Steampunk Car and Other Stuff

[thysonsacclaim]

Mjöllnir Lamps for the Roadster


His techniques interest me a lot, and many of them are very old techniques which is quite appropriate.

I've only fabricated some things entirely myself, but I do a lot of mods with chemistry and small scale metallurgy with the help of my background there and some old turn of the century manuals and textbooks I have. One that I refer to often is called Henley's Twentieth Century Formulas, Recipes and Processes - Containing Ten Thousand Selected Household and Workshop Formulas, Recipes, Processes and Moneymaking Methods for the Practical Use of Manufacturers, Mechanics, Housekeepers and Home Workers. There's a digital copy here, although I usually use an original that was passed down to me (hell of a title on that book, also). This book is actually what kick-started my interest in chemistry and medicine.

Henley's contains some outdated formulas for drugs, tinctures, salves, poisons antidotes etc which won't really be useful to most people, but it also has some very useful information about photographing, engraving, etching, compression and injection molding, paint creating, glues, adhesives, materials and so on. It's also surprising that many of the methods are still used (though modified). Window staining, for example, is in there and it's done the same way since it was in he 1500s. Some of these techniques are also forgotten about, when advances in industry were made, but are the only way of doing something in a particular instance.

Not sure about the clothing, but steampunk furniture, modified electronics, etc I am fond of.

[Squiggle Dog]

That's great! I love that website and the knowledge that can be found there.

[thysonsacclaim]

Yes. Re Henley's, I've made a lot of the beverages like root beer, ginger ale or distilled alcohol from potatoes. I've not made the cheeses because I don't have a sterile refrigerator. I have a small lab area at home and one I use at school.

As for the things about metals and making alloys or cleansers or glues, that all comes in handy. A lot of these things don't require much in the way of ingredients. The harder part would be understanding their measurements and what they called things back then. They use old names (like "caustic potash").

It has a lot of info about saponifying things (turning fats into soaps). I think the most relative things to the forum are the metallurgy things and adhesives and creation of molds and cleaners.

I guess it mostly comes down to if you have the area or equipment to make some things (furnace, crucible, raw metals, etc).