Clever recycling and repurposing hacks?
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We had that full lunar eclipse near the winter solstice last night. Of course we had thick cloud, so I did not see it. However I looked up some astronomy in anticipation of the event. In the process, I found out that Galileo built the tube of the first telescope from repurposed copper plumbing tubing. That made my day. Galileo changed the course of science and history with a pipe that brought water to his bathroom. I feel totally vindicated in my interest in repurposing.
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Take one Ikea wall vase with draecena (plant) and throw the draecena away. Then add a solig solar lamp. You can use the spike that comes with the solig walkway lamp but I prefer a thick bolt with a decorative acorn nut at the bottom and you just slip the solig over the bolt.
Also the plastic covered solar cell degrades in strong UV light, but I find the sun is so strong here in Arizona that you can cover the cell with a white plastic shopping bag when it is charging out doors and still get a full charge. The aluminum plate just screws to any wall indoor or outdoor.I have some material and lighting issues at the moment and will improve the render when I understand what is going on.
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Nice outdoor light idea! Shouldn't you find a use for the draecena, too? I like Ikea hacks. I was looking for a good, DIY bike rack and found this image through Google image search.
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[/img]Unfortunately, none of the blogs it seems to be posted on still have it up or something. I can't find any information about what Ikea product it is made from.
This isn't a very elaborate recycling hack, but I like it quite a bit: in my architecture office, we go through a lot of paper. Most of it goes in the recycle bin when it is discarded. Then I see people walking around with new notebooks. Don't get me wrong, I love a good notebook, but all that one-sided paper has another good side! We have a binding machine, so I've taken to cutting the used-on-one-side paper down to 4.25"x11" and binding a stack on the short edge. The long and narrow proportion is perfect for making lists (and I make a lot of lists). Then I can keep my sketch book as an archive of my ideas and not clutter it with a lot of day-to-day mundane stuff.
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Was only kidding about tossing the plant. However we do forget to add water to the mini vase and they die. The sconce is so simple that I may make my own. I could make a plywood die and feed in aluminum blanks and apply pressure with wood working clamps.
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Would that work? Wouldn't the aluminum straighten out a bit after you release it? Your form might have to "overbend" the aluminum to take that into account, no?
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You might be right. There are a number of variables involved. However, if you get close you can probably do a little adjustment by hand. Trial and fit. -
Well, if you give it a try, I'd like to see the final result!
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This came to me while I was doing a watercolor sketch of my uncle who was a WWII bombardier.
If you are an artist here is an IKEA hack for you. The round IKEA magnet board makes a great drawing and painting tool. You can use magnets for hold downs. The board rotates easily so you can orient the picture to the stroke of your brush or pencil. However it can trap air when used on a tilted surface which will cause it to fall to the floor. To combat this, I put some furniture pads on the back so it can slide, but not just float on trapped air.
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@unknownuser said:
I also built a quarter-sawn oak coffee table to plans from a wood working magazine. They estimated the cost of wood at $200. I had the local lumber yard cut down some boards for me and went to check out. When they gave me a bill for $200, I smiled and said thanks I hope you can sell boards of this dimension because I am not paying $200 bye, bye.
A bit of an old quote Roger, but I'm not sure I understood this story. They said it'd cost about $200, they cut the wood for you, then when you found out for sure that it'd be $200, you left them with the already cut boards and left?
-Brodie
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@unknownuser said:
@unknownuser said:
I also built a quarter-sawn oak coffee table to plans from a wood working magazine. They estimated the cost of wood at $200. I had the local lumber yard cut down some boards for me and went to check out. When they gave me a bill for $200, I smiled and said thanks I hope you can sell boards of this dimension because I am not paying $200 bye, bye.
A bit of an old quote Roger, but I'm not sure I understood this story. They said it'd cost about $200, they cut the wood for you, then when you found out for sure that it'd be $200, you left them with the already cut boards and left?
-Brodie
Brodie, I think I typed that late at night and didn't proof read it. I was working from some plans in a wood working magazine. The author said the entire coffee table with quarter-sawn oak, hardware and finish should come in at around $200 plus or minus. I went to the lumber store and asked for quarter sawn oak and they said they didn't have it. So then I said give me some white oak regular sawn. When I got to the check out they gave me a bill for $500. Maybe I should have done the math, but $500 vs $200 (a price that came from a current wood working magazine not something found in my garage from 1930)it was a "you can keep it and I'm not coming back moment". I found a small neighborhood mill that sold me the wood for close to $200 and gave them the rest of my business for the time I continued to live in the area. You might not think it ethical, but I really felt that it was me that was getting stiffed.
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Aw, that makes much more sense. Assuming $200 was a fair price for that amount of quarter sawn oak (beautiful stuff), I can't imagine spending $500 for regular oak. I worked at a home improvement store for awhile (Menards, which is only in the midwest but it's basically the same as Lowes or Home Depot). I worked in millwork so I was cutting trim for people all the time. I can't quite equate it to selling $500 worth of wood but it never really bothered me much when I saw a bunch of trim coming back that someone had decided not to get. Then again, I was just a grunt getting paid by the hour so it was all the same to me. We would periodically throw away the pieces smaller than 5' or so because few people needed them and they just started falling all over the place (not really 'throw away,' they all got sent along with defective merchandise back to the distribution center - no one could ever tell me what the heck they did with that stuff but I suspect it wasn't worth as much effort as we spent bundling it up and shipping it back).
-Brodie
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I have developed arthritis and in the process collected a number of canes. I always look to IKEA for cheap repurposing solutions. IKEA sells these for $200. The original is to hold used plastic grocery bags.
From top to bottom:
- Free cane given to me by the Costco pharmacy on Veteran's day. It folds nicely and is good for traveling in the car or in a plane.
- Best friend who teaches design in the School of Architecture and Design at King Mongkut's University in Bangkok brought this on his yearly visit back to the states. I need to lengthen it as I am taller than the average Thai.
- A Jaguar cane bought from Cost Plus because I like the funky jaguar carving.
4.The calibrated cane with both inch and centimeter scales on the side. It also breaks down for travel. It is more of a walking stick than a cane. The head contains a compass. It also has a tripod screw for a camera. The calibration comes in handy for photos to be used for photomatching in SketchUp. - This is also a monopod/cane conversion. Airport security in Spain almost took it away from me because they thought it was a high-tech shillelagh. However, when I accused them of tilting at windmills they backed down.
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A friend brought me a cane from Thailand, but it kept falling on the floor when I was at the cashiers or using a public toilet. So I drilled a hole through the top and inserted a neodymium magnet. I like to use the word neodymium because so few others use it or can pronounce it.
You can see how it will atttach itself to ferrous metals like my front door.
Since the cane was made in Thailand, it needed to be stretched a bit. I whittled an extension and then used a copper plumber's pipe coupling slathered in epoxy to attach the two pieces.The extension was a porous wood. After I stained the extension, I slipped on the rubber crutch tip and stain bubbled from the interior back onto the surface due to the air pressure.
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Photo Copyright Roger Hawkins 2011The thing with the red feet is a Gorilla Pod, a flexible, grip-anything camera tripod. With the legs bent to the proper position the pod can also hold my Nook e-reader.
A heavy tripod is just too much to take when doing travel photography. The Gorilla Pod requires a little ingenuity when searching for a proper support. But, in the trade off, lighter is better unless you have an under-paid over-muscled assistant.
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Necessity is the mother of invention. Soda bottle sandals. What genius! -
At my house, there is no garbage pick up. You have to truck everything to a dump and pay $6.00 per bag. So when I trimmed some branches, I had to decide what I could do with them. The answer was coffee table legs. What I need now is a glass top.
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Roger,
Some good ideas. (also like how you're painting the door and room). Branches? Those look like a trunk. How big is the growth in your area? I am sure out there you could find use for anything that grows, if you have a little spare land. Ramadas, screens, retaining walls, pathways, compost even. Looks like you're having fun in your beautiful spot.
Peter
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Roger probably doesn't have young kids... but I modeled our sandbox on a version that used log cuts instead of the cedar posts that I used...
...just imagine waste wood making up the ring instead...
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After seeing this I made a few new bag clips this weekend.
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