James Alun

Wow, had me fooled.

I don’t know much about snakes but the head shape definitely isn’t a colubrid (rat or corn snake)or even python it looks more like a viper head, which could be some sort of rattle snake.

I’m hoping dad will transition to the mobility scooter when the time comes to stop driving, the same as grandad did.

Dad has just retired and is loving his free buss pass…

I change it every time the damn thing stops working properly after checking tension and thread routing.

In theory I change it when I change types of fabric.

Just a thought for anyone who struggles using a hand riveter because of grip strength. I use a lazy tongs riveter which uses your arm strength instead.

I’ve mentioned it over on the Tool thoughts for women thread. It’s a good resource for anyone. Because I have arthritis starting in my hands I use makita’s 12v range instead of the industry standard 18V and other wrist saving tools.

Thanks Pearl, pictures and videos are a good idea.

Maybe this is a question for a different thread, but I only thought to mention the lazy tongs because Jay said they struggle with the hand riveter. I’m not very good at mind reading. Are there other tools that you’re struggling with that we may be able to offer suggestions?

I was looking at rescuing wheelbarrow thread and saw a comment from Jay about not using rivets.

I’ve got some sort of arthritis and so I can’t use a standard riveter. Instead, I use a lazy tongs riveter, it uses arm strength instead of grip strength to compress the rivets.

I had my learner licence for about 8 months and did all of the family driving including holidays, about 5000 miles.

We have lots of lanes locally and 3 cities 30 mins away on the motorway, so quite a high level of diversity.

Our winters are a bit sporadic for snow, so Dad insisted that my brother and I spent some time on a skid pan to learn how to control the car with little to no grip. The Scandinavians have it as part of their training and I think it should be standard.

I also did my full motorbike licence which is theory, traffic free practical test and traffic test.

Hi Carla, sorry you're right. My experience of driving in the US was on a moped on Oahu and a road trip from Vegas up the coast road to Seattle. I wasn't impressed with how much people would veer around in their lanes

My friend is from Virginia ( I don't know more specifically) who has spent her adult life mostly in cities. She works in a medical lab and taught under and postgrad (much cleverer than me).

The roads I'm talking of are single lane, around 8.5-9 foot wide, hedges or dry stone walls either side. But I'm also not thrilled when people can't reverse in a straight line bouncing on the rev limiter. If I can't hear the gearbox whine, you're not reversing fast enough!

But more seriously, the number of times in the US and Australia I saw near misses that could have been avoided with proper observations was unsettling.


Also, I have to declare a conflict of interest. I'm a member of FuckCars on Reddit. I'm very firmly in the camp that cars should not be used in cities and that there are better alternatives for about half the journeys in towns and villages IF the infrastructure is well designed.

The US was built on the railroads, what happened?