Category: Projects / DIY / Crafts (Page 3 of 4)

Projects, Do it Yourself, and Crafts.

High Light Bulb Changer

November 29, 2010 / Phil / 14 Comments

So you have a light bulb in a high ceiling fixture and no ladder. What to do? Make your own light bulb changer.

Materials needed:

Broom stick with standard Acme threads
An empty 2 liter plastic soda bottle
An old cotton t-shirt
Small amount of tape (electrical, duct, masking, whatever)
Sharp knife

Steps:

1.) Cut the bottle approximately as shown in the photo. Be careful because this kind of plastic is tough. Both the knife and the plastic can cut you. You don’t need or want a smooth clean edge on the plastic. A ragged edge is fine. (see below)

Top portion of bottle attached to broomstick.

2.) Screw the broomstick into the mouth of the bottle until it’s snug, then apply a wrap or two of tape as shown in the photo to make sure it stays in place.

3.) Take the old t-shirt and fold it once so there are four layers of material and carefully fit it into the bottle. What I do is fold the t-shirt then lay it over a light bulb and use the bulb to gently press the shirt into the bottle. Once the shirt is in place, you can replace bulbs all day long without readjusting the shirt.

4.) Now you’re ready to go. Gently press the tool up over the existing bulb and twist the broom stick counterclockwise to unscrew it. Put the new bulb into the tool and install it.

BE GENTLE! This device grips the bulb and gives a lot of leverage so it’s very easy to twist the bulb right off and break it. Fingertip pressure is all you need to hold the broom stick.

The way it works is the sharp edge of the bottle tends to grab the t-shirt material so the shirt doesn’t slip. When you twist, the cotton t-shirt material takes about a 1/8th turn wrap on the bulb and grips it. The harder you twist, the tighter it grips. A heavy cotton t-shirt works best and a dirty t-shirt grips better than a clean t-shirt.

This device works equally well on incandescent bulbs and spiral CFLs (compact fluorescents). For very small bulbs, fold the t-shirt twice before inserting it. For other shapes like long skinny CFLs you might try the same methods but with differently shaped bottles.

Cook Over Wood More Efficiently

June 9, 2010 / Phil / 0 Comments

A huge number of people in the world use wood fuel for cooking. Cooking over wood is very common here in Guatemala. Wood fires generally produce a lot of pollution and smoke, and result in deforestation in some areas.

But wood is not such a bad fuel if we burned it more efficiently. The problem is that methods for burning wood are terribly inefficient. Most wood fueled cooking setups waste over 90 percent of the heat produced. The heat just goes off into the atmosphere and not into the item being heated. We also burn wood at a lower than optimum temperature, which results in wasted fuel, incomplete burning, and production of smoke.

If we could raise the efficiency of the burning process and at the same time focus the heat produced into the cooking pot or other item being heated instead of wasting it, we could theoretically get the same cooking done faster, using a lot less wood, and producing a lot less pollution.

Devices that burn wood more efficiently and that you can cook on are not that difficult to construct if you know how to build things from sheet metal and weld it together. And you’ll end up with a fairly large, heavy, non-portable device. But most people in poor countries do not have the ability to build such things and cannot afford to buy a large, heavy, and thus expensive device.

In order to make an efficient wood burning device that is small and portable you have to use forced air. Well that’s out of the question in poor countries, isn’t it? But what if the device generated its own electricity to power a fan for the forced air. Way too complicated and unreliable, right?

Perhaps not. Check out the BioLite. It’s a pretty neat idea.

Unpacking my Asus Eee PC

June 14, 2008 / Phil / 4 Comments

How long does it take to get from sealed box to surfing the net for a beginner who has never seen this machine in person before? I thought I’d video the process and find out. It would have gone quicker had I known that the Eee connects to WiFi automatically and gives no obvious indication of this. I spent time trying to establish a connection when one already existed. Of course I have that locked down now so it does not go fishing for open access points but only connects to my own WAP secured access point.