Author: Doozer

  • DIY Tools

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  • DIY Materials

    I use a lot of different materials while I’m doing DIY and I figured it would be useful to keep a list of what I use so that I can buy them again if I like them and match what I’ve currently got. I’ve tried to group them by project but some don’t fit nicely…

  • DIY Caustic Paint Strippers

    My tumble down house never seems to not need some work doing on it. At the moment that means I’m restoring the sash windows at the front of the house. They are about 200 years old and probably haven’t been touched in 30 years so they are in a bit of a state. On the…

  • Three Malt and Sunflower Flour

    This page details items backed using the Three Malt and Sunflower flour from Shipton Mill. This is a premium flour and at the time of writing is £2.45/kg (compared with £1.80/kg for plain white bread flour). The flour contains malted and roasted wheat, barley and rye which gives it a fabulous smell and colour. Additionally…

  • Abus Titalium Collection

    I recently bought myself a small collection of Abus Titalium locks. The name suggests that these are made from or at least contain titanium but as far as I can tell that isn’t the case. From the weight I assume they are made of aluminium. I have teh 64TI/50, 80TI/45 and the 80TI/50. The two…

  • Gutting a Gege AP1000 Cylinder Lock

    I decided to have a shot at picking one of my Gege AP1000 cylinder locks (specifically #1 which is 55mm long and snapped.). The keyway and side profile of the lock can be seen in this earlier post. This is a green belt lock and I feel I need more practice at this level before…

  • Various Cylinder Locks

    The locks below are part of my collection I bought them as a job lot and didn’t know what any of them were. These are my best guesses. Gege AP1000 Cylinders I have three of these, two in brass and one that I think it nickle plated. I found what appears to be the same…

  • Abus E20 Nickel Plate Half Cylinder – Mystery Lock

    I bought this lock as part of a job lot of snapped euro cylinders. All of them came with keys but none of them came with any information and it turns out cylinders don’t seem to have markings telling you what model they are. Two photos below show what little information I have to go…

  • Planting in 2024

    This is a list of all the vegetables (and maybe a few other plants) for 2024. Mostly this is for my own reference but you might be interested to see when I plant things. I live in the UK and my last frost date is between 10th and 20th March for my home site. I’m…

  • Seed Trays

    Each year I try something new with my vegetable growing. A few years back it was no dig, which was a great success. This year I’m going to try long life seed trays. I guessing I’m not alone in obsessing about giving my seedlings the best start in life. It’s completely silly because they are…

  • All About Compost

    I tried the no dig method of vegetable gardening a few years ago and I was immediately sold on (most of) it. Laying a fresh lot of compost on the ground is far less work than digging it and as far as weed control goes I couldn’t ask for more. The downside of no dig…

  • What We’re Growing in 2024

    We’re growing much more this year than we have in previous years thanks to some extra ground becoming available to us. I was trying to keep everything in my head but it quickly became apparent that wasn’t going to work… so I made a spreadsheet. The table below is an extract from that spreadsheet. Totalling…

  • Growing Sweet Potatoes in the UK

    I’ve decided this year (2024) I’ll have a crack at growing sweet potatoes. From what I’ve read it should be possible to get a crop as long as they are started early enough and we have a reasonable summer. They are a tropical plant so they are a bit marginal in the UK. I’ve decided…

  • LED Array Lamp Part 5

    In the previous a part of this series I gave an overview of the lamp. In this part I’ll get to the point where it’s possible to write to the LED’s. This won’t be the final form of the LED but it’ll be good for testing that it’s electrically correct. Installing Additional Software The plan…

  • LED Array Lamp Part 4

    I’m going to start this article with photographs of the built lamp as there’s no way I’m taking it apart again for continuity. I think it’s also useful to see that it’s almost identical to what I showed at the end of the previous part. These are the interesting bits, towards the bottom left there’s…