Aldi Taurus Brand Cheap ($35) Chinese made Circular Saw Unboxing

 

You can get these from time to time at Aldi - it cost me $35 (You can often pay more than this for a blade alone!). In this day and age, there's IMHO no real reason to pay more than this for something as basic as a circular saw for the average weekend warrior. It cuts like butter for my needs.

Aldi Taurus Brand Cheap ($35) Chinese made Circular Saw Unboxing

 

You can get these from time to time at Aldi - it cost me $35 (You can often pay more than this for a blade alone!). In this day and age, there's IMHO no real reason to pay more than this for something as basic as a circular saw for the average weekend warrior. It cuts like butter for my needs.

How to cut a branch without a ladder 2: Ozito electric pole chainsaw pruner review

Thanks for watching my other video on the manual Hortex pole saw.  Some of the branches in the jungle that is my yard were just too thick for a wuss like me to saw off manually. And so, I bought a cheap generic Chinese made Ozito electric chainsaw on a pole from Bunnings. It cost about $120.  Some manual polesaws are this price! You can find lots of these types of chainsaws on ebay as well, under different brand names.

How to build a treadmill desk on the cheap

Why do you need a treadmill desk?  The question should really be: “Why don’t you already have one?!”

With one, you can walk gently while you work, and the benefits of doing so are well documented:

"According to a study by James Levine at the Mayo Clinic, users can burn an estimated 100-130 calories per hour at speeds slower than 2 miles per hour ... Recent studies suggest that prolonged sitting is linked to an “increased risk of heart disease, obesity, diabetes, cancer, and even early death" - Source, Wikipedia

Also read this http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/18/health/nutrition/18fitness.html?_r=0

But treadmill desks are crazy expensive!

If you know you want one, source yourself a cheap second hand or kerbside chuckout treadmill (about 5 weeks after new year is a good time to go kerbside hunting!), and modify it.  With the money you save you can have a nice holiday to show off that new body!

This video shows how I made a DIY treadmill desk, which is angle adjustable.  Your own treadmill will have a different layout, but I hope this gives you some ideas:

Here’s the design I used. It should be straightforward to follow the principles applied. 

The finished product:

Instructions

1. Remove control panel. 

Here, it pays to source a cheaper treadmill, as the more expensive ones tend to have busier designs and worse, permanently fixed control panels.  You can still make a worthy desk from a treadmill with a fixed control panel, but the table will probably end up blocking the controls

2. Mount blocks onto control panel mount.

If you don’t need the desk to be angle adjustable of course, you can just mount the table directly onto the blocks.

3. The fiddly bit – Mounting the table onto the blocks

Next, you basically have to align the hinges, blocks and tabletop so that the middle block falls freely when the table is raised, and the blocks fall into the correct position that works for you, both when flat and raised.  This is probably the most difficult part. 

An extra pair of hands is certainly helpful at this stage!

Due to the location of the hinges, it is difficult to screw the hinges onto the mounting blocks/table, as whichever one you do first, the other part is going to get in the way of access to the screw holes.

  I ended up using a side ratchet screwdriver like one of these:

4. Remount the control panel in a convenient location

As can be seen, the control panel is now attached with a custom flexible organic mounting solution – otherwise known as a couple of pieces of scrapwood.

Here a a view of the back with the table raised.  Notice the control panel mount on the lower left, screwed into the left hinged block.

All done, let’s go to work … and play!

If you have any comments, or have your own build to share, I’d love to hear from you.

How to fix your leaking Caroma toilet for $2.75 with a Bunnings washer

I made this vid some time ago ...



If you'd like to read more, check this site out.

How to cut a tree branch without a ladder for $37: Bunnings Hortex Pole Saw Pruner Tree Lopper Thing Review

For what is a pretty simple device, pole saws are pretty expensive. I suppose they're not as simple as they look. After all, those teeth are sharp, and you don't want the blade coming off the head and cracking your skull open. The pole also has to be strong enough when extended to withstand vigorous too and fro.  The thought of screwing/nailing/duct taping a hand saw to a long piece of wood did occur to me ... but ...

Well, I'm not pathologically cheap; just your regular, run of the mill tightarse.  Sanity prevailed, and I went manual pole saw hunting.

I'd seen these manual pole saw things over the years at the local Westfield - you know, when they had great stores like K-mart in them, and before they went all trendy with dark marble and fancy restaurants (anyone been to Westfield Centrepoint in Sydney? Good gawd, son, it's completely (hand)tool free!). They are normally flogged by strong looking men who probably also run a Jim's Mowing, and start at $200+ - clearly a strategy designed to make an hour at Jim's usual rates look cost-effective. 

My usual first stop for these things was ebay.com.au, and oddly, there is precious little available if you're after a manual pole saw. Lots of chainsaws on sticks though,  priced to ram home that if you pay more than $75 IMHO for a manual pole saw, you're getting at least a little ripped off, because for a few bucks more you can go electric or petrol.

My next stop of course would be Bunnings (anyone ever been to a Masters? Heck, anyone actually seen a Masters?), where this appears to comprise their full range:

http://www.bunnings.com.au/search/products?q=pole%20pruner

(You'll notice a few line trimmers there too, which are completely unsuited to tree pruning.)

As you can see, we're in >$100 country for any Fiskars, but there on the bottom left is our boy, the laughably cheap (Feb 2014) $36.93 "Hortex Aluminium Handle Tree Lopper" .

Using "Tree Lopper" instead of "Pole Pruner" in the Bunnings search box also turns up the Hortex Turbo Deluxe with Mag Wheels model which costs about $18 more, which seems to be the same saw with a sturdier pole - but which is consequently also heavier. Not being particularly strong sealed the deal for me, so I stumped up for the $36.93 Hortex.

So my Hortex pole saw costs less than a can of paint - but will it do the job? Or will the blade fall off on first saw? Observe my skillful ministrations, as I take on nature!



Notes:

• I'd always assumed using one of these beasties required great strength. You do need strength, but not great strength. The curved shape of the blade actually helps a lot and meant I had to use a lot less force than I thought.  Top down cuts work best.
• The length of 2.4M is probably as long as you want anything like this to be.  As you can see from the pruner section in the video, its pretty hard to pull the cord and hold the pole at the same time when the pole is fully extended.
• The damn wingnut that attaches the blade to the head is a pain in the tightarse, because it keeps coming loose. Loctite may be the answer if you're OK with never removing the blade.  Alternatively, I'm sure I could've screwed the nut tighter but I suspect that would probably have led to stripped nut territory.
• As a bonus, you get this nifty yellow plastic handle that you can attach the sawblade to, turning it into a hand pruning saw.  Wow!!! C'mon, you're never going to use it, but who cares? It's like 3 tools in one for $36.93!!! 
• The pole locking mechanism was durable enough to enable sawing at maximum length, without the telescopic pole retracting.  This was my greatest worry when thinking about whether or not the better made Hortex was worth it.  As it turns out, it was fine.  There really is not a lot of force on the pole when it is fully extended and sawing, so the pole never retracted.  I think the angle you normally end up in when confronting a tall tree has something to do with this.  A better retraction lock is always desirable, but the pone you get is good enough.
• The rubber base guard at the end of the pole fell off and I lost it. Expect this to happen; it's not tightly secured. I didn't find this to be a big deal.

Conclusion:

I really can't fault this. It's a steal. It cut all the branches I needed it too, and the blade looks like it'll be ready for action for a while yet.  And when the blade dulls, it appears you can buy replacements from Bunnies here. I have to give this one 5 out of 5 Turds!

Have you used these contraptions before? Do you know of a cheaper pole saw in anywhere? Let me know and please share!

For the love of cheap tools

Welcome!

How much does a plumber, carpenter, garderner charge per hour? Most of the time, you could do what they do, if only you had their gear (though, likely not as quickly, and possibly not as prettily - but MOSTLY AS WELL is definately possible!).

If you've got the time, splurge on the great brands known throughout Australia - Ozito, Hortex, Performer, Xui, GMC and other greats, available from where all good bargain hunters shop! You won't regret it, and it won't break the bank.

If it turns out to be a pile of steaming kaka, you're only down the (relatively meager) price you paid for it, but I'll bet it's likely you got whatever it was you needed to do done - yes, even if you're a mere mortal. All you need is some commonsensee, and a bit of time. Everything is made in China nowadays anyway, so why not take the concept to the extreme? Let's go hunting for cheap tools - happy tightarsing!