Tag - Experiments

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Sunday, November 11, 2012

Making A Stirling Engine

stirlingenginethumb.jpgThis is a project to try to make a small working model Stirling engine - designed to run off a small heat source such as a candle or cup of hot water.

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Sunday, August 26, 2012

Pork-Less Pies

porklesspiethumb.jpgI have some friends who don't eat pork and they happened to mention one day that the one thing they really miss, since they gave it up, is a pork pie.

This seemed to me more of a challenge than an obstacle, so I set about trying to recreate something equivalent to the Pork Pie Experience, but without any pork or pig products - indeed without any products of mammalian origin at all.

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Friday, August 3, 2012

Beer Yeast Bread

beeryeastbreadthumb.jpgI like doing things just a little bit wrong on purpose - this time, I thought it might be interesting to try making bread using the wrong kind of yeast - beer yeast.

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Sunday, July 8, 2012

Custard Experiments

custardthumb.jpgI love custard. Egg custard is great, but I also like conflour-based custard - especially the skin that forms on top when it cools.

But there's never enough skin - so I set about trying to make more.

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Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Nuttish - Reverse-Engineering The Rowntrees Nutty Bar

nuttishthumb.pngUp until some time in the 1980s, there was a confectionery bar made by Rowntree Mackintosh, called 'Nutty'. Sadly, it's just a memory now - discontinued before Rowntree became part of Nestlé.

It was my sister's favourite - and she often reminisces about it. Well, I thought it was time to try to bring it back - so here's my attempt to reverse-engineer it.

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Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Petite Post - Finding The Lower Limit Of Postal Dimensions

petitepostthumb.JPGDecember 2011 - Royal Mail has quite a lot to say about the maximum sizes and weights of items to be posted, but surprisingly little about the minimums.

This is a little project to try to discover just how small an item can be successfully posted.

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Saturday, August 27, 2011

Gleaning

gleaningthumb.jpgMy attempt to home-grow cereal crops on a small scale (Project Wholegrain) is not going altogether as well as I had hoped, so I've supplemented my meagre harvest by going out gleaning.

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Saturday, August 13, 2011

Project Wholegrain - Garden-Scale Cereal Crops

wholegrainthumb.jpgMost vegetable crops that are grown commercially are also popular with small scale home gardeners, however, this doesn't seem to be the case for cereal crops. So this year - 2011 - I'm going to give it a try - growing grain on a very small scale

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Sunday, July 31, 2011

Making A Recycled Plastic Boat

plasticboatthumb.jpgMany of my past projects have thumbed their noses at convention or have been absurd, foolhardy or otherwise non-conformist, but this one extends the boundaries further than ever.

I'm going to try to make a boat by recycling plastic bottles.

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Thursday, June 16, 2011

More Plastic Recycling - Experimental Stuff

plasticmoulding2thumb.jpgSpurred on by the resounding success of my project to mould a replacement kitchen knife handle from recycled HDPE, I thought it might be worth a little experimentation, to try to get a measure of the potential for small-scale, amateur remoulding of this material.

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