
Turning a hobby into a business
Your hobby can make you money. Some people get lucky and become millionaires. Others just make a few extra quid doing what they were doing anyway. Now I cannot promise you millions, but with surprisingly little effort you can definitely make a decent wodge of extra cash. How much you make is

Bird Box from recycled pallet wood
When breaking up wooden pallets you will always get a few short boards and a few split boards. But even these seemingly useless pieces can be turned into wonderful things. Making a bird box from old scraps of pallets is easy, but the reward of seeing a pair of finches

Make your own logs from paper
A wood fire is a thing of wonder but popping down the local park with an axe for firewood is frowned on by the local council so we generally have to buy logs, which can cost a bit over the course of a cold winter. However newspapers are made from

Best domestic power drills for 2017
We call them power drills but that is a hangover from grandad’s day when hand cranked drills were still in common use. Some people (woodworkers mostly) still use those little hand powered drills for fine quality work, but to those artisans I say, “thanks for keeping the old ways going

List of States of the USA
Anyone who has a hobby of building websites eventually needs a list of things within easy reach, without any formatting attached. We need these lists to check our code with (especially when building arrays). So, this is really just a page to make my life a little easier. If it

Embossing metal
Here are some of my first experiments with embossing on thin metal sheet. I actually used an aluminium soda can. I wanted to give it a try because there are no fancy tools needed to get started. You really do have everything you need lying around the house. Firstly using

How to fix a plastic trug
These flexible plastic trugs are everywhere these days and no wonder. They are really useful, not expensive, easy to clean, come in lots of sizes, are hard wearing and can be bought in a range of bright colours. We use them in the garden and for bringing in logs to

How to mow the lawn properly
Plug in the mower and push it up and down the garden. If that was all there was too mowing the lawn we would all have gardens that looked like the middle of Lords Cricket Ground. But, most of us have scrappy patches of earth with grass that looks a

How to make Elderflower Champagne
It takes just days to make, tastes wonderful and can run from very mildly alcoholic to fully fledged party drink. Here’s how to make a gallon (8 pints) of your own elderflower fizz. Equipment Firstly you will need some simple equipment: A bucket or large food grade container that will

Changing the glass on a dual fuel stove
The glass of our Stovax 4 has cracked. Thankfully the task of changing the glass is an easy one that anybody can do. Go online and order a new glass pane and while you are at it, you can replace the rope seals as well if they are fraying. Lift