So far, we have discussed what urban sustainability is, which projects we think need to be given the most preference, and in what circumstances. Now we need to cover exactly how we plan to do this and what changes in thought we need to wrap our heads around. This isn’t a small process and it really required a change in thought on our part.
We are, as I’m sure you know, a consumer society. For our non-American readers, this may not apply to you. We buy cheap merchandise, use it till it fails, throw it away and then buy another to replace it. This is consumerism and it leads not only to a lot of waste in the form of garbage, but also to much dependence on large companies to provide necessities. As I’m sure you can guess by now, we don’t think this dependence is a good idea.
The solution to this is being able to fix the items we buy, or make make them for ourselves. To do this, we need lots of tools. By “tooling up” we mean the process of buying or making tools for ourselves that provide some useful function with respect to the manufacture or repair of everyday objects. Tooling up will be one of our main activities in order to reach a more sustainable location in life.
We do not want people to go out and buy a complete shop right from the start. Our tooling must serve some immediate or valuable function to be considered practical and sustainable. Not everyone needs a Bridgeport mill in their home shop–though Stan would REALLY like one!–nor can everyone afford such a thing. Having a mill would be very useful but not very cost effective at first. Having a hand drill, however, is of immense practical value and will justify it’s cost many times over within the first few months. Tools that do just this are the ones we want to have in our house.
Amongst this most privileged class of tools are the following (at least in our opinion):
- hand held electric drill
- drill bit set (by 32nds up to 1/2 inch)
- drill point gauge
- 1/2 hp bench grinder (two different grit wheels)
- dressing tool (for the grinder)
- sensitive drill press (small bench variety accepting up to a 1/2 drill bit)
- vice (bench variety)
- 4″ x/y slide vice (for the drill press) hack saw (with a selection of blades)
- skill saw jig saw (with a selection of blades)c-clamps (can’t have too many)
- crescent wrenches (3″, 6″, 8″)
- bastard files (many different shapes and sizes) machinists square and rule tape
- measure steel rule Tap/Die set (for common sizes)
“Image of a set of tools that has payed off over time for us.”
“Our drill press, above, purchased from a second hand shop.”
“A grinder purchased from the same second hand place, and it had never been used.”
This list is, by no means, comprehensive. It does not cover many tools that can be used every day to make your life easier and safer. It does, however, represent a cross section of easily obtainable tools for doing common jobs around the house and shop.
Another tool which cannot be underestimated nor done without is a good machine tool instruction book. This is especially important if you are a novice to working with anything in steel. I want to make it clear that we are not affiliated in any way with the book we are about to recommend. We have this book–bought it for school for a machining class–and have found it to be invaluable: Machine Tool Practices (8th Edition)
by Kibbe, Meyer, Neely, and White is an amazingly useful and detailed book about all things relating to tooling in steel and other hard materials. A lot of our advice and instruction on how to use a tool may come directly or indirectly from this book. We highly recommend buying it and making a detailed study of it’s contents whenever you begin to use a tool you are not familiar with.
“This is Pam posing with the Machine Tool Practices book.”
I’m sure a lot of interest will center around what tools we have, what we find to be good brands, and what prices we consider reasonable. These are all very important considerations in the tooling up process. However, they do not all have simple answers.
For the most part, good quality machine tools can be obtained at second hand. This will save you much time and money. Good places to look for second-hand tools include: flee-markets, second hand stores, swap meets, the classified ads, pawn shops, and tool sheds (commercial ones, not your neighbors!). A warning about used tools: always be careful when buying used tools. Test the tool before you buy it, ask about the return policy, if any, and shop around in at least one other store so that you have an idea of prices for comparison. With any luck, you will find a dealer who doesn’t know anything about tools and just wants to get rid of them quickly.
There are many other tools that we will show you how to make because of their utility. Among these, some potential subjects are: CNC desktop routers, RepRaps, backyard metal casting (via Gingery), and many others. Which ones we cover will be a subject for future posts and for your feedback. Let us know if you have any ideas or suggestions. We are always looking for reader feedback and will incorporate as much into our posts as possible.
That about wraps up our tooling ideas. From time to time we will have articles on specific tools, usages, practices and safety. Next week, we will be starting the design of a water storage system.
P&S
