🔨 The Workshop

🧭 The fixer's habits — before any repair

1. Make it safe: unplug it, depressurize it, let it cool, chock it. The machine can wait; fingers don't grow back.
2. Look before you wrench: half of all faults are visible — a loose wire, a split hose, a jammed thing. Clean it first; dirt hides cracks.
3. Change ONE thing, then test. Two changes at once teach you nothing.
4. Lay parts out in removal order (a cloth with rows; photograph or sketch each stage). Reassembly is the film in reverse.
5. Righty-tighty, lefty-loosey — and if it won't turn, penetrating oil and patience beat force and a snapped bolt. Heat is the second resort, never near fuel.
6. A repaired thing gets a TAG: what failed, what you did, the date. The next fixer (maybe you) inherits the story.

🚲 Fix-it trees — the machines worth keeping alive

🪚 Wood, kept simple

1. Square with a rope: 3-4-5 — any triangle with sides 3, 4, 5 (any unit) has a true right angle. Whole buildings are squared with string and this.
2. Measure twice, cut once — and mark the WASTE side of the line so the saw's width doesn't steal your length.
3. The joints worth knowing: the lap (two halves notched to overlap), the dado (a groove a shelf sits in), and the humble screwed butt joint with a glue block. Fancy joinery is for later; these build furniture, coops, and doors.
4. Wood moves with the seasons — across the grain, never along it. Leave a coin's gap where wide boards meet a frame.
5. Sharpening is the master skill: a dull edge is dangerous, a sharp one is easy. Flat stone, consistent angle (~25° for chisels/knives), burr raised then stropped off on leather. Learn it on the kitchen knife; it transfers to everything.

🧵 Cloth, soap, and light — the consumables you can make

1. The four stitches: running (fast seams), backstitch (strong seams), whip (edges and tears), and the button. A tear mended today is a rag saved from tomorrow. Patch OVER the hole on the inside, stitched at the edges — double cloth outlives the garment.
2. Darning a sock: weave, don't sew — threads laid one way across the hole, then woven through the other way. A lightbulb or smooth stone inside holds the shape.
3. Soap is fat + lye + patience. Lye from hardwood ash steeped in soft water (an egg floats showing a coin-size top = strong enough); rendered fat strained clean; combined warm, stirred to thick honey ("trace"), poured, cut in a day, CURED SIX WEEKS. Lye burns skin and blinds eyes — gloves, eye cover, add lye TO water never the reverse, vinegar on splashes. Fresh soap is still harsh; the cure tames it.
4. Candles: any fat or wax, a braided cotton wick (soaked in strong salt water and dried burns cleaner), dipped or poured in a jar. A wick that smokes is too long — trim to 6 mm.
5. Cordage from nothing: twist a bundle of long fibres (bark strips, dry grass, plastic bags) tight until it kinks, fold at the kink, and let the two halves counter-twist around each other. Add fibre before each half thins. This is rope, and it held the world together for ten thousand years.

🧱 Shelter that lasts

1. Water is the enemy; everything else is detail. A roof that sheds, walls that shed what the roof misses, and the ground sloped AWAY on every side.
2. Wet feet rot buildings: anything wooden stands on stone, brick, or gravel — never bare earth.
3. Adobe/cob (where it's dry): 3 parts sandy soil, 1 part clay, chopped straw through it, trodden wet, formed in greased molds, sun-dried two weeks. Test your soil: a jar of it shaken in water settles sand below, clay above — read the layers and adjust. Adobe wants a good hat (wide eaves) and good boots (stone base).
4. Heat rises and drafts kill comfort: seal the top of a room before the walls, and put the thermal mass (stone, brick, water barrels) where the winter sun lands.