Tuesday, March 20, 2012

The Least You Should Know...

That's always the hard part, isn't it?, deciding what you'll need to know?  That's why folks pay for training rather than try to figure that out themselves.

Getting back to my (dare I say) mission statement of helping to create resilient people, I plan to do a series here with the theme "The Least You Should Know About..." and cover things like basic electricity, basic electronics, radio, machines, gears, magnetics, motors, bearings, a wide range of things.  As I say up there in the header, "Someone needs to know how to do just about anything after the collapse, and that someone is us."  (a statement I said with the intent to mimic one of  Animal House's pivotal scenes.  No, I am not capable of being serious for too long).  It will be mixed in with the usual strange mix of other goings on, spread out over the next several months.

I plan to start with the least you should know about Electricity for two reasons: first, you probably are already aware of most of it which makes it good intro material; and second, it goes well with the solar panel project and discussions about that.  I want to talk about practical things like: if my camera uses a certain type battery, can I substitute it?  If I need to connect two solar panels, how do I do that?  How big should the wire be in my car/boat/whatever? Does the ground wire need to be the same size? 

So look forward to volts, amps, ohms, coulombs, watts, joules and all that.  Just not tonight.

5 comments:

  1. Looking forward to them, I will be sharing the posts with my kids.

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  2. Tx SiGB. this very good. when not napping will post and link.

    -- ca

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  3. There is a great series of booklets from the 30s/40s/50s published by South Bend Lathe Co - how to do this that and another with a SB lathe.

    I'll look further for the link - so far all I can find involves overly attentive russian women.

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  4. Some of them might be here
    http://www.wswells.com/index.html

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    1. For those who would like a clickable link, this is The SBL Workshop and has a collection of images and pdfs of the South Bend Lathes.

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