Light is good. Dark is dangerous, in the workshop at least. As I have been working out on/in the ‘shop ’til quite late many evenings over the Winter, getting some proper lighting going on will be quite blissful. It is surprising how tiresome working in poor light conditions can be.

Being a rather large space, compared to your average room in a house, the workshop needed a number of lights and a lot of versatility. As we got a haul of nice light fittings to use, and some new LED bulbs to put in them, we need a ‘grid switch’ to control the lighting of the room. A ‘grid switch’ (also called a ‘switchbank’) is basically a …Continue reading »

Wood Stove From Scrap – 1 Design Notes

Update: to see a video review of this wood burner after five years of use see https://goo.gl/h9Jxsf.

We have got to the point where there is no longer a gale blowing through the workshop (yay!): doors are shutting, and fiddly insulation and air tightness detailing is well under way. The obvious next step is to start considering a heat source. Passive solar gain is already in effect – the inside is staying about 5 degrees above the external temp, which is about zero degrees at the moment (yes working out there is cold). Although that’s quite encouraging, and it will be interesting to see how much better things get when the porous straw walls are properly rendered, we are thinking that another heat source is going to be needed. Especially when doing less energetic and more technical hackery.

Having a reasonable supply of wood on the Golden Hill site, a wood burning device of some sort seems like a good, carbon neutral plan. Bongo has been wanting to have a go at making a wood burning stove from scrap materials for some time anyway so… First step: research, think about materials, and dream up  …Continue reading »

A little update and some funny happenings from the adventures of Flowering Elbow: Project workshop/lab/studio/lair!

The workshop seems to be at a confusing stage. On the one hand, as our old and beloved geography lecturers might have said,  …Continue reading »

The Flowering Elbow lab/shop is starting to take shape as a slightly less barn-like entity. Here’s a little annotated photo round up of some of our recent goings on.

The single existing block wall had quite a few steel 'bits' cemented into it that were right in the way...

…Continue reading »

Workshop building continues…. but in other, lighter news: Bongo, of Flowering Elbow struck lucky and won a years subscription to Make Magazine with the entry of some photos of the Ambient Energy Aqua Purge Device (AEAPD) in a competition jointly organised by Ponoko (3D printing and Lazer cutting dudes) and Make Magazine.

For those of you that don’t know, the AEAPD is a steampunk style clothes …Continue reading »

It was a mad day-and-night floor laying mission. Lets consider it.

 The order of things and …Continue reading »

The golden hill centre opens to the public

The Golden Hill Centre, the site near Carmarthen on which we are building our FE Workshop, opened its doors to the public last Saturday (16th July). While our workshop remains very much in-process, there are a number of other recently converted buildings at the Golden Hill Centre. Among them, a gallery, some therapy and seminar rooms, and an IT training suite. We, that is Flowering Elbow, were there with a little display stand, and were invited to give a talk/presentation. Dave was there snapping away with his new camera – here’s a few ‘photo-highlights’ of our day. …Continue reading »

A few major stages in the FE workshop have been made since the last post. The insulated roof is now on! The old firewood, twigs, building rubble and other organic rotting matter have been dug or carried out, and floor roughly shovelled level.
Somewhat more excitingly after a non-stop day and night mission (with a few weeks of preparation), we now have a concrete floor for the new workshop! A full write up on the specifications, technicalities and considerations of laying the insulated floor to follow, but for now Dave has put together a nice little time-lapse of the ‘main event’ for us…

And here is another little vid of Dave using the power float to …Continue reading »

So we have been planning and working towards setting up a ‘proper’ Flowering Elbow workshop for some time now. One that has enough room for some decent machinery and tools. A place where we can make and design things, and a place where people can come to visit, learn and join in. Ultimately, we want to craft a magical, inspirational space for people to share their creativity and work on projects together. The workshop will also be our main base for producing design commissions, running courses and generally making and modding exciting jazz.

It is based on the Golden Hill Centre site near Carmarthen – a big set of farm outbuilding conversions, which amongst other things, houses an art gallery, hypnotherapy clinic, and IT training rooms. The workshop itself is going to be situated behind these buildings in a big old …Continue reading »