New Jaws for the Vice

This old record No. 6 vice belonged to my grandfather. Over the years, the jaws had become cracked. I have lots of old files and had a brainwave that these would be ideal for making replacement jaws. Files are made from hardened and tempered steel, and have slanted, ridged teeth which I reckoned would  be excellent for gripping stuff in a vice. I cut out rectangular sections of the correct dimensions using an angle grinder. The steel was too hard to drill, so I had to anneal it by heating to a red heat with a blow torch in the vicinity of the mounting holes and allowed it to cool slowly. Once the holes were drilled, they were countersinked.

My Side Gate

I designed this gate in Autocad several years ago. Autocad comes in very handy because if you draw curves, it tells you the length of the curve. This is very useful because it allows you to estimate the length of a straight piece of iron pre-bending. All the scrolls were cold bent around old pulleys and round bars of various diameters held in a vice. Rather than cutting the iron for each section, I used the leverage of a long length to aid bending and then cut off the waste. I used a long bar with a slot welded onto the end for additional bending operations. Some heating was probably necessary to heat and match up the scrolls which were identical on both sides.
I used 2 x 1 box for the perimeter of the gate. I decided to make a polygon for the top, which gave the appearance of a semi-circle. I divided up the straight length of box into equal sections, cut slots in three of the four sides between each section and bent the box into a curved shape. I tried to make the slots v-shaped to so that the slots would close up ok. Then I welded everything closed and ground everything smooth.
Total build time was about 80 hours.

Battling slugs!

If you live in a damp climate like I do, you know how slugs and snails can have a devestating effect on young plants. Usually the buggers don't eat weeds, only your newly planted annuals! If you grow plants from seeds in pots, don't transplant them into the ground while they are small . Instead wait until they have developed sufficient foliage and are beginning to become pot bound and struggling before planting. If they are attacked by slugs at this stage, they can afford to lose some leaves. Also don't forget to keep your pots where they can't be attacked during the night. If the pots are grouped together sprinkle a trail of slug pellets around the pots to act as a barrier.

Protect Your Feet!

Safety shoes are a good idea when working in the garden. The steel toe caps protect your toes from dropped pots, stones etc and if you choose a type with a steel sole, this gives protection from walking on nails, glass or other nasty stuff which might be hiding in the recesses of your garden!

Oriental Poppies

My oriental poppies finally bloomed! I collected the seeds of these the year before last and sowed them last year. Poppy seeds are small so they should be sprinkled on the surface of moistened seed compost in a tray and not covered with compost. Cover the tray with aluminium foil, a magazine or whatever and place in a warm are until germination. After about a week, check the tray each day and once germination occurs, uncover the tray immediately to prevent straggling of the seedlings. Keep the compost moist but don't over water. Seedlings can be transplanted into pots after they acquire about 3 pairs of leaves. And watch out for slugs!! Don't transplant into the ground until the plants have become so large that they can survive being partially eaten by these pests.

Leylandii Blues!

These trees could almost be called a garden pest! Leylandii or Leyland Cypress is a fast growing tree and can reach 50 feet in 60 years. You will be familiar with Leylandii as the green/ yellowish evergreen trees, ubiquitously used to form hedges which can soon become unmanageable if not tamed by diligent gardeners. In some residential areas they have been banned because of their rapid growth, and many disputes have arisen between neighbours because of the nature of the trees to go out of control, block light and protrude into adjacent gardens.
Anyway, I have a back garden with a short Leylandii hedge spanning the gap between a side gate and driveway gate. The hedge was planted in the eighties, and in those days I trimmed it with a hand shears, which of course has limited ability to cut branches thicker than about 1/4 inch. Every year the trees put on new growth, becoming wider in the process as the shears could only trim back soft growth. By the time the trees had become 15 years old, they had reached a width of about 4 feet. I had bought a hedge trimmer by then, however I also discovered a serious disadvantage of many conifers, unlike deciduous trees, they can't be heavily trimmed back to old growth as they don't resprout. So the Leylandii have now reached  a width of about 7 feet and are practically hollow inside!
My plan is to hollow the trees out more on the inside. Yesterday I cut out as much top growth as possible which was overhanging the hollow interior of the trees. Dead branches were removed also. By opening up the inside, this lets more light in and my plan is to plant lots of holly and laurel which can grow in lower light conditions, inside this space. Eventually the holly and laurel will take over and emerge from the inside of the trees (Sort of like a gardening version of Alien!) at which point I will remove the host Leylandii.

Neodymium magnet tool for getting nuts into those hard to reach places

I eventually found an application for one of those neodymium magnets I bought from Dealextreme.com!
I had made up a bracket for attaching the old engine salvaged from a Suffolk Punch  lawn mower to my cement mixer. Some of the nuts had shaken loose from vibration so it was time to replace them with lock nuts. Unfortunately clearance between the engine and back of the mixer bowl was limited so I needed some assistance getting the nuts into place so that they could be screwed onto the bolts. A standard magnetic pickup tool was out of the question and a socket was difficult to position, so I made up  a right angled magnet pickup to get the nuts into place so that they could be spun onto the bolts.

You can buy various sized versions of these strong magnets here: http://dx.com/p/super-strong-rare-earth-re-magnets-20-pack-12mm-x-1mm-5964?Utm_rid=55371787&Utm_source=affiliate