Homemade garden fork handle...

It's the time of year where my thoughts turn to all things gardening and so I start making plans and lists of jobs to be done.

Trouble is I broke the handle of the only fork I have for use at home, I have a couple down the allotment, probably should get another for home use (how many forks is too many?) I broke the handle whilst trying to dig up some very old rose bushes that someone in our local area had put on a freecycle type website, in the end I got eight very large (rooted) rose bushes, which are now in the garden in various places, which is good, but it did leave me with a broken garden fork.

So off to the workshop to make a new handle, below is the video.

Thanks for visiting.

Repairing our 15 year old tumble dryer...

 This is a job I've been meaning to get round to, we've had the same tumble dryer for 15 odd years and it started to make a horrible grinding noise, it was an easy enough fix once I'd found the parts for it.

Cosmetically the dryer is looking tired, but it still works fine and honestly we don't use it that much as we prefer to dry clothes outside where possible, but for rainy days it's a handy thing to have.

We could have bought a new dryer, but didn't want to spend that much money and repairing was the cheaper option and fingers crossed it'll last a few more years now.

Here's a video of me fixing it - 

Thanks for watching.

Paint scraper /decorators knife repair...

 It's been a while since I've posted, so to start off here's a quick repair job.

I've been decorating the house and managed to break the scrapers / decorators knives I've been using for various tasks and seeing as I didn't want to spend any money buying new ones, or if I'm honest given the current lock down I didn't want to have to queue for ages at a diy store to buy new ones, so of to the shed to repair the ones I had, there's a short video at the end of the post if you're not in the mood for reading.

One fixed already - 

Repaired and to be repaired.

You can see the problem, there should be a plastic handle attached to the metal part, so I need to make one of those and as it turns out it was easy given the piles of random bits of wood I have.

First I marked 2 points where I intended to drill -

Ready for drilling.

Then after drilling the holes I found a couple of long(ish) bolts, these need to be long enough to go through the wooden handle.

Like so - 

These bolts should do.

Next a handle is needed, for this I used an old spindle from a wooden bed, sometimes having random things pays off, I just cut one of the spindles in half which gave me 2 handles.

Handle picked and cut - 

Now to make the blade fit in the handle.

To make the blade fit you'll need to make a cut in the centre of the wood you use, a square piece will do, but I'd round it off a bit to make to more comfortable to hold.

Cut made - 

Now to fit the blade.

Mark drill points on the piece of wood, I used the blade I'd already drilled as a template, you'll need to make 2 holes in the wood for the bolts to go through, and it's a good idea to counter sink the holes as well.

Almost done - 

To be drilled.

Bolts fit - 

Not much left to do now.

Assemble the scraper and finish it off, I cut of any extra bits of thread from the bolts and gave the handles a quick sand, they don't need to be pretty as they'll be used and abused, but will last longer than they did with the plastic handles, they do feel a lot sturdier and like they can take more punishment, so although it's a repair it's also an improvement on the original.

Assembled - 

Bit of finishing needed.

All done -

There's a certain rustic vibe to these.

Quick video/slideshow detailing the steps -

Thanks for reading.

Mouse surgery ... ...

I've been using the same mouse for the best part of 6 years now, and as you would expect it has started to show signs of wear and tear, especially in the button clicking department, and one button in particular (it has four) has become really annoying.


Here's the patient -

Reminds me of Moya from Farscape.

The button in question is the one I use when scrolling through documents, web pages and any other type of scrolling, you can see it in the picture above, it's the small button above the large silver one, the way it works is I hold the button down and move the ball and what ever I'm looking at will scroll, and I can scroll vertically (up and down) and horizontally (left and right) which is handy, at least when the button works.

Now I could just go out and buy a new one, but that's the best part of £20 (or more) depending on where you buy it from, and to be honest to fix it costs no more than about £2 or if you have an old mouse lying about then it costs nothing to fix, you just need a soldering iron and some solder.


Here's the offending button, it's a simple micro switch -

Easy to remove, and replace.

So with my trusty soldering iron I set about removing the dying switch, which is just a case of desoldering it, and in this case it's just three little pins that hold the switch to the circuit board.


The three contacts -

Takes just a minute or two to desolder it.

Switch removed - 

That wasn't so hard.

Choices, choices, which switch do I pick ? - 

I removed these from an old mouse.

If you ever need a micro switch or two, then if you have an old mouse you'll be in luck as most mice use micro switches for the left and right click buttons, and any other buttons it might have, but if you do have to buy a micro switch you can get them for under £2 from places like Maplins, and I dare say you could find them cheaper with a quick search online.

All you need to do is remove the screws from the bottom of the mouse and then desolder the micro switches from the circuit board, and you can see in the example below just how long these little switches have been used in mice, the one in the picture is an old ball type mouse, none of this new-fangled laser nonsense.

The willing donor - 

A dinosaur in mouse terms.

Flip it over and go at it with a screw driver - 

There are usually screws hiding under the little plastic pads.

Remove the little pads to show the screws hiding underneath - 

Found you !

And your in, and you should see something very similar to this - 

Three switches, this will be the same with most mice.

And that's as hard as it gets, new switch installed in my mouse - 

I picked the best of the switches I salvaged.

And so far I'm pleased to report the patient is doing well, good as new in fact and I've saved money as well.

Soldering isn't difficult, you do have to be careful as soldering irons get hot, trust me I've burned myself a few times, you can buy soldering irons very cheaply and usually you can buy kits that have everything you need to get you started, iron,solder etc and if you've never tried soldering before I'm sure you can find a 'how to' style video or two on youtube or some other corner of the interweb.

So why not have a go at fixing things that break ? what have you got to lose ? if you can't fix it you've still got to buy a new one, and if you can fix it you'll have saved some cash, can't be bad ... can it ?

Thanks for reading.

How to fix a lampshade ... ...

Like a lot of people we have a large lamp in the front room, and up until recently all was well with said lamp (which reminds me, must get round to making that 'Beware ! low flying toys' sign)

Whilst the lamp itself is fine it appears the shade bore the brunt of the impact, so I figured well, might as well see if I can't do something with it, rater than bin it.


The shade -

Missing some important bits.

It dawned on me that making a way for the shade to fit onto the lamp wasn't going to be that much of a problem, I had already tried to weld the bits back on, but failed, but figured something else might work.

So I took a slightly different route, using a bit of hardboard, now I should point out that the lamp uses one of those energy saving bulbs, and as such it doesn't get very warm, I could get away with a bigger wattage bulb, but it would make things too bright, and perhaps a bit too warm, I'd rather not start a fire if I can possibly avoid it.

So here's what I did, firstly I marked out a square of hardboard, and then put the shade on it, then drew round the outside of the shade, the idea being that the hardboard would then be a bit bigger than the inside of the shade, and would make a nice tight fit.

Firstly I removed the remaining bits - 

Blank canvass, so to speak.

 

Then I marked out a square onto my hardboard and found the centre, then I put the shade onto the hardboard, getting it as near to the centre as possible.

All marked up - 

Onto the next phase.

Now at this point you may be thinking "You've made a mistake" how are you going to fit that onto the lamp ? the answer is simple, I cut out a hole roughly the size of the fixing on the lamp (I used the old fixing to work out the size) then using one of my many hole saws I cut out a hole in the centre of the hardboard.

Fixing hole cut - 

It's a bit bigger to allow for aligning.

The next job was to cut out the circle I had marked out on the board, but then I thought it might be a little boring, so I decided to try a little experiment.

I drew stars on the board - 

Might have over done it a tad.

I used a transfer type method to get the stars onto the board, I basically printed out some star shapes of varying sizes onto a bit of paper, then went over the outlines in pencil, turned the paper over and using the pencil I transferred the star shapes onto the board, by scribbling over each shape.

Stars being outlined - 

I used LibreOffice Draw (like OpenOffice Draw) for the shapes.

The next bit took what seemed like ages to do, but I cut out each star shape on my scroll saw, I was sick of cutting out the shapes after a while, not really, any excuse to mess about with power tools.

Stars all cut out and fitted to the shade - 

Catman approves.

You can see how the new part fits into the shade, it basically rests under the rim of the shade, which was the reason for making the new part slightly larger than it needed to be.

View from inside the shade - 

And it's done, saved having to buy a new one.

And here's what it looks like when the light is on - 

I quite like it.

Now, had this lamp been an up lighter it would project stars in light on the ceiling, but it's not, although I'd be lying if I said I wasn't now thinking of a way to turn it into an up lighter.

Here's what happens when you shine a light upwards - 

Pretty cool I think.

As it happens the lamp does actually project the stars when I use different bulbs, so now I'm wondering whether to make another shade that has bats or spider webs on it especially for Halloween.

Thanks for reading.