Primitive Technology, Country Skills, Native Arts and Practical Chemistry

507 Mechanical Movements: Embracing All Those Which Are Most Important in Dynamics, Hydraulics, Hydrostatics, Pneumatics, Steam Engines by Henry T. Brown.

Understanding Materials Science: History, Properties and Applications by Rolf Hummel

Real Alchemy: A Primer of Practical Alchemy by Robert Allen Bartlett

Creations of Fire by Cathy Cobb and Harold Goldwhite

Chemistry (Eyewitness) by Ann Newmark

Usborne Illustrated Dictionary of Chemistry

Levers and Pulleys
Pacific Science Center

Understanding Simple Machines
Craig Tillman

Understanding Materials Science
Google copy of book listed above.

Heron of Alexandria

The Pneumatics of Heron

Handbook of engineering and technology in the Classical world By John Peter Oleson

A Greek city of the fourth century B.C. By S. C. Bakhuizen, Gorítsa Team

Alchemy and chemistry terms

What is a Solvent?

Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments
online beginner's guide (pdf)

Fenners Complete Formulary (pdf)

(Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 - Part 6)

Acids, Bases and Salts
ProspectorsParadise.com

Online Biofuels Library
Journey to Forever

1881 Household Cyclopedia

A Dictionary of Chemistry By Andrew Ure and William Nicholson (1821)

Intro to Chemistry
Chemforkids.com

Intro to Physics
Physics4forkids.com

Facts about Fossil Fuels
American Petroleum Institute

Geometry basics and Measurement
MathisFun.com

Specific Skills

Basic Knots Guide
Instructables.com

Various primitive skills
Compiled by Mike Beckett

More primitive living skills
Articles and links from Thomas J. Elpel

How to make a beeswax candle

How to dye material naturally
ehow.com

Natural Mineral Pigments (from How to Paint a Mammoth) PrimitiveWays. com

Homemade Vegetable Oil Lamp
JudyoftheWoods.net

Native Arts, Country Skills and Primitive Technology

If modern civilization collapsed tomorrow, could you build a cart to haul firewood out of the forest? If you needed a new pair of shoes or gloves for cold weather, would you be able to stitch them together from animal hide tanned into leather?

What will you do for a source of light once the electricity's gone and your batteries have died? Will you be ready to carve a spearhead or knife out of a chunk a flint or stone, then attach it securely to a pole in order to hunt for food or hook a fish? And could you design a simple pump or pulley to bring water out of a well?The answer to all of these questions is probably not. Even an Ivy League education won't get you very far in the event our technological society fizzles into history. Moreover, it seems far too few of us were paying attention back in elementary school during those field trips to the indian museum, not to mention the natural history and science muesums.

We've heard about the native arts of indigenous people, like canoe building, stringing cordage, pottery-making, basket weaving, and the fabrication of hand tools like the hammer, knife and chisel. On the American prairie, the pioneers later set up farms with little more than the gear they packed in the back of a covered wagon. Many of the things they did we refer to today as country skills -- including homesteading, crop-growing, animal husbandry, quilting and needlework, and canning preserves. But the settlers did more than that, since general stores were few and far between. Necessity forced them to fabricate their own household commodities, tools and building materials. This section of the Mega-Disaster Planner describes the essential science, chemistry and raw materials belonging to that knowledge base of old, and introduces the native arts (i.e. vocational skills) needed to reboot civilization from scratch.

Basic Mechanics

Without electricity, motors, power tools or petroleum, moving heavy objects and materials will require a more creative approach in a post-apocalyptic future. Luckily, Leonardo daVinci and other inventors have given us many ingenious ways to work smart, rather than hard, and without the need for electrical power. Among the devices handed down to us through time:

wedge and wheel
lever and fulcrum
windmill and turbine
gears and belts
crane and pulley
spring and counterweight
waterwheel and pump

Making and using these tools is simple. After all, the principles of mechanics are not the brainchild of modern times. Heron of Alexandria and Archimedes of Greece built complex gadgets incorporating magnetism, pneumatics, hydraulics, electricity and thermodynamics long before daVinci came along. A contemporary of Jesus, Heron developed the art of model-making, stage craft and vending machines. According to a fascinating History Channel program, Stone Age Tech, he also wrote the first technical user's manuals. See link on the right for more about him. At any rate, an appreciation of friction, inertia, gravity, pressure (air and liquid), convection, conduction, suction and centrifugal force will grease the way for designing and fabricating labor-saving, simple-to-operate mechanical devices.

Check the library (especially the kids' section) for step-by-step, illustrated books like David Macaulay's The Way Things Work. At home, take a closer look at equipment you normally take for granted -- especially your wheelbarrow, scissors, bicycle pump, and hand-twist can opener. Many of these items will probably have to be fabricated on the fly after a mega-disaster, so knowing how they work now will shorten your learning curve down the road.

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Depending on the materials available, builders employ a variety of methods for fastening together the different parts of a tool or mechanical contraption. These include:

interlocking joints (mortise & tenon, miters, dovetails)
fasteners (hooks, nails, rivets, hinges, screws)
welding (forge and torch)
brazing and soldering
adhesives/glue (a mix of rosin & ashes will work)

Cotton

Raw Materials

In the absence of hardware stores, you'll be limited to materials in nature when it comes time to cobble together your own soap, knives, cooking pots, candles, toilet paper, clothes and other necessities. And in order to become a better scavenger and fabricator, you'll want to bone up in advance on the various uses of natural plant fibers, metal ores, rock minerals, clay and other silicates, not to mention actual bones and other animal parts. Here are a few things that early European settlers produced soon after dropping anchor in the New World:

Rock Salt The source of most table salt, it's found in sedimentary minerals at the bottom of dried up lakes, beaches and seas. Rock salt (aka halite) can also be mined from deposits left by ancient waterways, including the vast underground deposits near the Great Lakes (where most Americans get their salt today). Petroleum reserves are also commonly found beneath the halite. Another way to produce table salt is to evaporate it from seawater or brine (i.e. salt mixed with water). Brine itself has many uses, such as aging cheese, pickling preserves, electrolysis and as part of the process for transforming animal hide into leather.

Lye When mixed with tallow or another source of fat, lye produces soap, a staple of cultures, both pre-industrial and modern. Lye water is made by pouring distilled or soft water (e.g. rainwater) over white hardwood ashes in order to leach out the lye, also referred to as caustic potash. To get the white ashes, you should burn a hard wood like oak (not pine) or use dried palm branches, banana peels or cocoa pods. Pouring the same water over the ashes repeatedly produces a thick brown, brackish liquid. This highly corrosive lye water is then boiled down to a powder (for later use) or mixed as is with vegetable oils or animal fat (i.e. tallow) to make soap.

Saltpeter An essential ingredient of gunpowder (aka potassium nitrate), saltpeter is produced by combining dried urine, maneuer, plant compost and ashes (or charcoal). The mixture is left sitting in a pile for a few months, generally with a cloth or tarp underneath to prevent seepage into the ground. The other ingredients for gunpowder are sulfur and charcoal.

Sulfur A yellowish, pungent-smelling crystal found around volcanic rock and hydrothermal springs, sulfur is used in the recipe for gunpowder. It also serves as a pesticide, fertilizer (that is, once soil bacteria breaks it down enough to be soluble in water), food preservation and medicinal purposes. It's non-toxic, but may lower the pH of the soil if applied too liberally. Sulfur is flammable, and once it transforms into a gas known as sulfur dioxide, it does become toxic, so avoid inhaling it. It's a common-enough material to find, not only close to volcanoes but in rocks like pyrite and as a byproduct of chemical process. To extract it from ore, the deposits were historically piled high in a brick kiln on a hilltop, where there was plenty of ventilation. Then a little sulfur powder was ignited on top, eventually causing the sulfur in the rock to become molten and drip out like lava. When the molten heap cooled, it was ground into powder.

Soda Ash This key ingredient in the making of glass is derived from the ashes of marine plants, especially seaweed, found along beaches and dry lakebeds. Soda ash is also used to make soap, paper pulp and iodine. Glass is thought to have been discovered by the Egyptians around 1000 B.C. It's made from a combination of soda ash, silica and sand. It can be poured into molds and used as a glaze in ceramics, or shaped into cylindrical forms using a process called glass blowing.

Tannin Essential to leather tanning and wine-making, tannin (aka tannic acid) is found in oak bark and acorns, as well as the skins, seeds, and stems of grapes. Typically it looks like a yellowish powder, but its hallmark characteristic is its astringency, which is evidenced in the dry, puckery taste associated with red wine. Native Americans used the tannic acid in animal brains for tanning leather.

Tallow A traditional oil used for fuel, candles and soapmaking, tallow comes from animal fat cooked down in a process called rendering, then stored in air-tight containers.

Gypsum An ancient word that's Greek for plaster, gypsum is the key ingredient of plaster of Paris, which is used for making molds. Modern interior walls (aka Sheetrock) are made from gypsum. It's also part of the construction recipe for Portland cement and mortar used on the Great Pyramids. Gypsum is found in sedimentary rock and in lagoons high in calcium and sulfate content throughout the United States and elsewhere. Although soluble in water, when high heat is applied, it loses that solubility, resulting in a hard, durable, long-lasting material.

Lime An important construction material since the time of the Great Pyramids, lime is derived by either burning a pile of sea shells or extracting it from limestone, chalk or marble. One variation is known as quicklime (or burnt lime), which is produced by simply heating the lime above 800 degrees celsius. Slaked lime is a hydrated form of lime made by combining the white, caustic, alkaline powder Quicklimewith water. The two materials react to generate considerable heat, emitting a glow called limelight. The infamous "Greek fire" was a powerful ancient weapon that combined petroleum with slaked lime, causing ignition. Note: Lime burns the skin so avoid direct contact. If you do get exposed, don't simply wash it off with water, as that will only activate the chemical that causes it to heat. First brush off as much of it as possible and remove any affected clothing.

Ammonia Best known as an odor-removing cleaner, ammonia may also be used as a refrigerant in place of frion. In agriculture, when mixed with water, ammonia serves as one of the industry's most common fertilizers. Two good sources of ammonia are human urine and bird excrement (especially bat guano). It's also found around volcanoes, taking the form of ammonium sulphate.

Glycerin A by-product of soapmaking, glycerin provides the base for most skin lotions. It's also a key ingredient of nitroglycerin and a preservative in fruit canning. In food recipes, glycerin is a sweetner, a filler and a thickener. Other uses are as a lubricant, an antiseptic, and to preserve biological specimens. For people who don't like substituted grain alcohol used in herbal tinctures, glycerin is a common, although less effective substitue. To retrieve it from your soap mixture, add salt to the heated lye water and fats, which causes the soap to curdle and rise to the top. The remaining liquid is distilled, then filtered through charcoal, which captures the glycerin, minus impurities and any color. (You can also, by the way, just leave the glycerin in the soap, which makes it gentler to tender skin.)

Linseed Oil Pressed from the meal of ground up flax seeds, linseed oil is the universal binder found in oil paints and varnishes. You can mix it with mineral pigments (e.g. iron oxide and cinnabar), charcoal, lime (to get white), nut paste (for brown) or other available sources of portable color in your environment. Linseed oil by itself is an ideal preservative for wood, concrete and even hemp rope. (Keep in mind that it can takes weeks or longer to dry.) Nutrtionally, it's better known as flaxseed oil, which is high in Omega-3 fats. However, this isn't the best choice for a cooking oil, so look to other sources -- like olives, sesame, walnut, soy, peanut, sunflower and palm -- for that purpose.

Oil from seeds is pressed with an expeller, which pushes the meal through a long screw that creates sufficient pressure to squeeze the oil out and through a screen, then down into a container. The leftover meal (which still retains some of its oil) exits through the nozzle and can then be used in muffin or bread mixes, or in non-culinary applications.

Practical Chemistry

Dating back to those long-ago days of alchemy, chemistry is used to extract and combine liquids, solids and gases in order to produce all the things that make our lives comfortable and safe. As we saw in the previous section, things like vinegar, plaster and gunpowder can be produced by anyone who knows the recipe.

Practical chemistry includes a variety of easy-to-learn procedures. These include grinding with a mortar or crank-powered mill to create flour or meal, screening various materials using a mesh or cloth, filtration with a solvent like water to remove impurities and dissolve solids, leaching (as in the case of lye water described above), melting, distilling, percolating, pickling, pasteurizing and evaporating.

Not so easy is keeping track of all the different formulas and ingredients that go into each recipe. More often than not, proportions must be mixed precisely, or your concoction will fall flat. For example, if the instructions call for soft water, you can't simply fetch a bucketful out of a nearby creek. That water contains minerals which will react negatively with the chemicals in your brew. You have to use rain water or else distill the river water through evaporation. This is the case when making lye water for soap. (Chemists refer to inactive ingredients as being inert.)

In order to accurately measure and combine your substances, you'll also need to develop various testing instruments. Historically, the human tongue and nose have served as the most frequently relied-on indicators of acids, bases and salts -- three basic categories of elements in the periodic table. That's because most plants and other materials have a particular odor or taste (bitter, sweet, astringent, sour, etc.). Acids taste sour, while bases taste bitter. (Not that you should be sticking something like sulfuric acid - aka battery acid - on you tongue.) As a general rule, metals are bases. Vinegar is an acid. A base in liquid is called an alkali.

Chemists refine the acid/base identification process further with the pH scale. This system was developed a century ago and is centered on the amount of hydrogen in a material. Hence, "pH" stands for the potential (or power) of hydrogen. Like the Richter scale, each step up or down the scale represents a tenfold difference in the amount of acidity or alkalinity. Zero to six on the scale represents the acids, while numbers between eight and fourteen represent a base. The closer to the middle on the scale, which is the number seven, the less potent (or dangerous to handle) the material when handling.

To tell if a material is a base or acid, chemists use color. An acid will turn a blue pigment to red, while a base material (i.e. alkali) turns a red pigment blue. (One way to remember this: blue and base both begin with the letter "B".) Using pH color indicators is more difficult than it sounds, as it depends a lot on the pH of your indicator.

While laboratory chemists have a ready stack of litmus paper at their disposal to find out the pH of their solutions and substances, in the backcountry you won't have that luxury. Plant pigments like hibiscus, hydrangea and red cabbage (or even red wine) can be usedr to measure for pH. When a a material is exposed to the cabbage water or other indicator, you can roughly determine a pH number based on how much the color changes.

Working with acids and bases.

At the center of the pH scale, or neutral zone, are salts and soaps. Wenever you mix the right proportion of an acid with an base, you get a salt, or more importantly, you neutralize any negative effect of the material. That's why milk of magnesia gets prescribed for an acid stomach, and baking soda is spread on an acid spill to eliminate the danger of skin contact. Poison from a wasp sting is extremely alkali, so to counteract it, you would vinegar on the wound.

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Next: Rock and Mineral Prospecting

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TheCityEdition.com

Besides pH, another critical measurement for chemists is temperature. This is the case, for instance, when working with clay, glass or metal. Each melts or calcinates with a different amount of heat. Iron melts at 2800 degrees farenheit, copper at 2000 degrees. A clay pot fires at around 1400 degrees. In order to measure temperature when you're firing clay or heating materials, you'll need to construct some sort of thermometer or gauge. Potters, for instance, use pyrometric cones, which are a mix of common materials known to melt at specific temperatures. By watching a series of differently mixed cones inside a kiln, you can gauge the kiln's temperature based on which ones have melted, and which have not.

Speaking of heat, you can add a material like limestone that interacts with the metal or clay to reduce its melting temperature. In this type of operation, the limestone is referred to as a flux and allows you to conserve energy. Neither do you have to worry about the limestone getting mixed in with your base material, since it turns to a slag that can be skimmed off the top. Borax is used as a flux in brazing. Rosin (pine resin) is used in soldering. A soldering flux also helps dissolve lead solder into the seam; otherwise the lead can bead up into globs.

The field of chemistry is vast, and its secrets take time to absorb, but if you absorb the different lessons one by one, it will serve you endlessly in the aftermath of a global catastrophe. In this context, it makes sense that high school and college classes emphasize experimentation, since that approach enables students to deal with realistic situations they'll come across after they graduate. In the workplace, chemists are tasked with inventing products with different properties, like malleability, toughness and electrical or thermal conductivity. A chemist also determines how a substance reacts to heat, light, moisture and other variables. This information makes it possible to use the right materials for the right application.

Beware, however, that modern-day chemistry texts emphasize the molecular composition of things. Since there won't be any high-powered microscopes out in the wilderness, much of this information won't advance your practical education. That's why you might find it easier studying the archaic discipline of alchemy. This subject unfortunately got a bad name during the Middle Ages, but up to that time it had been regarded as the cornerstone of science. Every major culture used alchemy, and books outlining discoveries (whether they were made by the Arabs, Chinese or Greeks) were reprinted in multiple languages and read by every scientist of the times.

In alchemy, the basic process for transforming raw materials into serviceable items can be broken down into a half dozen categories:

calcination (applying high heat)
dissolution (separating elements)
conjunction (re-combining)
fermentation (bacterial action)
sublimation (distilling vapors from solids)
coagulation (thickening)

However unappetizing it may sound, fermentation is an especially key concept to learn. With the help of bacteria, grape juice can be converted into wine, milk into yoghurt and cheese. In addition to producing a greater variety of foods and introducing probiotics into your diet, the process of fermentation guarantees your perishables a longer shelf life.

Here are two other products created through fermentation:

Vinegar It may seem like a mundane cooking ingredient, but throughout history it has proved to be a powerful elixer for treating everything from sunburn to diabetes. It's also a disinfectant, herbicide and versatile cleaning solution when mixed with water. To produce it, you simply allow stale wine, apple cider or grain alcohol to sit in a barrel (or cistern) for a month, with a cloth covering the top. A long fermentation period allows acetic acid bacteria and soluble cellulose (known as the mother of vinegar) to breed and prosper.

Alcohol An essential medicine, fuel and preservative (among other uses), alcohol is produced by adding yeast to a fermentable mash of water and grain. The fermenting takes a little time, eventually inducing a chemical reaction that turns grain starches into sugars. The mixture is then evaporated up through a pipe (called the still), passing through a long coil or hose, where the vapor condenses back to its liquid state. A clear, odorless liquid, alcohol takes on its more familiar features while its aged in sealed wood (or terra cotta) casks Both beer (using barley and hops) and wine (using grapes) were staples of the ancient Babylonians and Egyptians, while the Chinese have distilled rice wine since at least 1000 B.C.

Ancient stills were built from terra cotta (i.e. common red clay). Like wood, this building material allows air to travel in and out, which is essential to the process. The still itself can also be constructed from a metal like copper.

Because tap water in antiquity often contained harmful bacteria and other contaminants, adding a alcohol to a primitive water supply can help prevent illness. Alcohol is also an ideal solvent that extracts oils and other substances from plants, hence the widespread use of it in the production of tinctures. Long ago, herbalists deduced that they could deposit a few handfuls of dried medicinal leaves or roots into a grain spirit, then conveniently store the concoction in a cool, dark cellar. So began the era of patent medicines.

The yeast used in the brewing process, by the way, also generates the commodity we know as ethanol. In a post-technological society, this fuel can power lamps, stoves and any other makeshift heating devices.

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To learn more about the practical uses of chemistry, check out the kids section of public libraries. In addition, Cathy Cobb's Creations of Fire describe the low-tech applications that generated the materials of daily life way back in the old days.

Optional Index:

Pottery & Ceramics
Carpentry
Chemistry
Leather Work
Basic Mechanics
Raw Materials
Blacksmithing
Housing Construction
Sewing & Cloth
Flintknapping
Mineral Prospecting

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