I have several 6 volt lantern flashlights kicking around the shop.  However, I never use them because I generally baulk at the $7 they want for a lantern battery that can't be recharged.

So I modded a flashlight to take a 6 volt 4 Ah lead acid battery I bought at Home Depot . . . 

When we moved into our house there was an electric chandelier in our dining room.  It was an adequate enough fixture but incandescent chandeliers are terribly inefficient, six 25 watt bulbs actually put out a fraction of the amount of light as a single bulb of half the combined wattage, and while they do make candelabra base compact fluorescent bulbs, I find their light cold, harsh, and they are not very dim-able.

Besides, nothing beats real candle light for a romantic dinner at home.

Read on for details on converting an electric chandelier back to candles . . .

Every time I've brought my Toyota Yaris in for it's regular service I was surprised to find a $50 charge for replacing the "cabin air" filter. It always annoyed me, but they assured me it was a pain to change the "special" filter. 

Turns out that's bullshit. It's a cheap paper filter that takes about 30 seconds to replace.  Corporations use proprietary parts and slip through overcharges for simple maintenance to add to their profit, of course. But this is an ultimately dis-honest practice that risks making otherwise satisfied customers, like me, angry and desirous of revenge for being duped.

Well here's my revenge Toyota, a step by step set of directions on how to turn a $5 household furnace filter into two Yaris cabin air filters.  It took me an hour and a half to figure this out and make two filters and another half hour to write this page.  Someone following these direction should be able to make a pair of filters in an hour, saving them (and denying you) $100!

From Wikipedia:

Upcycling is a component of sustainability in which waste materials are used to provide new products. It is generally a reinvestment in the environment. "Upcycling is the practice of taking something that is disposable and transforming it into something of greater use and value." This process allows for the reduction of waste and use of virgin materials.

The term upcycling was coined by William McDonough and Michael Braungart, authors of Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things.

It's a term that my photographer friend Libby Bulloff introduced me to and I hope to make "Upcycling:" a regular feature here at The Steampunk Workshop.  If you have a cool hack for "Upcycling:" please send it to me!

We bought this thing in an uncharacteristic flurry of consumerism in preparation for a huge family Thanksgiving dinner.  But you know what?  The damn thing works quite well and is really handy for spot clean-ups which seem to be the only kind of cleanups we ever do these days.

We quickly discovered that the bottles of cleaner were not meant to be re-filled, they have a lock-ring on the cap like some milk bottles, only this ring doesn't break away when you try and twist off the cap.

As of late last year we were banned from pulling items for our town dump's metal and wood recycling bins.  The stated reason was 'public safety' but it was fairly clear from the expressions on the faces of a few of our town's selectmen during the discussion that the whole idea of 'taking things from the garbage' was abhorrent to them.

One of them related the story of seeing some folks remove a 'soiled mattress' from one of the dumpsters.  He feared that the town could be held liable for 'disease' if this form of reuse were allowed to continue.

While we generally love and respect the Victorians and their technology here at the Steampunk Workshop, we do think that our public officials need to have a more modern understanding of epidemiology.