The Eagle (was fixed and) has landed

OK, so it is not an eagle, but we could not resist the heading. Phil explains what he did ‘There were many faults with this tricky little project. The marble base was broken with chunks missing and an attempted previous repair to a corner that had been glued back in misalignment. The taxman – err sorry, I stand corrected – the vulture also had loose metal dowels drilled into the bottoms of the claws that were being used as fixing pins to the base. These had broken the claws apart and the back part of one of the claws was completely missing…

Quick thinking of how to rebuild the missing part of the claw and looking around to see what was at hand that could possibly be utilized – I decided to use the stirrer to get the basic shape of the missing part then build up in layers with a compound until it looked similar to the other foot.
The marble base was filled and smoothed with the same compound to neaten it up and give it strength ready for refitting the bird…

Some glues can take an age to set, but the potions I use are fairly instant. You will have to visit the next meeting and physically read the label to find out what they are..’

Judy and Bernie

January 2020 Repair Cafe

Volunteers Judy and Bernie would like to share with you their thoughts and feelings about our January Event. Bernie role was to distribute jobs to the Electrical, Electronics and IT repairers and Judy was on Reception with Jane.

We have a lot of happy repairers, form fillers, team runners etc. volunteering with us and here are a few of the things that our amazing repairers fixed.

Steve Fox ‘of the cheeky face’ had taken a musical toy box home to work on it under less pressure. The doll had toppled and was preventing the moving parts from turning. He cleaned it up and reassembled it. The doll revolves, the soldiers march around the fort, and the top spins!

Although we don’t have the tools to dismantle and reassemble watches, Alan, one of our valued volunteers repaired a Garmin Sportswatch which had been used in the sea. He cleaned the badly corroded contacts and hey presto, his delicate touch paid off!

We saw a Panasonic personal radio cassette player, like the ‘Walkman’ that was fashionable in the 1980’s. Our visitors really like cassette players because you can easily record on them, pause them and resume where you left off. Sadly it had been designed to be unrepairable and our repairer couldn’t open the case without risking breaking it.

The Electrical area was becoming really cramped and busy. Nigel, who runs The Palm House, changed the arrangement of tables which made a huge difference, and Mel, our PAT tester, has now got his own table, in the main repair area.

Mel also enjoys carpentry, fixing bikes, tinkering with electrics and is great at fixing vacuum cleaners.Here he is happily mending a fire.

Everyone likes a cuppa, and our fixers are no exception (Andrew admits to being a tea bucket). We now have dedicated drinks makers who keep our volunteers happy and the fixers fixing.

Bernie Searle and Judy Luffman