Glass sphere / crystal ball stand...

My wife has a new glass sphere which she wanted for taking pictures through, it does come with a small glass holder, but she wanted something a little more sturdy so I made a stand for the sphere from a piece of oak.

The wood has some cracks in it, but I used CA glue to stabilise them and although a simple shape it works well, and looks good with the sphere sitting on it.

Here's the video -

Thanks for visiting.

Turning Picture Frames...

This is a project I started sometime ago, but only just got round to finishing.

It turns out that you can make pretty good picture frames using a lathe, although you will be restricted by the capabilities of your lathe, as in how big you can make them, but you could always go the other way and see how small you can make them. They are pretty easy to make and can be stained or painted to suit your needs, and you can make them from solid pieces of wood or by gluing wood together, it depends on what you can get hold of in terms of materials.

Have a look -

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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 -

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Allotment update (a bit late posting) ...

I'm a bit behind with posting due to work and other things, so I'm combining the last two allotment visits into one post.

The fist video is us harvesting our borlotti beans and some squash plants, and the second video is us picking this years apple harvest, which isn't as big as it has been in previous years, but we still got enough to make some wine and juice and the rest my wife cut up and froze for pie fillings through the autumn and winter.

There's not much on the plot now, we will get some kale and chard and we should also get some sprouts for Christmas dinner, but for now the plot has been left alone and once Christmas is over I'll start fixing the fences that are damaged (and anything else that needs fixing) and come spring I'll start moving plants about, we have two gooseberry bushes in the gardens at home which are being relocated to the plot, and there are some small fruit trees on the plot that I want to move.

So look out for more allotment posts next year, and in the meantime I'll try and finish off some of the Christmas makes I've started and post / make videos about.

Picking the beans and squash - 

Picking the apples and juicing -

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Homemade propagation station...

A lot of plants can easily be propagated using water, we usually just use jars of various sizes, but I thought I'd make a proper propagation station, you can buy ready made ones in all sorts of different styles and shapes, and with different types of glass, but I wanted to recycle some old spice jars and some old pallet wood so these cost nothing to make, I'm surprised at how well they turned out, and they look quite good as well.

Here's how I made them -

Rooting cuttings in water works for many different plants, and these are a good way to see the progress of roots growing, and they cost nothing but a little time to make.

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Homemade blackcurrant brandy...

One of the many things we do in preparation for Christmas (and winter) is to make liqueurs, we normally use our homegrown blackcurrants or blackberries (we're doing both this year) we pick from the hedgerows, either way the method is the same, basically it's infusing a spirit (brandy in this case) with the flavour of a fruit of some kind, the same way sloe gin is made, we're just not big gin drinkers so this is a good replacement for gin, many different spirits can be used, vodka being one of them.

It takes a few minutes to prepare then it can be left alone for a couple of months, once it's ready it takes a few minutes to strain the fruit out and bottle, if you start this a few months before christmas you'll have a nice warming winter drink for very little effort and money.

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Making an adapter for our vacuum cleaner...

We recently acquired a new hoover (vacuum cleaner) but it didn't have a brush attachment, we could have bought one, but it was quicker to make one of our old ones fit, all I did was use part of another attachment that I don't use, not a huge saving money wise but a saving none the less and it saved time in trying to find the right sized attachment online and getting it posted to us.

I could have cut out some of the steps as they aren't really needed.

Here's the video -

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