Knowledge Weighs Nothing

The Best 110 DIY Tips From The Last 110 Years

DIY TIps

We do loads of DIY posts on K.W.N, mainly low cost DIY projects that most people can do at home without needing a whole range of expensive equipment or professional skills.

Today we have an awesome resource to share with you! Popular Mechanics is celebrating its 110th anniversary and to mark the date they have gone back through their archives and found  the best 110 best DIY tips, tricks and hacks. If you are into DIY, you have just got to check this out, some of these tips are genius… I especially like the emergency adjustable wrench made from a bolt and two nuts, so simple yet so clever. Check out the other 109 DIY tips below.

The Best 110 DIY Tips From The Last 110 Years

(Photo from:  florianric)

Build A DIY Pot Belly Stove From A Gas Tank

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Ok, let’s start with some words of caution… Carbon monoxide kills, you can’t smell it and you can’t taste it. The project requires competent welding/join sealing etc. This isn’t a project for cutting corners or shoddy workmanship, as that could get you killed.

That said – if you do have the appropriate skills, you can make an awesome pot belly stove for around $50, which is probably at least five times cheaper than buying one ready-made.

Build A DIY Pot Belly Stove From A Gas Tank

(Photo from: Dr Qui via Instructables)

How To Build A Mini Bio-Gas System (Produces FREE usable gas from food waste!)

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I am not sure it gets any better than being able to reuse your food waste to produce usable bio-gas; that’s what I call a win, win!

Now the project below is a small scale system and I am not sure how much usable bio-gas it will produce, but it is a great proof of concept and I think the real beauty lies in scaling this system up… People who live on a homestead, or a farm etc, produce a whole load of natural waste that could be used to produce larger amounts of bio-gas. This is definitely something to consider if you have the regular waste to feed the system to produce the gas.

How To Build A Mini Bio-Gas System (Produces FREE usable gas from food waste!)

(Photo from: antoniraj via Instructables)

How To Build A DIY PVC Self-Feeding Chicken Feeder

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Unfortunately we don’t currently have any chickens… If we did have some I’d be off to Home Depot to pick up some PVC pipe and connectors!

This PVC chicken feeder is quick and easy to build, it holds around 10 pounds of chicken feed which is auto-fed as the chickens eat the food.  This chicken feeder also offers excellent protection from the weather, so your chicken feed should stay nice and dry.  Check out the awesome build tutorial from ‘Preparing For SHTF’ below.

How To Build A DIY PVC Self-Feeding Chicken Feeder

(Photo from: Preparing for SHTF)

5 Knots You Need to Know How To Tie

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In day-to-day life, most people get by with only knowing how to tie one or maybe two knots.  This is probably fine for average daily chores and DIY, but when it comes to urban/wilderness survival, or pretty much any activity where you are away from home and in the great outdoors, you need to learn how to tie a few more important knots…

Luckily the great guys over at ‘ITS Tactical’ have created an awesome knot tying post which shows how to tie 5 of the most common and important knots you are likely to need. There are how-to videos and loads of great step by step photos showing how to tie each knot. Check it out below!

 5 Knots You Need to Know How To Tie

(Photo from:ITS Tactical)

396 Free Do It Yourself Backyard Project Plans

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That’s right a whopping 396 FREE do-it-yourself backyard and garden plans… You can’t say we don’t deliver the free stuff for you!

There is something for everyone here, from ovens, barbecues, smokers and fire pits, to backyard building, landscaping and patio plans, garden furniture, bird tables, dog houses and many more. Get your free DIY plans below.

 396 Free Do It Yourself Backyard Project Plans

How To Make A Simple Adobe/Horno Oven

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You guys loved the:  How To Build A Clay Oven (Tutorial) post we did a while back, so when I saw this awesome tutorial on how to build a simple Adobe oven, I knew it would go down well too!

This DIY Adobe/Horno oven couldn’t be simpler to build – it has an internal structure of old bricks, which is then covered with a mixture of mud and grass. Check out the tutorial below for step by step photos.  I am not sure if this oven would stand the test of time, but it is so quick and easy to build, you could build a new one each year. Also, be sure to check out Peter’s Etsy store: NorthernWoodsCrafts.

How To Make A Simple Adobe/Horno Oven

(Photo from: Peter.paleoplanet69529)

How To Build A DIY Water Wheel Generator

How To Build A DIY Water Wheel Generator

Who wouldn’t love free electricity? I would love to live completely off-the-grid and not have to worry about rising electricity costs. It would also be a nice feeling to know that if the SHTF one day, we would still have power… If you live by a source of running water, one option for electricity generation is a water wheel generator. I think a lot of people assume it needs to be a fairly sizeable source of running water, but if you watch the video below, you will see a water wheel generator built, running, and generating electricity from a tiny creek.

With a water wheel generator, electricity is generated when the flowing water runs through the water wheel and makes it spin. It is exactly the same principle as the old dynamo lights we used to have on bicycles, back in the day, where the electricity was generated by the revolving wheel. As I remember it used to make stopping at lights interesting, as no revolving wheel equalled zero electricity, and zero electricity equals no bike lights!

Here is a link to a tutorial on ‘Build It Solar’ which shows how to build a DIY water wheel generator from mostly recycled parts, making this an affordable DIY project if you can source the recycled parts required to build the generator. Additionally using recycled parts also allows you to source free backup, replacements part to stockpile and store in case an existing part fails. It also includes a FREE PDF with the build instructions, that you can download and print out. If you are lucky enough to have running water on your land, this would be an awesome project.

Below is an excellent video from ‘Off Road/Off Grid’ detailing their DIY water wheel generator.

 

The ‘Build It Solar’ and the ‘Off-Road/Off Grid’ DIY water wheel generators are just two examples of water wheel generators. There are several different varieties of generators that utilize running water sources in different ways. Basically, the running water still turns the wheel on each model, but the wheels are positioned differently in the running water. There are ‘stream’, ‘undershot’, ‘breastshot’ and ‘backshot’ water wheels to choose from… Here is an excellent explanation of each type of water wheel, together with the pros and cons and efficiencies etc.

Below is an undershot water wheel, similar to the one used for the ‘Build It Solar’ DIY water wheel generator.

UNdershot water wheel

Below is an example of a stream water wheel

Stream water wheel

Below is an example of an overshot water wheel.

Overshot water wheel

BONUS Tutorial: How to Build A 5 Gallon Bucket Hydroelectric Generator

Here is an awesome 35 page PDF instruction manual on how to make a low-cost hydroelectric generator, in a 5-gallon bucket. I’ll be honest, it is not the simplest thing in the world to build, but if you are competent, technically-minded DIY-er, this shouldn’t present too many difficulties.

(Photos from Wikipedia and Off Road/Off Grid)

Free Outdoor Shower Plans

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Firstly I should say – this isn’t just any old outdoor shower, this is possibly the most awesome outdoor shower you could build, and what’s even more awesome is that below are the FREE plans which show you exactly how to build it.

Unfortunately in this case awesomeness costs money… The cost of materials for this outdoor shower is $2500, this is mainly because it is built almost entirely from cedar, which isn’t cheap. That said, if you have the budget to build this outdoor shower, a competent DIYer should be able follow the straightforward plans and complete the project in 2-3 weekends. Get the plans below, there are also other free and paid DIY plans, so check those out as well.

Free Outdoor Shower Plans

(Photo from: The Classic Archives)

25 Ways To Reuse Plastic Bottles

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I doubt there is even one person reading this, who doesn’t have some plastic bottles knocking around the house… We are lucky in that our local authority provides great recycling services, so most of our plastic bottles are recycled this way. Unfortunately many folks, especially those living in the sticks, just don’t have the same recycling services available.

If you are fed up just throwing your plastic bottles in the trash, check out the link below, there are 25 simple projects to recycle and reuse empty plastic bottles – there’s everything from the nice little zip case above, through to a plastic bottle barometer and a plastic bottle hydroponic lettuce garden!

25 Ways To Reuse Plastic Bottles

(Photo from: bojanmanev via Instructables)