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Found 444 results for the keyword ‘Techniques’

  • How to cut frozen food

    While the TV chief Christine Cushing was in my TV shop, I challenged her to use one of her many knives to cut a small portion out of a frozen food package. My technique was to use a jig saw with a course cutting wood blade. Christine now wants a jig saw in her kitchen.
  • TABLE OF INSULATING MATERIALS

    This is a quick summary table of all the common types of thermal house insulation. You can find details on each material by looking up "insulation" then "types".
  • Save your Sandpaper

    If your sandpaper for your power tools are plugged up but not worn out you can get a crepe block that you simply push into the running sandpaper and the clogs come out. If you can't find a true crepe sandpaper cleaning block, use an old pair of crepe soled shoes. They work just as well.
  • Melamine Paint -- Plastic Enamel -- and getting paint smooth.

    Every paint is formulated to maximize some special characteristic, and that often means sacrificing other desirable characteristics in that particular paint. No one paint can be everything to everybody.One of the most common trade-offs in making paint is "ease of application" vs. "durability".Pl...
  • Painting plywood edges.

    A rough plywood shelf edge will not look good if you simply paint it with the rest of the shelf.Even after sanding it smooth, it will not take paint well. And if you are going to paint the shelf, you shouldn't waste your time and money trying to put glue-on trim on the edge.To get it to look good...
  • Stopping knots from showing through paint.

    Resin in softwood knots can stay active for years, and bleed slowly through most paints, even if the wood has been kiln dried. The only way to really stop the bleeding is to use a shellac to seal in the resins.Shellac is not a very strong finish but has the unique characteristic that it allows n...
  • How do you get the porcelain touch up to actually work?

    When part of the porcelain paint pops off of metal sinks, your only DIY recourse is to use the little bottles of touch-up.First you have to find one that is the right colour, not always an easy task.Then you have to get it to stick. The manufacturers all say to just clean the surface and then ap...
  • TIP: Picking up metal shavings from a drill.

    Jim from Windsor, Ontario has a really good suggestion for getting metal shavings away from the area where you are drilling a hole. Simply place some magnets around the hole an inch or so away and the shavings will all fly away from the drilling area and collect on the magnets. It really works.
  • Tip: Marking ABS to line up plumbing joints

    Tim from Winnipeg sent in the useful suggestion that you use a china marker to put line-up marks on your rough fitted ABS joints so that when you take it all apart and then go to glue it back together, everything lines up as you had planned. If you don't have a china marker handy, use the white ...
  • Paint Edger tools.

    We have all seen painting pads, some even with wheels that allow us to paint easily right up to an edge.EZ Paintr is a company that has developed the first real advance in pad painters, now distributed by Rubbermaid.They have finally made a pad painter that is a true cross between a brush and a r...