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The site seems notable for its comprehensiveness. I also though it would be great if Lindsay Books would have put copies of everything online for free (like via Archive.org) before it shut down, since most of what it had sold were reprints of content now in the public domain. I'm assuming the site in the article may have much the same stuff?
http://www.lindsaybks.com/

While a related project by me hasn't really got going strongly yet, the OSCOMAK project was a hope to organize all this sort of info and more to let people design whatever individual or community infrastructure they wanted. From pages linked here put up around 2000:
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/...
"The Oscomak project is an attempt to create a core of communities more in control of their technological destiny and its social implications. No single design for a community or technology will please everyone, or even many people. Nor would a single design be likely to survive. So this project endeavors to gather information and to develop tools and processes that all fit together conceptually like Tinkertoys or Legos. The result will be a library of possibilities that individuals in a community can use to achieve any degree of self-sufficiency and self-replication within any size community, from one person to a billion people. Within every community people will interact with these possibilities by using them and extending them to design a community economy and physical layout that suits their needs and ideas.
As the internet has grown, it has enabled collaborative work which has created many success stories, including Linux, Python, GCC, Squeak and other projects. We want to harness that power and apply it to organizing technological knowledge in concert with many interested individuals.
The main project goal is to develop an on-line library of technology ideas, techniques, and tools, including a range from high-tech processes like plastics to medium-tech like ceramic houses to low-tech like spinning wheels. Also included will be biotechnology processes, like perennial agriculture, companion planting, sheep farming, and eventually cloning and DNA synthesis.
One process to be included is a way to convert the high-tech computerized library to a low-tech paper one as desired. Key to the whole endeavor will be to present everything in a how-to fashion. Also needed is a way to map out and simulate the interrelations of processes; for instance, sheep raising requires veterinarians, antibiotics, feed, fencing, and shears; shears require a blacksmith, metal, and a furnace. This latter feature also would be used to keep track of the product flows into, out of, and within a community's entire economy."

Been plodding along on this idea for a couple decades, but still not much to show... But, still a bit...

Our garden simulator from 1997 was part of this -- to help people learn how to grow their own food in an efficient and sustainable way.
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/...

My hopes for this go back to the 1980s and before, even envisioning something like the world wide web to support it:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/prin...

No doubt many personal failings and distraction have contributed to my limited progress -- especially the distraction of trying to create better software tools for distributed knowledge sharing and programming like the Pointrel system and PataPapa.

None-the-less, there is also an aspect to which the current economic order is not too keen on such work. As is suggested by John Taylor Gatto:
https://web.archive.org/web/20...
"Iâ(TM)ll bring this down to earth. Try to see that an intricately sub

Dover publications is alive and well http://store.doverpublications.com/

for something similar but possibly geekier also see
http://www.lindsaybks.com/

Not a publisher exactly, but you might also check out:
http://lateralscience.blogspot.com/

hmm.. my AC CAPTHCA is 'autocrat'

You don't have to 3d print a barrel if instead you 3d print a machine to make a barrel. I do know one of the first (the first?) machine tools ever designed were for making gun barrels. I'm sure building that machine would be a lot easier if you can 3d print all, or almost all, the parts for it. The parts of that machine that need to be accurate can then use off the shelf mechanical parts like precision guide rails are readily available and standardized, with the 3d printer providing the "stuff" required to put everything in the right places.

You ever heard of the Gingery Series? It's essentially a how-to manual on bootstrapping your own machine shop from scratch; at the end of the process you'll have an accurate metal cutting lathe and mill. It's quite reliant on time-consuming metal casting, as well as precision scraping to get the accuracy needed in a machine tool. With 3d printing you can replace the metal casting with printed parts, and the scraping can be replaced with pre-made linear rails and ballscrew assemblies. A 3d printing bootstrapped gun barrel making machine would essentially be a purpose-built version of this concept.

I have purchased two copies; Dover has a LOT of good stuff, Science, Math, Art, Philosophy and more! Also (for math and physics) try looking at Roger Penrose's "The Road to Reality" http://www.amazon.com/The-Road-Reality-Complete-Universe/dp/067945443; I was amazed at how much I DID understand! Additionally do consider Ash and Gross "Fearless Symmetry" http://www.amazon.com/Fearless-Symmetry-Exposing-Patterns-Numbers/dp/0691124922

This is rather away from your query but it may be of interest to some slashdotters: for obscure -often "old fashioned"- hands on 'Maker' tech try Lindsay Technical Publications http://www.lindsaybks.com/

There's a classic "Build a Complete Metalworking Shop from Scrap" set of books. This set of books really does describe how to build machine tools starting from scrap and hand tools. The author was originally thinking of recovery after a nuclear war, when there would be plenty of scrap around.

Dave Gingery Build A Metalworking Shop From Scrap Index

The most relevant book being the charcoal foundry book.

With that said, I've built a foundry based on these books, and built a small mill as per the milling machine book, and I have some recommendations: build the foundry and do a bit of casting and see if you like it, and then switch to a Reil burner running off propane: it's cleaner, faster, and less hassle.

Likewise, Gingery's designs are okay, but there are *lots* of modified versions out there, with much deeper bed sections to stiffen up the lathe or mill beds, and there are advantages to using modern angular contact bearings over his plain bronze bearing designs. (There are good things about bronze bearings as well, so it's a tradeoff, but generally on smaller machines, higher RPM's are more useful than the stability under very heavy loads that plain bearings give you.)

Dave Gingery Build A Metalworking Shop From Scrap Index

The most relevant book being the charcoal foundry book.

With that said, I've built a foundry based on these books, and built a small mill as per the milling machine book, and I have some recommendations: build the foundry and do a bit of casting and see if you like it, and then switch to a Reil burner running off propane: it's cleaner, faster, and less hassle.

Likewise, Gingery's designs are okay, but there are *lots* of modified versions out there, with much deeper bed sections to stiffen up the lathe or mill beds, and there are advantages to using modern angular contact bearings over his plain bronze bearing designs. (There are good things about bronze bearings as well, so it's a tradeoff, but generally on smaller machines, higher RPM's are more useful than the stability under very heavy loads that plain bearings give you.)

I think you are thinking of the 'Gingery' series of books available from Lindsay's Technical Books at http://www.lindsaybks.com/ There are also a number of groups on Yahoo on the subject.

"In the 1980s there was a popular series of books on how to make a very simple low budget foundry, how to use that to make the basics of a lathe, how to use that lathe to improve parts and make it a better lathe and how to use that to make a two axis milling machine.
Anybody remember those and the author or titles?"

http://www.lindsaybks.com/

The Dave Gingery book set.

Two links for videos of fixing something at home with a 3D printer:

    "YouTube - Better Living With MakerBot - Episode 1: Kitchen Lamp"
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBzyZSVK_Gs

    "Better Living with MakerBot - Episode 2: The Wall Socket "
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9tnqHS2vFo

You could recycle plastic you already have with better home technology, in theory. Just like you can build a machine shop from "scrap":
    http://www.lindsaybks.com/dgjp/index.html

What does it mean to say it is "cheaper" to mass produce things than print them on demand if you need to incur costs when you store them, ship them around, wait for them, secure them, deal with sending back wrong orders, keep track of stuff, and still need to repair and replace stuff on demand anyway? If that made sense, why do people have 2D printers at home when it is probably "cheaper" in some sense to print everything at a large central facility and have it mailed to you in boxes once a month?

If your 3D printer breaks, you ask your friend to print you a replacement part. Or you use another 3D printer you have at home. What do you do when you misconfigure a Debian system and it won't boot? You use another computer to surf the web looking for a solution and to create a boot CD-ROM or boot USB Flash drive.

Anyway, maybe it is good that it is "just a hobby" (even as that is not quite true), because 3D printers are part of ushering in "the end of work (as we know it)".

Related group I'm involved with:
  http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing

I have to agree with your sentiment. And "Nature Deficit" disorder is part of it, but that does not explain why most kids may not understand what a bootloader is on a computer or whatever if they are indoors a lot around computers. I guess I was lucky to just come in at the edge of things (my first computer was a 6502-based KIM-I, and my first languages were Assembler, Commodore BASIC, and Forth). Still, anyone can run a Virtual Machine on their PC and watch what happens with a simulated computer booting up.

Maybe this is related? :-) From:
"Ignorance, Apathy, and Greed"
http://www.progress.org/fold21.htm
"The causes of social problems exist on many levels. When we ask why social problems such as poverty, unemployment, crime, and war exist, each time we determine a cause, we can ask "why" again, as children often do until they are hushed. Poverty exists because some folks can't find jobs or the jobs pay poorly. But then why is the wage level so low? Because of the tax and land-tenure systems. Why do we have those systems? Because special interests pay to legislate it. Why do special interests get away with it? The voting structure lets them. Why does that structure exist? The voters don't demand to change it. Why not? When we dig down through all the layers to the roots of the causes, we find three fundamental causes of social problems: ignorance, apathy, and greed. The ultimate remedy for social problems therefore must confront all three root causes. It does little good to just run down the street shouting "share the rent!" or "stop war!". Uttering a slogan does no good unless it arouses sympathy."

Here is something related I posted on how my perspective may be different because my mother lived through the German bombing and invasion of Rotterdam and subsequent intentional starvation:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1755090&cid=33264228

Still, there are exceptions with some younger people, like the "open manufacturing" community I am involved in.
http://www.openmanufacturing.net/
Which includes indirectly the RepRap, MakerBot, Maker, etc. scenes:
http://www.makerbot.com/
http://www.makerbot.com/
http://makezine.com/
http://100kgarages.com/

While small, that's an encouraging trend towards DIY and an encouraging hopeful scene.

At the other end of trends, you may find some other links through your local historical societies. I've found that mine is a place where there are people who are interested in how things work (or worked) in various ways (mostly older women in that crowd, but some older men who know a lot about machinery and industry). These are people who know all this sort of stuff:
http://www.lindsaybks.com/dgjp/index.html
My father was a Merchant Mariner for twenty-something years, then a machinist and tool-maker, so I've learned some stuff from watching him.

While I agree with your parallels on the rest of the points, on basic income, while you make a good point, in general, it means something a little different (essentially, it means social security for everyone young or old as a substantial check from the government every month acknowledging their right as a citizen to the fruits of some of the industrial commons, as a formal government program to deal with rich/poor divides, the concentration of wealth, the lack of jobs, etc. in a systematic way still within a capitalist framework).
http://www.usbig.net/whatisbig.html

http://www.stirlingengine.com/
Build your own: http://www.lindsaybks.com/

I asked "How soon can you do it in Arizona?"

You're about 10,000 to 20,000 years too late for that. That's when a new group of evolved Von Neumann machines settled in North America (including presumably Arizona). Their manufactured products were rather simple at first, stone and wood tools, but leading to significant towns of adobe dwellings at later stages. Later more advanced Von Neumann machines of the same design, brought metal working and other much more advanced manufacturing facilities to Arizona. If for some reason, you aren't interested in humans as technology, there's the advent of the industrial age, which I imagine manifested in Arizona at some point in the late 19th century (by the time railroads went through).

This last instance of self-replicating factories is particularly relevant since with teleoperations, it can be repeated on the Moon. The industrial age has a well established pathway for establishing factories. First, you create a machine shop. Then the machine shop builds the tools and early infrastructure of the factory (later, large scale infrastructure can be made by the factories themselves). The machine shop can also either enlarge its own production or make more machine shops.

So we've reduced the factory problem to the machine shop problem. What does a machine shop need? Well it needs a source of workable metal and some basic metal working tools: lathe, drill press, milling machine, etc. The lathe as it turns out is the most important of these tools. So what do you need to make the tools? It turns out that you need just one thing, a furnace and some sort of cast (something to hold molten metal in a desired shape). For example, David Gingery back in the 80s developed a process for making a sufficient collection of machine tools starting with a furnace. He published a series of books on it. I haven't read the books through, but here's my understanding of what they do. It turns out that you start by building a charcoal foundry (a lunar equivalent would probably be a solar or electric furnace capable of melting iron, steel, or aluminum). Using sandcasting techniques, you cast the parts to build a proto-lathe. This is a machine that has enough of the functionality of a lathe, that one can use it to build a true lathe (Gingery used it to extend the functionality of the proto-lathe to be a true lathe). I don't know the proper order, but past that you build a milling machine, drill press, and metal shaper.

Once you have these basic machines, you can use them either to improve the machine shop, build more machine shops, or build other infrastructure like factories.

So to sum up, it's been done in Arizona. I'm a bit surprised that these academics couldn't have come up with a good answer (though the Gingery example probably wouldn't have been known at that point).

When I was a kid I had a book written ~ 1910 called 'The Boy Electrician' that had a something very similar included as a project.
It also had an x-ray machine with complete instructions. The good old days!
http://www.lindsaybks.com/bks/boyelec/index.html

An industrial system can produce parts with higher tolerances than the machines themselves have, otherwise we could never have created any tool more precise than a chipped stone knife.

Right now, our industrial infrastructure is a self-replicating system. To avoid that error propagation you mention, there are different levels of precision. Metal parts are cast in molds that have relatively rough tolerances and are later machined with high precision tools.

To get an idea on how it's possible to "bootstrap" an industrial infrastructure starting from very simple and primitive tools, take a look at this book series.

For most people, 'how to build a bicycle' would involve going to a bike shop and buying components.

The task of fabricating and welding the metal, producing the ball bearings for the wheel bearings, vulcanizing the rubber for the tires, etc. is more than most people would bargain for, and also more than would probably be included in a 'How to Build a Bicycle' book.

But then there's the Gingery series, a book series on making an entire machine shop from scrap metal. A completely raw-material 'How to Build A Bicycle' book would fit nicely with in that series. Building the bicycle using the home-built lathe, mill, drill press, shaper, sheet metal brake, indexing head, etc. and raw steel, of course.

You don't need a lathe to build a lathe, otherwise how would the first lathe been ever built? These books show how to build a full set of metalworking machines from scratch.

You could start here: Build a Complete Metalworking Shop From Scrap.

Start with basically nothing, and make your own foundry, lathe, milling machine, etc. -- $60. (I have no relation to it at all; I just found it online once.)

I think you answered your own question. If piracy was impossible, no one in his right mind would pay $1000 for a game.

Even $30 could be too much for a game. Case in point: in the year 2000 I bought (legally) the game "Need for Speed - Porsche Unleashed". I liked that game. I later bought "Need for Speed - Underground". It was a POS. I felt I was cheated, because they used the same name "Need for Speed" for a completely different game. The Porsche version was simulator-like and it was good to play with a force-feedback wheel. The later Unleashed version is entirely made for consoles, not PCs, it's optimized for the gamepads most people use with consoles, not for the force-feedback wheel. It shouldn't use the same name as the other one, it should be called "Arcade Racer - Underground", or something like that. Now I feel EA-Games owes me the $30 I paid for NFS-U. I would never have bought it if I hadn't liked the entirely different Porsche game. From now on, I will never buy anything from EA-Games without first testing a pirated copy, to see if it's worth the price.

Imagine that there was a guy standing outside McDonalds giving away free McDonald burgers (copies).

As always, analogies suck. The grandfather post assumed that everyone has a fixed quota of time for playing computer games, the same way everyone eats every day. That ain't so. People play games if they are interesting and the price is right. That's why I mentioned all those alternatives to playing video games. Personally, I have paid a little for a few games in the past. But it was at least five years since I last saw a game worth paying for. I occasionally pirate a game to see if it's worth, if it were I would buy it.

But, anyhow, getting back to the original thread, I don't believe anybody would pay $1000 for a computer game, they simply don't offer anything worth that much. But people do have other ways to pass the time and pay what they feel it's worth. For instance, one of my hobbies is machining metal, I paid close to $1000 for a lathe once. There are other people who also like to work with metal who pay almost nothing for a lathe, they build one instead.

I think the best analogy to the original/pirated games dilemma is to compare companies like Taig or Sherline with the the Gingery family. Dave and Vince Gingery are "open sourcing" the hobbyist machining field. If I knew about the Gingery plans at the time, I wouldn't have bought my lathe, I would have built one instead. Ater all, if my hobby is machining metal, why not start building the machines themselves?

Now, let's say I start building Gingery lathes and give them away, because I love building them, but after I'm done I have no use for another lathe. That would certainly mean that Taig or Sherline or any other company that makes small machine tools would be losing a sale. Do you think that's so bad? Would you put a hobbyist who gives away the products of his hobby in the same category as the software companies put the so-called "pirates"?

Check this out.

Nor did I say anything about getting rid of SUVs or the Vegas strip. I said:

Try making and powering them yourself, because it'll learn ya something.

I haven't seen any plans for the Gingery Humvee, but man, that would rule! I am in the planning stages of building a backyard foundry, tho.

Nor did I say anything about getting rid of SUVs or the Vegas strip. I said:

Try making and powering them yourself, because it'll learn ya something.

I haven't seen any plans for the Gingery Humvee, but man, that would rule! I am in the planning stages of building a backyard foundry, tho.

He doesn't just run linux, he hand compiles it on a home made steam driven computer, the parts for which he made in his backyard foundry.

He doesn't just run linux, he hand compiles it on a home made steam driven computer, the parts for which he made in his backyard foundry.

Here is a site with many books that tell you how make all kinds of fun gadgets.

It looks promising, but I have not started yet (mainly because the landlord does not appreciate foundry equipment in the appartment).

Their catalog is really cool, they have reprints of documents from 1900, 1800 and before, all obsolete by now, of course, but that's how the Golden Gate and the Titanic were built.

They also have an electrical section, for example, how to make an analog amplifier in a Jar from a speaker and a carbon microphone. Really neat stuff, and I wish I could tinker with it some more.

It looks promising, but I have not started yet (mainly because the landlord does not appreciate foundry equipment in the appartment).

Their catalog is really cool, they have reprints of documents from 1900, 1800 and before, all obsolete by now, of course, but that's how the Golden Gate and the Titanic were built.

They also have an electrical section, for example, how to make an analog amplifier in a Jar from a speaker and a carbon microphone. Really neat stuff, and I wish I could tinker with it some more.

The Boy Electrician is the best place to start. Published in 1940, so the tubes are a little hard to find, but most of the projects don't use tubes. Everything is easy yet informative, and the book is aimed at boys so it is easy and fun to read. Recommended, even for adults.

P.S. That site has several other books that you will find interesting, but this is the best.

I Only know one such book, "Instruments of Amplification" by Pete Fredrichs. It may be had from several sources, one of which is:

http://www.lindsaybks.com/bks7/finstr/

Or Google on the title

Really!

http://www.lindsaybks.com/bks7/finstr/
the URL links to one of several places that you can get the book Instruments of Amplification by Pete Freidrichs. The book describes how to build your own tubes, transistors and other more obscure amplifying technologies. Oldskool Geek at its best!

(Or Google for "instruments of amplification")

Note: Lindsay Publications is worth a lookaround... LOTS of obsolete-but-interesting, obscure, or otherwise hard to find tech books, generally CHEAP!

DIsclosure: I have no connection whatever with Friedrichs or Lindsay Publications!

Lindsay's Technical Books has the complete Amateur Scientist from Scientific American on CD-ROM. 72 years of experiments and projects, from the column's beginnings in 1928.

Table-top science to the construction of an electron microscopes, it is all here.

The same published also has another interesting book:
Instruments of Amplification that describes how to make your own electronic and electromechanical amplifiers from scratch. Great addition if you have to restart civilization on your own!

Step one is to make a charcoal foundry, starting with a pail, fire clay, and a steel pipe. With this you can cast parts. You hand-carve wooden masters, make sand moulds, and pour molten metal into them.

Once you can cast, the next step is to build a lathe - the simplest machine tool. You'd probably have to make a very crude lathe first, but once you have even a crude lathe, you can make round things. Then you can make a better lathe.

The next tool is a shaper, or planer, which allows you to make flat things. You're now up to the machining technology of 1850 or so, and can make small steam engines. Take a look at a steam locomotive. It's all castings with a little finish machining. All the finish machining is either lathe or planer work - there are no milled parts with complex surfaces.

The other early power tool, not mentioned in Gingery, is a steam hammer. You don't need that for small work, but the steam hammer is the tool that made it possible to make stuff too big to hammer out by hand. Watt's factory had a steam hammer by 1810 or so.

Once you have the lathe and planer, you can build, with difficulty, a milling machine. Once you have a milling machine, you can build more milling machines without too much trouble. And you can build a better mill than the one you've got.

Once you have a good mill, you can make almost anything makeable in metal.

People have built machine tools from these books, so it's quite possible.

Each step requires the equipment from the previous steps:

1) Charcoal Foundry for Scrap Aluminum
2) Lathe
3) Metal Shaper
4) Milling Machine

http://www.lindsaybks.com/dgjp/djgbk/series/index. html

I've been reading about how to build a Gingery Charcoal/Gas Foundary and homemade metal-cutting lathe. Today I finally ordered the books from Amazon.

"All you need is an old metal, 5-gallon pail, about $6 worth of fireclay, some sand, a junk auto heater fan with a coffee can shroud (or a vacuum cleaner), and this book to build a high temperature furnace."

You can use it to melt aluminum, zinc, and bronze which you can then pour/cast into sand molds. The nice thing is that you can assemble the lathe accurate to .001" or greater without needed precision parts, and learn a ton in the process.

Once you've done that, you can cast any other parts you want and machine them to your specifications for far cheaper than using this service. If you didn't make the part quite right, no worries, melt it down and recast it.

I'm planning to build this to machine parts of hobby sterling and steam engines and the ability to construct precision prototypes whenever I have an idea about something. No more tin cans, balsa wood, and RTV sealant! Yay.

Lots of other people have websites chronicling their projects based on these books.

I've been reading about how to build a Gingery Charcoal/Gas Foundary and homemade metal-cutting lathe. Today I finally ordered the books from Amazon.

"All you need is an old metal, 5-gallon pail, about $6 worth of fireclay, some sand, a junk auto heater fan with a coffee can shroud (or a vacuum cleaner), and this book to build a high temperature furnace."

You can use it to melt aluminum, zinc, and bronze which you can then pour/cast into sand molds. The nice thing is that you can assemble the lathe accurate to .001" or greater without needed precision parts, and learn a ton in the process.

Once you've done that, you can cast any other parts you want and machine them to your specifications for far cheaper than using this service. If you didn't make the part quite right, no worries, melt it down and recast it.

I'm planning to build this to machine parts of hobby sterling and steam engines and the ability to construct precision prototypes whenever I have an idea about something. No more tin cans, balsa wood, and RTV sealant! Yay.

Lots of other people have websites chronicling their projects based on these books.

I own an original copy of this book (kinda rare). One thing that continues to amaze me about the projects in the book is that they were expected to be understood and constructed by children, likely ages 10-15. Some of the projects (like homebrew wet cells) used some pretty dangerous chemicals. There were warnings throughout, but not to the point of "paranoia" like you see in some so-called "science experiment" books of today (except for those which have watered down everything to make the experiments uber-safe).

Today, it seems like you can't even get a kid to imagine how to build stuff, especially relatively complex stuff (an electric motor, a steam engine or tubine, a radio, etc) - let alone expect him to understand it. While knowledge of such devices doesn't have much practical use to most people, the education it gives about how to do things for yourself, and why they work, is what is important. Unfortunately for most of today's generation, such thinking skills are not shown or taught as much as they once were...

A lot of mechanical work, but you can convert a car to electric.

Mother Earth News published a few articals on it back in the 1980s or there abouts. Lindsay Sells some books on conversion, with a note that you want modern conversion technology as it is better than what they had a few years ago.

Lindsay books has lots of neat books, some of which (depending on what is in print now) tell you how to make glass. If you really want to do experiments you will find their collection valuable for that purpose too.

P.S. the good stuff is in the dead tree catalog, but not online, so get a copy of the catalog.

Some other ideas: If you can reassemble the part, try making a mold and making a new epoxy part.

First, you may need to make one of these. You can make your own lego parts, too.

Thanks for the book references.

I think that learning how to live without the grid will be a vital skill for anyone now living in the industrialised world today. It is clear from recent and past world events that oil supply is going to be a future problem, that governments have yet to address. The uk oil blockade during 2000 brought that home to me very clearly. During that time food was unavailable in supermarkets, travel was limited and the scope of emergency services were limited. I expect to see that type of problem occur again within my lifetime.

I am employed and can afford to have contractors to work on my house, however I chose to landscape my own garden and fit my own kitchen. During the past year especially I have had practical experience in many forms of building work and spent the cash I saved on the tools I needed. If I ever have to live off the grid I know that I have at least some of the neccesary skills already. I do quite a lot of work for a large London based building contractor, and even there most of the surveyors and estimators have zero hands on experience. They mostly seem surprised that I want to do this kind of work myself.

I read a lot to gain the skills I have learnt, and while most of the books I read are not really on self suffiency they may be of interest.

Taunton Press do a whole range of good books on a whole range of building and woodwork related subjects. They can be found at www.tauton.com. They also publish magazines such as Fine Homebulding and Fine woodworking . I have bought quite a few of their books in the past, and they are mostly very good.

Lindsay books publish a whole load of obsolete engineering books, as well as the classic Gingery series. These are invaluable for those wanting to make tools on a very low budget.

Steve

Thanks for the book references.

I think that learning how to live without the grid will be a vital skill for anyone now living in the industrialised world today. It is clear from recent and past world events that oil supply is going to be a future problem, that governments have yet to address. The uk oil blockade during 2000 brought that home to me very clearly. During that time food was unavailable in supermarkets, travel was limited and the scope of emergency services were limited. I expect to see that type of problem occur again within my lifetime.

I am employed and can afford to have contractors to work on my house, however I chose to landscape my own garden and fit my own kitchen. During the past year especially I have had practical experience in many forms of building work and spent the cash I saved on the tools I needed. If I ever have to live off the grid I know that I have at least some of the neccesary skills already. I do quite a lot of work for a large London based building contractor, and even there most of the surveyors and estimators have zero hands on experience. They mostly seem surprised that I want to do this kind of work myself.

I read a lot to gain the skills I have learnt, and while most of the books I read are not really on self suffiency they may be of interest.

Taunton Press do a whole range of good books on a whole range of building and woodwork related subjects. They can be found at www.tauton.com. They also publish magazines such as Fine Homebulding and Fine woodworking . I have bought quite a few of their books in the past, and they are mostly very good.

Lindsay books publish a whole load of obsolete engineering books, as well as the classic Gingery series. These are invaluable for those wanting to make tools on a very low budget.

Steve

Check out Lindsay Publications for a fine collection of reprints.

Look at The Boy Mechanic Series volume 1: (1913) "700 Things for Boys to Do. How to construct wireless outfits, boats, camp equipment, aerial gliders, kites, self-propelled vehicles, engines, motors, electrical apparatus, cameras and hundreds of other things which delight every boy."
You get wall-to-wall projects that in most cases are not too detailed, but are more than enough to whet the appetite and make you want to get started. Build a Wright-brothers style glider! A Wimshurst machine! An arc light! An electric stove! A toy steam engine! A telegraph key! A water rheostat! An alarm clock chicken feeder! A flat bottomed boat! An induction coil! A library table! A machine to put paraffin on wire! A pipe fitting steam engine! An electric postcard projector! An ammeter! A paper hot air balloon! A workbench!
It's a combination of practical projects, not-so-practical projects, crazy ideas, and plain ol' fun nostalgia. 1913 edition. It's a classic book well worth your consideration. Order a copy today! 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 softcover 469 pages

Every book and reprint I got from these guys was a keeper. I have some of the project books and most of the Gingery foundry/casting books. I use the charcoal foundry to recycle old hard drive aluminum platters & shells into shop tools.

Have Fun, read the safety precautions, and don't burn down your garage!

Civilization as we know it wouldn't have been possible if we didn't possess the desire and ability to discover. I think there's more than just one kind of hacking: Some like to hack by tinkering and others like to hack by communication with others. The latter tend to see it a little differently: they are establishing important networks of relationships within their community and would rather have those kooks get out of the garage and finish some chores.

A good source of machine books would be:
http://lindsaybks.com/

My favorite bookstore Has a number of books that will help anyone planning to make their own computer case. Not to mention all the fun science things that can help you do. Get the dead tree catalog, it has many books that are not online.

Anyone still have a _working_ mirror of the original Blue Flash coaster pics? All the mirrors listed are broken.

The pics of the Blue Flash are way more professional looking than this coaster. I'm working on convincing my S.O. to let me build one of these puppies with metal made from melted hard drive platters in my home made forge so I'm gonna need something better than 2x4's and PVC.

I bought the Dave Gingery Build Your Own Metalworking Shop From Scrap books a year or so ago, but haven't gotten around to building anything yet. It occurred to me, after reading the books, that dead hard drives would make a reasonable good source of aluminum. I guess I've been beaten to the punch.

I actually had a client request that I destroy some of their hard drives a couple years ago. Fun stuff, getting paid to break stuff. I dd'd /dev/zero over 'em, wrote some pseudorandom crap onto them after that, then popped the tops, pulled the platters out, and hit 'em with a belt sander-- all "on the clock"!

From what I know about Economics, this is patently false. Raising the price reduces demand*

The key that your missing is return on investment. The cost of making a gun is very very small. And the equipment to do can be created for very little as well. You can build the machining tools you need using these books from Lindsay Publishing and then using the books by Bill Holmes on firearms manufacture you have every thing you need to produce a reliable weapon.

This setup could be built at very little cost and materials for it can be found almost anywhere in the world. So the barrier to entry is very low and the cost of production is in time far more than materials. So the return on investment when selling a firearm would be quite high. In other word what you are looking at is demand side economics, but are not taking into account supply side economics. (Oh my did I just admint that I'm a right winger or what...) If you make a business model profitable others will pick up on it. So the shear number of manufactures will keep the price low because the risk is spread out and as such the demand will be there because the product in still reasonably priced.

As you stated the demand for drugs has not diminished due to high cost(because of the low barrier to entry verses the high return on investment(an ounces of week can cost more than an ounce of gold and you can grow it in your house)). And there is no reason to believe that the demand for firearms would either. In fact as the orginal parent I replied to was from Canada I would suggest that he lookin to the reports on illegal black market of weapons sales going on in his country. It is my understanding that it is quite the sellers market.

Note: I am not promoting, condoning or praticipating in any illegal activity. The statements above are simply examples that can be located in many places on the net.

But to simplify the discussion back on track, my orginal point was that making the ownership of guns would hardly mean that the supply of them would be deminished. It would simply mean that only those willing to break the law would have firearms and those of us who are law abiding citizens would be the ones outgunned. And those moral people who secretly still posessed guns would be much less likely to use them in defense of you and your family because of the repocussions.

I've mentioned them before (several times), but it bears repeating: has several offerings that you need to check out. Get the paper catalog (it has more than the online version), and order some books. They have a CD-ROM of the good articals from Scientific American (back when it was worth reading), and several other books. Most of their books are long out of copyright, so they are old, but the science is still the same, even if the theorys have changed. (Watch out for that!)

Lindsay books is a good place to look for books on this line. (Get the catalog, it has more than the website lists) Several books contain interesting science experiments that you can try. Along with many other fun projects that Geeks will love.