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How to make a tool set

How to make a tool set
Life without tools is barbaric. But even simple tools can be expensive in rural parts of developing countries. Import duties bump the costs up higher than they are in the States or elsewhere, and sometimes only low-quality brands are available anyway. So, to hold off future barbarians, we'd like to show how to build a simple tool set on a very low budget. Larry Bentley, the man who figured out how to make these tools, said a wise thing: "Without tools, kids don't take stuff apart, and without taking stuff apart, you don't learn how things work." These tools, Bentley says, could be in the hands of the next William Kamkambwa,who made a working wind power generator from backyard scraps in a village in Malawi. Here's Larry's quick guide to DIY tools. The tools in this guide: Saw Pliers Wooden vice Wood drill bit / star drill bit Chisel Strap hinge vice

Build a Touchless 3D Tracking Interface with Everyday Materials Combine low-tech materials with some high-tech components and build a completely Touchless 3D Tracking Interface. Explore capacitive sensing by using several panels of cardboard lined with aluminum foil. These panels, when charged, create electric fields that correspond to X, Y, and Z axes to create a 3D cube. For Weekend Projects makers looking for an introduction to Arduino, this is a great project to learn from. Once your touchless 3D tracker is up and running, what you do with it is only limited by your own imagination! Make an RGB or HSB color pickerControl video or music parameters; sequence a beat or melodyLarge, slightly bent surface with multiple plates + a projector = “Minority Report” interface Sign up below for the Weekend Projects Newsletter to receive the projects before anybody else does, get tips, see other makers’ builds, and more. More: See all of the Weekend Projects posts Related

Survival Gardening Survival gardening can provide fresh food for you and your family in the aftermath of a disaster. Disasters can occur at anytime and anywhere, and take many forms. Not all disasters are dramatic and natural. There are many types of garden seeds available. No-Till Garden Method Most garden plots are tilled. Plant in Buckets Above ground vegetables like tomatoes require loose soil that is about 10 inches deep. Plant in Tires Root crops provide valuable nutrients but require 12 to 14 inches of loose soil in which to grow. Grow Up Vegetables that grow on a vine like cucumbers and squash only need a small spot of broken dirt. Beans Beans are easy to grow. With a little ingenuity and having heirloom seeds on hand will allow you to provide fresh, healthy food after a disaster.

Survival Food Series: 25 Survival Seeds You Need For Your Garden Living off the land sounds as inviting as Christmas dinner. But many have hardly had adequate experience being “farmers.” In fact, many have had no experience at all when it comes to planting anything. That being said, the day is slowly approaching where each of us may have to trade in our company identification badges for a shovel and a pair of overalls. Educating yourself on farming topics such as mirco farming, planting for the seasons, natural insect repellents, seed collection and seed storage could help prepare for an upcoming economic crisis. Learn about how many vegetables or fruits the plant will yield. Start Practicing The only way to be fully prepared as far as growing plants is concerned is to practice, practice, practice. With each gardening experience will come more wisdom on how to handle a larger garden. Survival Seeds These seeds that were chosen were based upon their yield quantities, *ease in growing, nutritional content and for the season they are planted in. Sources:

How to make Char Cord / Char Rope The Urban Farming Guys 9 Steps To Starting A Survival Garden In a time of economic uncertainty and rising food prices, it it always a good idea to have a garden to provide extra food for you and your family. Besides providing a source of food in an emergency, a garden is also a great source of wonderful vegetables which are MUCH healthier to eat than most of the food you can get at the supermarket. So how do you begin? #1) Decide What Your Goals Are - Do you want to grow enough just to add a few vegetables to your dinner once in a while? Some people who want to live "off the grid" end up building a garden large enough that it will provide almost all of the food that their family needs. #2) Evaluate Your Land - Once you know what your goals are, you need to evaluate the land that you are currently living on. If you decide that you want a "mega-garden" but you live in a condo, then you may have to end up moving to achieve your goals. #4) Improve The Soil - It is almost a certainty that you soil will need a boost. So what is the solution? Comments

How to Make Char-Twine Survival Food Preparation and Food Storage List Don’t Forget The Kettles! When thinking ahead of survival food preparation, make sure you have several big kettles and 55 gallon water barrels on hand. Remember, you will likely be heating your own water for everything from cooking and canning to bathing and laundry. When you are looking at all the water heating, water CARRYING and cooking that you will be doing, not to mention possibly making soap, cooking huge pots of stew for your neighbors that weren’t as wise as you were, and canning your own veggies, you can never have too many kettles and 5 gallon buckets! Same way with knives, canning jars and utensils. There are several ways to prepare foods in emergencies, when there is no power for the stove or when you are stuck with NO STOVE to cook on. Build a Fire … and cook over a fire outdoors.Use a flat top wood stove… this actually works quite well indoors or out. Course if you have freeze dried foods, some of those are made to eat without heating them. Storing Home Canned Foods Tip:

Survival Food 101: Hardtack - Survival Life Pilot bread, ship’s biscuit, shipbiscuit, sea biscuit, sea bread , “dog biscuits”, “tooth dullers”, “sheet iron”, “worm castles” or “molar breakers”. Hardtack has had many different names throughout the years but its importance has never changed. Hardtack has actually been around since the time of Egyptian Pharaohs, but if you have heard of it, you probably know it better from the Civil War period. During the war, squares of hardtack were shipped to both the Union and Confederate armies, making a staple part of a soldier’s rations. Typically made 6 months beforehand, it was as hard as a rock when it actually got to the troops. To soften it, they usually soaked it in water or coffee. Soldiers and sailors the world over have used hardtack as a way to stave off hunger. It is such a basic item that I am amazed that no one I know under the age of 50 understands its importance, let alone how to make it. This is one of the most cost effective long term survival foods that you can make.

DIY Polygraph Machine: Detect Lies with Tin Foil, Wire and Arduino DIY Polygraph Machine: Detect Lies with Tin Foil, Wire and Arduino Lying is awesome. From a very young age, children learn that flat out denying the truth gets you out of trouble and helps keep you calm in the face of horror. But what happens when you just have to know if someone, say, used your toothbrush? You could ask them to take an expensive and arduous polygraph test. If you're industrious and don't have the dough for a legit polygraph, you can make your very own galvanic skin response (GSR) device. Today, we will make a cheap GSR device and learn if our toothbrush is really safe after all. Materials ArduinoAluminum foilVelcroWire10k resistorBreadboard Step 1 Make the Electrodes GSR machines require an even and consistent connection to the skin in order to function properly. Begin by taping the exposed end of a wires to a sheet of foil. Adhere a strip of Velcro over the tape and cut off the extra foil. Last, add a single piece of Velcro at the end of the foil side. Step 3 Load the Code

Project Build A Solar Panel: Step by step guide to building a solar panel with complete illustrations Introduction A solar cell's purpose is to generate electricity through the release of electrons from a material that is bombarded by electromagnetic radiation or photons. Most crystalline solar cells are sensitive to visible radiation from 400 - 700 nanometers, which correspond to 3.1 - 1.8 electron volts, of the visible region as shown by ACEPT W3 Group (1999) and also into the near infrared spectrum. As the wavelength of the electromagnetic radiation increases, the amount of electron volts decreases. This means that infrared radiation has less electron volts than the visible spectrum of light (because it has a larger wavelength than visible light) and ultraviolet and gamma radiation has more electron volts than both the visible spectrum of light and infrared radiation (because they have a smaller wavelength than both infrared and visible light). Significance of Solar Panels A solar cell, in itself, is of little value in our energy consumptive world.

Our Simple DIY Home Solar Power System Bringing some of the benefits of electrical power to our off-grid home has been a hit-or-miss affair. Over the years we’ve tried some very simple approaches to lighting and small battery recharging for our flashlights, such as hauling a 12 volt car battery to a small rural school about a half mile away every time it needed to be topped up. This was time consuming and inefficient. But we didn’t want to lose the feel of our simple home by bringing in a large generator and the jugs of gas needed to run it, and the prospect of setting up a wind turbine or solar array seemed expensive and a technological eyesore in a natural setting. …developing Eartheasy.com using a dialup internet connection on a phone line strung through the woods was challenging… Today, with the help of a local expert on off grid home solar power and alternative energy systems, we have the best of both worlds. The cost of this complete solar system, in today’s pricing for the components, was less than $1000. 1. 2. 3. 4.

Top 10 Things You Can Upgrade with a Little Electronics Hacking it is a skill to do a good solder joint, it comes with LOTS of practice. so most people who rarely do it will ever get good at it. Bingo. Of course, part of the issue is having a soldering iron at the right temp with a properly tinned tip. Newbies aren't using soldering stations but a cheap iron they got at rat shack (You have questions? We have deer-in-the-headlights... erm... answers!). I don't expect to ever master tricky stuff like smts or even multilayer pcbs so I'm not much better then a newbie, anyway - and I totally suck at sweating pipe joints. Ah, well... SMT is actually a bit better than through-hole once you get the hang of it.

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