Sunday, August 4, 2013

Remove Stubborn Stickers and Glue with Coconut Oil and Baking Soda

Remove Stubborn Stickers and Glue with Coconut Oil and Baking Soda

If you're looking for an easy way to remove stickers from plastics and furniture without resorting to harsh gunk removing chemicals, all you need is a little coconut oil and baking soda. Equal parts mashed together will give you a slightly abrasive paste, perfect for removing residue or glue from almost any surface.

Over at Rosy Blu Handmade, Michelle notes that this worked like a charm to get an old stubborn sticker off of a plastic vacuum cleaner that had been there for years. I actually tried this myself, and I found that one teaspoon of coconut oil and one teaspoon (or a little less) of baking soda worked wonders on already-soft residue, but the tougher stuff required me to drag out the Goo Gone anyway. Keep that in mind, your mileage may vary.

A number of the commenters at the original article (link below) noted that you could do the same with other types of oil, like tea tree oil (which is a bit more astringent and may cut through more, but is as expensive as coconut oil) or even baby oil, if you don't want to use coconut oil for cleaning. One of the benefits of coconut oil in this case is that it forms a paste as room temperature, so you don't have a liquid with baking soda at the bottom. In that way, it works really well.

You still may need a firm edge to scrape away the sticker after applying your homemade goop remover, but give it a try—you may have the ingredients at home already, and a quick Google search shows that coconut oil and baking soda together are great for a lot of other things, too.

DIY Gunk Remover: Non-Toxic Recipe to Remove Sticky Adhesive Residue | Rosy Blu Handmade


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Home made hardwood door and ledgestone entry

Firstly this was the first door I ever attempted and everything was done in my garage using pretty much standard electrical hand tools.

At the time I had just had Australian Jarrah flooring laid in the house to replace the horrible carpet in our first house.
Thankfully I had some lenghts of flooring timber already in the garage (complete with tongue and groove) I knew I didnt have enough but luckily my friend who did the timber floors always ends up with various cuts of hardwood laying around so I managed to collect enough to cover the job.

So I started with a sheet of Marine Plywood that I cut to the right size (the dimensions of the frame i the thickness of the boards (12mm) around the whole thing (so I could frame it with jarrah too)
To cut it to size all I used was a standard drop saw.

After cutting the sheet to size I cut the groove away from the first board and top nailed that to the plywood (note at every step I used flooring glue to secure the timber to the plywood)

After setting the first board I used what australians call a 'secret nailer' basically it's a nail gun that fires small nails at a approx 45 degree angle through the tongue of the timber.

Using one of these means the end result is that no nails are seen except for the first and end piece that are top nailed.

The picture attached is when I had laid a fair few boards and cut the hole where the dual glazed glass was supposed to go.


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Beggar's Chicken, a Chinese Delicacy

001.JPGLong back I read about a Chinese delicacy known as "Beggar's Chicken" and was waiting for an opportunity to try my hands on it. It is the Chinese version of the roasted chicken dating back to the Qing dynasty. The process involves wrapping a whole spiced chicken in lotus leaves, then encasing it in mud and roasted in open fire. When fully cooked, the mud forms a hard shell around the chicken and cracked open before revealing the deliciously roasted chicken inside.

As per the legend, a beggar in Zhejiang province stole a chicken from a village, and buried it in mud. He retrieved the mud covered chicken latter, and instead of cleaning the mud he just threw it in an open fire. This resulted in hardening the muddy shell around the chicken with a deliciously roasted bird inside. He then started selling chickens cooked this way and made a fortune for himself, also creating a Chinese culinary tradition known as "Beggar's Chicken".

002.JPGFive-Spice is one of the main ingredients in making Beggar's Chicken. It is a roasted, powdered blend of spices like Cinnamon, Fennel seeds, Clove, Star Anise and Sichuan Pepper. It is mainly used in Chinese cooking as well in most of the Asian countries. All these spices are growing in our area too. Though I got all raw spices, I could get Sichuan pepper in powdered form only.

Thanks to lmnopeas for her instructable on "Chinese Five Spice Powder" at: http://www.instructables.com/id/Chinese-Five-Spice-Powder/

I followed her instructable in making the Five-spice powder for the Beggar's Chicken recipe.


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ASUS Republic Of Gamers Maximus VI Hero Intel Z87 Motherboard Review

Legit Motherboard Reviews

Republic of Gamers Maximus VI HeroASUS Republic of Gamers Maximus VI Hero Intel Z87 Motherboard Layout

The ASUS ROG series is know for being the best of the best, and it's certainly and accurate statement. The drawback with the ASUS ROG motherboards that has prevented the masses from picking one up is the cost. Traditionally motherboards like the ASUS Maximus Extreme and Formula carry a pretty steep price. While this is still the case with the latest Intel Z87 motherboards, ASUS is launching a much more budget friendly ATX motherboard with the Republic of Gamers tags. The ASUS ROG Maximus Hero is a full featured Intel LGA1150 Z87 motherboard that will retail for only $229.00. Some will argue that this is still an expensive motherboard, when compared to the Maximus VI Extreme which will retail for $399.00. $229.00 for the Maximus VI Hero will certainly provided more end users to put the ROG board into their systems.

ASUS Republic of Gamers Maximus VI Hero Intel Z87 Motherboard Layout

One of the key features specific to the Hero, is the fact that it has the Republic of Gamers quality attached to it. Being part of the ROG elite motherboards offers up a quality that has been previously available to those looking to drop a small fortune on a board. While there are still some certain perks to having a board like the Maximus VI Extreme, though few will truly take advantage of all the features on it. The Hero offers the same level of quality as on the Extreme just a few less bells and whistles.

ASUS Republic of Gamers Maximus VI Hero Intel Z87 Motherboard Layout

ASUS felt that there has been a gap in their ROG product stack. The Maximus VI Extreme is a board designed for the extreme overclockers, the Maximus VI Formula is geared for premium gaming, the Maximus VI Gene is built for the fans of small form factor systems. The Hero will fill the gap between the Formula and the Gene, giving standard form factor users the ROG experience and quality without the price of the Formula and Extreme

ASUS Republic of Gamers Maximus VI Hero Intel Z87 Motherboard Layout

There is a lot of technology that goes into the ASUS ROG Maximus VI Hero. Some of the technologies include the Extreme Engine Digi+ III, five 4pin fan headers, USB 3.0 Boost, eight SATA III 6Gbps ports, DirectKey, ROG External Connector, Trusted Platform Module, two PCIe x16 Gen3.0 slots supporting SLI and CrossfireX, one PCIe 2.0 x16 slot (running at x4), three PCIe x1 Gen 2.0 slots, SupremeFX Audio, and GameFirst II Intel Ethernet are just a few of the technologies that make up the ASUS Republic of Gamers Maximus VI Hero Motherboard.

ASUS Republic of Gamers Maximus VI Hero Intel Z87 Motherboard Layout

Taking a look at the specifications for the ASUS Maximus VI Hero there are a couple key features to point out. First among them may be obvious but still worth mentioning. The ASUS ROG Maximus VI Hero supports the latest fourth generation of Intel Core i series processors in the LGA1150 package along with the Intel Z87 Express chipset. The Hero also supports dual channel memory at 2800MHz (O.C.) up to 32GB worth. If you're looking to run the integrated graphics, the ASUS Maximus VI Hero only has a single HDMI out, though it does support the latest 4Kx2K video.

Join us on the next page where we delve a little deeper into the technologies.




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How to Save Money When You Build Your Own PC

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