Tag: series

  • Build Your Own Metalworking Shop From Scratch: Book Review

    Build Your Own Metalworking Shop From Scratch: Book Review

     

    Book Review: Build Your Own Metalworking Shop from Scrap: Series Set
    Buy at Amazon

    Mr. Gingery is a legend. He made a living solving $500 problems with $50 solutions. You can only do that with skill and thought.

    He created this set of books that allow someone to build your own metalworking shop using only hand tools. Each book covers a specific machine tool – it has detailed construction diagrams, and step by step instructions.

    Each tool is used to create the next tool in line. First you build a small aluminum foundry and learn to cast metal, you use that to build a metal lathe. Which metal castings and a lathe, you can build a metal shaper that allow you to build a milling machine….

    The education is priceless, the equipment is functional. The books are cheap. if you are a prepper, and worried about when SHTF, then you owe it to yourself to throw this set on your shelf – with this set and some gumption you can recreate the industrial revolution.
    Buy it.

    I have only finished the first book, but my foundry was very easy to build following David Gingery’s simple instructions.  I am very excited about following his other books – especially the lathe building book.

    Following the Build Your Own Metalworking Shop from Scrap series is my plan for retirement, I want to do every project and build my own shop

  • Earthbag Building

    Earthbag Building

    Book Review: Earthbag Building
    Buy at Amazon

    Over 70 percent of Americans cannot afford to own a code-enforced, contractor-built home. This has led to widespread interest in using natural materials—straw, cob, and earth—for building homes and other buildings that are inexpensive, and that rely largely on labor rather than expensive and often environmentally-damaging outsourced materials.

    Earthbag Building is the first comprehensive guide to all the tools, tricks, and techniques for building with bags filled with earth—or earthbags. Having been introduced to sandbag construction by the renowned Nader Khalili in 1993, the authors developed this “Flexible Form Rammed Earth Technique” over the last decade. A reliable method for constructing homes, outbuildings, garden walls and much more, this enduring, tree-free architecture can also be used to create arched and domed structures of great beauty—in any region, and at home, in developing countries, or in emergency relief work.

    This profusely illustrated guide first discusses the many merits of earthbag construction, and then leads the reader through the key elements of an earthbag building:

    • Special design considerations
    • Foundations, walls and floors
    • Electrical, plumbing and shelving
    • Lintels, windows and door installations
    • Roofs, arches and domes
    • Exterior and interior plasters.

    With dedicated sections on costs, making your own specialized tools, and building code considerations, as well as a complete resources guide, Earthbag Building is the long-awaited, definitive guide to this uniquely pleasing construction style.

    Kaki Hunter and Donald Kiffmeyer have been involved in the construction industry for the last 20 years, specializing in affordable, low-tech, low-impact building methods that are as natural as possible. They developed the “Flexible Form Rammed Earth Technique” of building affordably with earthbags and have taught the subject and contributed their expertise to several books and journals on natural building.