Tennessee Gun

Tag: reference

  • List of Great Books on Bartering

    List of Great Books on Bartering

    List of Great Books on Bartering
    Buy at Amazon

    Just by going to websites like this, you are way ahead of the general populace.  If you go ahead and actually prepare you are light-years ahead of most.  If we have a large scale disaster, you may be in a position to trade some of your goods (and services) for items you may need.  What I would like to do is give you a list of great books on bartering.

    While you won’t get really good at bartering without practice, good reference books on bartering can definitely help you.  I personally stay with what I know and would try to stay away from jewelry and stick to guns – in a grid down or in a time of hyper-inflation, I may not have a choice but to barter with or for jewelry and other things.  In that case I would hope to have some updated references to use.

  • Quick and Dirty Transformer Design and Construction

    Quick and Dirty Transformer Design and Construction

    Book Review: Quick and Dirty Transformer Design and Construction
    Buy at Amazon

    Quick and Dirty Transformer Design and Construction is a small book of48 pages.

    Basically it reprints two articles for transformer builders:

    1. Design and Building Transformers, Technical Service Bureau Bulletin D-111, 1938, second edition.

    2. Induction Coils by Charles Underhill, extracted from Standard Handbook For Electrical Engineers, 1922.

    Basic understanding of transformer design is a very useful bit of knowledge to have.  I used a very rudimentary understanding to create a spot welder by rewiring a microwave oven transformer.

    I have also seen people create small power grids using home-built transformers.

    If you can design transformers you can take the power you have and transform it to the power you need (within reason).

    If you have high voltage at low amperage, and need low voltage at high amperage you can do that or the reverse.  It is really just simple math that this book easily explains.

    I have this book in my library, and I use it as a reference, when working on circuits.  but it really isn’t something I use all of the time, but it is something I think would be invaluable if society ever had to rebuild itself.

  • Basic Machines and How the Work

    Basic Machines and How the Work

    Book Review: Basic Machines and How the Work
    Buy at Amazon

    Only elementary math skills are needed to follow this instructive manual.

    Basic Machines and How the Work covers many familiar machines and their components, including levers, block and tackle, and the inclined plane and wedge, in addition to hydrostatic and hydraulic machines, internal combustion engines, trains, and more. 204 black-and-white illustrations.

    This book is a reference guide and instruction manual used to teach military personnel how machines work so that they can make repairs to unfamiliar equipment in the middle of the ocean.

    Like the Navy Foundry manual, this book helps teach vital DIY concepts that are vital to repairing material in a long term “grid down” disaster.

    In a apocalyptic “Postman” or “Mad Max” world – the ability to understand machinery would make a person a vital asset to a community.  However, I don’t really believe in those scenarios, so I stick with the more realistic view that it is cheaper to know how to fix things than it is to pay someone to fix them.

    I found the section on how differentials work to be fascinating, but the book’s descriptions on machines gives a great primer into how things work – by knowing this you can start to see principles and break things down into component parts.  It is books like this that turn a person into a Macgyver.

  • Emergency War Surgery

    Emergency War Surgery

    Emergency War Surgery
    Buy at Amazon

    Emergency War Surgery is not the be all end all medical reference, and in a catastrophic disaster, if you are on my team and break this out and read it with one hand as you try to pull a bullet out of my leg – prepare to get kicked in the head…

    But this book does give information that is hard to find, and in my own opinion, I think it deserves a place in every prepper’s bookshelf.

    Just don’t equate owning this book (or any other) with knowing its contents, which is why I said don’t read with one hand and cut with the other.

    You should have a firm grasp on the contents of this book pre-disaster if you think there is a possibility that you may one day have to use the contents of this book

    I remember once as a kid, I bought a karate book at the school book fair, and went home and challenged my dad to a sparring match.  I was so ready – I kept calling time out to open the book to whatever kick I wanted to try.  It was silly then, and the idea that you can learn emergency war surgery simply by owning a book is even sillier.

    Take real classes by knowledgeable professionals.

  • 18 Vital Reference Books for Preppers

    18 Vital Reference Books for Preppers

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