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New Things With Old Plans

 

Nostalgia is a powerful thing. And that's certainly one of the primary motivators for this project.

This collection of vintage projects wasn't initially started by us. Some anonymous patron of the internet had the foresight to begin archiving and indexing their old shop projects. Unfortunately for the 'net, they could no longer maintain their servers. We're proud to be able to clean up their awesome contribution to the net, and continue that work.

So far there are at least 200 projects and still counting. Coming largely from the 1940s, these projects are the essence of do it yourself. They regard recycling old things and turning them into new things of the highest purpose.

The forge in the photo, for example, is made from an old cast iron sink. And what a great design! The two sink areas make for a great working forge that has a quench tank built in. You couldn't ask for something more suited to be re-used.

We built this also after a lot of help we received on the forums and plans at diy net. Though it's a little hard to navigate, there is go kart info there that isn't half bad! But the point was that the projects that they have helped us, and we realized that this kind of plan info was something that people would really appreciate.

If you have any sort of do it yourself nature, those two sites will be of great use to you, if nothing else to think about all the great projects that you'll do when the weather warms up. And the diy site is very helpful for all sorts of things around the house that need fixing and what not.

If you're looking for new projects will the old feel, we can't say enough about Make, which was started by a hero of ours, the man behind the O'Reilly books. We must have been keyed in to the same thread that's going around. What's old is new! The site is the web precense the magazine of the same name, which celebrates the old DIY ethic. Their blog is great, each day they list sites that are making some funky project. Very cool.



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