Many people planted the usual crops of lettuce, spring onions, radish, and once the word about cut and come again cropping hit the entire community, most adopted it and prolonged their plants, and many of the unemployed recipients were extremely grateful for this as they didn’t have to buy seeds and grow new plants. Some people got a little exotic and copied our salad bar designs and most of the local pallets were recycled into a second shorter, but deeper salad bar and common crops were rocket and mixed leaf but when pak choi, baby beetroot, chard, kale, and mustard became a popular addition we knew it had really taken off.

Several people were inspired to make their own and as I designed a simple recycled greenhouse design and the mantle was taken up by many if the salad bar brigade began expanding their abilities and learned woodwork and opted to make their own greenhouses and most were based upon my designs and customised for size and style. Many were lean to types and one was fastened to the back of an outhouse and was only 5’ (1.5M) tall as the girl was in a wheelchair and didn’t need the height and less height meant less volume and this led to less heating when a small log burner was made and installed. In spite of the limited headroom it was made totally from recycled materials and she compensated for the lack of height by growing shorter crops and pinching them out when they nearly hit the roof as she could reach it from her wheelchair and set growing wires and canes; this little greenhouse produced more crops in the season and is still producing them.

Having abundant crops means storing and preserving them and for most people this means blanching and freezing and many people dismiss other ideas such as drying or bottling/canning as they think only soup and fast foods come in cans or bottles and only pickles and chutneys come in glass jars. This method of freezing is fine while you have electricity to run your freezer but what happens when the electricity fails and you lose abundant crops you have preserved by freezing and you have no alternative sources of power for your freezer such as a generator or solar panels and battery storage and an inverter? You rely upon your bottled/canned foods. More focus has been put onto spreading the preservation methods and splitting then to ensure you minimise your losses if you rely on one preservation method and this sparked some real ingenuity and one resident bought aubergine, grew courgettes and small tomatoes and red peppers and pulled some onions from their garden and did a bottled chargrill in butter and it remained bottled until the needed it and she literally tipped it out into a wok and stir fried it as the butter acted as the fat and she could cook on a domestic gas or electric cooker, a timber fire or a barbecue and this was the ultimate in choices.
How did she do it? she cut the aubergine and courgette into small chunks and sliced the pepper and cut the onion into larger pieces and added some small tomatoes from her greenhouse and mixed them together and literally grilled them and let them cool, she split some into bags and froze them and put the rest into large jars and topped them up with melted butter before fitting the lids.
This year we have added some stir fry recipes and while they all use garden basics such as onion and mushrooms we have added some unusual ingredients such as the stalks of broccoli or cauliflowers by cutting them into small pieces and adding them to our stir fry and then the magic ingredient, green cabbage, and the leaves are cut into small pieces and added to the stir fry and they impart a nice flavour and I highly recommend it.

As you develop new skills you develop along with them and of you partake in woodwork you may get a saw to cut wood and this would be determined by its intended use and for cross cutting timber this would be a cross cutting or universal saw with around 7-8 teeth per inch (TPI) which is about normal today. For cutting finer cuts you would opt for a saw with more TPI and while it would be slower cutting the cut would be more accurate.

For most pastimes involving new skills you need to measure and this requires either a tape measure or ruler or even both and some way of marking something and for wood or timber products this would be a pencil and for metals this would be a scriber, neither of these are actually binding as you could use one of the markers such as Sharpies as they mark on wood and metal. In either case you need your marking out to be accurate and this is where you make basic mistakes such as using a steel ruler to mark out 50mm as an example, if you measure by hooking a tape measure on the edge and measuring 50mm it will be 50mm, if you place an engineer’s ruler on the edge with the 50mm mark on the edge of the material and mark across the end of the ruler it will actually be 51 or 52mm and not the 50mm you require and would be fine if you want something slightly oversize and need to file, grind, or cut it down to its final size. This raises the issue of accuracy and asks just how accurate do you need to be as a scriber is more accurate than a marker and a sharp pencil as more accurate than a marker with its thick lines, then how you mark something becomes critical if you are cutting something.
For any power tool you have a width of cut and this is determined by the thickness of the blade and the accuracy of the cut, I have a metal cutting band saw and this gives a cut of 2.5mm wide in steel and is very accurate, therefore I have to mark something out at 50mm and then add another 2.5mm at the end to allow for the thickness of cut before marking the next 50mm.

Getting children into learning can be difficult as not all children are academic and not all children have large attention spans and many of these have practical skills and would prefer to use them, but wait a minute don’t practical skills involve learning and this means academic skills and this is a crafty way of getting children to learn academic skills.
Think about this a little and this means that to cut wood to a specific size they need markings to work to and to do this they need to learn measuring and marking and this means addition and subtraction and the difference? They are achieving an objective they want to reach and have both the incentive and motivation to learn measuring out and marking and this means basic maths. They naturally do this instead of naturally rebelling and claiming they cannot do it and wanting to do something makes it easier.

Children can work with many things and giving them simple jobs such as pointing an outside or garden wall can give them immense satisfaction and the first thing would be to give them a hammer and plugging chisel and let then chip out the mortar on a section of wall, then tell them the sand and cement mix and let them dry mix it and add the correct amount of water to point it up. Show them how to point it and let them do it and they have the satisfaction of doing it and seeing the results.

In a similar vein you can teach children basic electrics and electronics by simply having things such as a serviceable car battery, a peg or bread board which you can plug components into and insert a fuse which will blow if they get it wrong, which they will. If you attach a battery clamp and a piece of wire and wire this to the bread board with standard Banana plugs you can have both a positive and negative terminal on the board and they can learn wiring and finally plug it all in and see their results, if they go down the electrics route they can fit a relay holder and wire it and learn how relays work. They can make basic lighting circuits and learn how traditional 12 volt fluorescents and LED lighting works and they can build a mock-up of their intended circuits before doing it for real. If you get them a basic multimeter they can make up basic electronic circuits and take real time readings to establish exactly what each component does.
They can mock most things and one recent project I saw was from a 7 year old who made regulated charging circuits for lithium batteries and he obtained some from a scrap computer battery and made up a circuit for 1 cell to drive 12 volt lighting strip for emergency lighting and his first design failed and blew. He evaluated his designs and found his error and corrected it and made a second circuit which worked and gave around 2 hours if light from a single cell and found he could charge them with a solar panel and got the appropriate equipment and made of 4 emergence lights which would give him 4 X 2 hours of emergency lighting if they lost power.

How to make a system for electrics/electronics?

Get a 12 volt car battery which is serviceable.
I peg or bread board.
Fuse holder and fuse.
Banana plugs/sockets and 1 red and one black socket with screw connections
Varnish.

Take the peg board and varnish it as this stops it absorbing moisture and gives it further electrical insulation, take some wood and make a frame for the peg board and attach it so the peg board is raised and varnish this also.

Take one banana socket and attach it to one side at one end of the board and if this is the red positive terminal attach a fuse holder in the cable so this terminal is fused and fit a low rating of fuse to ensure nothing is overloaded. Fit the black negative banana socket to the same end of the peg board, but in the opposite corner and now you have two terminal blocks on the board and two places to attach your circuit cables to and all you do is connect your battery terminals and plug your banana plugs into their respective sockets and you have the major connections. You make your circuit up on the board and wire it to the connections and switch on, if the fuse blows you have a problem and if it doesn’t, you don’t and you have the advantage of seeing what individual components do and how they act and children soak up this knowledge and retain it and this gives them a greater insight and knowledge for the future.

In many fields you can reverse engineer and this is simply seeing how something is done commercially and replicating it on a smaller scale as most complex processes evolve from simple processes which are scaled up and modified for cheaper commercial applications of scale, the cheaper it is and the more they can make cheaper means competition.
One example I used was working plastic and the plastic was Perspex, one guy bought a shop for his wife and he wanted the Perspex display units which were popular at the time and many were steps in Perspex for peg board and wall displays. In a commercial operation they cut Perspex into strips of various widths and placed these over electric elements set at exact distances which heated the Perspex from underneath and it was placed onto a shaped jig which closed, it was aluminium and water cooled so once it closed it had the shape and the water cooled the jig and the component held its shape.

This was reverse engineered and initially I made a heated coil running from 50 volts and this consisted of a heating coil inserted into a base with two pieces of heatproof material either side and on top of this were made to accept heatproof packing pieces to raise or lower these sides to sit the Perspex on while it heated the bend area. Experimenting was necessary as too long on heat overheated it and too short on heat didn’t allow it to bend and I found it marked the Perspex by having small imprinting of the shape of the heating coil into the plastic. This method was changed to a solid bar heated using oxy acetylene and placed in the groove where the coil had been and I saw the Perspex begin to go milky and that was enough, I made wooden jigs for outside and inside bends and bent the piece holding the wooden template in position and bending the Perspex and once it had the correct shape it was dipped in water to cool it and hold its shape. One problem was it was slow but it cost nothing as it was done at work and each bend was individually heated and bent and while it was slower it was very accurate and had no marks; even the commercially produced ones had heating coil marks in their bends.

The moral of the story is simple, there is nearly always a solution and sometimes you just have to find it, there are nearly always lots of transferable skills from one field to another and often it is just the implementation and tools which differ and the way you use them will nearly always be similar. Processes can be studied and complex processes can often be simplified and downsized from commercial applications to a DIY application and you just have to figure out how and implement it