The Art of the Bodge

Drawer(?) of questionable quality scantlings, a soldered vent, and some tiles (feat. lots of PVC piping, zipties, and 2.5mm² copper wiring)

During a sunny scalding summer day, as I strolled through the local Yellow Gettin' Spot, a, frankly, repulsive ghastly image appeared in front of my eyes, shaking me to my core (of little effect, as I was practically melted right through), causing me to hurriedly leave the mirror and reach the plumbing/fireplace/chimney sexion, with a prominent listing of vents of all like three shapes and sizes, so in another bout of overheat-induced good choices, I obviously got one.

(Well, it's less of a good choice and more I needed to test out flame-soldering on some steel and making a drawer out of it was the first thing that popped into my head, but anyway.)
So, after a liberal application of an angle grinder and some dodgy (at best) clamping…

Fig. 1: the vent after a lengthwise cut and some delicious lead solder binding.

…We've something that vaguely resembles something.
Or, at least it better bloody do, after I put on welding gloves in the smelting summer oven and probably almost blew myself up filling up this damn "pencil torch", which, in addition, gave up the damn ghost right after this (nothing like Quality Products™ for two and a half bux' equivalent).
So, how does one make anything into something?

Fig. 2: a very coherent design drawing set, clearly written by someone without executive order dysfunxion and in one sitting.

By drawing the damned thing. Well, it would help if one didn't take two bloody attempts before arriving at a sensible top termination/brace solution (because while everyone has tools at home, not everyone has a resident engineer therein) (also note how at two different times I'd drawn the drawers I'd come out with two different depth measurements, which is Fun™).
With that drawn (and consulted against the material I had at hand in basement), then, let's roughly trim it down.

Fig. 3: An artistic interpretation of those 22x55x150 (or I guess not anymore) scantlings being cut; not pictured: the top brace chunks.

WARNING: always be exercising caution when operating power tools, and adhere to the manufacturer's (and, more importantly, common-sense) markings.

Well, that's a mitre saw, and I'd rather not lose an eye (less likely, I was wearing glasses, glasses, and a facemask, I don't fucking trust that thing) or leak guts (more likely, I don't have any abdominal protexion) when trying to trim it to even lengths, let's apply some, cough, engineering:

Fig. 4: an absolute marvel thereof, actually worked quite good, surprisingly (despite almost striking me with heat, but eh).

Now that's better, innit – they're actually recognisable as legs (one even has a knee (after a fashion(?))), so it's time to buy some screws (because in three boxes of screws I have on hand there are none that) – 40x3, so they get good grip but don't poke through – and apply them:

Fig. 5: okay, look; the timestamp says it's 3:39, so I take no responsibility for how shit this photo is (but I do take it for the fact that it's the only one I took after deciding it's good enough).

Now, after sleeping, rolling a finger in on a threaded taper of a woodsplitter (thereby splitting mine), and finishing up the drawers,

Fig. 6: now, after deburring and lacquering, she's looking feisty, probably from the blood drained off me during filing.

And, well, thanking local gods for actually making my back-of-forehead calculations result in this nice of a tension-fit:

(Chunk one of four, got hit by size limit) #art-of-the-bodge #diy #makers #carpentry

Fig. 7: The frame, standing upright on its own for the first time, filling me with maternal pride.

And with that, the job is done!
Well, a drawer would preferably have things in it (like, dunno, drawers), but let's do that after some testing, i.e. mounting a 12-inch-wild parts box (pretty damn wild, considering I bought it at a French store in Poland) because that's, frankly, just a tad hard.

So, considering this very much a bodge, this comes down to stuff I have in my wardrobe(? actually very angry at English for not having a good literal "szafa" analogue), basement, and just scattered around the house en général.
And so, out the wardrobe comes some 12mm ID/16mm OD PVC piping, out the basement come zipties, and out the house come copious amounts of tea. What can one do with those? The obvious (to me) answer was "weld them" but that's probably because I have yet to manage a successful weld on a plastic :v

Fig. 8: the only time I could say I smoked a fag (or, well, close enough, visually).

And that still has not changed (turns out that that PVC is not only laced with some additive that charred itself, but also isn't a good match for nylon), but it's defintely ruled out any welding (for now), so the next-obvious thing is just making a ninety-degree groove on both ends and sticking it on top of zipties' locks (not gonna hold much weight, but it doesn't need to, really).

Fig. 9: incredible; just… incredible engineering, Lavoisier'd be proud (also incl. my incredible file in newspaper in vice setup, pride likewise).

So, what does my dumb arse try to do next?
If you guessed "weld another piece of the pipe to this one" you're damned right.
Did it work?
Obviously not, come on, when does plastic welding work for anyone.

Anyway, next step is to add the supports going from the remaining corners. But what with, if welding didn't work?

Fig. 10: you know, there are some times, when you do a stupid solution and it works, where you think to yourself "this is just dumb", but this ain't one of them.

Electrical tape. Obviously it's fucking electrical tape.
But, you know it, works…

Fig. 11: you can't even see how badly this is bodged from here!

And quite goodly at that.

Now, the next logical part would be the drawers, but those turn out to require thinking, so let's do the top instead.
I don't've any flat wood(ish) parts big enough, so the next-best thing (and quite better, due to flood-resistance) is a piece of big ceramic bathroom tile I nicked (free of charge) when they were throwing them out a storehouse.

Fig. 12: you know the old design mantra "it's better when you turn it upside-down"? It was, but less practical, so let's stick with it being right-up.

So another trip to Green Homeless Deathspot Equivalent™ to get the DIAMOND TURBO DISC OF DEATH and liberal application of an angle-grinder later…

(Chunk two of four, got hit by size limit) #art-of-the-bodge #diy #makers #carpentry

Fig. 13: remember chil'ren: always cut tiles right-side-up so you don't nick the user-facing side.

WARNING #2: see WARNING.

…there seems to be something somewhat resembling a (table(?)/drawer) top, but how does one mount it?
The simplest solution would be to add protruding corners on the tile edges to limit its movement and roughly key it to the top, and, according to Occam's razor, it's therefore also the best, so let's do it!

But what could possibly be strong enough to hold up under the table, yet malleable enough to become formed to a nice 90-degree corneur?

Fig. 14: it's the return of the… oh, wait; no way, you're kidding – she didn't just bend what I think she did, did she?

Yeah, boiiiiii, that's right, it's our old pal, the 2.5mm² copper wire (as well as some acetone and a cyanoacryllic glue (not pictured: another packet since this one seized up, a syringeful of acetone to get that one to budge, couple chunks of wood and a clamp to get them to set properly)).

Fig. 15: Photoshop skills on par with glueing skills (take it as you will).

How-ever, afterwards, we're left with a pleasant scent of of a job goodly done (and actually down to spec, surprisingly enough).

So, this is it, it's what you eat, sleep, piss and shit; live, breathe– your whole existence just consists of this the moment where the drawer supports themselves are mounted.
The right side (i.e. the one that ends narrower-sexion-toward-user) is easier, because there's two surfaces, and the drawer is engaged on both of them, so if one just adds something to support that…

Fig. 16: it's ziptie madness, baby.

With the right side mounted right-cock-stiff, let's see what we can do about the harder left side.
You could, en theorie, employ an analogous system, with a narrower pipe, maybe like that one for the box, but what could possibly hold it up at such a distance? If only there was some part, possibly a cut-off of some previously-used one, that, with little work, could serve as a support for the narrower pipe?

Fig. 17: guns strong enough to pull apart nylon (which is to say: not necessarily very).

Note how, at the top, the leg-ziptie distance is bigger, leading to more tension on that side and more resistance to forces pushing down on the right, which is exactly what one wants in a unidirexional application like this. Actually, speaking of the devil, who's applying that force?

(Chunk three of four, got hit by size limit) #art-of-the-bodge #diy #makers #carpentry

Fig. 18: there were too many jokes with "lay" and "pipe" for me to insert all of them here.

It's the return of the oh, wait, no way, you're kidding smol pipe from earlier indeed, and that's exactly who; with surprising elegance, no rogue zipties sticking out, and the paint on all the pipes gets short work done of with a splash of acetone.

And, with that, the drawer is truly done. But a bodge would not truly be a bodge without feature creep, and the first feature that crept into my head was a grate on the side to hang things off of.
Usually, this'd be a nightmare to make, with either (a) assembling some weird tiny wood frame or (b) drilling even holes in sheet metal/board, but thanks to my thriftiness detrimental tendency to collect things that might be even slightly remotely useful…

Fig. 19: you know what they say: never throw anything away, and you might end up on TV one day, for one reason or t'other.

I had a some steel left over from a dead home theater (funnily enough, that same system also contained a half-kilogram heatsink, it's a sight to behold).
As for coupling them, the simplest non-ugly solution was to just solder them together:

Fig. 20: easy as embedded software: works beautifully up until it doesn't, and then it's a nightmare to fix.

The first two attempts consisted of vicing the deep end of the smaller piece then "gently" pushing the other one down, ensuring no cold joints.
Desoite that, though, they fell apart under even tiny amounts of torque, so I decided that that's exactly what's needed to make it work: the final solution ended up being two nuts being viced in, bolts slowly being driven thereinto, clamping the plates with the hot lead between them, which works to this day.

Now, the only thing left to do with this is mount it…

Fig. 21: it's supposed to be the soldier hanger, that never blows its composure construxion, even if it means carrying the weight of the whole world a couple things on its shoulders.

With, on the right, the screw I didn't quite manage to tighten all the way down, because my finger got, as mentioned previous, split right-half'n'two, and on the left a smaller screw that fits in that tiny hole:

Fig. 22: I've created a monster, 'cause nobody wants to see carpentry no more, they want 2.5mm² copper wires, I'm chopped splinters (okay, I'm not so sure of this one).

And, with that, our journey has come to an end, and naught is left but the tags, to thank you, the reader, for reading, and the final photo of our absolute monster of a creation:

Fig. 23: My (slightly misframed) son.

(Chunk four of four, got hit by size limit) #art-of-the-bodge #diy #makers #carpentry (it's a bit of a stretch, innit :v)