/diy/ - Do It Yourself

use a 12v car battery attached to the wire found inside toasters. works like a charm, and is re-usable. just make the wire into a kind of tube that you then drop the fuse inside, instant ignition almost.

>>46889
Dude, why would you make a 40'x40'x10' room out of shipping containers? the entire point of them is to minimalize the amount of area you're using. if you notice, the designs i've posted have a total square footage of 960 square feet, according to my numbers of (8*4)*3. if you want a large house, don't even think about piling a load of shipping containers together. it's just not cost-effective for large homes. Bachelor pads/small houses, perfect.

i sketch using pens (mostly design work ;D )

so, i start using a red pen, sketch roughly, mess about until i get a line i want to keep, then i draw along the line with a black pen. then, scan it into the computer and remove the red line. this should work just as well with a red pencil, black pencil and a fine-line pen, no computer required :P

>>50980
i'm hoping to fuck it works out. it's not going to be large depth-wise, because it's being made out of 6" dia. water pipe (6mm thick, so pretty fucking strong), but it'll be plenty long. gonna spend more time actually designing it this time, because the last few metal forges i've built failed horribly, and if i'm gonna implement gas into it i REALLY need to design it well. however, the gas implementation is simply to improve the effeciency of the coal by effectively "kickstarting" it, with a little boost as and when i need it instead of, say, a pair of bellows.

>>50929
advice i'd give to people starting out?

fuck about. a lot. don't bother investing in an anvil straight away, a large sledgehammer's head and a smaller hammer will do a great improvisation, and is much easier to source. using a brick-build forge without cementing will give you the option of modification during the process if you discover a fault, and makes it a lot easier to cool down after use if you don't have a lot of space readily available. That, and invest in two axes:
one, for chopping wood to start the fire with (the method i used anyway), and a cheaper one to put indents into steel/cut steel on your working face. works like a charm, and is more readily available. be prepared to make/modify your own tools to suit your needs and learn to weld using mig/gas/MMA welding, as it proves invaluable if you find that you need to do, well, anything that could do with some extra length etc. An oxy-acetylene welder can do a great improvisation of a forge if you have one readily available, as obviously it creates massive heat very quickly, but be careful or else you may simply cut through the piece you're working on.


Never cast into a cold mold by the way, i learned that the hard way after molten lead exploded out of a cold mold onto my arms, leather apron and surrounding area.

oh, and don't fuck about with gas forges unless you have a lot of spare $$$ or you don't mind being blown to smithereens by your half-assed gas creation.

>>50232

i'm presently in the works of designing a coal/propane hybrid forge. it'll work kinda similar to a barbeque but with a hell of a lot more heat (obviously)

At present i use:
three and a half pound ball pein hammer as a forge hammer
Lump hammer as a forge hammer, along with two sledgehammers for larger work. crude, but effective. also handy for bending steel bar if you have a friend handy.
15 pound anvil (can't afford a real anvil atm)
home-made brick forge (which is surprisingly effective considering it's just thrown together as and when i need it.)
pair of boltcutters modified into large tongs
pair of pliers modified into small tongs.

I usually start my forge-fire using a mix of wood and parrafin (extra kick, wooo!), then slowly but surely increase the heat with the wood, which i've managed to get steel to red-hot with, then add coal at that point and wait slightly longer until it's producing a constant heat, usually hot enough to burn anything with ~6 feet without touching it. fucking hot, but if you stay with it right from the start your body acclimatizes. horrible when it's summer, about 28 degrees Celsius and you're shivering because you've been next to a raging forge-fire for a few hours.

>>48327
i only ever take my shoes off if i'm planning on staying the night. i'm just not comfortable any other way. a lot of my friends are like that.

Reppin' England.

>>44331
am i allowed to want this thing? badly?

>>42874
personally i was thinking of insulating the exterior. instead of putting drywall inside (And lowering the usable space), put marine ply outside, then fill with the expanding foam. as well, it'll help solve rot problems as long as the exterior construction is fairly watertight. I know a lot about wood, but not as much about steel, so why not surround my steel with wood?

>>44245
Good method, i only use sketchup as my hand-drawn designs always come out more like concept sketches, and i don't have autocad software. Only downloaded sketchup last night though and i'm seriously impressed with the usability

>>44218
This looks fantastic! good work man, how long have you been using the program?

>>44215
i only use the free version, and tbh i think it's enough to do whatever you want. And, it's simple to learn!

>>44195

how do you make a wood gasifier? that sounds... interesting, and most probably useful for people who want to make a forge but can't afford propane/coke

Well, seeing as how quite a few of us on here use sketchup, lets have a sketchup design thread. i'll jumpstart with some of the things i've made so far.

First up:

Cubbies under a mezzanine floor. rest of room not included, as it wasn't particularly needed.

>>44075

I was too busy ranting and forgot to add that it proves massively useful in any DIY projects. I've built a mezzanine floor, bed, shelving unit and i'm in the middle of designing a wardrobe to fit under the mezzanine floor ;D

i once saw my dad change the wheel on a car without a jack. he literally removed the wingmirror on the opposite side of the car, put a load of blankets and quilts down on the opposite side and rolled the car onto it's side. could have led to problems if he hadn't worked in a pit and thusly knew about supporting things properly. Lucky for him he had a friend to help lower the car back to it's correct orientation.

wow, no machinists?

Wood machinist here. One of the quality ones, however, not like the CNC machine operators or the mill workers who claim they're machinists, but really don't know when a bearing is gone in a machine from looking at the blade.

guess i earned being proud of this trade, been doing it 3 n a half years.

>>41717
fuck the eurocode. it's a pile of over-regulated crap if you ask me.

>>41726

dude, i'm 19 and trying to move out... why do you think i'm designing a containerhouse?

but, tbh, 99% of people can't afford to move out at 19.

>>41471
compare the £20,000-£50,000 to buy the land and fully build a shipping container home vs the £120,000 to buy a terraced house (2 bedrooms upstairs, 2 rooms downstairs, maybe an extension if you're lucky), and suddenly it seems a lot more doable.

>>41394

the downstairs is the entrance :P at the minute, just been working on getting placeholders in to see how it'll look. then, the real shit when i actually start fucking about with things

>>41387
stairs to the top container in each side. that, and the single container on the right hand side is going to be more of a workshop/store room than anything, with the upstairs being a bedroom/bathroom and the downstairs being general living.

>>41376
Angle grinder/oxy-acetylene cutting torch/oxygen lance... there's a plethora of ways to cut steel

>>41346

as i've been saying all along: these are concept images. i can pull out the original concept image to show you how it's been developing if you want me to.

and at present; the window and door models are being pulled off the sketchup models website. i can get custom windows, glass, doors etc at trade price through my contacts, as well as the shipping containers, timbers etc. i'll start working on the bottom floor now, as i'm fairly happy with the upstairs (and i could probably do with working on the bottom floor :P )

latest update: keep the stairs, or put something more simple in?