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Looks like I've been gazumped. Someone's offered above the asking price and is heading over before me to check it out. Bastids.

Here you go.

Sorted now. Thanks.

All done and dusted now.

A few pictures below.

I'm going over this evening to check it out. Looks to be a bit of rust on the seatstay bridge and a fair few spots around the lugs, but hopefully it's just surface stuff. Will report back later.

I mean, I did totally look at angle grinders online. But I think I'm sorted now - someone heading over tomorrow afternoon with one for me to borrow.

I think I'm sorted now. Can definitely get a lead to it - my other d-lock worked fine, so I brought the bike back to my place. It's just the front wheel is still locked to the frame.

So it looks like the only option available to me so I can free my bike from my stupid broken D-lock is to attack it with an angle grinder. Anyone got a good one in SE15 or thereabouts to save me buying one for what'll be it's only job? Thanks in advance.

I've got a sofa you can have. It's a sofa bed, but you'd probably want to replace the mattress on it if you were going to use it as one. The sofa bit of it is v.comfy, though.

Can confirm whacking it with a big hammer has done nothing to improve the situation, though it did feel quite therapeutic.

Nope, but I'll give it a whirl.

Difficult in summer, but for temp control in winter, I'd recommend getting a large builder's trug and an aquarium heater. Bucket in the trug with water, aquarium heater set to the temperature required dangling in the water and there you go. Summer you're a bit constrained, which is why I have a fridge/greenhouse heater/temp control unit for fermenting.

Charlie's right to an extent, but if you're getting acetaldehyde (which you don't want), it's likely to be happening at the fermenting stage, so making sure you pitch the right amount at the right temperature and controlling the primary fermentation is important. Sounds like you're leaving it long enough after reaching final gravity, so that's unlikely to be the cause, which is why I'm thinking it's during primary fermentation that it's happening. Your yeast isn't converting enough of the acetaldehyde by the sound of it, so it's either struggling to get going or it's not got the conditions it needs to do its bit efficiently enough to get rid of it.

With lager, it's such a difficult style to hide any brewing errors that anything sub-optimal is risky. So I really wouldn't do it without a fridge in this weather - you're almost asking for trouble. Even more so if the temperature is fluctuating all the time, which it probably is despite it being in the most stable room.

As for rehydrating, I wouldn't bother. I used to do it, but I found just bunging a packet in made little if no difference at all. And it's a faff, so you may as well stick with dry yeast directly in. Having said that, I've got more control over my fermentation temperature, so the yeast is operating in perfect conditions. You might find it gets things going quicker, which could help.

Check out this page for more: http://beersmith.com/blog/2016/07/13/acetaldehyde-in-home-brewed-beer-the-green-apple-off-flavor/

Sounds like acetaldehyde. Which is caused by a few things but is probably your fermentation/racking.

How are you controlling fermentation temperature? Particularly with the lager, which is a bastard to ferment properly without good temperature control. When are you bottling? Might be worth giving it a bit longer in the fermentation bucket to see if that clears it.

Seatylock Mason. I recommend not buying one due to the faulty lock chambers.

Cheers for the offer. I'm not really that close, tbh. Based in Nunhead/Peckham. Could ride over on my other bike if needs be, though.

No neighbours with angle grinders and the WD40 has made zero impression.

In what's been something of a nightmare today, my d-lock somehow malfunctioned while at Decathlon, so I've currently got a bike that has its front wheel locked to the frame. Just got it back via a sweaty rail replacement bus service and am wondering how tf I'm going to get it off.

I've got the keys, but they won't actually go into the chamber, so I think it'll need cutting off. Anyone know who can do that type of thing?

The plan is to use high and low e strings (or floss in their place) to make sure I got the bridge in the right spot

That's what I did yesterday when I found out my archtop had a floating bridge while changing the strings and said bridge did what its name would suggest and floated off the top.

Gaffer tape.

'kin' 'ell, this replacing a decal malarkey is a bit of a faff, eh? Looks like I'm going to have to sand down the headstock, clean it with naphtha, reseal it, spray some clear varnish on it, leave it to dry, clean the area the decal is going to go with naphtha, then apply decal, then seal, then spray some more clear varnish on it.

Way more of a ballache than I imagined it'd be.

Anyone got any less time-consuming/fiddly solutions?

Checked out the bretted Belgian pale just now. Now that's a pellicle.

Yep. Worth sticking with. It is fucking confusing, though.

Had no idea that was a thing people did to be honest. Could have been a worse scam in hindsight!

No, me neither. I can see why, though. Squiers weren't the guitars they had been by the late 80s and given how good the early ones were, it was probably fairly easy to replace the decal and pass it off as a US Fender. In hindsight, it was a bit of a bargain, but the guy said he just didn't get on with Fenders. It sounded and played so well, I didn't think anything of it. Until I got it refretted about six years ago and the guy said: "Nice Jap Strat. Did you change the decals or did you buy it like this?" I was pretty disappointed at the time, but the more I find out about them, the less I feel that way. In fact, I'm kinda pleased I'm restoring it to its original state (as far as that's possible with custom-made decals).

The sonic blue and tortoiseshell go really well together. Looks ace.