This is not one of my better ideas, but I have always (for some reason) wanted to turn chipboard (particle board) to see what would happen, well now I know.

It's not something I'll ever do again, chipboard or particle board as it's known is horrible stuff to turn for obvious reasons, the end result is oddly pleasing, but the actual turning was very messy, lots of dust so it goes without saying that you need a proper dust mask and eye protection (even when turning proper wood)

The end result is oddly pleasing though.

Here's the video -

Thanks for visiting.

Rough recycling ... ...

I've been doing a spot of recycling, all be it very roughly, well it's more of a trying to find a use for all the things I've kept exercise ;-)

The first thing is some where to put my scroll saw, so far I've used it on the floor, on the kitchen table (wife not best pleased about that one) and various other places, none of which are very good places to use a scroll saw.

So I recycled my old metal computer desk into a table for my scroll saw, I even kept the wheels on it for extra mobility, and as it used to be a desk it's about the right height already.

Here it is -

Not much to look at.

I didn't really have to do that much to be honest, basically I just switched the frame work about, the sides of what was the desk were placed on what would have been the front and back of the desk, I had to drill new bolt holes, and add an extra bit of support at the back, again using a piece of the old desk.

Back support -

Drilling new bolt holes was easy.

I did originally intend to just bolt the saw to the new table, but found when using the saw at high speeds things were a little less than stable, so I added a wooden top for a little less wobble, it works well and means I can now sit at a good height and cut stuff out of wood, which is handy as I'm planning to make a dolls house for my daughter and I'll need to do a lot of cutting out for things like windows and such like.

Wooden top -

Not very neat, but it works.

I even kept the bottom shelf, figuring this would be handy for storing stuff on.

The next little bit of recycling involves 2 hoovers (yes 2)

This is very much a hack, and had I spent more time I would have made something a little neater, basically I do a lot of wood turning and other very dusty related stuff in my shed and I decided I needed some kind of dust removal system.

I did have an old hoover which I used for cleaning up and clearing dust, but it was old and more or less knackered when I started using it in the shed, needless to say it didn't last very long, and until our last hoover broke it just sat in the shed waiting to be used for something.

Dust extraction systems can be quite pricey, so I figured building my own was the best way to go, all I really needed was a new motor to power the extractor, and as luck would have it we got a new hoover and so I kept the broken one, which wasn't usable in the house any more, but was perfect for what I wanted.

Here's the extractor set up (warning contains extreme hackiness) - 

Okay so I've basically hacked 2 hoovers together ;-)

The old hoover was a tub type effort, so I've kept the tub part and removed the motor and it's housing, then I basically made a lid for it that I could fix the hose from the other hoover to.

It looks rough (and it is) but it does the job, basically I'm using the tub as a storage bin for wood shavings and such like, and the other hoover is a replacement for the old motor, it works well because unlike the old hoover this still has some of it's filters intact so the motor doesn't get dusty and burn out like the last time (oops)

How it works is simple enough, hoover A provides suction and hoover B provides a storage bin, wood shavings get sucked into the bin and any fine dust is filtered out by hoover A's filters.

The storage bin -

The tub holds a fair bit of waste.

When it's full I bag up the shavings and I intend to use it as mulch on the garden and down the allotment, I've also discovered that the filter collects very fine wood dust, which when mixed with some pva makes for a pretty good wood filler :-)

The fine dust -

Very fine and great for making wood filler.

I've also found out that I can connect the extractor up to all my power tools, or at least the ones that have dust outlets on them, which may come in handy if I need to use them in the house.

You could also make a wooden box to do the same thing, you'd just need to make it so that you could connect your hoover to it, and it would need to be sealed as well, with some kind of removable lid for emptying it, which is what I would have done if I'd had a little more time.

And there you have it, even if something doesn't have an immediate use anymore (like an old pc desk) it may well have a use in the future, so it's worth hanging on to it for a short while.

Thanks for reading.

Which is better, fixing something or throwing it ?

I like music, who doesn't ? (I'm sure someone somewhere doesn't) but I don't really get the chance to listen to music that much, at least not on my stereo, which hasn't really been used for years, probably due to the volume the thing is capable of :-)
I have some old pc speakers in the shed that I plug my mp3 player into, this is good if I'm doing something repetitive, like wood turning, removing the wood until you have what you want can take some time, so music helps pass the time, just lately AC/DC has been my preference.

If however I'm not in the shed I don't really have a choice but to use my mp3 player with some headphones, I don't have anything fancy, but they put out good sound (which is the important thing) but for some reason I keep breaking them, and it's always where the jack plugs into the mp3 player, probably how I put it in my pocket or something like.

I did have a set of headphones that had an in-line volume control, these are good to have because if someone tries to talk to you, or you need to talk to someone it's easier to just turn the volume right down, rather than ferreting about in pockets for small music players, and because I broke my set that had the in-line volume control I was a little stumped, I didn't want to pay loads for a new set (I got mine on offer) so I got a cheap set and decided to frankenstein me some headphones :-)

Yes I could have just thrown them out and got a new set, or gone for something like this - headphone volume control (opens in new window) but that's just adding to the rubbish and all I needed to do was chop and change what I had a little, I kept the leftovers, pretty sure they will come in handy at some point.

So this is what I did, basically I took the damaged set of headphones and cracked open the volume control.

You need some tools to do this, soldering iron,solder, a knife or flat headed screw driver to open the volume control, if your soldering on the kitchen table use a bit of scrap wood, pliers and a sharp knife or wire strippers.

Here's a picture of what I used -

The stuff.

I cut the good headphones in half, all I needed was a length of wire with the jack on the end (I could have just bought a new jack for the other headphones as well, but it seemed easier this way)

Then I cracked open the volume control unit.

Here's what it looked like inside - 

The gubbins.

As you can see it's pretty simple inside, so then I de-soldered the damaged section, and took the plastic casing and the small black plastic grommet, I planned to use the casing on the new cord to give it some more strength, the grommet was need to make sure the new lead was held securely in the volume controller.

Casing and grommet - 

Casing and grommet.

Next thing was to thread the casing onto the new lead, this took a little longer than I expected.

Threading the casing - 

This took longer than I thought it would.

Once this was done I then set about soldering the new lead onto the volume controller. Now if you haven't ever messed around with headphone wire before then you may find this helpful. I think they do this for all headphones, perhaps not really cheap ones ? but there's a coating on each of the wires and a kind of thread running through each one as well, this has caused me problems in the past and the best way I've found to deal with it is to burn it away with a lighter or such like, but be careful because if you heat the wires too much they sometimes loose colour, this may cause further problems when it comes to soldering, you can also scrape the coating off with a sharp knife (Stanley type blade) 

The wires and thread - 

Not the best picture, but you can sort of see the thread.

So to the soldering, I always find I need three sometimes four hands when I'm soldering, should probably make some kind of vice type system, anyway the contact on the volume controller are quite small, so if you have a finer tip for your iron use it, it will make a difference.

The contacts - 

If you have glasses, wear them.

I got my lovely wife to take a picture of me soldering, luckily pictures don't show the swearing I did as I toasted my finger tips with my soldering iron :-(

Soldering - 

Finger toasting.

Now when you solder small terminals make sure you don't join terminals with the solder, or things don't work properly, and when you have finished soldering don't put it all back together just yet, test it all first, there's nothing more frustrating than finding all you hard work needs to be undone because something went wrong.

Testing music is a preference, I found AC/DC to be adequate for my testing -

Let's rock ! :-)

If everything is working as it should, both left and right ears are working then you can go ahead and stick it all back together safe in the knowledge that you saved money, didn't add anything to the rubbish and you are clever because you did fixing :-) so if you have something that's broke why not see if you can fix it before you retire it to the bin.

Thanks for reading.

Do you have young children ? if so then you may have a load of these ...

I have a couple of young children, and they seem to have a shed load of toys, all of which came in really strange packaging, I know that the packaging is designed so kids can see the toys in shops and drive their parents mad with "I want that one" pleeeaaasssee mum/dad

But what do you do with the packaging once they have ripped it open on their birthday or christmas ? well there's not a great deal you can do with some of the plastic, or the cardboard, so chuck what you can in the recycle bin, but wait have you ended up with a pile of these ?

These are quite useful.

I have some how ended up with a large amount of these, if I remember correctly I think I got as many as 8 of these little plastic coated wires from 1 toy ! surely that's overkill ? and not to mention annoying because they take ages to get off the toy, all the while you have you kids getting more and more anxious that it's never coming out of it's box.

Well I have found that they can be quite handy, I have used them to mend things, the last being the handle on my hedge trimmer (best not to ask how it broke)

 I'm a keen gardener, not that good (I'm learning though) and I have found these things make good plant ties, as well as holding things together in the garden, for example long canes for growing beans up, and they can be removed and reused time and time again, so rather than throw them away, why not see if you can use them, or see if anyone you know likes growing things and see if they want them ?