DIY Cork Extractor

This little tip might just help you, come festival season, when you're camping and you've forgotten to bring your corkscrew...

Grow up. Don't buy shit you don't need.

Another work of genius from the Secret Laboratory...

Wassail Torch

It is that time of year when we must wake up the sleepy orchards so they can get to work on making little cider apples. Before waking the trees you must, of course, scare away all of the bad spirits that have been squatting rent-free over the winter period. What better, then, than a homemade Wassail torch from The Secret Laboratory?

Materials list:

• A tin can (OK, they're actually steel these days). Remove the lid entirely and eat the contents. Save the lid.
• An old towel or some similar kind of waste rag.
• A woodscrew of sensible size.
• A squidgy washer, possibly hard rubber or fibre.
• A stout stick.

Equipment list:

• Saw (to prepare your stout stick).
• Punch (or some pointy thing that can act as a punch, e.g. a nail).
• Hammer (to drive the punch).
• Drill with a drill bit of sensible size (see woodscrew, sensible size).
• Screwdriver (of sensible size - see woodscrew).
• Tin snips. If you haven't got tin snips, nail scissors will do, as long as they're not your girlfriend's).

Procedure:

• Using the saw, cut your stout stick to a sensible length, making sure the stick remains sensibly perpendicular to the cut faces.
• Assuming your stout stick is vertical, drill a hole vertically in the top of your stout stick. If your stick is not vertical, either return your stick to a vertical position else establish your own local vertical reference by application of cider and proceed with caution.
• Punch a sensible sized hole in the base of the tin can (see woodscrew). Place the squidgy washer on the woodscrew and, using the screwdriver, affix the tin can to the stout stick (see diagram). The purpose of the squidgy washer is to prevent fuel leakage from the combustion vessel (tin can). The importance of this can not be overstated.
• Punch a hole in the centre of the tin lid and enlarge the hole to a sensible size (see wick) using tin snips.
• Roll up a strip of towel or rag, leaving a little pointy wick sticking out of the centre of the roll (see diagram). Insert the wick through the hole in the tin lid and install the assembly in the combustion vessel (tin can).

Instructions for use:

Pour a small amount of paraffin (lamp oil) into the combustion vessel, just enough to dampen the towel AND NO MORE. There should be no fluid sloshing around in there. Return any excess to your paraffin container.

Light the wick and go scare the bad spirits away from the orchards. Wake the trees and let's hope the cider apple harvest doesn't fail!

Cautions:

These things shouldn't need saying but unfortunately they do. If you were a child who wasn't brought up playing and learning with inflammable substances, PAY ATTENTION NOW.

• Under NO circumstances should your Wassail torch be used indoors.
• Do NOT use your torch near any combustible material (dry vegetation, whatever).
• Risk assessment is NOT for dummies. Formulate a contingency plan and establish emergency procedures before using your Wassail torch. Dry sand or earth is always a good thing to have around in these circumstances.
• Enforce strict supervision of any parties using (or in the vicinity of) your torch, ESPECIALLY kids.
• Petrol and other highly volatile spirits are NOT a good substitute for paraffin. You want a nice slow burn, not a bomb on a stick.
• Finally, I cannot accept responsibility for any misuse of your Wassail torch. You're the grown-up.

I hate having to say all that shit but, you know, there are some people out there who need it.

Want a shiny nickel plate finish?

Stage One

Ammonium Sulphate, 410g
Ammonium Chloride, 90g
Nickel Chloride Hydrate, 490g
Cobalt Chloride Hydrate, 10g.

That should be 1kg of powder. Grind it together with a large pestle and mortar. Don't worry, it's not going to blow your face off. We're not making bombs here. Take all sensible precautions though - you know what chemical shit can be like if you get it in the wrong place.

This is your "Stock Powder". Store it in an airtight container.

Stage Two

Ammonium Sulphate, 34g
Ammonium Chloride, 5g
Nickel Chloride Hydrate, 40g
Cobalt Chloride Hydrate, 5g.

Dissolve this in 0.73 litres of 5N sulphuric acid (careful now, use safety wear) and make up to one litre with distilled water.

This is your "Stock Solution". Store it in a suitable bottle.

Now rest well. The preparation is done. You can move on to Stage Three any time you like.

Stage Three

To make one litre of "Working Solution", add 50ml of "Stock Solution" to 55g of "Stock Powder", dissolve in 660ml of distilled water, then make up to 1 litre with more distilled water.

Stage Four

Connect your piece of metalwork (perhaps copper or brass) to the negative terminal of a power source (croc clips are good for this). This is now your cathode. Connect another piece of electro-conductive material (any metal or carbon but preferably nickel) to the positive terminal of the power source. This is now your anode.

Maximum current should be 15A per square decimetre of the anode and cathode but that's a bit heavy (and a bit dangerous) for home use. You'll get good results for small items just using one of those big fuckoff torch batteries or similarly rated DC power supply.

Complete the circuit by dipping your anode and your cathode into the "Working Solution", making sure they don't touch. Leave for an unspecified while. Could be minutes. Could be hours, depending upon your power source. Swish 'em about a bit every now and then.

Remove, rinse with water then polish with... polish. Metal polish is good. Lo and behold - a wonderful and most durable nickel plating that looks almost like silver.

Whoops - sorry Mr Murdoch. I forgot that this formula was one of your expensive "industry secrets", the knowledge of which I acquired from my Dad just before you sacked him and his work fellows. Hey Ho. I guess we just don't understand the meaning of confidentiality anymore.

Anti-Tardiness Event Console

Coming soon, my newly redesigned "Event Console" - a product designed for people who want their web site events calendar to remain largely independent of mainstream social media tools. Oh, and independent of any tardy, hired web-head who's in charge of your site updates of course. It doesn't matter how tired or static your web site has become, with this nifty little tool your web site will always look like it's up to date! You can even update your web site calendar from your phone whilst lying prone in a gutter after closing time.

Ignore the "Steampunk" console imagery (sample input screen shown here). The output is pure text streamed directly into your web site and formatted according to your own style sheet.


I have two clients working in Beta for several months now, and nothing's broken. Want some?

Universal-ish power supply unit

Hobbyists and home experimenters will know the feeling. You're working on a little project and you know you're going to need power. Often this results in a mad search for a battery box and some cells that still have a bit of life in them, or perhaps you raid your collection of "Wall Warts" (which usually means you can't charge your phone or use your router until playtime's over). Wouldn't it be nice to have a dedicated power supply for these occasions? What a luxury.

Contemplating this problem earlier today, my gaze fell upon a heap (literally a heap) of old computer PSUs gathering dust in the corner of the Secret Laboratory. I always salvage stuff from old PCs - better gathering dust than going to landfill.. Some of the PSUs were of no further use anyway, being of the old "20-pin" format rather than the "24-pin" that modern motherboards require. Some were rated as low as 200W, which doesn't really cut the mustard with modern PCs. For years I had been tripping over the very solution to my problems. It was a classic "DUH" moment...

So, the next Secret Laboratory project is going to be the conversion of one of these old computer PSUs to a useful universal-ish general purpose power supply. If it's good enough for motherboards, it's good enough for the shit I build.

The plan is to source a compact yet safe housing for the PSU, to prevent busy little fingers from poking stuff (accidentally or deliberately) through any dangerous holes. Terminals will be presented for +3.3V, +5V and +12V outputs (either separately else via a voltage selector switch - I haven't decided yet). I may include -12V for those of you who like to muck about with devices that require it. I never did fully understand why op amps need the dual polarity thing...

If you're following this project, the bit you're going to be working with is the 20-pin connector (usually marked P1), seen here to right of centre. You can ignore the other connectors (far left) - they just route the same power to other computer peripherals (hard drives, etc). You can get everything you need from the 20-pin connector alone.

Of great importance! Mark well the following cable colours:

• Orange: +3.3V
• Black: Ground
• Red: +5V
• Grey: Power Good (optional signal)
• Purple: +5V Standby (optional power)
• Yellow: +12V
• Blue: -12V (optional power)
• Green: Power On

There's some redundancy in there, so you'll find several cables of the same colour. Trust the colours but use a meter to check the voltage lines. I haven't given pin numbers because they differ between the 20 and 24-pin standards.

To turn the PSU on, you must ground the Power On pin. I plan to use a simple on-off switch for that.

+5V Standby is always on, even without Power On grounded. I plan to have a little LED across this just to show that the unit is plugged in and ready to go.

Power Good goes high when the PSU is delivering the right voltages to all outputs. Again, I plan to have a little LED across this one. You can't have enough lights on your unit, you just can't. The more lights, the better it looks (and it's a real babe magnet - well, it's always worked for me).

Regrettably, I must inform everyone that electricity can be hazardous and you really mustn't go mucking about with stuff you know not what of. In particular, do not disassemble the PSU itself and, if you do and you see something that looks like a little can of baked beans for a pixie's din-dins, don't touch it else you might end up all dead (even if you're not plugged in). That's my legal disclaimer. Can we see if we can get through this project like grown-ups?

More news soon, as soon as I've found a suitable housing for the PSU...

The Lindsay Technique for tangle-resistant cable storage

I call this the Lindsay Technique because it was musician and rock climber Andy Lindsay who taught me. The technique is derived from rock climbing practice but it works equally well in the world of live music performance.

Happy tangle-free gigging!

Reclaiming your toothpaste

OK, not an invention as such but a super little tip for all of you with TDA (toothpaste depletion anxiety).

Coming next on The Secret Laboratory - a full video disclosure of the Lindsay Technique for non-tangling cables. A must for musicians...