How To Make Gardening Tools At Home: Handheld Dibber

Description

Interested in how to make gardening tools at home? Need a seedling planter for your garden? Want to make a simple DIY project for your gardening enthusiast? In this episode in the House of Hacks series' on DIY gardening tools, Harley shows how to make a handheld dibber, also known as a dibbler. Springtime is upon us and making homemade gardening tools can be an easy workshop project for either yourself or a loved one. The dibber is an especially easy-to-make DIY tool to help plant seeds and seedlings that requires minimal tools and time and is particularly suited for kids and beginners. These simple tools make great gifts for the gardener in your life.

Previous video gardening tool video: How to make a long dibber

Inspired by this Charles Dowding video and this blog article.

Here at House of Hacks we do tutorials, project overviews, tool reviews and more related to making things around the home and shop. Generally this involves wood and metal working, electronics, photography and other similar things. If this sounds interesting to you, you may subscribe here.

If you’re interested in learning more about the House of Hacks' values, here’s a playlist for you.

And here’s the most recent video.

For a written transcript, go to How To Make Gardening Tools at Home: Handheld dibber

Music under Creative Commons License By Attribution 3.0 by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com.
Intro/Exit: "Hot Swing"
Incidental: "Chipper"

Transcript

Are you looking for an easy to use gardening tool to plant seedlings?

Do you need a simple to make gift idea for the gardener in your life?

In today's episode of how to make gardening tools at home, we're going to make this handheld dibber.

With spring in full bloom, DIY gardening tools are a popular project for either your own use or to give as gift ideas.

In an earlier House of Hacks episode, I showed you how to make a long dibber out of a rake handle.

A long dibber is useful when planting seeds and seedlings in large beds at ground level.

This handheld dibber is useful in smaller areas, such as raised beds.

Before making the long dibber, I cut off about 12 inches from the end of the handle in order to make this smaller handheld dibber.

Conceptually the idea is the same.

We're going to be putting a rounded point on the end to make holes in the soil for seeds and seedlings but we're going to be adding a few extra features to this one.

In this project I'm going to use a lathe, just to show a different way of doing the same thing, but if you don't have access to a lathe, you could do the same thing as I showed before with a sanding station, or by hand with sandpaper, files or a rasp.

Today, I'll also be connecting two round objects to each other at 90 degree angles.

Stick around to see how I do that.

Welcome! If we're just meeting, I'm Harley and this is the House of Hacks where we make stuff out of wood, metal, electronics and other similar materials in order to inspire you on your creative journey.

For this project, to start, I'm going to cut off about 4 inches from the end of this wood.

I'll set it aside and use it later on this project.

Then I chuck the remainder in the lathe and start cutting it down.

The idea is to reform the end from the slight taper to more of a point with a rounded end.

Once I have it to the shape I want, I'll use the marks on the tool rest to inscribe a couple lines an inch apart.

These allow the user to gauge the depth of the hole they're making.

The last lathe operation is a bit of sanding to make everything smooth.

Remember that 4 inch cut-off from earlier?

That's going to be a handle for this piece.

I used the sanding station to put a slight chamfer on each end.

So now that I've taken the dibber out of the lathe, the next operation is to attach the handle.

Originally, I was going to use a hole saw and put a radius on this end for this to sit down inside.

But I don't have a hole saw the right size for this radius and so the next idea I came up with was to use a Forstner bit to put a flat on here and a dowel to join these two together like so.

Overall I think this is going to be a much easier operation.

All that's left is a bit of oil to protect the wood.

It's ready for use.

I'll see you over here in this video where I show you how to make the longer version of this tool for use standing up.

And when making things, remember...

Perfection's not required.

Fun is!

How To Find A Lost Digital Camera - Unique color codes (Part 4)

Description

Ever lost a camera or other photo gear? Looking for ideas for how to find lost camera (digital)? This is the fourth in a series where Harley shows ideas that can help a lost camera find its way back home. These travel tips and hacks can help someone who has found a lost camera return it to you.

Buy online (Affiliate links):

• Colored electrical tape
• Model paint kits

Here at House of Hacks we do tutorials, project overviews, tool reviews and more related to making things around the home and shop. Generally this involves wood and metal working, electronics, photography and other similar things. If this sounds interesting to you, you may subscribe here.

If you’re interested in learning more about the House of Hacks' values, here’s a playlist for you.

And here’s the most recent video.

For a written transcript, go to How To Find A Lost Digital Camera - Unique color codes (Part 4)

Music under Creative Commons License By Attribution 3.0 by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com.
Intro/Exit: "Hot Swing"

Transcript

Ever lost camera gear before?

Looking for ideas for how to recover camera gear if it's been lost?

Today at the House of Hacks, I'm going to show you a strategy to help your lost camera gear find its way home.

I belong to a local photography Facebook group where sometimes somebody will find photography gear that was accidentally left at popular shooting locations.

Generally, a post goes out to alert people that gear has been found and who to contact to retrieve it.

Many times the gear can be reunited with its owner.

Inspired by these posts, this is the fourth in a series of ideas to help your gear find its way home if it gets lost.

The other videos in the series can be found in this playlist.

The previous ideas help if your gear is found by a random stranger.

Today's idea helps your gear stand out from the rest, that may be very similar, when you're in a group.

Hi! If we're just meeting, welcome!

I'm Harley and this is the House of Hacks where we do things related to the workshop like metal, wood and electronics projects and other things of that nature.

Today we're talking about photography gear.

When you're with a group of photographers, many times people have either the same or very similar gear and if things get jumbled up, sometimes it's hard to figure out who's is who's.

To help in this situation, select a three or four color combination and get paint or tape in these colors.

Multi-packs of electrical tape and model paint kits are great sources to get multiple colors of each.

Electrical tape can be found at home improvement stores and model paint kits can be found at craft stores.

Or, they're both available on Amazon. I'll leave affiliate links to searches for multiple products of each down below.

Using tape or paint, depending on the equipment and your preference, put your color code on all your equipment.

This makes it easy to identify your equipment when it's combined with the same equipment from other photographers.

If you have friends that do the same thing, be sure to coordinate with them so you don't use the same or similar color combinations.

I'd love to hear in the comments below if you have any strategies for identifying your equipment.

And remember, it's a good idea to have a multi-pronged approach and identify your equipment in multiple ways.

I'll see you in one of these videos that YouTube thinks you'll enjoy.

And when making things, remember...

Perfection's not required.

Fun is!