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Er... what "thing"? The castor wheel is on a stem, pivoted at its upper end. Lift that end of the splitter, push the castor stem out and down and put a pin through the outside to hold it in place. I suppose a long lever attached to the stem somehow COULD be made to lift it (I have one for the...

Sadly, no self-lift, so it still has to be lifted by me in order to flick the wheel down, but at least it doesn't snap at ankles with a straight lift. Now, suppose it would be possible to slip a small car jack under the bottom bar....? Will think about that. ****

Got this comment from old friend "Newton has surely been tested enough already".

Cable thickness is a compromise. Too thin and it might overheat, too thick and it might not have enough resistance to do the trick. Agree about uncoiling; important point. Tried it with my extension lead and it worked, which is enough for me. Sadly, old colleague is no longer with us, so further...

Recently got the chance of a very reasonably priced electro-hydraulic log splitter, to ease the task of splitting the wood from the five fir trees. Seemed to work well, but was a bit of a pig to move around, as it's heavy and the single leg has an unerring aim for ankle/shin when moving it. So...

One caveat to that. When we moved up here, my 100amp Oxford buzz box would occasionally trip the circuit when it was switched on. A knowledgeable electronics Prof ex-colleague explained to me that the big inductance of the transformer meant that on start up, it could look to the circuit...

Sadly, it can be pretty overcast here, EXCEPT when we get a stuck anticyclone when we do reasonably well for PV, but all the turbines are stationary, and the NIMBYs have a field day writing to the P&J to say how useless the turbines are.

An ex colleague I think took out some patents on this sort of thing, but the last time I saw him, he didn't suggest it had been a howling success. We've wondered about a small domestic wind turbine, but as our garden lies between our neighbour's TV aerial and the distant transmitter, suspect...

FWIW, I have had solar PV since 2011. Very expensive to install then compared to now, and newer panels are probably more efficient, but we do get a good FIT rate from being in so early. Up to a point, our longer summer days up here in Scotland's "cold shoulder" go some way to make up for the...

Thanks for the thoughts. IF proper recycling was in place, not sure that battery kit is that much worse for the environment, and if you allow for the fact that it enables repairs to be done where there is no access to mains, it COULD even be positive. But have now gambled on a charger plus a...

My deWalt 9135 charger seems to be terminally ill. It's the one that takes the old style batteries (the ones that plug up into the drill handle) AND can take the backward compatible Li-ion batteries. The light on the right of the charger is doing two flashes/pause/two flashes; looking on the...

Lion horizontal wetstone grinder with attachment similar to the Tormek one. If there are nicks, have made wheel out of flooring grade chipboard with coarse wet and dry paper on the surface, which is a lot more aggressive than the stone.

Trying to occupy hands while recovering from operation on tendon in left hand, managed to pick up an old B&D "lathe" attachment and self taught how to make vaguely round wooden objects. Moved up to an old Gamages branded version of a Coronet Minor, and taught myself more with the aid of a lot...

Don't we know it! Lost mobile signal when Storm Arwen demolished everything standing round us here. Cordless phone also dead, but fortunately we've kept an old corded one (not quite round dial!) in the workshop, so did still have some communication. Three days and a lot of petrol through the...

Read somewhere that 7 trees constitute an orchard. Even up here, everything is wilting and Scottish Water have asked us all to economise.

Can't disagree with most of that, just that my experience of the VC one was that its thermal mass was useful IF running all the time, but even doing exactly what you say, it was a pig to get going for intermittent use. Don't know the Dowling stoves, but had read that welded sheet was inferior...

Not convinced about that. When we moved into our present house (near passivhaus spec) it had a huge Vermont Castings stove in the living room. We didn't have it running all the time, and my impression was that it took a heck of a long time to warm up to efficient burning. Replaced it with a...

Dunno about honey bees, but there must be quite a few wild bee nests round us, including one under our driveside **** which the local badger excavated and expensively destabilised the ****. On the 1/2 mile stretch of road up from our house, there are at least five new badger diggings, so it...

Guessing wildly, but could the focussing mechanism just be "dry"? Which doesn't help, as no idea how you could lubricate it. (I'm a Pentax user, so Canons are a complete mystery)

Anyone who lived in the path of Storm Arwen knows what wind can do. Woodland behind our house, mostly spruce about 50 years old, is completely flat. And such storms are likely to become more frequent.