Your own machine shop

Traditional values – self-reliance

If you’re the type of person who lives way off grid, and/or would love a machine shop but just don’t have the cash, here’s a plan to help you out�
Multimachine! group to the rescue! Their site is packed-full of all the plans you might need to build a complete machine shop. Even better, one model uses a car’s engine block as a main component!

Why would you need a machine shop? Even a muscle-bound dyke like me could live a happy life, off-grid, without ever seeing a lathe or precision drill. But these things are often necessary to maintain the tools and machines that help us live. Here’s what a multi-machine might be good for:

AGRICULTURE: Building and repairing irrigation pumps and farm implements

WATER SUPPLIES: Making and repairing water pumps and water-well drilling rigs

FOOD PREPARATION: Building steel-rolling-and-bending machines for making fuel efficient cook stoves and other cooking equipment.

TRANSPORTATION: Anything from making cart axles to rebuilding large vehicle clutch, brake, and other parts.

EDUCATION: Building simple pipe-and-bar-bending machines to make school furniture, providing “hands on� metalwork training on student-built multimachines (which they can then take with them when they leave school)

JOB CREATION: A group of specialized but easily-built multimachines can be combined to form a small, very low-cost, metal working factory which could also serve as a trade school. Students could be taught a single skill on a specialized machine and be paid as a worker while learning other metal working skills in “off” hours.

The multimachine is an accurate all-purpose machine tool that can be built by a semi-skilled mechanic with just common hand tools. For machine construction, electricity can be replaced with “elbow grease” and all the necessary material can come from discarded vehicle parts even though a little scrap steel and some concrete mix will make construction a lot easier.

If you are the off-grid sort of a person who likes, and sometimes needs, to get their hands into a good set of ball bearings, this just might be your next project!

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