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?