It's Not Pretty But It Does The Job

This is a parabolic reflector designed to enhance the directionality of a wi-fi router or access point antenna, and to increase the signal strength in that particular direction. It's cheap and easy to make, and involves cutting and glueing, which is always fun.

My router is in the corner of my house, and there's no point illuminating my street with my wi-fi signal since I'm not using it out there. This reflector will bounce all of that signal back into my house and increase the reception. The link (below) where I got the template says it will increase gain by about 9dBi, which is pretty decent. I never got round to doing a before/after measurement, but there was a noticeable improvement. In rooms on the far side of the house where signal had been patchy before, it is now much more reliable.


The antenna on the right with the reflector is set to cover the ground floor. The antenna on the left is aimed at the area where my wife uses her laptop in the bedroom upstairs. There isn't enough space for a reflector there, but the signal is good enough without.

Here is the link where you can download the template and make your own.

The pull-starter on my lawn mower is attached to the engine cover, the engine cover is bolted directly to the aluminium engine block in various places. When you pull the cord to start the engine, the engine cover pulls upwards on two bolts at the front. One of the bolts was missing already, and the other mounting point eventually snapped off, making the whole thing quite wobbly and very hard to start. With my wife in the background telling me to just buy a new mower, I broke out the socket set and got to work.


Four bolts around the starter mechanism and it just lifts off. This reveals the top of the crankshaft which has the blade attached to the other end and spins clockwise when the engine is running:


This is the pull cord assembly:


When there's tension on the cord, a little tooth pops out:


This tooth engages with the protrusions at the top of the crank:


Because there are now no bolts holding the front of the cover down, the whole thing lifts up when you pull the cord and the tooth fails to engage with the top of the crank. Here's where the mouting point broke off from the engine block:




I had read that Araldite (two-part cyanoacrylate epoxy adhesive, if you don't know the brand name) can be used to bodge broken aluminium engine blocks, so I used it to stick this piece back on, and found a replacement for the other missing bolt. It seems to be holding fast, and the mower is much easier to start.

Side note - if you ever break part of an aluminium engine block, take a moment to admire the crystalline structure.

One of our neighbours moved to a new house, and needed to get rid of a bunch of stuff. She didn't have a car so asked me if I could help take some of it down to the tip. I suggested that I stick it all in my garage and try to find homes for the various things first. That's how I ended up with a coffee table, cupboard, suitcase, two venetian blinds, two DVD players, surround sound speaker system, freeview TV tuner, folding highchair, baby play mat, plastic baby bath, metal candelabra, two large metal candlesticks, two IKEA Storm lamps, and a pair of dissassembled under-bed storage drawers. My wife sighed when she saw what I'd taken on, bless her.

Everything found new homes via Freecycle except for the cupboard - which is still in my garage, holding some of my other stuff - and the drawers - which I thought might be useful.


We had acquired a sideboard for our kitchen via Freecycle a while before, and I decided to modify one of the drawers to go under the sideboard. It had to be made narrower and shallower to fit, so I measured, marked and cut the side and front/back boards. The base is made up of small sheets of hardboard, which also had to be cut down.


There are some holes drilled in the base of the front/back panels where I guess some rods would go to support the base of the drawer. There wasn't any suitable dowel to hand but I did have some scraps of wood which I used to make some braces. They're not pretty, but they do the job (and they're invisible when the drawer is right way up).


The cut edges of the boards were much paler than the faces, so I used some wood stain to try to mask it. The colour's not quite right, but it's much less obvious than it was.


Some of the original casters were damaged but between the two drawer "kits" I was able to put together a set of four casters.


So there you go, the finished article:

When we moved into our house, the cupboard under the sink in the kitchen didn't have a shelf inside. We decided to keep our cleaning equipment and supplies in there and, after a while, we accumulated so much stuff that it started to overflow into other cupboards. Around this time, the supermarket near where I worked was being refurbished and they were throwing out a load of stuff, including most of a kitchen. I grabbed a few pieces of useful-looking wood and brought them home. One of them was a cupboard shelf that was exactly the right size for our cupboard.

Being under the sink, there are pipes and things in the way. My friend Rich kindly lent me his jigsaw so I could do some fancy cutting. Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures before or during the process, so you'll have to make do with the "after" shots:





The trickiest part was taking the cupboard apart so that I could put the shelf in. I had to remove the strut in the middle, which had screws at the bottom:


and at the top:


I then had to remove the board in front of the sink, and the drawer (though luckily not the drawer runners). It fit first time (a rarity for me) and the extra space was quickly filled up:

These were acquired more than ten years ago with a portable CD player and they have been used with various cassette players, CD players, minidisc players, and MP3 players over the years. One of the wires broke near the plug meaning sound only came from one of the speakers. Buying and soldering on a new plug was a possibility, but an easier option was to cut the end off a spare stereo jack-to-jack lead from my box of cables and replace the whole cable. Nice straightforward job. The trickiest part was tying strain relief knots in the exact same place in each cable so that the cable ends were the same length.

So, uhhh, we broke our bed. All the nails holding one of the battens popped out. It was a self-assembly job but the bit that broke was pre-built in the factory, so I don't think my construction skills are to blame.



The loose batten was eventually encouraged to come right off, the nails were hammered out, then my glamorous assistant held it onto the side of the frame while I drilled guide holes and then screwed it down with self-tapping screws. I drilled and screwed the other batten down as well (the one which hadn't fallen off) just in case. The battens at each end that the spine is attached to are already held on by some fairly sturdy screws so that should be OK.

I love my Audiotechnica ATH-M40fs headphones - I really do - but, after a couple of years, the coating on the pads starts to flake off and I end up with bits of black stuff in my hair and in my ears. I called my local A-T service centre to order the replacement parts, and the guy dictated the instructions off the top of his head. Very impressive. First, the old earpads come off:


Get a spudger or small flat-blade screwdriver into the gap around the edge of the earpiece and use it to pull the edge of the pad out. Work this all the way round and then slip the pad off the earpiece. We'll fit the new earpads last - first we have to pretty much strip the headphones to get at the headband pad. Remove the screws and lift up the driver:


Make a note of which wires go into which part of the distribution block:


Then loosen the screws in the block and remove the driver part altogether:


You do need to remove both earpads if you're replacing those, but you only have to fully disassemble one side of the headphones to get the headband pad off. I got a bit overexcited and did the whole thing before I realised that it was unnecessary. Here are the pics of the other side for reference. Apart from the wiring, the two sides are identical.




Now pop one side of the earpiece hanger out of its hole in the earpiece, then do the other side. There will be enough flex in the plastic to do this fairly easily. Thread the cable back out through the hole:


Now we need to remove the hanger mechanism (from one side only). This is to give enough access to slide the headband pad off. So remove all the screws, take the mechanism apart and thread the cable out, making a note of exactly how it's routed to help you put it back together later:


I don't have any pics of this last bit, but I've done this twice now and it takes me about an hour just to take the old pad off and fit the new one. It's probably quicker to use scissors and carefully cut the old pad off, but be VERY careful not to damage the cable. Once you've got the old pad off, you need to put the new pad back on. It's a tight fit and you need to make sure the cable stays in the right place as you do it. Stick with it, you'll get there eventually. Once you've got the new pad fitted and you're happy that it's even, reassemble the hanger mechanism, threading the cable carefully through, and gradually work your way back down til you have the drivers connected and screwed in.

Now comes the final tricky part - fitting the new earpads. Locate the edge of the pad in the groove around the cup, then use a spudger or similar to gradually stretch and work the edge of the pad until it all slips into the groove. Take care not to slip and cut or damage the pad.

All done! Put them on and crank up some tunes!

This is our cutlery drawer. Because it's full of cutlery, it's pretty heavy.


After several years of pulling on the front to open it, the threads gave way on the screw holes on one side and the front panel came away. Rather than pack the existing holes with matchsticks or toothpicks and re-use the original screws, I decided to use connecting blocks and screw into untouched wood. Since this is our heaviest drawer and gets the most abuse, I wanted a good solid repair.


I used one block and two self-tapping screws on each side to re-attach the front panel to the body of the drawer.

There was a lot of useful space above the clothes rail in our wardrobe and we had stuff piling up on the floor. I bought a big piece of melamine-coated conti board and used some scrap wood from the shed (left by previous owners) for the battens.

I listen to a lot of music, and have several pairs of headphones. Some small sets for use on the move, and a couple of larger sets for when I'm at my desk. The larger sets take up a lot of space on the desk when not in use and can get in the way. I bought a couple of screw-in hooks from a local hardware shop, and fitted them to my modified shelving unit.