This is one example of many projects found in the book The Best of Making Things – A Hand Book of Creative Discovery. Find out more about the book! You wil need: 8 strips of wooden lath (or cut a wooden yardstick) – small nails – hammer – window screening …
Joe Kennedy, long-time natural builder, tells fascinating stories of the ovens he has built and the lessons he has learned from them. Joe addresses many useful design ideas that he has drawn from his experience. He also shares his drawings of a current oven he is buiding that synthesizes his experiences into a very efficient and useful oven.
I cut these low-relief directly into wet mud smeared on sheetrock panels. After they are finished (and dry), I apply colored washes, which also make the surface more durable. Click on the thumbnail to see the entire image, uncropped. They range in size from about 16 x 24 inches to …
The following essay is from the Introduction to Dig Your Hands in the Dirt: “Art is…” Art is many things, but here what I mean by “art” is that kind of experience by which humans learn. Working with mud, sand, and straw is a way to teach geology, engineering, …
description and praise for Mud, Hands, A House
purchase As you might suspect, a book with this title features many photos of barefoot kids happily stomping in the mud. Mud huts and mud pies conjure up pictures of primitive peoples and childish pleasures. But then you realize that the kids aren’t in Africa, but in Washington DC, Chicago, …
This book shows how to make an accurate sundial with just a bit of simple materials, geometry, and a map with information about your longitude and latitude. It also shows how a sundial is really a model of the relationship between the earth and the sun – and, by extension, …
[product id=”2″] 123456789101112131415202530405075100 Children everywhere will welcome this new edition of a classic activity book – as will their teachers and parents (especially those seeking to simplify). A “best of” compilation of two volumes, it is a unique, affordable, and child-sized handbook that doesn’t talk down to anyone. In fact, …
(Excerpted from www.cobcottage.com .) A Cob Cottage might be the ultimate expression of ecological design, a structure so attuned to its surroundings that the authors refer to it as “an ecstatic house.” They build a house the way others create a natural garden, using the oldest, most available materials earth, clay, …
This book is the second edition to Rocket Stoves to Heat Cob Buildings published by Cob Cottage Company. Drawings, descriptions and photos are improved and added to. This time, they provide more clear instruction on the brick assembly, the part of building rocket stove that is all in the design, …
