converse320

I've had good results with Zinser Allcoat paint on plastic before. Its not textured, but would give a lowish sheen black finish on both wood cab and plastic tube. A litre is about £17, which would obviously do a lot of tubes. I'm still going to try dye plus a satin clearcoat for the cab. I've had good results finishing kitchen worktops like this.

I ran a small building/development company for many years. I started out happy to lend tools out, but found it never ended well. The last straw was a friend who borrowed a super-expensive fine-finish sanding machine. They said they wanted to use it to refinish a kitchen table. So it came back in its box, with about 100 dead sanding disks in the box, and a strong smell of burning electrics. It was completely destroyed. "Yes, started playing up when I got to the last corner of floor" she said. "I'll happily pay for it to be fixed." Stupid woman had sanded the whole of her downstairs floor with it, using 400 and finer grit!!! When the repair quote came back, she suddenly remembered it hadn't been working properly when I lent it to her. So to save embarrassment, I just stopped lending.

Scrivener's great for planning - its like a big pin board full of labeled envelopes that you can stuff things into. Honestly, brilliant software.

Scrivener is brilliant in my opinion. It's more a project management tool for writing than just a simple word processor, and I like the way it almost forces you to organise your thoughts rather than just writing stuff. But my wife hates its for the same reason. Definitely worth a look, it suits the way I think.

This sounds remarkably like a job to me. The job ad reads like a contract of employment. There are hours listed. There's a form of job description describing what the role will be. How can they possibly get round minimum wage legislatiion?

This. I've got one too. Really good protection, and cheap.

No, thats not what I meant. One Plus refused to supply a VAT receipt, and claimed their supply was VAT exempt because of a deal they had done with HMRC. Most UK retailers will happily give you a VAT invoice showing VAT component if you ask for it. We're VAT registered, so can claim back the VAT on most business purchases through our VAT returns. A mobile phone bought from most suppliers will have a VAT component - but not oneplus.

The whole VAT thing for some major companies is just weird. I bought a phone from OnePlus last year, and they refused to provide a VAT receipt, as the VAT was "Included" in the price, but not actually charged. Meaning their phones are actually 20% more expensive than they look if you can claim VAT back, which I can. They claimed they had negotiated a deal whereby they were VAT exempt in return for a payment to HMRC. Our finance person said EU rules oblige companies to provide a VAT receipt on request, but I only managed to get one from OnePlus by threatening legal action. These large companies have a very tilted playing field in their favour.

Shame about the parts no show, but looks great. Nice colour too. Mine is dark sludge.

Mines going to be green lacquer with chrome corners. Badge looks great, nice job.

I get all my weird and wonderful fixings requirements from Suffolk Fasteners in Ipswich. If you have an original they'll probably be able to match it reasonably closely. But I'd try Aria as first port of call - I spent ages trying to match some 80s Mesa Boogie D-180 screws and then found out MB had them in stock for a not ridiculous price.

Seriously well done Stevie.

My local Aldi was doing perfectly serviceable looking big clamps with deep jaws at £3.99 a go last week.

I've used Autoglym car polish with success.

Just in case someone else is annoyed by chips and gouges in their old Mesa amp. At 4.99 for a tube with brush, Halfords satin black touch up paint is an exact match for the older amps. Well, a 1985 D-180 anyway. I know, the chips are mojo. But I hated them.

I wasn't meaning to cut up a a real 250! Naim used a published circuit and decent clone mono were PCBs available at one time.

Curious as to the choice of Class D for this project, given the difficulties of maintenance and repair if anything goes wrong. I've had a home made FRFR powered cab going for nearly 30 years, amp of which is basically half of a Naim 250 with a mic level, guitar level and line level inputs. Its been completely bomb proof and sounds fantastic.

Did you try the distributor for this repair? Curious as to what they said if you have. I try not to buy anything that can't be repaired as I'm trying to reduce my footprint on the planet. So I have a lot of old stuff.....

I'll take a kit with crossover as well please Stevie. Very nice work.

I had an Ampeg Portaflex 20T for bass practice that I thought was OKish for bass, though didn't make it sing. When I finally managed to get my hands on the bass amp I'd been looking for since I started playing, I let my daughter have the ampeg for her guitar practice. It makes a MUCH better guitar amp than a bass amp, IMHO. Very varied tones, and finally the missing overdrive appears. I think it likes to see quite a high output pickup, other than that, I'd recommend trying one as bass or guitar amp. All valve, 4Ohm or 8 Ohm and you don't need a cab connected. There should be some cheap ones around as Kenny's were selling them at £275 until quite recently.

Well we need to start using local timbers, and that neck looks great. Wincing at the sight of that bass facedown on the concrete though.

I've got the big Makita 1/2" router, but the only time I use it is for solid wood worktops, and then only reluctantly. Its all very well having "tools that are man enough for the job", but a big 1/2" router can be pretty hairy unless used with extreme care. My big Makita is going in my new router table........ I think of the little Makita as simply a motor unit. It will do pretty much anything I need, and does it really well with the right accessory. Haven't used the DeWalt, but a lot of carpenters like their stuff so I'm sure it would be good too.

I have 4 routers. This Makita is the one I use nearly all the time. Its super light, very low vibration and powerful enough for 95% of all jobs. You can get a plunge attachment for it which works well.