What do you diy?

[ellipsis]

I thought that it might be useful to have a thread where people can post what they do themselves. That way other people who are curious about diy a
certain product or service can ask others about it.

I harvest/glean, split and stack a lot of my own wood. I do a little work on my car. I gather and filter veggie oil to fuel my car. I make my own compost and grow my own lettuce. I am in the process of making a knife from a file.

[pastradamus]

Good stuff from the OP. I work a lot with cars myself. Turning old cars into lightweight rally cars by adding various components and removing heavy parts etc...I also do a bit of carpentry and woodturning and some welding too.

[The Ben G]

I make my own Shirts, Doctor up My jacket (with patches, safety pins, buttons, ect.), Grow my own plants, and doctor up musical equiptment.

[ellipsis]

Good stuff from the OP. I work a lot with cars myself. Turning old cars into lightweight rally cars by adding various components and removing heavy parts etc...I also do a bit of carpentry and woodturning and some welding too.
yah I drive a huge hulking deisel which I would love to reduce the weight of for fuel efficiency. Besides removing the back seats and spare tire, what is easy to do?

[ls]

Good stuff from the OP. I work a lot with cars myself. Turning old cars into lightweight rally cars by adding various components and removing heavy parts etc...I also do a bit of carpentry and woodturning and some welding too.

Feel free to post some pictures of the cars, I'd like to see what you do with them. Same for you theredson. :cool:

[ellipsis]

Believe me, I would love to. Security concerns make me reluctant to do so.

[ls]

Nevermind then, do you that to bikes too?

[ellipsis]

I don't work on bikes, unfortunately. I forgot that I also forage/gather/eat wild food (berries, apples, etc.) and make my own apple sauce and berry/grape preserves. I use apples that I glean from people's trees or pick from old trees at my house and use wild berry to make jams. I get the grapes from one of my gardening clients who just like how they look.

[Knight of Cydonia]

i screen printing my own shirt.

[Pirate turtle the 11th]

My fence.

[ellipsis]

My fence.
Barbed wire or electric? Or metaphorical?

[Pirate turtle the 11th]

Barbed wire or electric? Or metaphorical?

Wooden. stupid thing is too weak in strong winds and requires sorting out every couple of weeks.

[Dr. Rosenpenis]

get a post pounder

[Jimmie Higgins]

I wash my own clothes at the laundromat.:lol:

I do some silk-screening and I make my own zines on liberated paper from work:
http://ny-image2.etsy.com//il_430xN.49820758.jpg
And buttons:
http://ny-image3.etsy.com//il_430xN.50553847.jpg
And I don't know how to resize images!

[ellipsis]

Is that button saying that black people are watching the cops? A la bpp community patrols?

[Jimmie Higgins]

Is that button saying that black people are watching the cops? A la bpp community patrols?
Yeah, it's a stylized version of Huey P.

[ellipsis]

Both are sweet designs, kudos.

[Sugar Hill Kevis]

That first image is mint.

I DIY'd a series of pint glasses from vodka bottles when I was in the USA... unfortunately I left them all there. That aside, just a bunch of arty faff.

[ellipsis]

I also do my own landscaping and lawn mowing. I cleared an over grown area, planted the aforementioned lettuce bed and put down a stone patio with stone from my houses old foundation.

If people were wondering about the knife made from a metal file, all you have to due it heat the file up really, really hot and then let it cool surrounded by wood ashes. I did it in my cast iron wood stove. This burns off the annealing the metal in order to make the steel less brittle and softer/ easier to sharpen. The slow cooling is important to reduce the chance of cracking the metal. Once is it cooled down you have sharpen in with a file or angle grinder.

[Manifesto]

I can do origami :p

[Manifesto]

And I don't know how to resize images!
And for this one solution is to download gimp then resize it and upload it to imageshack (http://imageshack.us/).

[ellipsis]

If people are looking to compost here is some advise:

Variety is key but not in a chaotic way; be creative in choosing what to add to your compost. Food compost should be added periotically, lawn clippings and some brush should be added in alternating layers, wood ash from your stove, old bags of potting mix. Don't add anything weedy or diseased.

Aeration is extremely important; decomposition is an aerobic chemical process. Latch four wooding pallets together in a square rather than putting in in a pile or buying a special barrel or what not. Mix it with a shovel every so often.

Mix in with potting soil, work it into a garden or leave it on top as mulch.

[ellipsis]

I hiked into the woods and cut a christmas tree for my mother today.

So yah I am really trying to jump start/increase the usage of this sub-forum. As such I am going to keep posting on this thread, even if I am talking to myself.

[ellipsis]

Feel free to post some pictures of the cars, I'd like to see what you do with them. Same for you theredson. :cool:

I just patched a hole in the underbody of my car with Bondo and replaced a headlight. The headlight was troublesome and I feel like I had to break the bracket to get the old light out, but it went back together fine.

[Ovi]

I gather wild mushrooms and pickle them (though I haven't done that for a couple of years) and make my own soap :p ; way better than the commercial crap.

[ellipsis]

I sewed up my old WWII duffel bag in prep for traveling today.

I also have been working on that knife, I heated/cooled it X3 and burned out a lot more annealing, shaping is much easier going now.

[Pawn Power]

What is the deference between DIY and simply doing shit? I do a lot of things-- what makes them DIY?

[ellipsis]

Not much, but I think DIY, and I could be wrong is learning to do things which you could pay somebody to do, like renovation or car repair. Rather than buy a knife i.e. paying for it to be made for me, I am making one out of an old file.

[IcarusAngel]

I notice many people here make their own shirts. What is an easy way to get started with doing that. I have a T-Shirt transfer thing from Avery. It's old and it's for bubble/ink jet printers. Do those work at all or do i need more expensive equipment. What kind of shirt do you buy that allows for a good transfer?

[ellipsis]

Cotton i imagine, but i dunno I have never used those. If that doesn't work, try a stencil and spray fabric paint. If you have friends in college who do art, they might be able to help you do a better job.

[ellipsis]

I was at the mechanic today to get a free estimate, he told me one thing i know that I didn't know how to do and one repair I did know how to do, replacing a fuel line that connected to the fuel filter. They quoted me 45 dollars to do it, which i refused. After i got the car back, i went next door to get the hose from the auto parts store. so instead of spending 45 bucks i spent 97 cents and two minutes doing it myself.

[The_Cruekid]

I take it on myself to make business' and corporations pay for their junk mail heavily. Take a brick and wrap it up and then stick/sellotape their prepaid envelope to the front. They get charged by the post office according to weight.

[Delenda Carthago]

Another good idea is a community barber shop.Some comrades that know the profession,doing it a couple hours per day.Something like that has started last month in Exarheia and I think its a very good idea!

[ellipsis]

these last two posts, while potentially helpful are quite off topic.

[Chambered Word]

I'm wondering - as a 15 year old - what I should try DIYing. I'm considering making my own punching bag for practise for starters.

[ellipsis]

Look through this sub forum for ideas. Punching bag hmmm maybe a canvas bag with a bag of sand inside with a layer of padding.

[Chambered Word]

Look through this sub forum for ideas. Punching bag hmmm maybe a canvas bag with a bag of sand inside with a layer of padding.

I might try this sometime, thanks. :)

EDIT: I'm just wondering how I could get my hands on really cheap plain shirts (black, white, red, maybe green ones). Perhaps I should try buying some from a wholesaler? I'd like to start making leftist T-shirts to sell to people cheap.

[Delenda Carthago]

Look through this sub forum for ideas. Punching bag hmmm maybe a canvas bag with a bag of sand inside with a layer of padding.

a carpet in some garbage bags can be too!

[ellipsis]

I might try this sometime, thanks. :)

EDIT: I'm just wondering how I could get my hands on really cheap plain shirts (black, white, red, maybe green ones). Perhaps I should try buying some from a wholesaler? I'd like to start making leftist T-shirts to sell to people cheap.

Try discount stores like tj max or thrift stores.

[Liberateeducate]

I have 3-4 years experience in construction/home improvement so if i need a plumbing, electrical, or basic home repair 99% of the time i do them myself, as well as all the repairs for my other families apartments or homes.
I repair bikes sometimes, but i dont have a lot of the specialty tools to do harder stuff, and don't want to really buy them.

i also make stencils and patches, but who doesn't do that!:laugh:

[AntiFASH]

Let's see:

I do internal combustion engines, both gasoline and diesel. I can do brakes, electrical, suspensions, and manual transmissions on cars. Forget automatic trannies, that shiz is run by elves or something. I never got into racing, but I do have a lift kit and off road tires on my Isuzu. Someday I'm going to do one of those diesel to veggie oil conversions.

Other than cars, I've worked in shops that do everything from front end loaders to air compressors to sump pumps.

I can do some metal working and fabrication. It's not my thing though, a lot of the byproducts from cutting torches and lathes play hell on my asthma. It's too bad, I REALLY like metal working. I just learned how to forge knives out of mill bastard files and timing chains. That's a trip, I'd recommend trying it if you know anyone with a forge.

I do some electrical, mostly small shit. I can do basic solder and repair on laptops. I really like building and fine tuning SW radios. I used to work summers installing CCTV cameras for yuppies. Fuck, I hated the clients. But I learned all sorts of neato tricks for monkey wrenching the hardware ;). My current project is a magnetic loop antenna. FWIW I'm in the running for an electrician's apprenticeship through the IBEW. I want to go lineman though, so I don't know how much use that will be for you home repair needs.

I can swing a hammer. It seems like every other weekend I'm doing some home remodeling project with my dad or uncle...

I own a dremel. If it can be monkeyed with, I will monkey with it :rolleyes:.

Hate to say it, but I really enjoy building and refurbishing military surplus and semi auto firearms. Due to the forum restrictions, that's all I'm sayin' on that. It's a fun hobby though, if you can separate yourself from all the right wing batty bullshit. Thanks to the internet, I hardly ever have to suffer the morons at the tacticool gun stores... For the record, if Obama were to outlaw all assault rifles tomorrow I'd be the first in line at the ATF exchange.

I like playing with airbrushes. I got into this after I painted a longboard I had in high school. I'm not very good though.

I'm starting to get into bikes. My girlfriend has been taking me to her bike club meetings. I may end up exchanging guns for bicycles. I can't afford both, and frankly I'm enjoying the fuck out of my DIYer fixie. Yeah, I know.. hipster scum and all that ;)

[ellipsis]

Great list, I'll have to contact u about working on my desiel.

[AntiFASH]

By all means. If I can't give you a good answer, then I'll find someone who can.

[punisa]

I do my own CMS from scratch (geeks will know what I'm talking about:lol:)
I grow my own tobacco.

[Code]

Spray paint stencils (small and large)
little electrical gizmos
patato guns, homemade produce mortars, etc
patches, stickers, and altering buttons
and other random stuff that I come up with