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.
Just a quick post on my latest experiment, that being making awls from bits of wood left over from other projects and old drill bits.
They are simple enough to make, just take an old drill bit, and cut a length off it, then sharpen one end to a fine point, then all you need is a wooden handle, as I have a lathe I've used it to make my handles, but you could just as easily make them by hand.
Here's the ones I've made so far -
Turned out well I feel
Not much to them really, all three are made from scrap bits and pieces I had in my workshop, I recorded a video on how I made them, which you can watch on youtbe.
Now that the garden and allotment are starting to wind down a bit I've had more time to get round to a few projects, one of which is making a tool to hold sheets of sand paper so I don't have to put my hand inside things I'm turning on the lathe.
I've made a couple of video's, one is of it being made and the other is of me using it, but basically it's a round handle that you can attach a sheet of sandpaper to, there's a coupe of pictures below and the video's as well, all I've really done is to turn a round piece of wood and then cut a slit into it, it's into this slit that the sandpaper slides, it's very simple, but saves catching your fingers on fast spinning bits of wood.
Pictures -
Really should've made one sooner
Check out the video's, there's a couple of pictures of the brush pot I made for my daughter at the end of the shorter one, onto the next project.
We've recently taken out an old (and broken) extractor fan from the kitchen, the trouble is that once the extractor was removed we were left with a hole roughly 100mm wide right through both walls of the house, the problem was filling the holes.
Definitely a hole in that wall
There are numerous ways to do it, but being tight and not wanting to spend any money I used what we had lying about, that being half an old breeze block, these are handy because they can be cut very easily with an old handsaw (I have one just for cutting breeze blocks) and as it turns out you can very easily turn them into round blocks with a little bit of cutting and filing using a rasp.
Obviously I made the wiring safe, the cable has been disconnected at both ends and is not live, I wasn't able to remove it from the wall as it's been plastered in and I didn't want the extra work.
'If you're not confident with electrics please get someone who is if you need anything electrical done'
So please take a look at the short video of the rough steps I took to fill the hole, it really was very simple to do, below is a picture of the finished wall, we've painted the kitchen white so it's difficult to see much so you'll have to take my word for it that it's fixed and you can't tell there was ever a hole there.
All done -
You can just see a faint outline where it's been painted
Thought it was about time I made myself a bowl / friction sander for my wood turning adventures, don't know why I haven't made one before now (no excuse) but now I have, and to my surprise it works quite well, so here's a video of me going through the steps I used to make it, and at the end of this post is a very basic plan with some measurements on it, the measurements will change depending on what size bearings you use and what sort of size you want to make it.
Homemade bowl sander -
The plan -
Should give you a rough idea of how it's made.
As I said it's a basic plan to give you a rough idea of the dimensions of the one I made, hopefully you find it useful.
While the weather has been good we've been doing a spot of decorating, this involves amongst other things a lot of painting, which means getting the paint out of the loft and obviously as it's settled it needs mixing.
Stirring 10 litres of paint with a stick is a pain, so I made a paint mixer which I can put into a drill and mix away, you can buy pre-made mixers, but I didn't want to spend any money and I figured I probably had enough stuff to make something that would do the job just as well in the shed, and I did, I did also do some rough sums to work out if you could make one cheaper than you can buy one if you went out and bought the parts, I'm confident you could buy the materials to make one like I did for about half the price of a bought one.
Anyway here it is, it's basic but works well (better than I expected)
Simple, but effective
And here's a quick video of how I made it, there are numerous ways I could have done it, but I used the first parts I grabbed.
Trying to catch up with some gardening jobs, this one should have been done few weeks ago, but the plants haven't suffered, they have good root systems on them now and are ready for potting up, so here's a video of me doing just that with an explanation of how I propagated some verbena bonariensis using ajar of water, you can propagate loads of plants in the same way, which couldn't be easier, it's basically sticking your cuttings in a jar of water and forgetting about them for a couple of weeks, anyway the video is below.
