The Concrete Lathe Project

April 15, 2012 by kris de decker Filed Under: DIY, Lathes, Metalworking, Random

concrete lathe

“Metalworking lathes are necessary to the production of almost everything but are very expensive. In 1915, special lathes made from concrete were developed to quickly and cheaply produce millions of cannon shells needed for World War I.

Lucien Yeomans, the inventor, won the nation’s highest engineering award for it but sadly the technique was almost forgotten after the war. We re-discovered it as a way to quickly make inexpensive but accurate machine tools for use in developing countries and in trade schools and shops everywhere.”

Pat Delany developed a metalworking lathe design that uses concrete parts cast in wooden molds to achieve high precision at a rock-bottom price of $150. Find the detailed building plans at Make Projects. Also check out Pat Delany’s low-cost DIY machine tools (such as a hand-powered drill and a treadle-powered generator), all built from recycled parts.

Dog Sulkies: Pet Powered Mobility

March 8, 2012 by kris de decker Filed Under: Animal power, Cargo, Dogs, Random, Travel

dog sulkies

Dog owners looking for a more sustainable means of personal transportation should not look any further: the dog sulky is the answer. Dog powered vehicles have been used for the transport of goods and passengers in some European countries during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Compared to those vehicles, the modern dogcarts offered by ChaloSulky promise to deliver a much smoother ride. The carts benefit greatly from the use of bicycle wheels, suspension and brakes. Moreover, the dogs are not confined between two shafts. Instead, only one shaft goes over the animals’ back, making the vehicle lighter and giving the dogs more freedom of movement.

[Read more…]

Traditional Repair Techniques: The Japanese Art of Kintsugi

February 27, 2012 by kris de decker Filed Under: Ceramics, DIY, Pottery, Random, Repair

Traditional Repair Techniques The Japanese Art of Kintsugi

The Japanese art of Kintsugi, which means ‘golden joinery’ or ‘to patch with gold’, is all about turning ugly breaks into beautiful fixes. Most repairs hide themselves – the goal is usually to make something as good as new. Kintsugi proposes that repair can make things better than new.

Kintsugi is a technique of repairing broken porcelain, earthenware pottery and glass with resins and lacquers that come from trees. It dates from the 15th century. The kintsugi artist carefully repairs the broken vessel with a sticky resin that hardens as it dries. The resin can then be sanded and buffed until the crack is almost imperceptible to the touch. After that, the artist takes a lacquer that has been combined with real gold and covers the crack.

Check it out: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5. The first link mentions a couple of DIY-kits using cheaper binding materials.

Solar Cookers That Work At Night

February 20, 2012 by kris de decker Filed Under: Cooking stoves, DIY, Random, Solar

solar cookers that work at night

The solar cooker only works for a few hours in the middle of a sunny day, but not at night or in the mornings when people actually want to cook. Working better means working at night. Climate Healers, an international development technology organization, issued a design challenge last year after their traditional solar cookers failed to catch on in mountain villages in Rajasthan, India.

The challenge was to design a low cost stored energy solar cook stove that could store solar energy without requiring manual interventions from the user. The energy should be stored for at least an 18 hour period and should then be delivered at the users’ control to cook their traditional meals at the times that they choose, which may not necessarily be when the sun is out. People should be able to cook indoors, sitting down. The stove top temperature should be about 200ºC, with heat delivered at approximately 1 KW to the cook surface.

Three US university teams accepted the challenge in early 2011. Later that year, dozens of Indian university teams entered their proposals into the Shaastra Social Innovation Challenge at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. Engineering For Change has published the finalists’ papers online. The ten designs follow different strategies, using materials such as sand, aluminum cans, rice husks, water, salt, straw, or olive oil to store solar heat.

Find all the papers at Engineering For Change. Via Makeshift.

Japanese Tub Boats

February 17, 2012 by kris de decker Filed Under: Boats, Fishing gear, Random, Travel

japanese tub boats

“Taraibune (tub boats) were once found along the Echigo coast of the Sea of Japan and on Sado Island. Now they are used only in six small fishing villages on Sado Island. They have survived to the present because of their low cost and durability.”

“Tub boats are made of local sugi (Japanese cedar) and madake (timber bamboo). The woodwork in a tub boat is not at all beyond the skills of an experienced carpenter, but the braiding of the hoops is now an extremely rare skill.”

“Japanese tub boats are used for nearshore fishing and seaweed collecting. A key tool of the taraibune angler is the glass-bottomed box which is floated alongside the boat. This enables him (or more frequently, her) to clearly see the bottom in shallow water to identify likely prey or harvest. A variety of long-handled tools is trailed behind the boat — to collect the fish, shellfish, or vegetation at hand. Tub boats are propelled facing forward with a paddle, though in one village the men use outboard motors.”

Tub boat“In spite of their ancient appearance, they date from only the middle of the 19th century. Prior to that, dugouts and plank-built boats were used to collect the rich shallow-water sea life around the southern tip of Sado Island, but in 1802 an earthquake changed the area’s topography, opening up a multitude of narrow fissures in the rocks along the shore into which it was impractical or dangerous to take long, narrow boats. Derived directly from the barrels in which miso is brewed, tub boats proved to be adept at navigating these narrow waterways. Indeed, they can be easily spun in their own length.”

More at Douglas Brooks Boatbuilder & Indigenous boats. Previously: The woorden work boats of Indochina.

Chinese Wheelbarrow Lives on in Angola, Africa

February 16, 2012 by kris de decker Filed Under: Cargo, Human power, Random, Travel, Wheelbarrows

Chinese Wheelbarrow Lives on in Angola, Africa

The ingenious Chinese wheelbarrow lives on in Angola, Africa. The contemporary design is similar to the Ancient Chinese vehicle, except it uses straight boards and a car tyre.

The machine and the men pushing it are both called “roboteiros”.

Picture credit.

More pictures: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 / 12.

Thanks to Marco Cecilio.