Homestead Mechanics
(Page 2 of 5)
March/April 1970
By the Mother Earth News editors
If you like making things out of wood the first thing to make is a good workshop for your homestead. So many workshops I've seen are located in attics or cellars or barns where it's nearly always too cold or too hot or too damp or too dark to work. The workshop is worth the same consideration and planning as your kitchen. If it must be in the attic or cellar it should be properly heated, insulated and lighted. Once you have a good workshop you can make it pay for itself many times just by doing simple repairing or building. I never did any building until we put up our small barn. Since then I've watched a neighbor put up an entire two-story house single-handed. He says the amount of knowledge needed to build a small house is surprisingly Carpentry
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little if you have a good set of plans. A carpenter earns about $15 a day, and by doing your own carpentry you can save that much while you yourself learn to master the fundamentals. Here is a check list of ten fundamentals in carpentry. See how many you know already:
1. How to lay shingles.
2. How to use the steel square. 3. How to file and set saws. 4. How to use the chalk line. 5. How to use a mitre box. 6. How to set girders and sills. 7. How to make joints. 8. How to hang doors. 9. How to lath. 10. How to lay floors.
Masonry
One of the "trickiest" masonry jobs is supposed to be building a fireplace and chimney. But two high school boys I know apparently never heard how tricky it is because they built a fireplace out of fieldstone in a little house on Owasco Lake near Auburn, N. Y. and put up a 20-foot brick chimney. They dug and laid the concrete foundations, installed the damper, the flue, and put in fireproof bricks where required for proper fire protection. I admit they had some help - they had a ten minute conversation with a mason and read about three books! I haven't ever built a fireplace myself - about all the masonry I've done so far is to put in a cement floor in our small barn and pig pen. It's really worthwhile learning how to mix and pour concrete and lay foundations - you'll use it again and again. If your cellar is damp, look into the new damp-proofing paint. It's a white powder you mix with water and scrub into the concrete or brick. The tiny particles penetrate and then expand which is said to work wonders in waterproofing masonry. It was developed by the French for waterproofing the Maginot line and is now being manufactured in this country for general use under the name, Aquella.
Plumbing
Once you've learned how to repack a dripping faucet and replace a washer and clean out a trap below the sink or basin you know the three most common plumbing repairs a house needs. From there you can easily go on and learn how to install running water in your barn, or put in a modern hot water system, or an extra shower. Even if you don't want to do any plumbing work yourself I do think it is necessary to understand the operation of plumbing systems just for your own self-protection. Some people actually believe that pouring coffee grounds down the sink drain helps keep it cleaned out! You probably know others who think nothing of pouring hot grease down the sink or piling the drain full of lye indiscriminately. These people would never have a quarter of the plumbing repairs they have now if they had a better understanding of preventive maintenance.
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