What have you put in my drawers?

Posted on April 5, 2024 by james

As reported recently, I made a third insert for one of our kitchen drawers. Cleaned up and sanded down, here’s it.

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Is this even allowed?

Posted on April 5, 2024 by james

I reckon that Halfords and other car battery suppliers who offer an installation service must keep a legion of malnourished five year olds on site to actually do the swap.

This is a new battery for a Skoda Octavia roughly in place.

Slightly above centre (and slightly out of focus) in this photo is the battery clamp and the bolt that holds it in place. Undoing it is possible with a long extension bar and a socket on the end. But don’t undo it completely otherwise who knows where the bits will end up? Once mostly undone the old battery can be wiggled out.

But how about keeping the clamp out of the way whilst the new battery is put in and then making sure the clamp is correctly orientated before doing the bolt up? I was probably still in nappies the last time one of my arms would fit down there.

Eventually I wrapped a wire around the clamp (and behind the bolt) to keep it out of the way whilst the battery was inserted, then slid the wire out (getting caught on all sorts of other stuff in the process, natch) before doing the bolt up.

I swear car designers make it this awkward on purpose.

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Some forgotten CAD work

Posted on April 3, 2024 by james

For the drawer inserts that I posted about earlier. That’s “Cardboard Aided Design” 😀

This is how I started, as given the space available and the number of shapes and sizes to be accommodated, I had no idea whether what I was planning would really work. I even had these set up as a multi-layer insert with one tray resting on top of the other that I tried before this one. I really wasn’t happy with that.

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Memory Lane, 5th November 2022: What time of year is it again?

Posted on April 3, 2024 by james

Wandering around the garden today, I see dandelions flowering:

Blackberries in bud:

Nasturtiums (hiding under the leaves) and pot marigolds (calendula) in flower:

Clary in flower:

And borage, too:

Strawberries flowering as well:

Lots of flower on the chile plants (no chance):

A chive flowering:

Flowers on the rosemary:

And on the brambles:

It’s November, for crying out loud! How messed up is our world?

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Uno, dos, trays

Posted on April 3, 2024 by james

Last month I posted about making new drawer inserts for our kitchen drawers. These:

Well, you know how it is, same as last time. Sooner or later it happens…

“What you did is really wonderful. It’s made such a difference and I really love it. Now I’ve just got this other one that would really be good with the same…”

The first two were made from scraps of cedar with a ply base and I’d completely run out of cedar that I was prepared to sacrifice for kitchen projects (the rest is for beehives), but I did actually cut down and plane some pine at the same time, mostly as practice. So now I have it, I might as well put it to use…

Didn’t quite get it finished this evening, but just a bit of cleaning up of the escaped glue and sanding and it will be ready to put into use tomorrow.

Brownie points! Yes!

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The ghost of Cruella

Posted on April 3, 2024 by james

As if it didn’t strain credibility sufficiently that “Cruella” Braverman insisted that sleeping rough was a lifestyle choice, I was quite surprised to discover that despite her hasty departure from government, measures against people who sleep rough are still included in the Criminal Justice Bill currently making its way through Parliament. Specifically, allowing the police to “move on” rough sleepers, which is a slightly odd idea in itself, but then also to enable them to be fined up to £2,500 or even imprisoned.

Quite where someone who is sleeping rough is supposed to be able to find up to £2,500 I’m not really sure. Perhaps the Tories can’t imagine the idea of not having a few hundred thousand in the bank, even if the clothes you stand up in form almost the entirety of your worldly possessions.

And how is a creaking Prison Service supposed to cope with an influx of people who may have all sorts of mental and physical health issues, possibly including not being able to cope wth being in enclosed spaces? Being locked up in a prison cell is really going to help with that.

I just can’t see that there’s any logic to it, though with the current government that doesn’t seem to be any kind of requirement when it comes to drawing up legislation. I’m rather more tempted to believe that the measures are more about “playing to the gallery” of far right-wing nutjobs and trying to demonstrate that, despite admitting in Parliament to being willing to break the law, making laws that they themselves break almost immediately, lying about it and laughing in our faces over it, they are in fact the “Party of Law and Order”.

Somehow I rather think that boat sailed quite some time back.

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Memory Lane, 5th November 2022: How much do you need more compost?

Posted on April 2, 2024 by james

Quite a bit, in my case. So I have embarked on a new project, building as much from reclaimed timber and other re-used parts as possible.

Can you tell what it is yet?

That’s the floor, carefully engineered from scraps of timber used to repair some sheds, of what I hope will be my compost toilet. Note the differences in widths (and in fact thicknesses) of the different boards 😀 The idea is based on “The Humanure Handbook” by Joseph Jenkins.

In my case, the floor is constructed so as to allow a set of pallet forks to be inserted underneath so it can be moved around. I’m a little worried that it might get a bit top-heavy, but we’ll see.

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A few beehive repairs

Posted on April 2, 2024 by james

Last Spring I ended up doing far more beehive repairs than I ever thought I would need to, so there’s actually very little to fix for this season.

The most important item is to add a rim to a couple of underfloor entrances in preparation for being able to do oxalic acid vapes through the rim, so I ripped some scrap timber down to 20mm square and have started fixing those in place using PU adhesive, with a couple of stainless screws that I happened to have left over from taking some other stuff apart.

After that I need to make a few repairs to wax moth damage in some poly hives where the larvae have eaten into the polystyrene. I really have no idea why they find that so tasty.

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Memory Lane, 5th November 2022: Poor guy

Posted on April 1, 2024 by james

The one who has to shift this lot, that is. Not the one on top of the bonfire 😀

That’s most of the decent cardboard I have collected over the winter to make new beds and paths in 2023.

Not sure it will be enough to get everything done that I want, but it is at least a good start.

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The projects never stop…

Posted on April 1, 2024 by james

As the new beds take shape in the veggie plot I’ve decided to remove the sides of the bed where the raspberries are growing. Some of them are quite rotten, but others look like they should be ok. I think some might have been cedar.

It has occurred to me that I may be able to recover sufficient timber to make shelving to go along the north-facing walls in Frankenstein’s greenhouse which will carry the strawberry plants that I have potted up, so they are out of the way when I want to put plants in the beds. At present I have thirty pots with a strawberry plant in each and I think I may have room for eight or nine more. Once my father-in-law has freed up some space in his greenhouse I’m hoping there will be some space there too, as I can probably recover as may as a dozen and a half plants from the old strawberry bed. They may be a bit tired in terms of fruit production, but if they produce runners I should at least be able to plant more up for next year and replace them.

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