Last week I finally got around to ordering the first four of a set of seven books I'd long been interested in, written by a machinist and inventor named David J. Gingery. He published these books back in 1980, showing you how to build a complete metal-working shop entirely from scratch. He starts with a simple charcoal foundry, made for $25 using a 5-gallon pail, a vacuum cleaner, silica sand, and clay. He describes the usefulness of this simple foundry:

You can melt aluminum, pot metal, and even brass with a very simple home built furnace fueled with grocery store charcoal. In a very few minutes you can melt beer cans, your wife's pots and pans, the siding off your neighbor's house, the pistons out of your car, and anything else you can beg, borrow, or steal. It costs very little to build, and it works incredibly well.

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