Plant Supports

During lockdown I made plant supports to sell to keen horticulturists within the village.

I started off making them for my parents and grandmother, but word soon got out amongst their friends and I had lots of keen customers.

I started off rather crudely cold working 6 and 8mm mild steel round with no proper jigs, I just eyed up the forms and the bends meaning there was little homogeneity between the supports. I would bend the pieces in a vice, and a section of round tubing with an inner diameter slightly greater than the diameter of the solid round mild steel.

After a short period of crude manufacturing I came up with a standard product list, and sold these through an email newsletter. Alongside this I made jigs for each of the products. This would dramatically decrease the time taken to manufacture each product, whilst ensuring homogeneity within the product group.

Over lockdown I sold hundreds of supports, and made some reasonable cash on my furlough period.