Sunday 27 November 2016

Floodlight revamp - from 300w incandescent to 12w LED

Here's an old halogen work-site floodlight that I have just pimped to replace the old incandescent tube with three GU10-fitting lampholders, each with a 4w LED bulb.

Might not seem much, but this is a pretty impressive floodlight that now uses 4% of the energy that it used to.

To be fair, it is slightly less bright. These bulbs are supposedly the equivalent brightness of 50w incandescent bulbs so that means 150w, instead of 300w, or half as bright.

Even allowing for this, that means we are using 8% of the energy for the same illumination - sweet!


So, here's my garden just after dusk...



...and with the new flood, pretty well lit for a 12W outlay... 


Monday 21 November 2016

Your starters for 50....

Here's some recipes from a special Veggie Dining put on as part of the 25th anniversary of the Rising Sun Arts Centre, Reading on 20 November 2016.

I was up for making the starters. Here they. The recipes are below...


Making 5 starters each for 50 people when each one is between 2-4 pieces with a few optional extras like dates, pineapple and olives end up with 800+ discrete portions. The most fiddly were the cheese/pineapple sticks, stuffed chillis and almond-stuffed prunes
Bring it on!

Fuck, Yeah! Mushroom pâté

Chop mushrooms and fry in rapeseed oil with a small amount of diced onions and some crushed garlic
Blend with liquidised black-eye beansMix in finely chopped sage, black pepper and celery saltBlend all together and leave overnight to allow the flavours to disperse

Creamy  mouthfuls

Cream cheese with finely grated strong cheddar cheese, whipped up with very finely chopped chives.

Add caption

Served with...


Wholemeal wheat triangles
Take whole meal wraps and cut into equalateral triangles, then roast with olive oil, salt pepper and black pepper. Dusted with powder-ground salt.

Puff pastry cuboids with sesame seeds
Shop-bought puff pastry rolled really thin and chopped into rectangles.
About half were rolled out on flour and the other rolled half out on sesame seeds.
Dusted with powder-ground salt.

Potato crispy circles
Unpeeled maris piper potatoes, sliced into 2mm rounds and roasted in rapeseed oil.
Dusted with mix of garlic powder, powder-ground celery salt, pepper and smoked paprika


Red Rag Plalmonds

Prunes stuffed with unskinned almonds
Roasted in the oven at about gas mark 5 for about 30-40 minutes Red pepper sliced into 8mm strips. Microwaved in covered Pyrex with rapeseed oil

Cherry bombs

Sweet, warming piemento cherry peppers stuffed with specially created hot Risingstun Pickle



Random 1970s cheesiness

Tinned pineapple (fresh also works), skewered on a cocktail stick, then anchored on a diced lump of mature cheddar.


This was just one of three lush courses and the whole thing involved all these peeps...


good god yeah...

Tuesday 15 November 2016

Reviving a long-lost hammer

This was a nice project for a lovely mild November Sunday afternoon - breathing new life into a rusty old hammer head found some years ago in a garden

This involved cleaning off decades of rust and adding a sturdy new ash handle, hewn from a log foraged in the woods a year or two ago.

Here it is - what a beauty. This is a forming hammer, used for beating out curves in metal panels. Not the sort of thing you need every day, but handy occasionally, so good to have one without having to buy one. The head is about seven inches long and pretty heavy. The handle here is about fourteen inches long


Before 

Here is the forlon looking implement. I have had this so long I can't recall where I found it now. It's pretty old and had been buried in soil for many years. The log is ash, from the Chilterns. It was one of many left lying about in woods after thinning out trees.   Ash is good and springy - a traditional tool handle wood. This has been in the shed about 2 years and was fairly well seasoned.


Here's an end shot. The hammer is very pitted with rust.


Feels nice and heavy, but looks much worse than it is.


The log. Looks like about 13-15 years old.


To start with I popped the log in the vice...


So I could plane a flat side...


thus...


This monster is a planer/thicknesser that can take 13"x6" baulks of timber. By making multiple passes through it, the log was converted into a thick plank. Here it is early on...


The planer can take up to 1/4 inch off on each pass. After several goes, it looks like this

I tried out various tools for the best shape. The axe handle felt good in the hand. It was a good starting point. The final handle design was adjusted to allow for the fact that the hammer head is symmetrical on each end (unlike the axe, which has an asymmetrical handle to match its asymmetrical cutting head)


To start with, a rough outline was sketched out...


This was shaped out with a bit of hand planing then a LOT of shaping on the belt sander, starting rough with 80 grit...


Till it looked like this. The head is not fitted yet.


To fit the head, the hammer head hole was used a template.


To leave a cutting guide..


The vertical cuts were made with a good old fine toothed tenon saw...


like this...


To get a tenon that fitted the handle hole involved some stop cuts (perpendicular to the grain) to form the shoulder and then some work with a course wood rasp to form the curved shape.

Here, I am checking the hammer head for a fit. This was done by filing and rechecking in small increments. The handle tenon was left just slightly wider than the hole, so that when the head was hammered home into the hole later it would produce a really good tight fit.

You can see the rasp on the bench behind. Its a 15" beauty.


Then a lot of finishing on the belt sander to get a really even curve. This started with a 80 gauge sanding belt to rough form, then a well-worn 180 grit belt to get a good smooth shape.


The hammer head then needed de-rusting. This took at least an hour of sanding with the belt sander...


And a tungsten carbide tipped blade in the angle grinder which speeded things up...


But left it looking pretty rough...


At which point it was time to get out the awesome filing sander. This is such a fantastic tool...


After a while, the rough marks were smoothed out...



And after a load more time smoothing out the saw tooth marks, it was time to switch to a fine sander. This is a cheap and cheery orbital sander, starting with 80 grit and working down to 180 grit...


You can see it is getting there...



Eventually, the head was polished up using a random orbit sander with a super fine 400 grit sanding disc... This is a 125mm sander with a 180mm sanding disc. The floppy edges allow finer polishing...




Until it got really smooth and shiny...



Then 'twas time to fit the handle. This was hammer on by driving the handle into the hole in the hammer head with a wooden mallet.


Once the head was on, I used a sharpened length of 15mm copper tube as an annular wedge. using a circular wedge should distribute the expansion of the wooden tennon evenly out into the hammer head...


Cooper is ductile and gets mashed when you smack it in with a steel hammer...


Conveniently, both ash and copper are no match for a hardened multi-tool cutter, so could be sawn off neatly...


leaving a very neat fit...


With some more sanding, it ends up very plush...


Here is the finished hammer, prior to sealing the wood...


A bit more sanding with the fine grit sanders took off the dirt surface and left a super smooth handle...


And this was then sealed with French polish. Between coats, the surface was made super smooth using steel wool...


Here are some tool porn shots of the finished beast...


mmm...


The imperfections of the rust pitted hammer head and the rustic handle add to its charm...


I probably won't need a former hammer for ages, possibly years, but good to have one for those odd occasions.

I should update this picture, taken back in 2015, when I had at least 15 hammers. I think I have found a few more since then, lurking in the recesses of the shed - ha ha!