Tale of a sander

[Dan McCosh]

Years ago, I bought a Ryobi detail sander, which pretty much didn't work, so I put it on the shelf. Later I was using a Fein, which I liked, and ended up using the scraper blade attachment to cleanoff bulging hull seams. Then the Fein was lost/stolen, and I was looking around for a power scraper replacement. Eying the old Ryobi, I ended up attaching a portion of a putty knife to the shoe. It worked pretty well, unlike the sanding role. Then I looked up the sander on Ryobi's web site, and discovered they in fact offer a scraper option. So much for my patent application.

[Wild Wassa]

Originally posted by Dan McCosh:
"So much for my patent application."

When I first started painting, in the olden days, we would often make scrapers out of glass, or just use a broken bit that suited the shape to be scraped.

I talked to an old Dutch painter yesterday, who told me he used glass to make throw-away scrapers for use on difficult shapes. I'm going to go back and try glass on one or two tricky bits ... cut the glass to the shape needed. A couple of layers of masking tape cover the non cutting edges, this saves fingers and gives a bit of grip.

He also told me what Australian trees were suitable (for collecting different coloured resins) to make different coloured varnishes, I feel that if I told you, a US company would patent the idea.

A US company has put a patent on the Ug boot ... an Australian icon. This has effectively put 50 Australian companies out of business in the last 6 months ... Ug boots have been seen recently selling for $2,000US a pair ... but Ug boots come with high heels now.

You can still buy an ugish type boot in Oz but they are just called sheepskin boots now, and are as little $30-$50AU a pair, over here. I won't tell you what the nickname for the sheepskin type boot is ... because that could be stolen as well.

Warren.

[ 12-18-2004, 08:55 PM: Message edited by: Wild Wassa ]