Funny you should mention that. There are many things that when we think of building them, our minds go to metal work. However, a large percentage of them can just as easily be built from wood and will handle the job just fine. I don't have a lot of metal working equipment and if I get near a welder even Navy Seals run screaming. Wood projects, on the other hand, I am more than equipped to take on. So I have to remind myself many things can be done using wood instead of metal, or the two can be forced to play together.
Nancy Reading wrote:Thank you for that firewood rack post Kelly! It's given me ideas - I want to make some wood trolleys - to shuffle wood from the wood shed into the house - that are small enough to store under the kitchen counter. I was thinking metal - but there is no reason they can't be made of wood (which might be much easier).
One of my little projects has been outside - I like to use comfrey as a cut-and-come-again mulch. It is also good in my climate for holding back the grass from my growing areas. I'm in the process of planting up a new set of beds at the moment, so I dug up part of an established clump that is starting to sprout:
digging comfrey
When I teased apart the growing points I had about 20 small plants to plant out
comfrey starts
That was enough to do one side of the patch with a double layer of comfrey starts. That will make a nice barrier in a year or two.
Flling in a hole in the wood shed wall. This had been covered with a tatty bit of woven plastic, but I got fed up with looking at that and decided to try my hand a some wattle instead. Technically the wood should be split hazel for longevity, but I don't have so much of that around, whereas I do have a bit of willow that I cut down a couple of years ago which has been lying in the mud. Time to tidy that up too! It is still remarkably flexible so seems it may be up to the job for a year or two at least.
I added a couple of uprights from some coppiced hazel. These will do to weave the willow around. I cheated and used screws to fix them.
Then for the willow: I left all the side branches on, they will help catch the rain and wind a bit.
There is still a bit of a gap at the top. I couldn't work out how to easily infill above the roof support and am hoping we can replace the end roof panel which is leaking at the middle due to not being adequately fixed down and flexing in the winds. By wrapping the panel down, that will make a nice bit of flashing....If not well I have four dimensional plans for this space anyhow!
It isn't water tight, but should catch the majority of the rain (which doesn't tend to come from this direction much) and a bit of ventilation is a good thing in a wood shed!
Jay Angler wrote:I think that sometimes the most important projects are the ones that repair broken things so they can go back into full service.
good as new
Hopefully the handle will last a few more years now. I'll try and do better about putting it away properly out of the weather now I have my new yurt-shed.
I can relate to a well repared tool. I have no idea why I delay fixing tools in regular use. Well, I do. I'm too busy with the task at hand to stop, go to the workshop, repair and then go back to doing what I wanted in the first place. It's always, I'll do it when I'm done here and then I'm either too tired or forget. And the cycle repeats. And you'd think I'd learn - so many times when I eventually get too fed up with a loose rake head or wobbly spade and fix it, the job satisfaction goes way up and my frustration is a thing of the past!
Changing one thing, no matter how tiny, is still change
The longest recorded flight time of a chicken is 13 seconds. But that was done without this tiny ad:
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