I couldn’t grow proper facial hair (I’m a guy) and read that using Rogaine (the stuff for balding guys) on the face could stimulate hair follicles. It worked; I now have a beard after using the product for only a handful of months (I don’t think balding guys get to stop using it). May Toegaine would have a similar result?
Wrestle the staples out with needle nose pliers. If that doesn’t work, cutting them flush using snips would be plan B. Really you just need to get them out of the way so you can put the front of the drawer back where it needs to be.
Yes, I would think to put the brackets on the inside front and secure them with fairly short screws. One bracket on each side would probably be enough, but I don’t see the harm in using two on each side.
First: get yourself a real knife block. Tossing all your knives loose into a drawer is ruining the edges, and keeps them duller than dirt. A dull knife is dangerous.
Second: I wouldn’t bother trying to fix that. The particle board looks like humidity has done a number on it, and it’s falling apart. I would suggest getting a new drawer made out of 1/2" plywood (1/4" bottom) and box joints. It’s pretty easy to do if you have a table saw, but if you’re asking here, I’m going to assume you don’t.
Walks in, assumes you’re stupid, adds nothing, leaves.
On the knife bit it’s no huge deal, it’s not ruining anything, just hone them often. Our knives would get gangbanged all night in the kitchen, they’re designed to have the angle of attack adjusted. - ex chef
Those knives do not look like they’ve been honed since they left the factory.
Every chef I’ve known took immaculate care of their knives, and they sure as fuck didn’t leave them out in the kitchen for everyone else to use.
Also: the value added is in looking at the remaining particle board that’s on the drawer face. You can see that it’s split on the right side, and pieces have separated on the left. That doesn’t have a lot of structural integrity, and gluing it isn’t going to solve that long-term. If humidity is causing the glue holding the sawdust together to lose integrity, then there’s not a lot that can be done that will actually fix the problem permanently. Sure, glue it back together. Then it breaks again, only in a slightly different place. Rinse, repeat. This is the problem with particle board, and why it doesn’t belong in a kitchen or bathroom.
It’s not that bad, glue and screw. Remove the inner board from the drawer front and reattach it to the drawer first. You might have to clean up the MDF a bit. Use filler if you have to, maybe, but don’t use nails. Then reattach the drawer front - again with screws. It might not look perfect, but it’ll probably look fine when the drawer is closed. Consider wood block fillets at the interior corners (sacrificing a bit of space).
Alternatively you could rebuild the drawer frame, using the same drawer front so it matches.
Take off the drawer handle (the two screws), this will release the wood drawer front from the drawer face plate.
Once you have this wood you can fix it back to your drawer with a L- bracket. If the wood is broken too much on the side, you can replace this part with a piece equal in size and depth.
Like others suggested, pull the nails out and then add your new drawer front, nail it back in (or use screws, pre-drilling your screw holes). Then put your face plate back on.
So those nails seem to be staples. How do I pull them out? They don’t show up on the outside. I tried hitting them with a hammer gently, but they don’t seem to come back out. Do I cut them off using a multi tool?
You could try clipping them off instead of pulling them out. Just use a flush cutter (or as close to flush) and cut them down to the wood. This is what most do when taking our trim, as it can cause more damage to get the nails/staples out.
I’m more interested as to why you have a cottered crank from a bicycle on your counter. It looks like it has been cusomized into a tool with a little blacksmith work. What’s it do?
With no offense intended (because the fault is on the cabinet maker), that’s one of the flimsiest looking designs I’ve seen. In most cases, the face is just a plate attached to the cabinet itself.
As for fixing it, it looks like it was just stapled through the sides. I’d pull the staples and clean up the bits where the face ripped off. Maybe try filling in those parts of the face plate with some wood fill or bondo. Then you can run some glue along the cabinet and glue the face back on. Maybe run some L-brackets and nails/screws into it, too, if it still feels flimsy.
Thank you for the advice. The cabinets are supposedly only 3 years old (came with the house). The particle board on the front side seems too damaged. Would a regular piece of wood work?
Looking at the picture, a regular piece of wood should work as long as the thickness is the same. Otherwise the front will sit a bit proud if thicker, or there will be a gap if thinner. Though you could trim the dado back on the sides if it’s thicker. Edit: and make sure to measure size before trying to take it off. Just in case it breaks more.
It looks like that particle board is nailed to the face. Hopefully it isn’t glued as well, otherwise it’ll be a beast to get off. Those screws are just for the handle and likely have no structural qualities.
I had the same thing happen the chipboard just gave way because it could not hold up to the weight of the flatware and eventually just crumbled and pulled off. I fixed it by re making the the sides back and front out of a piece of trex decking I has left over and just cut it to the same size with the same rabbits, etc then assembled it with brad nails and gorilla glue. I reused the bottom as it was still in good shape.
Also, what is that on your counter, ice breaker? Motorcycle peg?
I get that it’s a comic but this doesn’t feel like a conversation that would ever occur in real life. Granted I don’t hang out with programmers or mathematicians so maybe it’s more plausible than you would think.
My kid is studying physics in university, and she comes home and tells me physics anecdotes which I don’t understand, so I always reply “That’s Numberwang!”.
So I can see these types of conversations happening between math and programming types.
It seems plausible enough to me. Many comp sci undergrads would be dimly aware that floating point arithmetic is notoriously difficult to get right and can often lead to surprising errors if you get it slightly wrong, and also dumb enough to believe that e^π^−π is exactly 20.
Comics are not only meant to present something that can happen IRL :P
That kind of trolls happen occasionally in IT, where not everybody know well about maths and physics, they may easily fall into these kind of traps by taking granted that the maths you gave is more trustful than computer code they wrote (usual kind of joke to make your friend understand that he what was doing something wrong or without understanding)
Also, in Uni, we were all little Satans, trying more to break others students works instead of trying to improve self (that was a true war among IT students). All means were used, this kind of troll (as depicted in this comics) to make the other loose time is truly expected
Classical “type Alt+F4 before saving your code to automatically fix bugs” kind of joke
That’s sort of part of the joke. ACM is the “Association for Computing Machinery” one of the biggest and oldest and nerdiest computer clubs.
ACM hosts all kinds of SIGs (special interest groups) - clubs dedicated to interest in (sometimes deeply esoteric) aspects of computer science. For a few of them, hand-coding a new specialized fast floating point calculation code during a contest could easily come up.
So there’s technically a situation where lying to a peer, on purpose, in a particularly mean context (such as a competition) about a floating point number computation - could actually get someone kicked out of ACM.
Edit: Additonal context that helps the joke - my experiences with ACM have all been super chill , relaxed and friendly. So “I got kicked out of ACM” is also a “you did what?!” setup for the joke.
Thanks for the context on ACM saving me a search. I would like to add that I wouldn’t characterize it as ‘mean’ but moreso trolling them for being unaware of Gelfond’s Constant.
I did a physics degree. The start is the sort of random stuff that would come up down the pub (in the evenings). I could easily see a conversation like this happening (at least the start).
Oh grad school man. Yes it would. I was also amazed that there would be people sitting at the bar who could read hieroglyphics. And random shit like that.
This is totally a conversation that would happen in real life. I’ve watched a friend of mine try to convince someone who had a bit much to drink that the primes are closed under multiplication for an hour. Absolutely hysterical
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