It seems that the first real incarnation of the vacuum cleaner was a very large horse drawn machine. Its inventor Hubert Cecil Booth used it as the basis of a cleaning service, you hired them to come to your house or office and they parked the machine outside in the street and passed hoses in through the windows to suck up the dirt and dust. It seems it was effective enough to attract the attention of royalty and was hired to clean the carpets of Westminster Abbey in 1901 in preparation for the coronation of Edward the VII. Apparently it was also a very noisy contraption which led to complaints and even fines.

The first domestic vacuum cleaners were invariably hand powered utilising some sort of bellows arrangement. These normally needed two people to operate them, usually servants of the owner for as well as being cumbersome and difficult to operate these early cleaning machines were also expensive.

In 1905 the Walter Griffiths Manufacturing company of Birmingham England patented an “improved vacuum apparatus for removing dust from carpets”. It used a bellows arrangement to provide the suction but was manageable by one person. At the same time in San Francisco Chapman and skinner produced an electric vacuum cleaner which was portable rather than being installed the cellar or parked outside on a wagon. However due to it’s 18 inch fan and its weight of 92 pounds it was not a best seller.

In 1906 Jim Kirby invented a vacuum cleaner which used water for filtering out the dirt, being dissatisfied with having to dispose of the dirty water in 1907 he designed a machine which used centrifugal force and a cloth for filtering the dust.

Also in 1907 a janitor in an Ohio department store by the name of James Spangler built himself a machine using a broom handle, an old fan motor and a soap box with a pillow case for a dust bag. In 1908 he was granted a patent and formed the Electric suction Sweeper Company. One of his earliest customers was a cousin of his whose husband William H Hoover became the president of the Hoover Company, manufacturing Spangler’s machines. James Spangler was the company superintendent. Sales were slow to start with but after the introduction of a free 10 day home trial sales took off and all subsequent vacuum cleaners became known as “Hoovers”.

Since those early days there have been innumerable changes and improvements in the function and the style of domestic vacuum cleaners such as the “cyclone technology” of inventor James Dyson. However some of the best vacuum cleaners still adhere to the basic format of simple, compact, powerful, easily portable but highly effective cleaning machines. One of the best is made by the Numatics Company, you can read this detailed Henry Hoover Review

Our vacuum cleaner recently stopped working, no amount of shouting swearing or kicking made the slightest difference to this state of affairs, it still wouldn’t work. I tried my usual desperate tactic; if something doesn’t work dismantle it. Now I’m no electrical engineer or engineer of any description for that matter, but I’m damned if I’m going to take a dead appliance to a repair shop just so they can charge me £25 to tell me it’s dead. As a very last resort maybe, but first I dismantled it and looked for any obvious faults like loose wires, loose screws, obviously broken parts. Nothing! So I started the search for a replacement.

There are people who will tell you that the Internet or World Wide Web or Google however you think of it, has made jobs like searching for a new vacuum cleaner so much easier than it used to be, no more traipsing round the shops trying to get sensible advice from some spotty youth of a shop assistant.

Theoretically true, but have you seen the sheer amount of rubbish websites that appear when you type in something like “vacuum cleaner”. It can take all day to find any useful advice. Then I saw the light, why didn’t I just buy a replacement model for the one that had broken down? Genius!

Why was this such a brilliant idea? Because the broken vacuum cleaner was a Henry and he’d been giving stirling service for over twenty years. Now I come to think of it must be the better part of thirty years, my daughter used to ride on him when she was small and she’s now 27.

Not only did Henry work day in and day out with out complaint but also survived traumas like falling down stairs and worse. Some years ago I decided to sand the floor boards in one room, being a cheapskate and realising that they didn’t need much sanding I decided to do it with a hand held belt sander.

It worked a treat, it also came complete with an attachment for connecting it to a vacuum cleaner, that worked extremely well too, until there’s was a loud bang and the sort of bright blue flash you get from electricity. I was deafened and slightly stunned but Henry was lifeless, switching off and on again may work with computers but this was obviously serious.

With the floor sanding not finished there was only one thing for it, take Henry outside and dismantle him. The patio table was soon covered in bits of vacuum cleaner and sawdust. A word of advice, if you’re going to dismantle something take notes or photographs.

Anyway I cleaned out all the sawdust and used WD-40 where relevant, reassembled everything and Henry burst into life, and that was a good few years ago. Here’s another confession, that wasn’t the last time I blew Henry up, there circumstances were quite similar and the outcome identical. Henry made a full recovery and soldiered on for years.

You may ask why I even bothered looking for a different type of vacuum cleaner and I can honestly say I have no idea. Looking for a bargain maybe, seduced by the shiny new upstarts like Dysons and all the copies. But I have had occasion to use a Dyson and they always struck me as a case of style over substance. Too “gadgety” also rather brittle and flimsy somehow.

Henry is very solidly built, pretty compact in size and very easy to pull around the room. He has a rubber strip around his casing to protect your furniture from bumps.

Naturally the stainless steel tubes are going to last forever and although the flexible hose is plastic it is very durable, I always seem to be standing on mine and it just springs right back into shape. And of course the old one lasted for well over twenty years.

On normal everyday cleaning Henry does a great job, be careful what you leave lying around on the floor, Henry will quickly dispose of almost anything, I’ve had to retrieve money and jewellery form his insides many times. socks disappear instantly.

Henry will cheerfully tackle the aftermath of most DIY jobs, sucking up bits of brick, plaster and wood shavings with no problem. I used Henry to clean up when I swept the chimney but a word of warning, Henry reeked of soot, it took days to get rid of the smell. Update! I just swept my chimney again, here’s a tip if you use your Henry to clean up the soot. Disconnect the stainless tubes fro the plastic hose and then unscrew the hose from Henry, holding both ends of the hose upwards to avoid getting soot all over the room take the hose outside. find a suitable piece of wood or maybe a hand brush and hold one end of the hose up in the air let the other end rest on the ground or just above it. now tap the hose with your piece of wood or hand brush, tap it repeatedly all the way up and down the length of the hose, you’ll be surprised at just how much soot falls from the end of the hose. That should help stop Henry from stinking of soot.

So what do you look for when buying a vacuum cleaner?

• Size
• Weight
• Power
• Capacity
• Price

Price

While Henry is not the cheapest vacuum cleaner on the market he is not the most expensive by any means.

Weight

Weight may be a consideration for some people if they’re getting on in years or have a disability or maybe a lot of stairs. Though I’ve seen a review of Henry by someone who says they’ve got a three storey house and can clean by leaving it plugged in downstairs thanks to the long power cable.

Henry weighs in at 6.6 kgs which I might have said was a bit hefty for some folk to lug around, but I just checked and some Dysons are around 8kgs. So not bad really.

Power

Henry has a two speed switch for setting the power; the low setting gives 600w the high setting 1200w. There is an Autosave low energy system which saves on power.

Capacity

Henry has a 9 litre capacity and makes the most of it, never mind “no loss of suction” I’ve never noticed any loss of suction until the dust bag is full to bursting and it takes some time to reach that point. You won’t be buying loads of dust bags. You can use Henry without a dust bag but then of course you’ll have to clean him out occasionally.

Henry has a high efficiency filtration system.

How Much Will Henry Cost You?

You can buy Henry on Amazon for £1o8.20 and with free delivery.

What do you get?

• 300mm Combination Floor Nozzle
• 240mm Crevice Tool
• 2.4m Nuflex Threaded Hose
• Stainless Steel Tube Bend with Volume Control
• 2 x Stainless Steel Extension Tubes
• Double Taper Hose/Tool Adapter
• 65mm Soft Dusting Brush
• 150mm Upholstery Nozzle
• 150mm Slide on Brush for Upholstery Nozzle

What about a Warranty?

The Numatic HVR200 A Henry A1 comes complete with a manufacturers 2 year warranty.

What do others think?

Henry get very good reviews all over. Here are a few comments:

• “Sheer brilliance”
• “Henry’s just keep on going”
• “Hooray Henry”
• “The Ferrari of vacuum cleaners”
• “indestructible”

In fact on Amazon Henry has 217, 5 star reviews

I know some people don’t seem to like the fact that you have to wind the cable in by hand, I don’t see it as a problem, power winds are just something else which can go wrong.

Henry is a robust well built hard working vacuum cleaner, ask all the builders, car valeters and contract cleaners who use them.

You can read reviews from customers at Amazon Click Here

If you’re going to make a project in wood than it pays to first of all make sure you choose the right wood for the job. If you’re making a piece of fine furniture that could one day be a family heirloom, than you will want to select some fine hard wood. Naturally it should be suited to the type of furniture, for instance mahogany always makes a fine chest of draws whereas a yew makes a handsome table. Remember to make sure your wood comes from a sustainable source.

If the piece you’re making is for the workshop or is going to have a paint finish then a particle board may be perfectly acceptable for construction. If you want something stronger and more durable then choose good quality plywood.

2. Tools

If you’re going to be using hand tools then you need to make sure they’re in good order and sharp. Of course the same principle applies to power tools but where you might still do a good job with a power tool that is not in tip top condition; the same can’t normally be said for hand tools.

Not only do sharp tools mean it takes less effort to saw or plane timber but they’re safer too. A chisel which is sharp enough to go through wood as though it was butter is much less likely to slip and cause damage. Get some time saving tools like a pocket hole jig and two cordless drills are better than one, one for screwing one for drilling.

3. A Tidy Workspace.

Even if you don’t have a dedicated workshop and have to use a corner of the garage or maybe work in the yard when the weather is okay, it’s important to keep things tidy. Knowing where every tool is saves time and energy, its frustrating when you can’t put your hand on the tool you need and getting cross can lead to making mistakes. Being tidy is safer too, power cords hidden under piles of wood shavings can trip you up and even if you not hurt tools like planers and routers don’t take kindly to being thrown onto the ground. If you are working in makeshift conditions and using an assortment of power tools always place the ones you’re not using on the ground, don’t leave them balanced on the corner of a small bench.

4. Good Plans.

Whatever your making it’s usually much easier if you’re using a good set of plans. We’ve probably all made small projects based on a rough sketch we made on a piece of scrap paper, and that’s fine if it’s a small project for the workshop and you’re using wood from the scrap box. Or maybe the item you’re making is only going to be used once, and quality doesn’t really matter. But if you are making furniture which needs a fine finish or the sizes are critical because it needs to fit in a particular space, then take the time do draw your own accurate plans or buy some good ones. You don’t want to waste expensive wood by making mistakes.

5. Be prepared.

Whether you’re making fine furniture or more simple garden furniture it pays to be prepared. It makes even more sense if you doing a project with limited time, if you making a nice oak blanket chest and there’s no rush to get it finished then it won’t be a big deal if you run out of glue or screws, it may be annoying but it wont hurt. On the other hand if you’re going to spend the weekend making picnic furniture for next weekends barbecue party then you don’t want to have to stop work and drive to the store for bolts, screws, glue or whatever it was you forgot. As well as you’re plans make sure you’ve got a check list for all the supplies you’ll need to get the job finished without stress, it’s more fun that way.

By Kevin Cooper

If you’re a keen woodworker then you’ve probably made your share of cabinets and similar types of projects. It can be very satisfying, you enjoy the woodworking part, and maybe you even designed the piece yourself. Then when it’s finished you get the satisfaction of having something useful in the home or workshop and you might even get the pleasure of friends and family admiring your work and complimenting you.

So what’s the biggest drawback to all this fun? For me it has to be making joints, good strong accurate joints can be a pleasure to look at but a pain in the neck to make. Now I can do a lot of good work by eye, if I think it looks right then it usually is. What can I say, it’s a gift.

But when it comes to working out the dimensions for all these joints that’s a different story. I can use a tape measure or a rule but just don’t mention math, it gives me the heebee jeebies. I know all about measure twice cut once to make sure things right but I can break out in a sweat when it comes to doing the math for the joints on a set of frame doors.

And don’t forget the joy of gluing and clamping up the joints, I usually wish I’d got at least one extra arm. It doesn’t matter if you’re using mortise and tennon joints or dowel joints, they can be tricky to get right.

This is where the pocket hole jig comes to the rescue, it makes the job so easy it’s nothing short of incredible. You don’t need to do any difficult math to get your wood joints accurate you dot need an octopus for an assistant or a dozen assorted clamps to hold the joint while the glue dries, you don’t even need glue!

All you need is your pieces of timber cut to the correct size, and wee can all manage that, your pocket hole jig, the special drill bits that come with it and the right screws. That’s it, it’s so simple. You just put your piece of wood in the jig fit the special drill bit into your drill and away you go, the hole you drill will make a pilot hole for the screw and a larger hole to enable you to tighten the screw, then you simply screw the pieces of wood together, no glue needed and yet you get a strong tight joint And you can conceal the screw from sight by fitting wood plugs into the pocket holes.

The amount of time saved by using a pocket hole jig will really surprise you, you’ll have time to make even more projects. If you think you need one of these great jigs for your workshop then check out my review of the Kreg Jig K3 Master System.

I’ve been a woodworker for as long as I can remember, not by trade more by genetics I think. My Dad was the same, you know, we just have to make stuff. If I can’t get the piece of furniture I want I’ll make it. If the furniture on sale doesn’t look too good, make your own. And sometimes I make stuff just for the heck of it! I love woodworking.

I’m a pretty able woodworker, but I’m no Norm Abram. I need a little help now and then, so I buy tools and gadgets which can help me make a better job. If it saves time as well even better and Norm likes to use the latest tools and devices so I’m in good company.

So when I saw the Kreg K3MS K3 Master Pocket Hole Jig System I couldn’t resist. You know what it’s like when you’re making things like frame doors, if you don’t have the skill for making perfect mortise and tenon joints, (I’ll put my hand up here), you might try dowel joints, but they have to be accurate too and glued up of course, sometimes I think I need an extra arm in the workshop when I’m trying to glue and clamp new joints. Not any longer, now you can use a pocket hole jig.

The Kreg K3 is just so amazingly simple, it’s one of those “Why didn’t I think of that?” moments. Not only does it work exceptionally well its easy to use and you don’t even need glue.

So what’s in the kit?

In short, everything you need! The case contains all you need to get started straight away, just make sure to buy enough screws if you’re planning a big job.

Case contents

• Portable base
• Face clamp
• Stepped drill bit
• 6 inch square driver
• 3 inch square driver
• Dust collection shroud
• Wrench
• Detailed instruction manual
• Starter screw kit
• Starter plug kit

The body of the Kreg jig is made from very resilient and durable heavy duty glass reinforced nylon.

The stepped drill bit drills the main hole for the screw and at the same time drills a pilot hole.

The dust shroud fits all standard 1 ¼ inch hoses ensuring a clean and tidy work space.

You can drill wood from ½ inch to 1 ½ inches thick.

What about a warranty?

The Kreg jig K3 Master System comes complete with a 30 day customer satisfaction guarantee and a Lifetime Guarantee on the hardened steel drill guide.

How does it work?

Very simply, you clamp your work piece in the jig, drill the holes and screw the pieces together. It really is that easy. No precise measuring to be done, no math to get everything accurate, and no glue required. It’s just amazing how quickly you can get the job done.

What do other users say?

• “Kreg Master System hade me feel like a joint master”
• “Great Jig!!!”
• “ A woodworkers must have”
• “Throw away your dowelling jig and mortising machine”
• “Greatest single tool I ever owned”

Where Can You Buy the Kreg K3 Master Pocket Hole Jig System?

You can buy the Kreg K3 jig system from Amazon and get free shipping. Click here to view on Amazon.

Where Can you Read More Reviews For The Kreg K3 Master Pocket Hole Jig System?

There are over 140 reviews from real customers on Amazon. Click here to read more

What if you don’t know anything about the subject? No problem

It needs to be well written interesting and informative. It will be.

It needs to be an article that’s relevant to the topic and not just a collection of facts. Absolutely not a problem to achieve.

It needs to be original and not get flagged as duplicate content or plagiarism. How about if it will pass a Copyscape test, that should be good enough.

Instant Article wizard can do all this and do it so fast you’ll be amazed, I was.

It can do the raw research using the internet, write an article at the touch of a button, let you edit if you want to and all at a remarkable speed.

See for yourself, watch a demonstration video here

Power 3 Marketing is the new work from home, money making program from David Bocock (4DMMB) and Jennifer Ledbetter (Potpie Girl). They’ll show you how to use your hard won internet marketing skills to good use in promoting your local offline businesses. Every one in your town with a business is a potential client. Everyone from Mom & Pop stores to Auto Repair shops, real estate businesses, dentists, all of them need your skills to help them get more business.

David and Jennifers training will show you just how easy promoting local businesses online is compared to affiliate marketing. you won’t go crazy trying to find some long tailed keyword phrase that no other marketer has found.

You won’t need to burn the candle at both ends writing hundreds of articles about weight loss or hair loss or cellulite reduction or diarrhoea in dogs (thank god). In fact they even supply articles for you.

You will find that Power 3 Marketing is much easier than internet marketing, but the rewards can be just as great. Do you realise just how much businesses spend on advertising in the Yellow Pages or the local newspaper or on local radio stations. And they don’t even know if it works most of the time! There’s no way to check.

They’ll gladly pay you for effective marketing especially when you can show them proof of how many visitors their website gets. Or show them the business is on page one of Google.

There are three levels of membership at Power 3 Marketing but you can start with the basic level which is absolutely free. Don’t spend any more money until you’ve earned some.

Check out the free membership here Power 3 Marketing

David and Jennifer were shocked to find that so many people were failing to make money online but these weren’t people who were dreaming of instant riches, these were people who were giving up their precious spare time. Time they could have spent with their families not couch potato time. These guys were dreaming for sure, but they were dreaming of a better life for them and their families in the future.

A life where they had a comfortable income and could work from home and spend lots more time with their families. These guys weren’t dreaming of instant riches without doing any work. They knew that is a fantasy, you have to work at it even on the internet, sure it can be easier than working in a normal job and the rewards can certainly be much greater. But you still have to learn the basics; the only way to get rich overnight is to win the lottery.

So here was a large group of people who were working hard, before work after work, weekends, early mornings, late nights leaning all about Google page rank, how to get on page one of Google or Bing or Yahoo, how to get traffic to your sales page. Backlinking, SEO, article marketing, keyword research. Hard work but with no results, 0ver 50 percent of these people had never had that important first sale, the one that makes you run round the room shouting and makes it worth while. The one that makes you try even harder to get that second sale.

So no sales but they still didn’t give up, they believed it was possible but it didn’t seem to work for them. David and Jennifer knew that these people had learned valuable skills; they also knew there was another way to use them. They knew because they were already doing it. They were using the same skills to get local business owners onto the internet for the first time, or if they already had a website but it was nowhere to be found, they used these skills to promote the websites and get more business for the owners.

David and Jennifer knew this stuff worked, they’d also found out it’s a lot easier than affiliate marketing. If you’ve done any affiliate marketing you know just how hard it is to compete for sales in markets like weight loss. There are thousands of competitors online, maybe hundreds of thousands but how about “tire dealers Scranton PA” think you could compete for that? Sure you could, its way easier. There’s much less competition and most of the offline business owners know nothing about using the internet for promoting their business.

Worse still they fall prey to unscrupulous companies who charge thousands of dollars for really crappy websites or a listing in a directory which no one will ever see. So here’s your chance to use your hard earned skills, help local businesses who will be very grateful, and finally make your dream come true.

There are three levels of membership to Power 3 Marketing; the basic level is actually free. The next level is Gold and really steps things up, the final level is Elite and takes things to even greater heights, the Elite level also has a forum where you can get questions answered or discuss your plans and progress, David and Jennifer also take time to come to the forum and share their expertise.

Don’t think that the basic level is not worth it just because it’s free; it’s enough to get you on the road to earning some money at last. Then you can think about investing in the Gold or Elite membership. Check out the free membership here Power 3 Marketing

Kevin Cooper

Well it might make you happy to know you’re not alone. Well maybe it won’t make you happy but what’s that old saying “misery loves company”. So at least you can be miserable with a lot of other people.

Still not happy? How about a little factual evidence to cheer you up. Do you like statistics? A recent survey found that over 56% of people working at affiliate marketing have never made a sale! I think that’s worth repeating, never made a sale. And yet at least 40% of them have been working at it for more than a year.

So we’re not talking about people who bought a get rich quick scam and gave up when they didn’t make a fortune overnight. These people have probably bought a number of “make money online” products. They knew, or soon realised that it’s almost impossible to make quick money online. Legally that is.

So we’re talking about a lot of people who probably work all their spare time away from the job they have, to try and make money online. Maybe you’re one of them. If you are you’ve been doing just what the others did. Learned about keyword research, long tail keywords, keyword phrases, niche markets, article marketing, and all sorts of stuff that you need to know to succeed online.

But you still haven’t succeeded. Maybe if you’re totally honest you’ll admit you may be partly to blame, We all have some tasks that we don’t like (I hate backlinking) so maybe we don’t make as good a job of it as we do with the tasks we like or feel we’re good at. But equally it’s not necessarily all you’re fault. Some people take to affiliate marketing like ducks to water, others struggle. It’s the same with any job.

If you taught ten randomly chosen people how to be a plumber, you just know there’d be at least one guy who would be the Einstein of plumbing and wouldn’t need much teaching. Just as likely there’d be at least one guy who wouldn’t know which end of a wrench to use. That’s life.

So what do you do now? There is a way to use that stuff you learned about websites and keywords and Google page rank and all the rest of it. How many people do you know with an offline bricks and mortar business? I bet you’ve got at least one in the family right? Could they use more business? Do they have a website? If they do is it any good? Does it show up on page one of Google when would be customers search for that type of business?

Do you think you could help get their business noticed on the internet using affiliate marketing techniques? I’ll bet you could. Let’s face it next to your average off line business owner you’re an internet marketing genius. Do these business owners need you? You bet they do. And here’s a secret, using your skills to promote an offline business online is easier than affiliate marketing.

Two very successful online marketers, David Bocock, creator of 4 day Money Making Blueprint, and Jennifer Ledbetter (Potpie girl) creator of One Week Marketing, have put together a program to show you exactly how you can use your affiliate marketing skills to promote businesses where you live. This isn’t theory; David and Jennifer have been doing this for some time. They’ll show you step by step how to use your hard earned skills to good advantage working for your local business owners.

The program is called Power 3 Marketing and you can start for free, the basic training won’t cost you a cent. Go and find out more. What have you got to lose? Click Here >> Power 3 Marketing

Kevin Cooper

Of course even if you want your portable generator to last for years the amount you spend on it is going to depend on your budget, I’d like a Rolls Royce but I can’t afford one. So your choice is going to be a compromise based on a variety of factors such as how much you’re willing to spend, what you need from your generator.

Maybe the best way to start is to decide exactly what the top limit of your budget is, that way you make your search for a generator a lot simpler, if you’re on a low budget you won’t need to waste time looking at thousand dollar products. Likewise if you’re on a mid price budget you don’t need to start wading through all the cheap generators on sale.

If you’re going to do your shopping or research on line, such as at Amazon.com,  then you can obviously go to the search engines and type in a search phrase such as “Low cost portable generators” or “$300 portable generators” or maybe “$1000 portable generators”. That obviously narrows the field to your price range and save a lot of time.

You should also make a list of the features you would like a generator to have, for instance how many outlets does it need? This depends on what you will be using it for of course, if it’s for camping and fishing trips then you might only need a couple of outlets. The same thing applies to the size of portable generator you need, if you need lots of power then you know it’s going to be a big generator; do you need to move it around? How heavy will it be? Should it have wheels?

To sum up, before you go looking at generators on line or off, make a wish list, how powerful, how heavy, how quite and so on., and set your budget, it could make your search a lot easier. You could also check out this in depth review of the Briggs and Stratton 10 HP portable Generator