Recharging Non-Rechargeable Batteries, and Axeless Woodchopping

When Joe Budelis came to my "open garden" event last month, he mentioned he had found some nifty answers to a couple of life's persistent questions. One of these recurrent questions is what to do with spent alkaline batteries. Currently (subtle pun there) they aren't accepted for recycling locally.

And of course they aren't rechargeable, or so I assumed, until I saw Joe's Rosewill recharger for alkaline batteries. Yes, we live in a magical world where non-rechargeable batteries can in fact be recharged. There are a few tricks to using it, but Joe says it has served him well, and he used to have a model that charged the larger sized alkaline batteries as well.

Unfortunately, an internet search shows this fine item to be unavailable. Dare we suspect that liability has once again reared its fearsome head? Or perhaps Rosewill has decided to focus instead on perfecting its reversible aging chamber. That would be a bed with electrodes at either end for head and feet that send a gentle electrical current through your body while you sleep, causing you to wake up in the morning feeling five years younger.

Speaking of batteries, in the form of energy that's stored in firewood, Joe also showed me a way to split wood without an axe. It's a wedge with a telescoping handle. A good name for it is elusive. One vender calls it a Manual Slide Log Splitter. On ebay, it's called a "Hand sliding slide hammer type wedge log splitting tool". It doesn't apply as much splitting pressure as a axe or maul, but Joe says it works well enough to supply wood for his fireplace. For anyone who'd rather not wield an axe, this is a good alternative.

Thanks to Joe for recharging our sense of the possible.

In the process of seeking out the log splitter on the web, I found a variation of an axe that looks like it has potential. The blade is flared at the top to shift the center of gravity to one side, so the blade enters the wood, then acts like a pry bar, all in one downward stroke. A bit pricey, but worth exploring, here and here. The videos also demonstrate the "old tire" approach to log splitting, which keeps the wood upright while you split it.