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Comment by Vinnl | Hacker News Reader

Unrelated, but I'd already get stuck at this step:

> I don't have a tool to make a big enough hole, but with a little research I find out a hole saw is the way to do it. It's an open-ended drum with serrated saw teeth that you mount on a drill to do the cutting. I go to my local hardware store, get some advice on what to get, and buy a 60mm hole saw.

Just the idea of buying a whole new machine for a single use, and not even knowing for sure whether it'll do the job, is already so demoralising that I'll usually just stop and hope that an alternative approach magically presents itself to my mind's eye.

Interestingly I don't usually have this problem when programming, but I really don't like DIY.

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> Just the idea of buying a whole new machine for a single use, and not even knowing for sure whether it'll do the job, is already so demoralising that I'll usually just stop and hope that an alternative approach magically presents itself to my mind's eye.

It's actually not a machine, it's a thing that attaches to a drill [0]

[0] https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bi-Metal-Cutting-Plastic-Drywall-Pl...

Oh yeah fair enough, haha. I know little enough about DIY, then add in the fact that I get even less practice talking about it in English (not my native language), and mistakes like these are just waiting to happen.

Easily done. I think one of the problems with the DIY space is that it's pretty unforgiving for someone to enter into - there's an assumed level of knowledge and there's little to no patience in the community to teaching that level of knowledge. If you hang out on the reddit DIY spaces, you'll see it flips from "yeah you can do that no problem yourself" to "you need a professional, why would you ever attempt that" very quickly, with very little explanation as to _why_. (FWIW, they're usually right).

There are many work arounds.

Cutting a hole isn't an issue for me here, we have a multi-slotted circle that takes a variety of round serrated cutting blades for making holes .. and it fits in all the drills we have. It dates from the 1960s.

However .. if forced to cut a hole away from the chock full of everything tool shed I'd probably scribe a circle, drill a large hole with a drill bit just inside the circle, and put a hacksaw blade through to hand cut it.

Or drill a lot of holes close together just inside the circle, punch out the inner donut and clean up the edges.

Usually there's a plastic insert (in picture of article IIRC) that fits in the hole and has a lip that covers up any ugly rough hole cuts.

DIY is remarkably like programming in the sense of there often being many ways to skin a cat, search for text, or create a hole.

I don't go as far as stopping entirely. But it is part of why it takes me significantly longer to do physical DIY projects as I tend to overanalyze before I get started and the same when I do encounter an issue.

> Interestingly I don't usually have this problem when programming, but I really don't like DIY.

The cost both in equipment, wasted materials and potential irreversible (or at least difficult to restore) damage are factors for me. With programming the cost of exploratory problem-solving is mostly time.

It is however a reason why I opt against self hosting critical, to me, stuff where the impact of things done wrong are again higher (think data loss of personal files).

Yeah that is absolutely true, I have the same issue again if my software projects require special/new hardware.

I love tools. Especially well-built, "buy-it-for-life" type tools. Love love love 'em. If I had a big enough house, I'd buy every tool under the sun. I have two festool stacks of cabinets filled with each and every screw driver, drill bit, wrench, saw, ruler, etc. I've got a little drill, a big drill, and an insanely huge SDS-max drill that I've used maybe three times, but lent to friends probably 15.

The feeling when I have the exact tool for the job is exhilarating. Realizing I have spent so much money and space on this stuff that is useless 99% of the time is a little embarrassing, so I focus on the positives.

It's an illness.

Physical/hardware DIY is significantly easier with the more (and more-specific) tools you have.

I have nearly filled my shed with tools. Still, almost every new job I do requires me to go buy a new one (even if sometimes it's just a washer that needs to be just 2mm bigger than my biggest one, which is so frustrating). It does get easier with time, but right now, I am still on the stage where I only have everything I need already for the really minor jobs around the house, and I am not sure it will ever get much better.

Remember if you would hire someone to do the job they would have that tool. So you can use the money you save on tools and then have the tool. The first time you DIY a job you shouldn't plan on saving money.

Friends are also good. No need for you to own a weird tool if you can borrow if from someone else who also has done the job. (so long as you return the favor)

I now own a ton of tools I have used only once.

Do you ever line 'em all up and look at them in awe? I do.

I do this with unused HF radios!

I learned from a friend, if you are going to need a specific tool and don’t expect to use it a lot (for a single job), buy a cheap one that can do the job at your friendly cheap importer ( harbor freight etc). Renting is ok too. You can skip the cordless too..

Going for use the tool a lot (drills, pliers etc) buy something better.

I've often heard this advice, and while I acknowledge the financial sense it makes, it also puts the new user into a hard place.

Here's the problem: the advantages of "good" tools disproportionately impact the new user. A crusty machinist with decades of experience can make high tolerance parts on a clapped out Bridgeport, because she knows all the subtle ways things can go wrong and doesn't need to rely on the tool handling those things for her.

The new user? No idea what he's doing, and if you throw cheap/poor quality tooling into the mix, now it's just that much harder to figure out if what's going wrong is the user or the tool.

None of this is to suggest that everyone should toss out their home gamer woodworking tools and replace it all with Festool, but there are some pretty serious advantages to having trustworthy tools to help you learn.

> I learned from a friend, if you are going to need a specific tool and don’t expect to use it a lot (for a single job), buy a cheap one that can do the job at your friendly cheap importer ( harbor freight etc).

A critical factor to keep in mind: What are the implications if the tool fails?

If a failure means I will be inconvenienced and have to buy a better tool next time, sure as hell I'm starting with the cheap one.

If a failure means something expensive is getting messed up or someone's getting permanently harmed, I'm going to aim for the point on the bang-for-the-buck hockey stick right before it turns north.

It is hard to believe how true this is until you start to get to really esoteric stuff.

Example:

I have electronic mortise locks (historic house with very custom doors that used mortise locks, replacing doors would be ... remarkably expensive. There are two doors i replaced with non-mortise locks by filling the cavities with marine epoxy, but wife really like the look of mortise locks on the others).

There are a very small number of wireless mortise locks, all of which are garbage and look ugly to boot.

The way these are electrified is either:

1. Wireless power transfer from the strike side - this is complicated and only works sometimes.

2. Drilling a hole all the way sideways through the door and running a wire inside the door, using special hinges with embedded wires to transfer power through the hinge, and then connecting that all to a 24v supply somewhere.

I have the tool necessary to do #2, which will properly drill a straight hole 36 inches deep horizontally into a door with perfect alignment.

In part because the tool is as expensive as paying someone with a tool to do it for you, so i might as well own the tool.

Doing this without the tool, I imagine even with the right set of bits, you would screw it up probably 99% of the time.

I think my approach there if I didn’t have the correct tool (not sure if international plugs allow for the same, and sometimes manufacturers can be fussy about warranties), would be to lop the plug off, pass the cable through a smaller hole, then refit a plug.

This however requires having a plug to refit, and I believe there can be weird regs around having plugged goods passing through “walls”

You would need wire strippers, and maybe screw drivers for attaching the new plug, if not a soldering iron. :D

Generally you would not solder mains power. Often code doesn't allow it.

Definitely not a soldering iron (at least on UK plugs). Kitchen scissors in a pinch (or teeth in a real pinch) and presumably a couple of screwdrivers is in everyone’s toolkit if you own a house.

Right! I just looked at replacement plugs for the US, and they're all either compression fit or screw terminals! So, teeth plus a screwdriver (or maybe a butter knife) is all you need.

In the UK at least this used to be pretty common up until recently. It was usually recommended to wire your washing machines into a fixed wall spur instead of using a plug. Incidentally my mums house almost burnt down due to a washing machine plug which had a wiring fault and started melting through the wall socket.

The more I learn about UK wiring, the more I'm convinced it is the worst in the world. Untrained people in third world countries regularly do better. Of course the UK has been getting better, but they are the ones who came up with the ring wiring and then have to put a fuse in each plug to try to overcome some of the problems from that idiot system.

It's not a machine, it's just a new drill bit that cuts a hole.

I was surprised they got stuck here and need to use a totally different drill. Several of my smaller hole saw fit in a 1/4" chuck.

Never wrote a program to do some helping task for while your programming the bigger task that only gets run once? maybe to generate a bunch of boiler plate code or something? same deal.

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