The foxfire book
Interviews and essays describe the way of life and crafts of pioneer America still surviving in the Appalachian region.
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What Hacker News says
- Sounds like someone needs to do a _Foxfire_ [1] series around Chemistry and Physics departments.
[1] http://www.foxfire.org/thefoxfirebooks.aspx
"With nearly 9 million copies in print, The Foxfire Book and its eleven companion volumes stand memorial to the people and the vanishing culture of the Southern Appalachian Mountains, brought to life for readers through the words of those who were born, lived their lives, and passed away there—words collected by high school students who wanted to be a part of their community and preserve their heritage."
// edit: corrected link, added quote
- I heard about this a few years ago. So this is how it came out.
Think of this as a startup. The basic concept is interesting. A decade on, it's clear that the execution was botched. The article indicates at least the following problems:
- Trying to do too many things, and ending up doing them badly, rather than doing a few things well. Take a look at the list of machines being built, and the "percent completed". None have reached 100%, and only four are over 75%. This is after ten years. - Employee retention problems. (A major problem with any volunteer effort.) - Founder not into delegation.
This has been done before, better. There's a classic series, "Build Your Own Metal Working Shop from Scrap" (http://www.amazon.com/Build-Your-Metalworking-Shop-Scrap/dp/...) from 1982. You start with charcoal, sand, wood, and metal scrap, set up a forge, and cast parts. With the forge, you make parts for a lathe. That's book 2. Book 3, a metal shaper. Book 4, a milling machine. Book 5, a drill press. Book 6, precision tools so you can do accurate work. It's a lot of work, but people have successfully followed those directions and made machine tools.
Further back, there are the Foxfire books, from 1962 (http://www.amazon.com/The-Foxfire-Book-Dressing-Moonshining/...). This was the bible of the hippie "back to the land" movement. A number of communes were set up using those books.
