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!