adam and eve it

This week I have discovered some new and interesting truths - well, they may only be interesting to me but I'm banking on them being possibly useful to others;

Last weekend I used some of that I Can't Believe It's Not Nails that I'd picked up at Homebase. Well, I'll tell you straight: it isn't anywhere near a reasonable replacement for old fashioned nails and a good hefty hammer.

All winter, my eye had been offended by the sight of the bird feeder in our garden. It leaned at an angle so acute that it looks like it arrived in the garden by a passing javelin thrower rather than your conscientious author armed with a dibber, a stout mallet and a well-calibrated spirit level. I don't know whether it was cats, squirrels or just really fat birds, but I guessed, whichever it was, the soft ground wasn't up to the job.

Now the birds didn't seem to mind but it did make refilling inefficient. So I thought let's fire the dirt and go for a heavy stand instead - this would also facilitate moving the feeder around the garden, maybe allowing me to get some photos from the patio windows or something. I had some fence post offcuts which were perfect and after I'd cut them to size, chamfered the ends and chiselled out some cross-halvings the whole thing began to look pretty good, even if I say so myself.

So naturally I chose to reject coarse nails in favour of the more aesthetic adhesive and reached for the glue gun to applied it to the cross joint with gusto. It spread remarkably easy, a bit like toothpaste, and as I clamped the pieces tight it looked exactly like toothpaste oozing out from the joins. After 4 hours left drying, I realised I might as well had used toothpaste. It showed an astounding reluctance to do the slightest amount of setting.

Of course, being male, it was only at this point that I consulted the fine print on the tube to discover Hard As Nails takes 24 hours to cure before handling. Who in their right mind is going to stand there holding the timber to a ceiling for a whole day, waiting for it to dry and support itself? Further investigation of the tube revealed it was Not suitable for use in damp environments, so, as a garden bird feeder stand it was hopeless from the start.

Half an hour and four no. 8 slot-head screws later the whole assembly was up and dinner was being served.