I just found this book, The Boy Mechanic, at Barnes and Noble yesterday. It's great. It has 200 projects that a person can build in classic turn of the century style. Some of the projects are frivolous, but sophisticated, toys. Others are simple instructions for building furniture or things around a farm. It even has a section on the outdoors and camping. I think its a great book for the survivor. Especially, for longer term survival.

My first hit on a search for this was Gutenberg:

http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/12655

Same document?


Me, I've always loved these kinds of books. I didn't get books like the Hardy Boys, I got stuff like this and a watchful eye with some of the tools.

Just like it, but with fewer projects and with all the illustrations. The copy I just downloaded from Gutenberg didn't have any illustrations, but it had 700 projects compared to 200.

I may have to subscribe to Popular Mechanic if they still show you how to build things like this. American Scientific used to have an amateur scientist section that showed you how to build an experiment in every issue; I lost a lot of my interest in the magazine shortly after they discontinued it.

The PDF file is the only one that still contains the illustrations. Just don't try to download it on dial-up.

Ah, it was the time.