The drill powered wire wheel. Takes a while, but it's a lot easier than scrubbing by hand. Costs about £1.50 and doesn't wear down too quick
The wire is also aggressive enough to groove along the grains. There's no way I'm bothering to hand sand the grain at this stage, so I'm consulting with some others on ideas for leveling it with speed and ease. One option I'm considering, which will probably be the one I use, is an epoxy based grain filler. It's transparent and gooy, so it fills the gaps to give a nice smooth surface; mirror smooth if you sand and relay it a few times
Progress on the door jambs is slow, but at least present. I wired wheeled this jamb as a test to see how clean I could get them, and how I might do that. The wood looks much more interesting and alive now, unfortunately ^^^
The cleaned up version, after some precision diamond discing. It does have a nice glaze. Now all I need to do is figure some way of tidying the end up which, despite my best efforts, aren't all that. I might make some copper caps for it, but this one is a low priority given what else needs doing, so I'll see if anything off the shelf inspires me as I wander round tool stores
Here's a roughed out section that's easier to handle. Masking tape seemed an easy way to get a straight edge around the circumference, it's also nice and bright
Mum thought this clay soil pipe would make a good plant pot. At the time of minidigging, I really couldn't be bothered considering it with the amount I had to deal with, but I found this one piece hanging around after tidying out the rubble and thought I'd chop it up for her as a surprise present
Soil never looked so good, to me anyway. You can see the rendering took a knock from the minidigger's boom. Easy fix, it's only the first coat anyway
Max inspects and signs it off as almost good enough to do a dump on, maybe later...
Two three hours of rotovating later, all the lumps and bumps of the minidigger are starting to level out. The soil is much nicer to till now it's got some sand going on in the mix. I was able to rake the surface to further improve the levelling as well as haul all the loose rocks and rubble over towards one point for easier collection. Looks easy, but my back and I have fallen out with each other
After cutting most of it off with a carpet knife, I fired up the 3hp beasty with a wire twist knot brush. Yep, that works... :P
That white line around the doorway is silicon. It'll make getting the door jamb back in annoying and besides, silicon will not stick to it's self, so that all needed to come off if I have any hope of resealing the jamb
All mixed up with some water and awaiting neutralization. Not sure if I can be bothered with that tonight
Weighing in at an eerily similar 448g
Crushed and measured, 400mls worth. Knowing how much volume my sample makes up is important to working out the dispersion of any treatment I put on the garden
Round two, a bigger random sample
Uh oh spaghettios! There it is, in beautiful ultra high resolution. And it says, "John, the pH is simply tooooooo high, fix me!"
Yes, it is. And a temperature compensated one at that. No messing around with useless dye kits for this monkey!
A pH / ORP / Temperature meter, or is it?
400ppm is an improvement, but it could still do with being higher
A nutrient-wand, obviously
At least now I can see a good layer of sand settling out within seconds as I stop stirring
Four soil samples I took from around the garden
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