Oct 07
The TorqueVario VDE is “without doubt the ultimate electrician’s screwdriver” – reported in the Professional Electrician (September 2011 issue), Calibrated and individually certified to International Standards the ECA, Elecsa & NICEIC have tested the tool and endorse it.
Of particular interest to most electricians will be the electric slimfix and the torque screwdrivers. As well as enhancing the safety of installing terminal screws users will be in good company as Wiha supply TorqueVario screwdrivers into industries such as aerospace, defence and F1.
Torque Facts:
- Poor termination is the number one cause of failure to switchgear
- Under-torque and you risk arcing, hotspots and fires
- Over-torque and you risk damaging the component or the thread, which in turn may lead to under-torqueing
Wiha tools are now available to buy from NeweysOnline
Jul 27
Top on-line magazine and website, DIY Week (.net) are once again holding their great competition to find the Uk’s top DIY products, suppliers and retailers.
The very best in DIY getting together to compete for great prizes
The awards will be spread across many categories including gardening, hardware independents, suppliers, manufaturers, wholesalers and retailers.
The black tie awards ceremony will be held at the Deansgate Hilton in Manchester on Thursday, 24th November.
Closing date for entries is September 23rd 2011 and entries can be submitted by clicking on the DIY Week awards image.
Nov 10
Neweys Online is the online store from Newey & Eyre, the Uk’s leading electrical wholesaler, and they have just cut prices on over 200 top selling products. Check them out at neweysonline.co.uk
Maz Hussain, Web Channel Manager at Rexel, who own Neweys, said:
“With over 12,000 products available to order up to 8pm for next day delivery or collection, Neweys Online has always offered our customers a way to make their life easier.
We are delighted to be able to offer our customers more competitive pricing on over 200 of our top-selling products, as well as reducing our delivery charge to just £4.25. We feel confident we can now offer Neweys Online customers an even better price and a better quality of service.”
If you visit Neweys Online soon and use the voucher code ‘diydoctor1′ when buying anything online, you will receive FREE DELIVERY!
Apr 13
Just spotted this on lifehacker.com - a DIY three-stage brush cleaner!
Jason Fitzpatrick reports that for all those people who have always avoided buying good quality paint brushes on the basis that it is difficult to get them clean enough to reuse them alot – someone has come up with the three stage brush cleaner to help you!
This is obviously only for oil-based paint, but Craig Smith, a ‘Make’ reader, has designed the three-stage brush cleaner, and writes
Did you know:
(1) Most people buy the cheap disposable paint brushes because they don’t want to clean the expensive one-coat brush, or have been burned before by losing an expensive brush to improper cleaning.
(2) Most people clean a brush poorly in a one soak paint thinner process, leaving lots of paint residue in the brush, therefore ruining it.
(3) Most people pour a cup of paint thinner in a jar, clean the brush (poorly) and dump the thinner.
Craig says ‘I made a 3-stage paint thinner jar/rack system that eliminates all of this. The top board has 4″ circles cut out of it with a circle cutting bit, the bottom board has 3 ¾” holes so the jars cannot fall through. Four dowels glued in hold the rack together. The jars should be filled no more than 1/3 full. After several weeks of sitting, the oil based paints will fall out/settle on the bottom of the jars. The now clear thinner can be carefully poured into a container, the settled paint sludge cleaned out of the jars, and the thinner poured back in. One quart of paint thinner will last me dozens of brush cleanings with excellent results, minimal waste and I’m now buying the high quality paint brushes for superior results to use them over and over.‘
So your brush goes through a clean in each jar, and the jars will work on a rotation – can three (the cleanest) becomes can two at some point; can two becomes can one, and can one gets cleaned out to become the new can three with fresh solvent.
Have you come up with any DIY product/time saving ideas? Let us know!
Sep 29
Could the days of mixing the two parts of glue together like our dads did be numbered?
DIY Doctor has, for a long time, promoted two-part adhesives. Over the years we have used hundreds of different adhesives for thousands of different jobs. For reliability and super strength we have returned to two-part araldite pretty much every time.
Then we received a sample of Araldite’s new product, Fusion Power Adhesive. It is a typical Araldite product in-so-much as it is a two-part adhesive, but unlike the others its all in one applicator. It mixes itself as you press down on the syringe type applicator and has the strength of every other Araldite product. The difference with this one is……It achieves that unbelievable strength in seconds rather than minutes or hours.
Araldite sent us half a dozen tubes (It is a one-shot, throw away product) and we got so exited after we used the first one, we ended up with a briefcase stuck to a wall “Just to see if it would” !
It did.
It truly is the king of adhesives and we can only hope Araldite have plans to bring out a 6 or 10 shot dispenser. It is a little pricey at £3.00 per shot, but when you have finally managed to mend something that you have been trying to fix for months, you might come to the same conclusion as us…….It’s worth every penny!
As part of the launch of this “wonder adhesive” Araldite have launched a new game on their website…. You can either
click here to go to their site or play the game below, it truly is great fun and (for fear of getting many abusive emails) you’ll be stuck to your computer screen for hours….I know, “Don’t give up your day job” !
By the way – Araldite Fusion can now be purchased from Screwfix and Focus!!!
