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Showing content with the highest reputation on 05/01/14 in all areas

  1. You think something you do will be OK, then comes a rude awakening (literally!) & you realise that that something you did could actually have killed you! Very sobering. With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, putting a full ashcan fresh from the stove underneath it after I'd put the empty one in & already locked up for the night, plus it was going to rain overnight, so didn't really want to put the full ashcan outside, wasn' t the best idea I've ever had. Sure enough, less than an hour & a half later, just before midnight, the CO alarm went off. Having opened the front doors & boosted the ventilation through the boat to clear the air, it dawned within my befuddled brain what the source of the CO was - the full ashcan sitting under the stove gently smouldering away, giving off CO into the confines of the boat instead of up the stove flue as it would when sealed inside it. So, what seemed like a good idea at the time could have killed everyone on board but for a fully functioning CO alarm. I wouldn't mind, but the omnipotent one swore she could smell the ashcan, however I thought she was just reacting to the dust. Now I've heard that some people get quite a whiff off an ashcan, but I've never experienced this myself. I don't know what this means, but I will take her concerns very seriously in future when she says she can smell something funny, no matter what it is. Let my experience serve as a timely reminder to all of you, before winter truly sets in, that you can't treat anything relating to your stove with casual indifference. Do I feel stupid? Yes. Should I seriously consider changing my name to Richard Head? Probably. Stay warm, but most importantly, stay safe folks.
    1 point
  2. Go on Alan, nice little retirement business!................................................................and its got a PD2 and Catrin can entertain the guests with her melodian
    1 point
  3. So I was tinkering last night with my Boatwoman's Bonnet kit that I got for Christmas (thank you Monkey ), when I realised it had a rather hefty 21 metres of piping cord in it. As some of you might know, I was a costume designer and maker for many years, and only gave up my trusty sewing machine when I moved onto the boat. The idea of sewing by hand piping cord channels whose cumulative length is longer than my boat, didn't appeal so I did a bit of interweb research to find a super cheap sewing machine that I could run from a Maplins laptop inverter from the cigarette lighter sockets on the boat. I saw that Poundstretcher stocked a 6v machine and so I read some reviews, watched some YouTube vids of it and thought it was worth a go. When I got to Poundstretcher this morning they actually have 3 types of sewing machine! I opted for their middle-of-the range one in the end, as the cheapest one which was a mere £15 looked like it did straight stitch only. The one I bought was the Hyundai Mini Multi-purpose 8 Stitch Sewing Machine reduced from £49.99 to £29.99. I got it home and was delighted to find it can be powered by 4 x AA batteries! Didn't say that on the box! Considering I'm used to Brother industrial sewing machines and sturdy metal-cased Husqvarnas, this isn't a half bad little machine for something so small and lightweight. Because it takes batteries I don't have to be near a socket on the boat, which is helpful. And it works perfectly. I wouldn't want to try and sew leather or canvas-backed vinyl on it, but for clothes repairs and boatwomen's bonnets it's ideal! It says it has 8 choices of stitch but that includes stitch length, so there's not a separate function for lengthening or shortening stitches. If you exclude varying the stitch length there's really only three (straight stitch, ziggy and stretch-stich/hemming) - but quite frankly, other than buttonholing which is a glorified zigzag, I've rarely used any others in 19 years of costume work anyhoo. Oh, and it can be operated by a hand button instead of the foot pedal if you prefer. The only glitch, which isn't a problem but has made me chuckle, is demonstrated in the photos below: This is the sewing machine in my little studio on the boat: My sacrificial sock, which I used to test each of the stiches and check I was happy with the bobbin tension - it was fine (the bobbin tension, that is. Not the sock. Sock has been stitched up good and proper). I've numbered each stitch in this photo. Spotted Hyundai's cock up? Anyway, I'm not knocking it - a little Russian roulette stitch selection will keep me on my toes. It's a great machine for under thirty squids that can run on AA batteries - but if you're a boater with a 240v inverter you could run it from the adaptor it comes with if you prefer. I've missed my costume work so I'm looking forward to having a play, albeit on a slightly smaller scale than musicals containing 400 costumes!
    1 point
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  5. WOW Hi GG You must have quite a power demand then, that seems a lot generator running. I believe the conversion kits are pretty expensive, might be worth equation how much solar you could buy with a conversion cost.
    1 point
  6. use a circular saw, much quicker and safer than a chainsaw. In fact chain sawing pallets is probably more dangerous than logs in my humble opinion.
    1 point
  7. … and it turns out we're wrong and Athy's right! My apologies. It's too long to post here and anyway off topic, but there's full explanation here: http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-exc1.htm I stand corrected.
    1 point
  8. Finding your company rather more irritating than usual, then finding a productive way to enjoy my day, is far from 'flouncing'. I find the sort of egg-throwing you and others engage in here to be infantile and stultifying. I would suggest you also find something more useful to do if I imagined you were up to it. No, I will stay in the deeper waters, thanks.
    1 point
  9. This post cannot be displayed because it is in a forum which requires at least 10 posts to view.
  10. Cheers didnt need it, took full advantage of local pubs !
    1 point
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