Wednesday, 10 June 2015

Woodworking Techniques and Tips: Episode 2

Woodworking Techniques and Tips: Episode 2


Woodworking Techniques & Tips (Wood): Episode 2

John Landis, a professional woodworker, takes us on as his apprentice through a series of educational woodworking videos and generously shares his skill and expertise in woodworking with us.

In this video episode he continues his discussion about wood at the cellular level, about end grain versus long grain, and how that impacts what and how to glue wood, joints, etc. (glue only along the long grain and not the end grains unless you have special joints ...)

He also reveals that all wood has tension because of the different levels of moisture in a piece of wood. This tension has to be released before the milling process. The way to overcome movement due to this tension that is released when you cut into a piece of wood, is to over-cut on sizes.

He uses real life examples based on the projects being built in his company's shop. John goes over techniques and procedures that easily apply to projects you may be working on.

 He uses tools such as the jointer, planer, lathe, table saw, router, band saw and hand tools.

Easy Wood Working Plans for Furniture, Small Craft & Much More...


Wednesday, 3 June 2015

Woodworking Techniques and Tips: Episode 1

Woodworking Techniques and Tips: Episode 1


Woodworking Techniques and Tips (Wood) : Episode 1

John Landis, a professional woodworker, takes us on as his apprentice through a series of educational woodworking videos and shares his skill and expertise in woodworking with us. This video is about wood fundamentals, from the cellular level - why and how wood behaves, specifically how and why wood shrinks and expands, an important factor to consider when dealing with wood joints.

He uses real life examples based on the projects being built in his company's shop. John goes over techniques and procedures that easily apply to projects you may be working on.

He uses tools such as the jointer, planer, lathe, table saw, router, band saw and hand tools.

Furniture & Woodcraft Plans for Dressers to Small Craft & More



Friday, 8 May 2015

DIY SMALL HOUSE: Tiny House Build Leads to Life-Saver Shelter for Homeless

Put your DIY skills to good use: Build a tiny house for someone who needs shelter. Check out this video to see this awesome act of kindness.


Perhaps you could start something similar in your community using discarded, recycled housing material. Too often you see building material, furniture, etc. with alot of remaining shelf-life thrown out at the dump; or perhaps you could barter your junk for other people's.

This recycling attitude will also help with our burgeoning wastefill problems that are now endemic all over the globe due to our generally wasteful ways of living and our 'disposable' mentality where once our forbears were frugal and naturally practiced sustainable living and consequently had a less devastating impact on their environment (now more and more one giant - and increasingly toxic - landfill or seafill).




Wednesday, 17 December 2014

DIY CHRISTMAS CRAFT: More Christmas Decoration Tips

How to Make 3D Snowflake Ornaments for Christmas



Easy Christmas-ornament DIY tips to create inexpensive, 
beautiful, 3D, paper snowflakes for Christmas.



DIY CHRISTMAS CRAFT: 6 Easy DIY Christmas Ornaments and More

DIY Christmas Ornament Ideas For Your Christmas Tree!




How To DIY a String or Cone Table-top Christmas Tree



Add more Christmas cheer to your table this season with these creative, Christmas ornament ideas: cone and string Christmas trees, and candle-holders.


How to Make a Christmas Wreath from Old Book Pages

Tip: Recycle unwanted old books from your friends and family



Tip: Spray some glitter (in mono or different colors) to add some Christmas glamor!

You can get more creative with your glitter by trying out different shapes for spraying:
  • for example, on the rims of each cone, 
  • or in radiating strips from the center, 
  • or on the body of some of the cones 
  • or try other patterns or
  • use templates eg. old crochet mat place over the wreath
  • or substitute the book pages with coffee filter cones!

DIY Christmas: How to Decorate a Garland for Christmas

Make your own, unique Christmas garland this Season




Tip: You can substitute artificial branches with real conifer branches - pick the younger branches as they are more pliable. They will stay green for a few days. Bonus: the smell of the pine needles will add to the ambience. After Christmas these pines can be recycled into ... believe it or not, underwear instead of just mulch.

Tip: Remove the ribbons and ornaments carefully after Christmas to re-use these next year.


Tuesday, 12 August 2014

DIY GARDEN TIPS: How to Make Cheap or Free, Vegetable Beds Fast

DIY GARDEN TIPS:  Making Veggie beds and Bottle Towers Gardens
A Rich & Glorious, Kitchen, Vegetable-Tower Garden

With the growing awareness for better health and the benefits of organic food (not least is reduced health and health insurance costs), the main stumbling block to eating organically has been for the average family, the higher cost of purchasing organic food in general. 

Organic food is admittedly, more expensive than non-organic produce. However if there is growing demand and sales of organic food, the cost of organic products will, by the NATURAL, economic forces of supply and demand, ultimately be driven lower.

In the meantime have you considered growing your own organic food as a viable alternative? This will definitely make organic vegetables and fruit more affordable to the average family. Contrary to popular belief, organic gardening does not have to be expensive or diffcult. Here are some great tips to get started on organic gardening in your own backyard, patio, plot, balcony - anywhere at all - faster, cheaper and importantly, easier! (What family would not want convenience when time and energy in today's modern, hectic lifestyle is at a premium?)

Once you get the hang of growing your own food well and your garden is establised, no matter how small, you will have made savings that you can plough back into your garden ventures as you expand and/or improve, or use the money to buy other organic food that you don't grow, instead.

The video below shows you how to make cheap or free vegetable beds by recycling unwanted plastic cartons that are readily available in most cities, FAST.

TIP: Don't throw away spare cartons, wood, containers or plastic bottles!


Recyling Free or Cheap Plastic Crates as Vegetable Garden Beds.

Bottle and Pot Tower Vegetable Gardens


Now your vegetable garden does not have to be horizontal.  If space is at a premium go vertical instead.

How about starting a pot or bottle-tower garden? It may not look so pretty at first - but if you use some attractive, trailing vegetables or herbs to drape over your framework, or erect a screen in front of your bottle towers and then plant a pretty climbing shrub like the lovely, blue plumbago, then it's possible to get added satisfaction, both aesthetically and food-wise from your bottle garden.  The video below shows how it is done. The field-trial of over two years has taken the guesswork out of such issues as what works, what grows, irrigation issues, etc..

Be prepared to be surprised when you find peppers, lettuces, celery, spinach, chives, coriander, basil, sage, bak choy & other similar Brassica members (smaller to grow than your typical cabbage but just as potent because of their sulphur content), garlic, etc. sprouting happily in the pot or bottle above or below each other of your vertical, tower garden.

This tried and tested concept offers so many exciting and creative possibilities for tapping your home spaces to grow great (and pretty) food - fresh vegetables, fruit such as strawberries and tasty herbs - all with little effort once established (and without having to change the small amount of soil for at least two years)!



Bottle Tower Gardens: A Viable Alternative for Those with NO Space!

There is a renaissance in organic gardening as people opt for a better quality of life, so join in the movement, and seek out your community or local groups for extra support, friendship and good old, fun and comaraderie even as you improve and invest in your family's health, wellbeing and greater vitality.

Don't forget to share your organic and golden harvest with friends and family as you reap your bumper crop in more than one way. You might even end up with converts within your micro-community and that will be hugely positive for the drive to eat healthily as a family, community and ultimately as a nation!

Making Your Garden Bee-Friendly


TIP: Last but not least, grow some edible flowers (they're also very pretty!) that bees also like - in between your veggie plants or as a border or backdrop - because our bees are dying on a global scale, due to intense herbicide pollution. If more people planted bee-friendly plants in their herbicide-free garden it will be possible to reverse this trend and that would have a huge impact on our food production. Bees not only produce honey, they pollinate a vast variety of vegetable and fruit plants in the process of gathering pollen from flowers and this is crucial for food production on any scale.

Here's a list of flowers that bees love which also include those that are edible.


http://diydazzlers.blogspot.com

Some of the Flowers that Bees Love to Visit

Nb: When bees visit your garden you will also find bonus visitors viz., butterflies, lady birds, birds, etc., and that's a good sign that your garden is healthy (with Nature's pest-control system underway even if it does not look obvious to the untrained eye) - and that is something to be proud of!


Friday, 25 July 2014

DIY Jokes

10-Step Guide For The Do-It-Yourself Handyman:

1. If you can't find a screwdriver, use a knife. If you break off the tip, it's an improved screwdriver.

2. Try to work alone. An audience is rarely any help.

3. Above all, if what you've done is stupid, but it works, then it isn't stupid.

4. Work in the kitchen whenever you can...many fine tools are there, its warm and dry, and you are close to the refrigerator.

5. If it's electronic, get a new one...or consult a twelve year old.

6. Stay simple minded: Get a new battery; replace the bulb or fuse; see if the tank is empty; try turning the switch or just paint over it.

7. Always take credit for miracles. If you dropped the alarm clock while taking it apart and it suddenly starts working, you have healed it.

8. Regardless of what people say, kicking, pounding, and throwing sometimes DOES help.

9. If something looks level, it is level.

10. If at first you don't succeed, redefine success.




AFTER NEARLY AN HOUR of "just a little more white, two squirts of blue, a dash of black, perhaps a tad more white," the paint-store clerk got my gallon to the exact shade I wanted.  With a sigh of relief, he pounded the lid on.

        "Now what do I do if I need more paint?" I asked.
        "Don't come back here," he begged.




HOW TO CHANGE YOUR OIL
    Women:
  1. Pull up to Jiffy Lube when the mileage reaches 3000 since the last oil change.
  2. Drink a cup of coffee.
  3. 15 minutes later, write a check and leave with a properly maintained vehicle.
    Men:
  1. Go to O'Reilly auto parts and write a check for 50 dollars for oil, filter, oil lift (AKA kitty litter), hand cleaner and scented tree.
  2. Discover that the used oil container is full. Instead of taking it back to O'Reilly to recycle, dump in hole in back yard.
  3. Open a beer and drink it.
  4. Jack car up. Spend 30 minutes looking for jack stands.
  5. Find jack stands under kid's pedal car.
  6. In frustration, open another beer and drink it.
  7. Place drain pan under engine.
  8. Look for 9/16 box end wrench.
  9. Give up and use crescent wrench.
  10. Unscrew drain plug.
  11. Drop drain plug in pan of hot oil; get hot oil on you in process.
  12. Clean up.
  13. Have another beer while oil is draining.
  14. Look for oil filter wrench.
  15. Give up; poke oil filter with Phillips screwdriver and twist it off.
  16. Beer.
  17. Buddy shows up; finish case with him. Finish oil change tomorrow.
  18. Next day, drag pan full of old oil out from underneath car.
  19. Throw oil lift (AKA kitty litter) on oil spilled during step 18.
  20. Beer. No, drank it all yesterday.
  21. Walk to 7-11; buy beer.
  22. Install new oil filter making sure to apply thin coat of clean oil to gasket first.
  23. Dump first quart of fresh oil into engine.
  24. Remember drain plug from step 11.
  25. Hurry to find drain plug in drain pan.
  26. Hurry to replace drain plug before the whole quart of fresh oil drains onto floor.
  27. Slip with wrench and bang knuckles on frame.
  28. Bang head on floor board in reaction.
  29. Begin cussing fit.
  30. Throw wrench.
  31. Cuss for additional 10 minutes because wrench hit Miss December(1992) in the left boob.
  32. Clean up; apply Band-Aid to knuckle.
  33. Beer.
  34. Beer.
  35. Dump in additional 4 quarts of oil.
  36. Beer.
  37. Lower car from jack stands.
  38. Accidentally crush one of the jack stands.
  39. Move car back to apply more oil lift (AKA kitty litter) to fresh oil spilled during step 23.
  40. Drive car.


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