South Manchester Men in Sheds is currently 'locked down' due to the COVID-19 pandemic.  We will be meeting later this week (July 1st) via Zoom to discuss the procedures and policies required to enable us to open in a cautious manner over the coming weeks and as long as the external conditions improve

 

 Renovating a 1930's Sprung Rocking Chair

I brought a 1930s sprung rocking chair of mine which had begun to fall apart. I intended to try and get away with a few minor repairs but it was soon clear that it needed a lot more

Fortunately Nick was an expert at this sort of renovation and convinced me it was worthwhile to take it back to basics. The photos show Nick beginning to strip off the covering fabric, taking it down to the wooden frame and me sanding it down with full kit on - mask, anti-vibration gloves and power sander. Under Nick's tuition, next stage will be to repair the frame, then onto the upholstery stage

Nick starts to take the Chair apart and remove all the fabric and cushioning

Once Nick showed me what to do, I then removed the rest of the hessian and other coverings

I then spent ages removing all the tacks and as many of the staples as I could 

Using a very handy palm sander I sanded down as much of the wood as possible, concentrating on thise parts that wouldn't be covered by fabric

A lot of the wooden joints had come apart and needed to be carefully dowelled and glued together

 

Some strategic screws also had to be put in place. One or two splits in the wood  had to be fixed and sometimes new splits occurred. Nick's patience in this "two steps forward, one step back"form of progress was amazing

 

There was a lot of glueing and clamping involved, sometimes using straps rather than clamps. Niick showed me some handy tricks like using nails to keep straps in place, and clamping some difficult angled joins overnight and then only gluing them when they had been stressed into the correct position

 

 

One of the metal spring holders had broken, but Nick managed to fix it using a crimpers tool which enabled two pieces of metal to be connected to each other by compression 

 

 Whilst Nick was more than happy to move on to a re-upholstery stage, I decided I had learnt enough for one project. Fortunately, just half a mile away from the Shed there was C. McCormack, a re-upholsterer, who finished off the job for me. I got the material from "I Want Fabric" in Salford which had a warehouse full of upholstery rabrics to choose from. Job done!

 

Bernard enjoying the renovated rocking chair 

Concreting the Back Yard

  Concreting Day

We decided that the back yard needed concreting. After looking at the oprions we decided to go with pumping the concrete rather than using wheelbarrows. Thanks to funding by Southways Housing (our landlords) we were able to do this and today "Barrow Mix Pumping" came in the morning and completed the pumping, the tampoing and clean up in about 2 hours.

Chris had done a great job (assisted by others) in preparing the shuttering and eveyhing went very smoothly. There is a photo at the end with Aaron, Dan and Steads from Barrow Mix. They even refused to take the traditional tip for their hard work because we are a charity. Many thanks and what a great job you did

Concreting - the video

 

The Day after - all dry and ready to use

Community Workshop Sign

Pete and Nick with the new sign we've  put up at the front of the shop.

Pete is a skilled sign writer as can be seen by the photo of the sign he's made. "Community Workshop - come and learn a new skill" is to emphasise that we are open to all in the community

Saleem Pacha

                                      Saleem Pacha

Saleem Pacha mended bikes at the Men in Sheds for people in the local community on the Merseybak estate in Chorlton. He led our bike project and was critical to its success.

Saleem died in the early hours of New Year's Day. He was a taxi driver and his white Skoda was hit by a black Mercedes which led to his death and left four other men seriously injured

We are all shocked by Saleem's death and we have had to close our bike repair service until we can work out how we can best run it without Saleem's leadership

Ten or more of us from Men in Sheds were at his burial service on Jan 8th as were many members of the local community who came to pay their respects. A collection in his memory was made at the local corner shop on Merseybank parade and supported by MiS which raised over £1000 in his memory

We have accepted the donation of Saleem's tools and bike parts from Saleem's family and we are making and putting up a plaque to Saleem's memory in the Shed

Saleem, we all miss you badly and our sympathies are all with your family and many friends on the estate

building a fold-down workbench

building a fold-down workbench

Sandra and Chris are building a fold-down workbench in the projects room upstairs

 

 And here it is finished...