I have a question about unpowered machine tools. The idea is to create a complete machine shop capable of making basic parts without requiring electricity.

OK, before you say something, here's the background. This isn't about TEOTWAWKI, it's actually about third world development.

I'm in college right now, taking a class on human geography. I'm writing on strategies for development, and one challenge that faces the third world is their almost total lack of infrastructure. In the worst areas, it's totally lawless. There are no organized systems for providing water, food, handling waste and sewage, providing electricity, NOTHING.

A side problem is that a village that does get its act together organizationally is literally a lone voice in the wilderness. They have to import EVERYTHING.

Solution: a simple, unpowered machine shop. With the right materials on hand and a guy with journeyman training, a village can keep its equipment in repair, build necessary tools, and accumulate enough of a surplus to sell to neighboring communities (in exchange for money to buy raw materials for the shop). All without ordering imports from overseas, often in cripplingly small quantities and through corrupt government bureaucracies.

Anyway, does anyone know a site that might have information on this kind of thing? Even (perhaps especially) just information sites. I've googled around, but can't find anything along the lines I'm looking for. ETS is filled with do it yourselfers, some of whom have overseas experience, all of whom are very self-reliant. So you guys seemed like a good first choice when I started asking around.

At the risk of possibly being accused of "doing your homework for you," I'll offer a few suggestions, which is the same I would have done for my students when I taught college:

Take a look at the web page for Backwoods Home magazine. It's a good starting point. Their book section will also provide more information.

Check out the Foxfire series of books (10 volumes) on old-fashioned ways "and other affairs of plain living". They're edited by Eliot Wigginton.

Blacksmithing "how-to" books would provide some info, too, depending on when they were written.

Another old text I've found on-line is at this web page.

If possible, check with a state or local Agricultural museum or other antiquarian museum. When I worked in the Tennessee State Museum, years ago, we had in our collections full sets of millstones, & a complete frontier gunsmith's shop, including a spring-powered lathe & a wheel-driven rifling machine (looked like a part of a spinning wheel on steroids).

Depending on where you're in school, get to a major university's library (frequently possible to check the collections on-line). You should find something useful there. My undergraduate college library was OK for the work I was assigned there, but for real research, I went to Vanderbilt's Joint University Libraries. It was a lot of work, but worth it--besides, the research was fun.

As Solomon said, "There's nothing new under the sun."

Good luck. Please post again with some of what you find. I'd be interested.

David

Good leads, thanks!

Mainly I was wondering if there was a hobbyist industry that I'd missed. The idea of modern materials and techniques used to implement hand-powered equipment. Also, by pricing this stuff, I can get a rough economic model put together.

Historical sources have proven very valuable. Lowell Mills in particular. Its machine shop was built to support the textile mills, but then turned into the center of its own industry as the demand for machinery of all kinds increased.

Having been involved with a couple of social and economic projects in Ecuador, I have some limited experience in planning and executing a couple of projects, one of which is a “fix-it-shop”. The differences, I see with my experience and your development model, is most of the communities I have dealt with, have electricity to some degree and are able to import on a limited basis tools and supplies.

I have a question. If your model is to maintain only a self-supporting (in terms of a village) operation, should you not first look to what the community has already in place? For the village to even have some degree of organization to exist, they would have already had to have a natural evolution of local trades, using nearby natural resources. If the goal of your model is to allow the community to grow, without the importation of a resource, then they must have natural resource that can be “harvested” in substantial quantities.

There are many communities around the world that are self-sustaining. However, these communities either succumb to the “comforts’ of the modern society, their culture and means of maintaining a stable community or are self-limiting/maintaining.

There are a number of resources (both books and magazine articles) on “primitive” forging, pottery making, spinning and weaving (textile development). A quick search turned up the following. I do not if they would be helpful or not. Pet

http://www.backwoodshome.com/

http://www.backwoodsmanmag.com/

http://www.primitiveways.com/

http://www.tribaltek.org/lifeskills.html

http://www.countrysidemag.com/

http://ambilac-uk.tripod.com/safesurvival/id11.html

http://www.keenjunk.com/index.htm

http://www.anvilfire.com/

http://www.hollowtop.com/plinks.htm

Making the Best of Basics by James Talmage Stevens
Self-Reliant Living by Dr. James Mckeever
Back to Basics from Readers Digest

This is what we call appropriate technology in anthropology speak. A friend of mine invented a dung powered unit to produce household electricity for the Nepalese highlands where forest loss to woodburning is a issue. Every system has some form of resource, be it solar or wind power on a faceless desert or even simple brute human labour. WW2 photographs show huge rollers being dragged in China and oceania by massive work gangs to construct airstrips. There are also modern examples right here. The Amish and Mennonite communities and the wonderfull Lehman's hardware and Cumberland General Store catalogs for example.

Was there a show called "Lost Tech" or something? Maybe it was my imagination. I've always wanted to see a show on TLC/Discovery/History Channel go over how older human powered machines were built.

I've always liked the footage of elephants doing the work of train locomotives and fork lifts.

I believe the Aga Khan Foundation has done a great deal of work in this area:

http://www.akdn.org/index.html

While the following link isn't completely along the lines discussed here, it is of some interest.
Caveman Chemistry
It goes from making fire up to making plastic, and a variety of things in between.
If I recall correctly, it is a chemistry teacher's attempt to make the subject interesting... many of the topics are useful, some fun, and a few that would only interest a small group...

You can read the whole book online or buy it.

In the first chapter he discusses the process of fire, then gives a practical method of building "training wheels" to use the bow and drill method... all the chapters are layed out this way.... information and then a practical application.....

Fun reading regardless of your interest.
(No association, I just like the book)

Just out of curiosity, could a certain amount of bartering fit into the plan?

There are lots of hobbiest wood/metal workers here in the US. I see homemade forges and casting furnaces, people who have assembled their own lathes and all the way up to the ones who make fine furniture with hand tool dovetail saws, chisels, etc. See if you can figure out how to fire some bricks made from local mud/clay/whatever then you can stack bricks to make a furnace to heat metal to start makeing some tools.
There is also the possibility of powered tools if you have a running stream to power a waterwheel.

Here is another article from Wilderness Way Magazine on Primitive Blacksmithing that might be of some interest. Pete

http://www.wwmag.net/blacksmith.htm

I recall an article in an old Sci Am issue about the machines and cranes used in Italy's renaissance to build the domes of those beautiful churches and cathedrals- and engineering feat even by todays standards.

Those machines were powered by hand or by a couple oxen

Consider a crane moving up or down while the ox keeps going in the same direction.

Necesity is the mother of inventions + a bit of creativity+ talent

Thanks for the link, I'm poking through it.

The goal isn't really self-sufficiency. The three things I'm addressing are:

1. The complexity and expense of importing replacement and spare parts for locally-operated equipment. That includes farming equipment, but could be other things too. Right now, you have to order a long way to get things, typically to an urban area that you don't do enough business with to avoid being gouged. Which brings me to

2. Improving economies. If you have many villages with this kind of setup, all replacing farming equipment and repairing vehicle parts using a smaller menu of raw materials, you get higher-volume, more commoditized markets.

3. Time to repair / opportunity to innovate: You can't keep an inventory of spares when you're living hand to mouth. So you have to order a part when it is needed-- impairing local activities significantly while you wait for delivery.

I didn't think of the possibility for villages to barter and trade with one another, but it's definitely a major plus. Suddenly, the piece of steel you need you can get locally, get the spare part made, and repair your vehicle/agriculture equip/etc quickly.

Like I said, this isn't intended to be a panacea, or even a second or third tier solution. It's designed to make by small steps the transition towards real indigenous economies.

Exactly. As it stands, most first world tech depends on first world infrastructure-- something you simply can't depend on. However the third world has a surfeit of labor and other things that make uneconomical first world ideas into economical ways to CREATE infrastructure.

Though it's an achingly slow process, of course. Then again, most of the quick fix ideas have failed, so maybe slow is better than stopped.

Its not technology that worries me, or even really being totally self-sufficient. It's simplifying and eroding away dependence on elaborate and not-to-be-found infrastructure.

Absolutely. Though it simply didn't occur to me at first.

The idea is that if you have a certain amount of generic stock on hand, and you can turn that into finished gear, you have the opportunity to trade with neighbors when urban and international trade becomes difficult. It's hard when you're trading "tractor wheel bracket #09823" since the demand is sporadic and equipment-specific. It becomes much easier when you're trading a piece of forged steel plate so you can MAKE one. Or making it to order for a nearby village.

Win win. It hadn't occured to me as I put this together, but it's a definite and major advantage.

I do not know if this will help or if it is adaptable to your model.

At a local gun show, I meet a gentleman who was married to an Indonesian woman; they would make periodic trips to visit her family. The gentleman made contacts with local blade/knife makers and began to purchase hand-forged knives to bring back to the states. I try and buy a few each time as I am fascinated by the knives and like to support such grass-root efforts.

Most, if not all of the knives are made with recycled materials, either broken plow blades, ball bearings and other scrap metals in “primitive” forges. Many come with sheaths made from bamboo or wood. The workman ship is quite remarkable.

While I do not actively use most of the knives, due to their large size, the ones I have used are a pleasure to use. All are handmade works of art in my eyes and look forward each time to meeting this gentleman and obtaining a few.

I would think that a similar manufacturing/repair model might work for your project. He has pictures of most of the knife makers and their forges; for the most part they seem to relatively simple in design and can be made and maintained with local resources.

The 3-man fix-it shop I am working with in Ecuador started primarily as a bicycle repair business, they are trying to branch out into appliance repair, as there is ready market for such repairs. Part of their problem was the necessary capital to rent the shop, buy some basic tools and parts. We have been bringing/sending some tools and parts to them to help them establish a self-sustaining business. We recognize though, that due to tough economic times, the self-sustaining part will take some patience and effort. Pete

This does illustrate my idea very well.

I've been gathering more information on 3rd world development, and mentoring/community approaches seem to be doing far better than big, national-improvement projects. In Tanzania, a province managed to cut disease drastically without any additional funds, just by using modern statistical methods and aggressive preventative medicine.

Anyway, what you're describing is part of it. I'm looking at pretty much your knife maker or bike repair shop type situations-- where giving a subsistence farming village some tiny industrial capability might allow them to start accumulating wealth. We'll see-- it's turning out that security becomes a very big deal in many parts of the world when a village starts actually doing well, and dealing with that is filling up my report. <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Thanks so much to everyone for the advice/links!