C. Letellier

Looking at the cloths pins and seeing the deterioration in the wood it has me wondering about other materials.  Most years I have taken them in after every use but got lazy this year. These I inherieted from my mother and are really good quality.  Went and looked and the cheapest good ones I found was $22 for 10.  With freight they would be nearly $3 a pin.  Which brings me to the thinking.  Material that won't stain clothing, degrade in the weather or UV, etc.  First 3 thoughts were ceramic, stainless and glass.  

Ceramic I could certainly do.  Fairly easy to build molds to mass produce.  Shape the mold to roll out say 10 halves at a time in the mold.  Cut into individual pins and fire.  Guessing a little too fragile though even with a tougher glaze although it might surprise me.  Would have to plan for the shrink from firing the clay.

Stainless ideal other than cost.

Now glass got my attention.  Cheap material if recycling.  Love color of some of the blue and some of the green beer bottles so I think material is available.

I am familar with tempering, prince rupert drops and the nearly unbreakable beer glass out of east germany so I know it is possible to make really tough glass.  Can probably make molds by carefully welding various long pieces together so if can cut into individual halves with a knife while still hot after molding should be doable.  I know glass molds are supposed to be a bit hot but well within what can be done with common steel or possible even cast brass giving another possible method to build molds.(clay positive to brass negative to glass positive.)

Good springs good stainless cloths pin springs

Tempered glass is just fast cooling the glass at the right rate.  Tough and shatters into small pieces that are mostly harmless if broken.  Sort of the ultimate version is below.

Prince Rupert drops.  Notice if you avoid the tail you can hit it with a hammer and not hurt it. ( it will actually dent the steel hammer)  Here is a good video on them.

prince rupert drop.

That brings us to the unbreakable beer glasses.  Brand name Superfest.
unbreakable beer glass.

The process is to heat the glass near molten and soak it in a potassium solution so the sodium in the glass exchanges ions with the potassium for chemically strengthened glass that is very hard to break.  Adds another question in colored glass would it change the color?  Brings up one other thought about being able to find them in the dark.  Uranium glass and UV?

Has me toying with trying at the personal level and mildly thinking at the business level.  So if good quality wood cloths pins are at least $2 each and probably $3 each would you be interested in a glass version if durable and if so what price point?  Assume nearly unbreakable some direction or combination of directions.  First generation would probably be common beer bottle colors.  

With radiator shop tools I have, I am fairly sure I can melt the glass.  Quick google says propane / air will melt lime/soda glass and the big bell torch does 150,000 BTU's.  Welding the molds up would be a pain but I think is doable.  A bunch of pieces of small shafting, key stock and bar stock welded together to shape the mold.  A series of cross cuts in it for a knife to follow to cut individual halves out of the molded long half blank.  What am I missing?

William Bagwell wrote:

Tess Misch wrote:I found this at a 2nd hand shop and thought "how cool is that!!" with no idea what it is. It is bowl-shaped, but it is HEAVY and solid metal.  Could be very old. But a curiosity to me regardless!  Any thoughts?  Thanks!  --Tess

My guess: bottom of a gas cylinder such as oxygen or other high pressure gas. Correct shape, approximately the right thickness, etc. Has been flame cut from a larger object. Not sure what the round dimples are, but in the fourth picture they look like weld beads so may have been added later.  

I will second the end out of a pressure tank guess.  Likely the left over scrap from someone building an oil burning stove.

Also a good source for making pectin for other processes.

As for breeding true in mixed orchards mentioned above the answer is NO.  If you get seeds from an apple orchard partially pollinated with crab apples,  Some of the trees will be from other apples,  some will have crab apple traits when fully mature but you can not otherwise tell them from normal apples and finally some will look and taste like crab apples.  Early you can often tell the last batch by leaf color in the spring if you have a crab apple with the purplish leaves as pollination source.  Some of your cross breed apple trees will show the purplish leaves in the spring while others have true green leaves only.  My lesson in this came from a decade ago when I got Gala apples from the grocery store.  Was slow making apple sauce with them and found many the seed were sprouting inside the fruit.  So I planted all the seeds and got over 50 trees from it.  Gave most away.  If they looked like a crab tree leaf they are producing crab apples.  Others are a mixture of great apples and garbage depending on the tree.

Jay Angler wrote:...

Avoid the danger of "too deep" storage spaces. My current kitchen did 3 deep pantry cupboards along one wall, but stuff gets stuffed to the back to never see the light of day again. The narrowness of them aggravates this issue, and the "beige" colour doesn't bounce light as well as a shinier white would have. Small details can make a big difference.

I'm a *big* fan of deep drawers so long as they come all the way out. The hardware is more expensive, but the functionality is worth it in the long run.

I agree mostly on deep cabinets.  There are rare exceptions where the depth is necessary.  As for color though white is ideal and in the modern world small lights inside deep cabinets are easy to do. Cabinets would be full depth back to the wall is another criteria.  I remember taking cabinets out at a friends house and they had fairly shallow commercial cabinets and 6 to 8 inch gap behind them so probably 20 or 40 cubic feet of completely wasted space serving as bug and mouse habitat.

As for deep drawers that is totally correct.  I will never build drawers for anything of mine that do not go as close as possible to full depth.  Drawers need to be full extension if on glides and removable.  Cost can be kept down if the drawer is either light or or low use as extension glides are not needed.  

Now I will add another criteria for drawers.   The should be built so nothing can wedge behind anything.  That means the drawers need a floor and a roof in the cavity.  And the roof needs to slope very slightly more open to the outside.  Thinking the UHDP white plastic for truck bed stuff as the roof.  Super slick and no knife will hurt it as it is used as cutting board material so no way for the drawer to wedge so it won't open.  Mostly the goal is to be sure something like a spatula or knife or other  cannot stick up and prevent opening the drawer.

Another reason is to limit what drawers a mouse or bugs can get too.  Had a portable cabinet in a cabin that the mice could literally get behind and climb up thru like a jungle gym and nest in any drawer.  NEVER again.  They will have chew their way from level to level if they go at all because each drawer cavity is sealed from every other.  As for bugs some sort of drawer seal on each individual drawer should be part of the thinking with a magnet to pull the drawer the last tiny bit fully closed against the seal.

Another criteria for drawers is the counter top needs a drip edge at the outer edge of the bottom of the counter top.  Had a cabinet that when you spilled on the counter, the spill followed the curves and right into the close drawers.  That is another NEVER again.  Ideally the counter should extend beyond the handles such that the drip edge does not even drip on them if the drawer or cabinet door is closed.

Then one final waste space I would choose to reclaim is I want toe kick drawers for low use items.

Some more pieces added.  Began neatening things up mostly.

Got the first part painted.  One mistake was painting the rotatary mechanism of the upper draft control.  It now sticks so it is almost impossible to just rotate.  Since it is spring loaded the cure is to push in first breaking the paint connection and then rotate.  Moves freely until it sits about 10 or 15 minutes in which case pushing in again is necessary.

Have you tried sheet clips or sheet straps?  Here is the first one I found that had the garter belt style anchors rather clips so it should function with straight sheets if used properly and not just fitted.

Sheet clips with garter style anchors.



Another suggestion have you tried simply folding hospital corners?

Hospital corners

Another answer would be to put a marble or flat washer on one side and fold the fabric around it and a knot trapping the fabric bunch in the knot for mostly tear free pulling.  Open used on tents and tarps where grommets do not exist.  Should work for sheets too.  Bit of light rope and something to anchor the knot around.


Finally if you are playing flannel would the hook side of velcro let you hold the sheet gather and simply remove to wash?

Standard thin flexible poly greenhouse plastic.

Mine is worse than normal because of where it is used.  The big shop doors close over it and the inflation fan pushes the plastic out against it.  But wind still causes the plastic to flex and move so I have a bunch of area that has been abraded rubbing on plywood.  And I am fairly sure it costs me heat.

Link to how it is used solar shop curtain.

   Tools glad to have built.  Built a hot wire foam cutter for long cuts a few years ago and gave it a solid work out last night.  Very glad to have it.  3 furring strips(2 complete and 1 chopped into various pieces, a piece of rope in a loop and twisted together as a tensioner, about 10 feet of baling wire, 2 nuts and bolts and 2 big wood screws so not terribly complicated.  

Running it off the big battery charger.  Draw just short of 60 amps when running.  

Lay the sheet over a 2X to have room for the wire to fall out the bottom. Set the wire on the marks on top.  Turn the charger on.  About a 30 second delay while the wire gets hot enough and about another 30 seconds while the wire melts its way down through the 2 inches of foam.

  No real mess and factory straight lines even cutting bead board.  This will be the 4th time I have used it in the last 3 years.  

  But cutting foam to firmly fit holes it was amazing.  Cut a slight loading taper and about 1/8" to 1/4" oversize and the foam fits tightly with almost no breakage.

is there a good choice polish for taking scratches out of greenhouse plastic?  I see a bunch listed but looking they are mostly putting hard plastics first in the list and just listing poly at the end of the list.

First option is PVC pipe.  But supposedly it causes slight chemical deterioration in the poly sheeting so while I might use it for rigidity I would use standard black as a slip cover over it.

Lesson learned doing the solar curtain.  The wood curtain rod from the local lumber yard is 1 1/4 and a snug fit down 1 1/4 black poly pipe.  Be aware wood on poly scratches it a tiny bit making it foggy where it rubs.