No Tech Magazine

Parabolic Basket and Tin Can Solar Cooker

"The objective of this project is to create a solar cooker out of local invasive species and waste materials. We want to create a device that can pasteurize water and be an alternative to the use of fossil fuels for cooking food."

"The structure of the parabolic solar cooker will be made from the canes, or stems, of the locally invasive Himalaya blackberry. Canes will be harvested and dethorned so they can be woven into a parabolic basket shape. The Himalaya blackberry canes form parabolic curves, so when they dry and stiffen they will maintain the sturdy parabolic shape of the basket."

"To give the parabolic cooker its necessary reflective surface, we gathered around 300 tin can lids to line the inside of the basket. We punched holes in the can lids so we could string them together in lines of 8-10 lids each. Then we tied these lengths of can lids to the basket using either hemp twine or twist ties. Since there were still many spaces on the basket uncovered by can lids, we gathered a bunch of large can lids and attached those individually to the basket."

Read more: Parabolic basket and tin can solar cooker. More DIY-posts. Previously: The bright future of solar powered factories.

Solar Powered Garden Helper Machine

"I really love gardening but I have a bad back and when it comes to staying bent over in the garden it gets rough. So I built this Helper Machine. I call it My P-Machine. Planting/Picking/Pulling weeds/Putting around the garden machine."

More.

Hat tip to Rob De Schutter.

Harvesting Steel Wire

"There is a huge need for construction materials, at the same time the planet everywhere is littered by millions of used car tires. A way has to be found for re-using the materials that car tires are made of: rubber and steel. Large scale processes for this are well known. At the smallest scale of use better methods of recuperation have to be developed."

"Each car tire contains 70 meters of steel wire with a 1 mm cross section. When the properties of the composing parts of a used rubber tire are well understood, then the practice of recuperation can be adapted to it." Illustrated manual at Demotech.

The Lost Art of Lashing

"Stable and strong - you can almost make anything with lashing."

Illustrated manual at makeprojects.

Previously:

• Lost knowledge: ropes and knots 
• How to tie the world together: online knotting reference books
• The Diamond Hitch

Lifting Tool for Carrying Plant Containers

The tool shown here was designed for use in outdoor nurseries specializing in ornamental and bedding plants. At nurseries in California where it was tested, it reduced workers’ forward bending angle by as much as 47%. The time spent working at a forward-bent angle of more than 20 degrees was reduced by nearly half. Hand gripping effort was reduced by more than half. Lifting strain was reduced by 40%. Workers reported less work-related pain when using the handles, and those who had the most severe symptoms at the start reported the most improvement.

When Low-Tech Goes IKEA

What happens when two industrial design students from Sweden end up in Kenya creating a pedal powered machine for small-scale farmers who are often illiterate and speak more than 60 languages? You get a do-it-yourself design that seems to have come out of the IKEA factories - pictoral manuals included.

"Made in Kenya", the bachelor project of Niklas Kull and Gabriella Rubin, is a textbook example of low-tech made accessible to everybody, regardless of their native tongue and language skills.

Sub-irrigated Planters

Sub-irrigated planters are simple devices that allow low-maintenance, low-water consumption container gardening. Appropedia has DIY-instructions, using plastic buckets or bottles.

Previously: Water batteries for trees, How to make your own low-tech vertical farm.

Jua Kali: Innovation in Kenya's Informal Economy

Wandering through winding alleys dotted with makeshift worksheds, one can't help but feel clouded by the clanging of hammers on metal, grinding of bandsaws on wood, and the shouts of workers making sales. But soon it becomes clear that this cacophony is really a symphony of socioeconomic interactions that form what is known as the informal economy.

In Kenya, engineers in the informal economy are known as jua kali, Swahili for "hot sun," because they toil each day under intense heat and with limited resources. But despite these conditions, or in fact because of them, the jua kali continuously demonstrate creativity and resourcefulness in solving problems.

"Making Do: Innovation in Kenya's Informal Economy", Steve Daniels, 2010. Full book online here and here. Hat tip to Gabriella Rubin. Related: Cameroon blacksmiths.

Making a Dugout Canoe Using Stone Tools and Fire

"The Dugout Canoe Project (.pdf) began as an experiment to use traditional Native American technologies. Archaeologists are reliant on just a few ethnohistoric sources that mention how Native Americans made dugout canoes using stone tools and fire. Numerous contemporary examples of dugouts exist, particularly Plimouth Plantation’s Wampanoag Indian Program, made by burning and scraping out logs. However, to the best of our knowledge, no one has attempted to fell a tree using only stone tools and fire. We wanted to see if we could cut down a live tree using these technologies, something that may not have been done in this area for several hundred years."

"Dugout canoes are probably the first type of boat ever made. People from all over the world made dugouts. They were widely used in North America before the arrival of Europeans. Dugout canoes were made by Native Americans across North and South America for transportation and to hunt fish with a spear, bow and arrows, or with hooks made from antler or bones. In Eastern North America, dugout canoes were typically made from a single log of chestnut or pine. Carefully controlled fires were used to hollow out these logs. The fires were extinguished at intervals to scrape out the burned wood with wood, shell or stone tools, giving the canoes a flat bottom with straight sides."

Courtesy of the Fruitlands Museum. More posts on primitive technology.

Making a Blade out of Homemade Steel

"From Dust to Edge is the documentation of a long journey in the efforts of making a blade out of homemade steel. My interest in blades started with the legendary Japanese katana and as a result of wanting to learn more about how they were made I ended up becoming a bladesmith. I combined the traditional Japanese techniques and the current knowledge of the Western smith in this pictorial representation. The project will be divided in several sections. It is primarily a visual description through photographs." Via Kevin Kelly.

Build a Solar Powered (Interior) Kitchen

Solare Brücke is an organisation that promotes the distribution of solar thermal technology, both in developing countries and in the first world. They offer detailed construction manuals, which can all be downloaded for free.

One example is the Scheffler-Reflector (see the picture on the right): "To make cooking simple and comfortable the cooking-place should not have to be moved, even better: it should be inside the house and the concentrating reflector outside in the sun. The best solution was a eccentric, flexible parabolic reflector which rotates around an axis parallel to earth-axis, synchronous with the sun. Additionally the reflector is adjusted to the seasons by flexing it in a simple way."

The Scheffler-Reflector can be built in steel or aluminium, and there are additional manuals available for the mechanical tracking system, a stove and a baking oven. There are also plans for a solar tunnel dryer and a smaller solar cooker.  Find all manuals at Solare Brücke. Thanks to Eric Blair. Related: The bright future of solar powered factories.

The Agricultural Building and Equipment Plan List

"The University of Tennessee Extension maintains a collection of over 300 building and equipment plans, and all are now available in electronic format for download. The plans are primarily intended for use in Tennessee, but many are appropriate for other locations as well.

The plans came from many sources. Some were developed in The University of Tennessee Extension Biosystems Engineering and Soil Science Department, but most were developed in a cooperative effort with the United States Department of Agriculture and the Cooperative Farm Building Plan Exchange. The Plan Exchange no longer exists, but the plans remain on file and are available." Via The Survivalist Blog.

Window Orientation and Shading

"In sunny southern locations, protecting your windows from the sun is an important component of good window management. The first step is to know how the sun moves through the sky and to orient the building and place the windows in it so as to minimize direct solar admission through your windows." Read more.

"Sustainable By Design provides a suite of shareware design tools to calculate the right dimensions and placing for your specific location, wherever you are.

• SunAngle: our premier tool for solar angle calculations.
• SunPosition: calculates a time series of basic solar angle data.
• Sol Path: visualization of the path of the sun across the sky.
• Window Overhang Design: visualization of the shade provided by a window overhang at a given time.
• Window Overhang Annual Analysis: visualization of window overhang shading performance for an entire year. 
• Overhang Recommendations: suggested climate-specific dimensions for south-facing window overhangs
• Light penetration: visualization of the penetration of sunlight into a room
• Louver Shading: visualization of louvered shading system performance for an entire year.
• Vertical Fin Shading: visualization of a vertical fin shading system performance for an entire year
• Window Heat Gain: calculation of monthly heat gain through windows.
• Panel Shading: visualization of the shading of rows of flat panel collectors throughout the year."

Interesting follow-up at Treehugger.

How to Build a Spiral Pump

"A spiral pump, first invented in 1746, has been recreated and tested at Windfarm Museum using lightweight and inexpensive modern materials. A 6 foot diameter wheel with 160 feet of 1-1/4 inch inside diameter flexible polyethylene pipe is able to pump 3,900 gallons of water per day to a 40 foot head with a peripheral speed of 3 feet per second.

With its low torque requirements, the pump is particularly suited to be mounted on and driven by a paddle wheel in a current of two feet per second or greater. This easily built, low maintenance spiral pump can be used to provide water without the need for fuel wherever there is a flowing stream or river. It can also be hand turned or otherwise driven to provide a low cost, efficient pump."

Read more: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4. Thanks to Paul Nash.

DIY Heirloom Technology

Heirloom technology at makeprojects.com. Small collection for now.