THRIVING after the FALL

The Index · A subject

Tools and their making

The mill, the press, the scythe and the bench tools, made, mended and kept.

32 documents · 5 chapters · 30 rows

In the chapters

Documents 32

In the Workshop

The beam press

In the log 30

  • 20 confirmed
  • 1 amended
  • 3 partly confirmed
  • 6 unresolved
  • 3 marked for safety
  • K7 unresolved Safety Scythe hung up, never laid down, never carried edge forward
  • F8 amended Safety Scythe: peened edge, hone every few minutes; injury risk; lay 2–3 cm
  • J6 unresolved Safety Scythe carried blade down and behind; stone moved away from the edge; nobody inside the arc
  • K29 confirmed Scythe: thin web behind a rib; edge peened cold; steel like 1095 or 75Cr1 at 60 HRC, straw temper; three angles (hafting: tip 3 to 5 cm inside the heel's arc; lay; …
  • K30 unresolved The Austrian scythe valley: works in Upper Austria hammering blades since the 1500s; Europe mows with the Austrian scythe
  • K48 confirmed A table of twelve (12 knives, forks, soup spoons, dessert forks, dessert spoons, 260 mm chargers, butter plates, goblets, 4 serving spoons, 2 carving sets, 2 ladles) …
  • W35 confirmed Three tools: axe, straight knife at 25 to 27° single bevel, hook knife cutting no deeper than 1.5 mm (1/16 in); Wille Sundqvist taught for fifty years and forbade …
  • W39 confirmed Indus sesame and mustard by 2000 BC; Roman beam and screw presses; Chinese wedge press over 1,500 years old; the Zaan had about 600 mills at once around 1700; Cornelis …
  • W42 confirmed Rapeseed about 40 to 45 % oil; a wedge press recovers about two thirds; 3 to 4 kg seed per litre; a family of four uses about 30 l a year, 100 kg of seed, a twelfth of a …
  • W44 confirmed Rotary quern older than Rome; Vitruvius De architectura X.5 on the water mill c. 25 BC; post mills in Brandenburg villages from the 1200s; Sanssouci's Historische Mühle …
  • W47 confirmed 75 W at 50 to 60 rpm, crank 250 to 300 mm at elbow height; flour under 38 °C; roller mills (1880s) above 60 °C and strip the germ; stone mills damage 6 to 9 % of the …
  • W48 confirmed Open Source Ecology: Jakubowski, Missouri, 2003, fifty machines; LifeTrac about 5,000 lb (2.3 t), 27 hp PowerCube, 3,000 psi (200 bar) hydraulics, wheel motors, 4 in …
  • F55 confirmed Scythe: sickle→scythe 16th c., cradle c. 1800; blade 75–100 cm; grips hip/cubit; lay 2–3 cm; yellow ripeness 25–30 %; 0.4 ha/day; 20–40 h/ha vs combine; band twisted 2–3 …
  • F76 confirmed Hand processing per 100 kg: spelt 8 to 12 h at a quern gapped 2.8 to 3.8 mm; millet 14 to 18 h in a mortar, 1.5 to 2.5 kg loads, 40 to 50 strokes/min, 62 to 68 % …
  • O34 confirmed Scab: Mills 11 h at 10 °C, 7 h at 15 °C; Rvi6 from M. floribunda 821 in 80–90 % of resistant cultivars, breaking down; urea 5 % after leaf fall −50–96 %; shredding
  • A19 partly confirmed Rapeseed ~40 % oil, home screw press recovers about a third of seed weight; 70 kg oil = 250 kg seed = 0.1 ha of best sand; flax and hemp lower and rancid faster; blue …
  • B23 confirmed Norbert Elias, Über den Prozeß der Zivilisation, Basel 1939 (Haus zum Falken), written in London exile; born Breslau 1897; carving of the whole animal at table in the …
  • M42 confirmed The wheel: 300 ml whey per 30 l at 32 °C; cook to 45 to 48 °C until the grains squeak; press at ten times the weight, turning at 1, 4 and 12 h; 3 kg; turn daily then …
  • D29 confirmed Press: 60 to 70 l juice per 100 kg milled apples; Brandenburg wedge presses driven with mallets
  • T25 confirmed Plate 25–30 cm across, 2–3 cm rim, 1 cm well; bowl 15–20 cm, wall 8–12 mm, an afternoon on the pole lathe; blank 30–40 cm log, worked within a fortnight
  • T29 confirmed Clay tests: ribbon past 5 cm, ball survives a night in water (same as Ch 10's pond tests); processing by slaking, sieving, settling; 20 % sharp sand temper; wedging; …
  • J17 confirmed 117 assumes roller crimper, no-till transplanter, engineered biochar, inoculants, fleece for an "autarkic" household; the book's household has fork, scythe, heap, char …
  • J19 unresolved Household year (own): field 1,500–2,000, kitchen ~1,100 (3 h/day), milking ~300 for three goats (twice daily over two lactations), wood 30–50, tools 156, pig 32, …
  • J21 unresolved Hay: a mower with a peened scythe cuts about a third of a hectare of grass a day; rye 0.2 ha: two days cutting with cradle and binder, one day stooking, a dry week in …
  • J23 confirmed 120's 156.5 h/yr split: daily wipe/oil 65 (0.18 h/day), charcoal 30, forging 15, handles 7.5, canner 1, barrels 4, field honing 15, peening 10, saw filing 9; sharpening …
  • J24 partly confirmed No document in the library grinds flour; the quern (runner 40–50 cm) gives 1–2 kg coarse flour/h; 340 kg = 200–300 h/yr; women's work from the Neolithic; worn joints in …
  • J25 partly confirmed Post mill (Bockwindmühle) in the Mark from the 13th c.; grinds in an hour what a quern grinds in a week (50–100 kg/h); needs a millwright, a miller and 30–40 households' …
  • J26 confirmed Mühlenzwang (mill compulsion) in Brandenburg villages; quern forbidden; among the oldest and most hated manorial rights
  • J27 confirmed Lifespans: scythe 5–15 yr, axe head indefinite, barrel 10–30, cast iron until cracked; file 1–3 yr and not resharpenable; a homestead cannot cut hardened file teeth; …
  • J39 unresolved Order of specialists: herdsman (paid by the head, since settlement), miller, smith, cheesemaker (40 cows, 100 l/day), potter (Ch 17), cooper, wright, tanner (Ch 9), …