Grill season 2014 about to start with Yagoona

Hi Everone,

The 2014 grilling season is almost on us.
It has been a very busy period over the winter consolidating our success of 2013.
Stocks are in and we are ready.

New products

are the new Ringryll 100 with the Barramundi BBQ integration.

Ask a neat conversion for your Firepit into an outdoor table with this Firepit tabletop.

Exhibitions and Events

This year we have a busy schedule planned for out exhibitions and events.

Spring
06.03.2014 - 09.03.2014  WOHGA, Winterthur
12.03.2014 - 16.03.2014  Giardina, Zurich
03.04.2014 - 06.04.2014  Wohnen und Genuss, Wetzikon
09.04.2014 - 13.04.2014  OFFA, St Gallen
 
Summer/Autumn
27.08.2014 - 31.08.2014  ZOM, Wetzikon
25.09.2014 - 29.09.2014  WEGA, Weinfelden
02.10.2014 - 05.10.2014  Bauen+Wohnen, Luzern

We will off course have out open day at our new exterior exhibition space:

17.05.2014    -    Yagoona Ausstellung, Büntelistr 1, 9436 Balgach

Learn more (in German) here.

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Grill courses

This year we are planning to offer you Grill courses.

These will most certainly not be like other courses mainly because we are going to concentrate on grilling with wood fire only.
This will entail preparing your own wood, then starting and controlling your fire. Then together we will cook some really special, mouthwatering grilled meals for you to enjoy.
I´ve never done one of these courses before so it´s likely to be interesting.

They will be held on the following dates

Sat 10.05.2014  -  Start 15:00
Fri 23.05.2014  -  Start 17:30
Sat 14.06.2014  -  Start 15:00
Sat 13.09.2014  -  Start 15:00
Sat 25.10.2014  -  Start 15:00

Notice that I haven´t added the end times, that´s because we´ll end when the party ends, I guess ;-)
We´ll be putting on a "limited" amout of grog, but I recon itßll be enough to put an elephant down!
There´ll play some and have a chilled party. The pits will be kept burning and we´ll then wile the evening away relaxing around the fire. Bliss.

The cost is CHF140.- a head and we are aiming for about 10 to 20 people per event.
If you want to sign up, then simply email me with the date that suites you and how many of you there are, and I´ll take care of the rest. Simple.

See ya then :-)

Alex

Learn more (in German) here.

The new Ringryll 100cm

It has been some time since I posted anything on my blog - shame on me.

It has been a crazy busy year and it is just now in the seasonal lull between the onset of autumn, which classically marks the end of the grilling season here in Switzerland, and the Christmas season.

This is the first year where I committed myself to a program of exhibitions and trade shows with my garden design products and predominantly, my wood fire grills.
This new strategy proved more successful than I could imagine. Every show I attended was a hit. Heaps of praise, great sales and an amazing ground swell of interest. I think my success was only limited by my ability to attend the shows, and fulfill orders. This stretched my capacity to breaking point!

It is no question that I will do it again next year with a bit more ambition, and help.

Seeing as I have some time to catch up with things, my mind turns to improvements to my products and new versions of them.

Here is the first of them. It is the new Ringryll 100cm

The 0 series of the new Yagoona Ringryll 100cm awaiting testing

The previous version was very well received and sold well but there were a few things that I was not quite happy with.

Ringryll 100cm - original version

The squared opening was a change to the completely round design of the Ringryll 80 which was the first social grill from Yagoona. I have always felt that the completely round design optically looked very nice, but had a practical down side: it prevented the user to clean off the cooking gunk from your bbq tools on the edge. What was required was some 'straight' edge in the design for this purpose.

So for this new Ringryll, I make a perfect square in the middle and shifted the joins of the plates to the diagonals. This was a change that as soon as I sketched it, I knew that it was right.
A combination of a square inside a circle is a very acient motif indead, and probably best known for its use in Chinese currency starting in the Qing (Ch'ing) Dynasty.

This design change has brought some other benefits to the grill. The opening for the fire was a little on the large side in the first design, meaning that it could take anywhere from 30-45 minutes between starting the fire to cooking. With this new squared design, the opening is now smaller which should result in a faster heat up time.
This design change also adds about 10% more cooking space to the overall barbecue cooking area.

Ringryll 100 from the top with the Barramundi BBQ

The last change was quite small, it is regarding the use of the Ringryll with the Barramundi BBQ.
Many people have purchased the combination of the Ringryll with the Barramundi BBQ both in the Ringryll 80 and the 100cm sizes.
These set-ups allow you to get the best of both worlds: social grilling together with the direct over the heat grilling better suited to steaks, sausages and kebabs.
The problem with the old design was that the Barramundi BBQ simply sat on top of the Ringryll plates. If you wanted to scrape something stubborn (such as burn on honey marinade) off the Barramundi BBQ cook plates, it could happen that the entire Barramundi BBQ could slide around on the hot greasy Ringryll cook plates. If the Barramundi BBQ happen to slide right off the Ringryll, this could result in quite a disaster.
The solution was to create small slots in the Ringryll to hold the feet of the Barramundi BBQ in place directly over the center of the fire. No more sliding!

Kookaburra barbecue

A few posts ago, I showed a simple diagram that hinted at a new barbecue design.
This was a long standing reaction to a repeated request for a ringryll barbecue for the smaller 65cm firepits. Well after looking at geometry and design, I gave up on simply shrinking the 80cm Ringryll to a 65cm size.

So I decided on a complete redesign of the concept and this is what I came up with

Kookaburra Barbeuce - looking a bit line pacman!

This design overcomes the largest problem of simply shrinking down the Ringryll, cooking space. Now there is enough plate space for a good barbecue.

Kookaburra barbecue with m Yabbi firepit

Kookaburra barbecue with m Yabbi firepit

Yagoona Kookaburra barbecue

Kookaburra barbecue with m Yabbi firepit - detail

Noah's Bed

A couple of months ago, I posted about the first Gardenqub to go up.
Well this project also included a few minor extras, such as the rebuilding of a large outdoor decking area and garden shed renovation. We took it all in our stride and had fun doing it.

What this post is about is the nice kickback I got from this project in the form of some weathered decking timbers. and heaps of them! Various lengths, but all 37mm x 60mm.

As soon as I saw them I already imagined some cool projects using them. I just can't help it.
It must be something about old timber that gets my creative juices flowing.

Now I'm am no famous carpententer of any repute what so ever, but I do love to meddle in sharp high velocity power tools,.. some fire and explosions too,..  ...  .  but not out of control,..  ...    . you know?.

So I set to work the last week or so to build a new bed for my son Noah.
The biggest task, especially if you take into account the cleaning up afterwards, is the sanding of the boards.
This was the trigger for me to purchase my first ever belt sander.
This really gave me the feeling of scraping back the years of age off each piece allowing me to get the effect I wanted out of every piece.

My first design I abandoned before long, when I realised it just didn't look right.
Back to the computer to make some quick changes and this what resulted.

Noah's bed

I'm into simple modern designs. Often they are the easiest to build as well, provided you have the right tools. For some years now I have been working most of my designs in laser cut steel, especially barbecues and outdoor fire features such as firepits. The medium is amazingly versatile and I have a lot of fun designing with it, but timber is somehow everything that steel is not. It had life - and retains the life force of nature, long gone from the earth and circulating now within humanity. This wood has been reincarnated again as a unique piece of art from a father to a son.

Bed end

Here is a close up of the bed end. Modern design is all about attention to detail I believe, and it is just these seemingly over-simple designs that capture this style the best.
But the reclaimed timber refuses to totaly submit to the tight geometry of the fashion. A warp creeps in here, a knot comes loose there. Ah, that is part of the pleasure working with this material.

Here is a shot under construction in my studio.

Yagoona Studio

A smaller Ringryll...

Ringryll mini...

Ever since I released the Ringryll (80cm) there has been a rush to get one.
It is the most popular barbecue I make. I released a Ringryll 100cm but found that everyone wants the 80!
There have been many who have asked for the Ringryll to be adapted for the 65cm Firepit, but I was distracted by other things until now.

This is the hint...

Love to read in bed?

I love to read in bed!
I has developed into such a habit that unless I am dog tired, it feels strange to not read a few pages of something or other before I doze off.

Some years ago an idea struck me to solve a problem I am sure I shared with many others that love to read in bed.I call it "readers arm". The discomfort from holding your book up over your head in bed.
Switching arms, lying on your side or holding the book with both arms all solve the discomfort till the next page turn, but I found that I would stop reading not because I felt like it, but because my arm would be sore. This would be particularly bad if I was reading a fat hardcover book.

I remember while living in Sydney, during winter our house was not centrally heated, so to stay warm in bed, you had to get right under your doona. This would add a new difficulty to reading in bed.

It was about 9 years ago I began to experiment with ideas to solve this problem.
Since then I have used a string of prototypes that I had made. They all hovered around the same concept. A clear sheet of plexiglass that is suspended over your head while lying in bed.

So here I wanted to share with you my latest unit. This is alread a few year old and works exceedingly well, but still does not cut it with regard to styling.

 I loaned it to my younger son while he was at home sick for a few days. The IKEA lamp hanging off the horizontal arm was his idea which is a pretty good improvement.

 This is what it looks like from underneath. Zak has it around the other way here. Normally the horizontal bar holding up the clear surface is at the top side instead of the bottom as shown here.
The height of the book can be adjusted so that it is easy to change the page, or even lower if the text is small.

The previous unit I built was out of aluminum and was quite flimsy. It would bend and buckle under the weight of a heavy book. But this latest prototype is brutally strong. It can handle not only the heaviest of books that I read, but the extra weight of a fat dictionary which I like to keep at hand while reading.

I find that I simply read under it until I doze off.
Its a snap to lift the book off and turn the page, but best of all, your arms are down and under the sheets almost all the time.

It is on coasters so I can easily push it away if needed, but I have gotten used to its presence above my head, and don't hit it anymore when getting up in the morning.

So my next challenge is to make it look cool.

Gardenqub is Finished!

Hooray! It is finished.
Yesterday the client and I spent the best part of the day laying the flooring.
It should have been a smooth process but for reasons that will become clear as your read this post, it wasn't!

We are half way through the laying and we discover a problem. The specified width of each board is 242mm and the spacing T piece which is also the fixing system occupies another 7mm as a gap. Together 1 board and 1 gap should = 249mm.
The total space between the 2 steel floor elements is 3493mm (14 boards x 249mm + 7mm)
What we noticed though was when laid, 1 board + 1 gap were between 250mm and 251mm. Never less than 250mm!
By the end of the span we were over more than 20+mm!

We first stared to use clamps in reverse to create maxiumum tension in the boards, but this was not giving us the results we needed.
Then we came up with an idea to chase back these gaps - by modifying the T pieces that make the gaps.
It was time consuming bue we were able to file off some plastic to make a gap of about 6mm which after laying resulted in overall board+gaps of 248.5mm.
Even with this, the last 2 boards were not so straight forward to install, but in the end it went in without long cutting the last board.

I think the result was worth the effort. We have a span with exactly 14 boards.

The cut out around the Walnut tree had to be adjusted after we got the last boards in. No problem with the jig-saw. I hope there is enough growth room for 10 years with the opening we got. Luckily Walnut trees are slow growers.


And finally some pics of the end product. The Yagoona Gardenqub.

p.s. the client and I relaxing after a job well done.