Ginger Bookstore

For folks who are not familiar w/ machine shops, the lathe is a fundamental tool in a shop, and is the only tool in a shop which can replicate itself --- there is even a book series which uses this conceit, the "Gingery Books": https://gingerybookstore.com/ where Vol. 1 has one setting up an aluminum casting foundry in one's backyard, and Vol. 2 has one using it to make a lathe which is then used to either improve itself or make a better lathe, then one uses it to make the balance of the tools in a machine shop.

You can see a guy following Dave Gingery's instructions to make a lathe bed here [1] And as you say, a granite surface plate is needed. Of course, Gingery's books only claimed to set up a metalworking shop starting "from scrap" and "simple hand methods" and that "it isn’t long before the developing machines are doing much of the work to produce their own parts" [2] Of course, to truly make a lathe from scratch, you must first create the universe. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPGZg45dGXA [2] https://gingerybookstore.com/MetalWorkingShopFromScrapSeries.html

> I wonder if there’s any resource that shows how to build all these tools from scratch. https://gingerybookstore.com/

David Gingery's books might be of interest to anyone thinking of bootstrapping a metal working shop starting from charcoal and scrap aluminum. https://www.gingerybookstore.com/

For anyone looking for an awesome series of books, these will expand your backyard workshop. Build Your Own Metal Working Shop From Scrap: https://www.gingerybookstore.com/ You start with learning how to cast, then work on casting parts for a lathe and other projects. edit: It looks like the site's author has some of these books! He has a page detailing building the lathe: https://www.backyardmetalcasting.com/lathe1.html

although I don't own this specific book, the gingery books I have are pretty great. https://gingerybookstore.com/InjectionMoldingMachine.html if you've got time and space, you can do way cheaper than $10k. You need a drill press and a metal lathe. If you're feeling ambitious, there are other books that will show you how to build a drill press and metal lathe. Really depends on how committed you are to bootstrapping and saving nickels.

Then the whole Gingery series: http://gingerybookstore.com/ (from furnace to machine shop!). Although his designs are based on scrap aluminium, you can also use cast iron.

Sand2NAND is the only thing missing. I'm reminded though of the late Dave Gingery's series of books, Shop From Scrap [1] where he tries to take you from building a foundry up to machine tools: [1] https://gingerybookstore.com/MetalWorkingShopFromScrapSeries.html

Is there a free chapter for free or something? It's better to get traction here than just the list of titles. I found this page that has links to more info about some projects and each links has a videos https://gingerybookstore.com/GingeryProjectVideo.html Is there a better page?

Dave Gingery's "Metal Working Shop from Scrap" book series is what you're looking for. https://gingerybookstore.com/MetalWorkingShopFromScrapSeries.html Disclaimer: while I've owned the lathe book for decades, I've been too intimidated by the "go to a junk yard and pick through for scrap meeting these criteria", including a couple diesel piston heads as I recall, to ever start.

This reminds me of the old Lindsay Publications reprint of Procedures in Experimental Physics from 1938. https://gingerybookstore.com/product143.html I believe it's only available used at this point, but: "Chapters include: laboratory glass blowing, laboratory optical work, technique of high vacuum, coating of surfaces by evaporation and sputtering, the use of fused silica, electrometers and electroscopes, Geiger counters, vacuum thermopiles and the measurement of radiant energy, optics, photoelectric cells and amplifiers, photography in the lab, heat and high temperature, notes on the materials of research, notes on the construction and design of instruments and apparatus, and molding and casting."

Very cool. I've been wanting to get into machining for a while (haven't had the time yet) and I was planning to do that by building my own machines (foundry, precision lathe, milling machine, drill press,..etc) with the aid of Dave Gingery's books [0] but I am still not sure about them (they use imperial units, which I loathe and they might be outdated). [0] http://gingerybookstore.com/index.html

"Complete Metal Working Shop From Scrap Series Set (7 INDIVIDUAL BOOKS)" Here is the description of the series: ISBN 1-878087-00-2 The Charcoal Foundry ISBN 1-878087-01-0 The Metal Lathe ISBN 1-878087-02-9 The Metal Shaper ISBN 1-878087-03-7 The Milling Machine ISBN 1-878087-04-5 The Drill Press ISBN 1-878087-05-3 The Dividing Head & Deluxe Accessories ISBN 1-878087-06-1 The Sheet Metal Brake Quote from the site: Build Your Own Metal Working Shop From Scrap is a progressive series of seven projects including, The Charcoal Foundry, The Metal Lathe, The Metal Shaper, The Milling Machine, The Drill Press, The Dividing Head and The Sheet Metal Brake. Beginning with a simple charcoal fired foundry, you produce the castings for building the machine tools to equip your shop. Initially the castings are finished by simple hand methods, but it isn’t long before the developing machines are doing much of the work to produce their own parts. It does not take long to learn the simple craft of pattern-making and sand molding. Each phase of the projects increase your knowledge and skill. There is no need to look for outside help. You can do it all in your own shop. No complicated math----No exotic equipment required----No large cash outlay. Lots of work to be sure, and some of it can be downright tedious, but the reward will be a practical small scale machine shop that you might never give yourself permission to buy, assuming you could afford…

We will need a true "civilization source code" reference for when we settle the stars, not just for apocalyptic scenarios. Like much source code, the most stable pieces for our own civilization is gradually lost to the mists of time, and we end up with mostly binary executable-only code. Generally where you will find this is in scaling down of processes. Thought experiment. You start out with the minimum viable population to simply keep current technological civilization [1]. They are tasked with one task, and one task only for the rest of their lives before an asteroid too big to divert hits in 100 years: document what would it take for someone to do what they do today, because we only have space for 10K people on a space habitat that we can build in that time. How do you go about building the reboot manual then? You will rapidly find that the fractal nature of knowledge exists in the past as well. There is a tendency today to depict our ancestors as simpletons, but this is a fatal conceit. They may not have had the scale that we do today, but they knew a lot of processes and observations that worked for the scale they did possess, and many times we've lost that knowledge as we never have had to revisit that scale for nigh on generations now in some endeavors. Part of the enormously difficult task of booting/rebooting technological civilization is simply identifying the lower-bound you want to start from, which defines the scale to start at, and re-capturing the…