[Closed] Things your Dad made

Very nice

My dad is just finishing off a scratch built model of a Royal Scot (o - gauge) which I'm mighty proud of him for.

Wow, that's nice. If only he'd put a little Darth Vader behind one of the trees it would have been a win-win for you both. 😉

My Dad made (in the 60s and 70s until he got all management, cut his hippy locks and bought loads of blue ties):

Bookcases
Balsa wood powered planes
Rowboats

By the 80s, this had down-graded to:

Carved propellors for my broken Airfix hurricanes

Now, as far as I know, he just makes emails and pizza dough once a week.

There's a message there for us all.

The fastest sledge in the history of man in the right conditions. Made out of steel tube and timber. If it ever escaped from your grasp it usually ended in tears/maiming for the poor ****er further down slope that got in its way.

My dad made himself a deep freezer. Wooden framed, lots of loft insulation and the cooling gubbins from I'm not sure where. It sort of worked for six months or so after which he bought a proper one and converted it into a work bench. By his own admission he's probably responsible for rather more CFC emissions than most.

My dad made, repaired or built everything around the house. Electrics, plumbing, joinery etc. Absolutely everything. I even remember him fitting our entire house with double glazing. His garage has every tool known to mankind. Fully qualified mechanic too and spent many a happy weekend helping him spanner cars when I was a kid. Thankfully I learned a lot from him, though I still won't touch electrics. Seems to be a lost art nowadays. Most of the guys I work with couldn't even wire a plug and one guy gets tradesmen in to hang shelves and the like 😕

His last handiwork was helping my build a bike stand.

he had some mates to help him

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My dad was an electronics engineer

He made us:
A metal detector
A guitar fuzzbox
A home CB Radio set-up (old-school illegal one before that were 'cool'), complete with a bin lid for the base for our (W40?) aerial

He also made for the family
Step on security mats (for an alarm system)
x2 porches
A really crap treehouse

And probably lots of other stuff I can't now remember.

Me, and a catapult.

Right, I'm going to fill my flask and raise it to Dads with tools, past and present. Cheers!

My Dad made/designed and developed Nuclear Warheads for a mahooosive American Arms company.
He also made sheds, kitchens, fitted wardrobs, bathrooms and restored amongst other vehicles a TR6, TR4, BSA motorbikes and a Norton Commandos.

He also made me cry once or twice the git. 😆

When I was a lad I got to play in these all the time, sitting on my dads knee working the controls

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my mum cross, mainly.

My Dad was (now retired) a welder/fabricator by trade and made all sorts of stuff for the around the house, shelving units, wrought iron scroll stair spindles (well it was the 70's), outside coach lamps, etc. The thing I have, that I rescused when he was going to take it to the tip, is the set of car ramps he made when he was an apprentice. Nice solid ramps that are wider and higher than the tin pot ones you can buy in Halfords. I remember then being around from when I was little and used to 'help' dad working on the cars (Escorts and Capris, before it went down hill with Allegro and Ital).

A motorhome, out of a Bedford Luton van.

Like this but longer, blue-and-white and with better detailing...
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My Dad built our family home from scratch, on his own, while working a full time day job!
He's pretty handy at construction and has done pretty much everything there is to build!

BoardinBob - Member

When I was a lad I got to play in these all the time, sitting on my dads knee working the controls

You are Nizlopi and I claim my £5.

As he gets nearer to retirement my dad's getting more and more into his serious woodwork, he's always been quite handy but the stuff he's making now just brilliant.

1st thing he made for me: a solid oak workbench, complete with 2 record vices, to go in my own workshop when we finally move house, it's a straight copy of the one he uses, which my grand dad made just before WWII.

Can't buy that on Screwfix.

Nice hatter, you know that a bench and vice needs pics here.

My father spent a lot of time working away from home, so I don't recall much stuff.

But he did once find the time to make a cardboard aeroplane with me. It wasn't sophisticated, but it meant a great deal to me. (We also made Airfix models).

He made me who I am today.
I am happy with that

Thanks Dad 🙂

My dad did all the wood work in our house fitted kitchen three fitted bedrooms and freestanding furniture . Some of the nicest bits of mahogany still have brands and marks from the ships they were intended for (granddad was a ship's fitter) My dad also made and restored furniture for me that we have in daily use 15 years after his death.

It fills me with melancholy to recall what an ungrateful sod I was when about 5 or 6 he gave me my own carpenters bench tools and tool box that he had secretly made for me.

I was more grateful for the fold down table and storage draws he designed and built for my train set .a freestanding chest of draws that expanded to a room filling 7 foot By 4 . I only wish there was enough space in my modern home for my son to use it.

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😀

Well, he was on the team from ICI and Rank Hovis McDougall that developed it. Our freezer was always full of the bloody stuff, and that was before they had refined the texture, so it was unbearable rather than just disgusting to eat!

Loads of things - he made some gorgeous fitted bookshelves in their house, a folding high chair for me when I was a baby, and I still feel guilty we didn't reuse the beautiful wooden cot he made.

Now he makes oboe reeds.

As with others, my Dad made stuff, but he had help on some of the stuff.

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The Marina on the right.

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The concrete chimney.

In addition to that, he made our house (again, with some help) but being an engineer of the hands on variety, he did a lot of the work - much of it whilst the labour was laid off working full time on the Marina project above.

He also made a pretty cool tree house, and worked a lot on boats and old cars whilst we were growing up.

My Dad Passed away in October from Liver Cancer, we didn't have much growing up so he made pretty much everything.
That include houses, A restaurant from scratch to provide a living, all the storage, beds etc that we ever needed.
He made all of us kids realise that anything could be made if we needed it.
I was lucky enough to renovate 2 houses in France with him, one of which my mother still lives in.

Just sad that I didn't get to enjoy more of his retirement with him and I was looking forward to seeing what he could make without the time constraints he normally had through his working life.
RIP Dad 🙁

djglover - Member

Quorn

[s]Well, he was on the team from ICI and[/s] Rank [s]Hovis McDougall that developed it. Our freezer was always full of the bloody stuff, and that was before they had refined the texture, so it was unbearable rather than just disgusting to eat![/s]

FTFY

My dad made a unit of shelves in my bedroom when I was a kid. His considerable skills as a financial adviser proved not that useful, I later discovered he'd started at the top and worked down, all the screws were put into the shelves from above, 2 to each shelf in opposite corners so if you put anything heavy on them they turned upside down then fell on your feet. And once that had happened a couple of times the unit lost all its strength and collapsed on my head. Ironically while it spent its entire time while upright falling apart, it proved very solid once crushing me.

I love me dad but I wouldn't trust him to make a sandwich never mind a harrier jump jet. And his dad was a bloomin ships' engineer.

Beautiful flask, though a hidden Darth Vader (or Daft Invader as my Mum mishears it) would have been added a little something.

My Dad, an electrical engineer, made pretty much everything: a garage, then a 1-bed, 1-bath extension, doing the plumbing and electrics, the roofing, the works. He'd rebuild and restore classic cars, make bicycles for birthdays and a sledge with steel runners that went like runaway train and was just as solid. I can barely wire a plug but I'm a far better cook.

My dad tried to make many things but unfortunately they fell apart.
He makes a mean cup of coffee mind.

...me laugh
...me proud
...me thankful

My dad could make himself a pint of beer by pouring it from bottle to glass with a great deal of expertise. That's about all though.

Mum, on the other hand was a bit of an electronics whizz and would build and repair all sorts of stuff. My first stereo was a strange amalgam of parts that dated from 1930s to 1970s, but sounded blooming marvellous (and loud).

My old man was a Techie Teacher and made the following ranked in order of awezumness:

Allsorts of stuff from plastic like huge storage boxes and salad tongs!
Chess sets from wood
Ladders from teak to get into the attic bedroom
Fibre glass sailing dinghys x 3
Twin keel sailing yachts 4 berth x 3 (sold one to pay for the kits, him and his mate kept the other ones)
A 2 man Hovercraft
Crow Pie - I didn't get to eat this it was from his days in the RAF.

I forgot the most amazing wonderful thing he made

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My dad some research work for the European Space Agency back in the 60s making satellites in Holland. He then did some work with Scania Vabis in Sweden, it was a short term job as they employed him to do some sort of time and motion / productivity survey. He told them they could produce twice as much stuff in half the time. They sacked him.

His was pretty good at making go carts, the type with pram wheels, and like Wrightyson, killer sledges.

He once tried to pull some grass that had choked a cylinder mower with the engine running and almost lost a hand when he freed it. He also thought that tying a rope around his waist would be sensible when tensioning a falling tree limb. Thankfully he had a change of plan as the falling tree would have whipped the rope like a cheese wire.

He made a lot of jam, rhubarb and ginger, strawberry and raspberry, and sometimes marmalade

Boffins are shite at DIY.

My dad makes nothing, but when I was about 7 he made me a cavalry fort with the Alamo burned into the wood above the entrance, it was a belter , way better than any thing you could buy and bullet proof!!! It's only as I have got older I realise the hours he must have put in once we were in bed making it and it was all hand tools and an old electric drill!!! God wish I still had it to pass too my lad!!

Me dad knocked up a couple of these when we were young that we used to sail mostly at Anglesey.
What I learnt to sail in, and what I've mostly forgotten now.
Always remember the delightful sensation of getting smacked in the head with the boom!
😀

Mirror Dinghys
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Good times.

... me miserable and confused.

Things my dad made: boats, canoes, furniture... good on ya, dad.

things my dad made:

me, the man I am today
me proud
the best grandpa ever

miss you dad 🙁

Multiple complex Halloween outfits at about 24 hours notice, following 4 weeks of humming and hawing on my part.

These included:
A Tyrannosaurus Rex outfit
A full robot suit with shoulder mounted guns (non-working)
A Freddy Cruger outfit, complete with stabby razor glove

Cheers, Dad.

My Dad built most of the studio set for Rising Damp.

My dad made me a Meccano crane. It was 40 years ago and the last Christmas we spent together. And of course my dad made me (and made me ginger) - and I look just as he would have had he lived to be my age.

My grandad, however, made lots and lots of stuff; kids seats for bikes, a babyseat that clipped over dining chairs, half of the house furniture, a beautiful dolls house, you name it... I have his tool rack in my shed.

..about 60,000 pints of beer disappear
....me , my brother and sister very unhappy most of the time
...our crap Fiat Strada catch fire by inserting the battery backwards
...every single family 'event' a nightmare
...my mum a lonely widow

Among some of his working life achievements - the various moulds for the Black and Decker Paintmate (piece of crap) and various moulds for Max Factor.

Both customers were a royal pain in the arse, apparently...

..frequently came home seriously (10 pint) drunk
..never spoke to us kids, unless it was to belittle us
..treated my mother like a servant

A different world in the 60/70s!

A vareity of concrete window lintels for the house (and he fitted them himself on his own using a variety of ladders and dodgy scaffolding)
A yellow go cart with pram wheels and axles; it was very fast.
A bike rack out of box section that affixed/ slotted onto a towbar.
A 2 storey tree house
and
A device for holding sheep still whilst you clipped their feet/ got them ready for shows etc (don't ask) 😯

Aren't dads great.
Still got a pair of speakers he hand made.
What went on to become rogers ls3/5s which now gave this crazy cult following, and make mind worth a fortune ..

My dad made us a sledge out of scrap wood in the garage. It was that heavy we could only just drag it to the top of the hill a few times.

my Dad made people dance..

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My Dad hand rolled body panels for Jowett Cars http://yorkshiretimes.co.uk/article/Jowett--A-Story-Of-Bradford-Car-Manufacturing

When the factory closed he set up a car Bodyshop which was one of the first in the country to repair rather than replace damaged panels.

Bloody hell, bit dusty in here. The thought of all that love(or not)going into stuff.

My Dad made my Mum happy, which made me happy cos when she was happy she made the best pies EVER!
Both Dad & Mum were Awesome & I wish they were still around. 😥

my ol' man is bonkers. but in a good way.

my dad is one of those people who you wander up to as a kid and ask him about making a kart for kite buggying in and he teaches you to weld. so you can do it.
bearings for the wheels? he'll show you how to cut and balance the casters off a shopping trolley. which works so well your outpacing guys on shop bought ones.

he also showed me how to make an amazing 'chopper' bike out of a bmx and several other bikes that was really good as a steady cam for filming skating, and could happily carry two girls as passengers 🙂

he built homes for people and our family, often from scratch.
but its his backyard 'engineering' and urban foraging for materials that amazes me.

he taught me that if your willing to rummage through stuff that other people regard as waste and be willing to learn a skill you can make anything. up to and including passive houses. often for free.

long after he is gone ill always remember my dad knee deep in someones skip grinning cos he has just found something cool

[i]long after he is gone ill always remember my dad knee deep in someones skip grinning cos he has just found something cool[/i]

Sounds like my ex GF.

The 3 metal handtools (depth gauge, drill bit gauge and thing I can't remember the name of) for my GCSE Design & Realisation project. We got a grade C for that! And I should hope so, he was a precision engineer.

Also, just basic maintenance around the house and on the car. I can still remember him saying the words 'You have to know how to do these things, I won't be here forever'. I think I have something in my eye 🙁

And I'm trying not to keep stuff - old parts/offcuts of wood etc just in-case they come in handy.

My dad made a bloody good example of how to live a good life without money.
A very good fighter pilot.
An all round sportsman.
My bedroom furniture from old doors.
Me a wooden garage and farm from scraps of wood.
Me study hard so I could have a better standard of living than him.
The best grandpa in the world.
Me immensely proud of him.
Still love you Biggles even at 90,

Lots of fishing stuff. Floats, flys, contraptions that let out bait when it hit the river bed, catapults, tarps (years ahead of his time) all sorts even my first rod. He was an Electrician by trade and busy, so I guess that explains the hobby stuff. Sadly he passed away when I was 15.

Nice to see the mirror above. My dad found one that had been thrown on a tip and spent about a year rebuilding it.

This is the only thing I have a photo of.
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My dad designed roads and tunnels for a living. He built teak furniture and other things for a hobby.

For us kids he put up a legendary 60ft rope swing in a natural bowl in the forest near our house. Apart from the size of the swing and it's superb location the great thing was the tree it hung from was too hard for anyone else to climb and vandalise it(he climbed up to E2 standard in the 50s and 60s). After attaching the rope he descended using a classic abseil.

My dad made me. My wife wishes he was here with us and she could have met him, so could question where my bad habits came from. 🙄
He would have made a great granddad. But sadly never was to be. 20 years this year and still miss him like mad. 🙁

The fastest sledge in the history of man in the right conditions. Made out of steel tube and timber. If it ever escaped from your grasp it usually ended in tears/maiming for the poor **** further down slope that got in its way.

bloody hell my dad made me one of those, and cos he had access to a welder but not a pipe bender it went to sharp angles at the front. lethal, to the other kid.

My dad built a house...it was a house builder scheme in Aberdeen in the 70's.

My Dad made a horrendous drunk, everyone around him thoroughly miserable and (on various occasions) my sister, my mum and me terrified. That's about the sum total of what my Dad made.