Last week I finally got around to ordering the first four of a set of seven books I'd long been interested in, written by a machinist and inventor named David J. Gingery . He published these books back in 1980, showing you how to build a complete metal-working shop entirely from scratch. He starts with a simple charcoal foundry, made for $25 using a 5-gallon pail, a vacuum cleaner, silica sand, and clay. He describes the usefulness of this simple foundry:
You can melt aluminum, pot metal... read more
