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Guy makes a knife from scratch. He has to make a smelter first.
- polynomial 15y agoWell at least he didn't have to invent the universe.
- mumrah 15y agoRelevant: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan#Cosmos_.281980.29 http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan#Cosmos_.281980.29
- s00pcan 15y ago"If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe."
- peterquest 15y agohttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSgiXGELjbc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSgiXGELjbc
- sixtofour 15y agoMan and God are having a pleasant discussion about the great advances Man has made in science. God reminisces about how far Man has come since He first made Man from dirt. Man gets a little boastful and says "Oh we can do that. Life from dirt? That's easy." God smiles and says "Oh? I'd like to see it please." Man says "No problem," and bends down to scoop up a handful of dirt. God says "No no no, you go get your own dirt."
- Simon_M 15y agoWow, real-life Minecraft.
- mcantor 15y agoFor his next project, he will store a chest inside a chest!
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- patrickod 15y agoSite was loading quite slowly for me and missing some of the pictures. The Google cache of the first part is here for those who want it http://tinyurl.com/6k2mxue http://tinyurl.com/6k2mxue
- olalonde 15y agoWhy did you shorten the URL? http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:5znUFwfWS1sJ:www.arscives.com/bladesign/tamahagane/main.htm+http://www.arscives.com/bladesign/tamahagane/main.htm&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ie&source=www.google.ie http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:5znUFwf...
- eli 15y ago"Charcoal has to be chopped to a specific size for the operation to run smoothly. I chopped mine during the days before the run in little chunks about a cubic inch or less." Chopped using what?
- napierzaza 15y agoLooks like wood charcoal. Use your imagination.
- RickHull 15y agoIt's a good point, with recursion bonus!
- wisty 15y agoLater on, he uses a forge, anvil, grinder, flux, chemicals for polishing, etc. He's not using cave-man technology. I think he built the smelter because you can't really buy them.
- ChuckMcM 15y agoI agree, and he got his ore from the Ceramic store, no pick and hammer breaking down rocks from the quarry.
- tomjen3 15y agoAn axe made of wood? That is what I do in Minecraft, at least.
- barrkel 15y agoI think he's trying to make a knife from scratch, not make a knife only using stone-age technology.
- eli 15y agoHey, I get it and I think it's actually a neat project. But "from scratch" is an entirely meaningless phrase.
- js2 15y agoAlso, http://www.thetoasterproject.org/ http://www.thetoasterproject.org/
- bobo418 15y agoa
- mikeknoop 15y agoI believe this is related: http://www.ted.com/talks/thomas_thwaites_how_i_built_a_toaster_from_scratch.html http://www.ted.com/talks/thomas_thwaites_how_i_built_a_toast...
- wallflower 15y agoAlso, the classic essay "I, Pencil" > I am a lead pencil—the ordinary wooden pencil familiar to all boys and girls and adults who can read and write.* Writing is both my vocation and my avocation; that's all I do. You may wonder why I should write a genealogy. http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/rdPncl1.html http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/rdPncl1.html
- rospaya 15y agoVery interesting. Makes me think if there is any knowledge or technology that we lost in the process? Is there something we knew but don't know anymore?
- jevinskie 15y agoAmazing! I never knew you could smelt tiny amounts of ore with a common household microwave!
- dstein 15y agoIt's reasons like this, that I really wonder if someone from today were to time travel into the past if anything they know would be useful at all. Medieval people would probably think we're all idiots.
- kabdib 15y agoSimple knowledge, such as the disease model of sickness and "microorganisms exist, keep things clean" would be useful. You could probably cobble together a water-drop microscope and demonstrate the difference between (say) clean wounds and infected ones. Fleas = plague. All that. Knowing how to distill hard liquor would make you popular as well.
- nosse 15y agoMaking hard liquor worth drinking is surprisingly difficult. It's lot easier if you know how to make activated carbon, but making activated carbon is difficult with equipment of that age(possible though).
- hessenwolf 15y agoJust try saying 'micro-organisms' from the top of a witch-burning pyre.
- harshpotatoes 15y agoI think if random individuals from today were to go into the past, we would mostly look pretty stupid. However, I think if a large enough group traveled into the past, we would have enough useful knowledge to wow them/revolutionize their society.
- hessenwolf 15y agoConquer/enslave/pillage, but yes, probably the best thing about us is our development in cooperation.
- hessenwolf 15y agoConquer/enslave/pillage, but, yes, probably the best thing about us is our development in cooperation.
- johtso 15y agoHere's a cached version of the page: http://web.archive.org/web/20081012031044/http://www.arscives.com/bladesign/tamahagane/main.htm http://web.archive.org/web/20081012031044/http://www.arscive...
- jaz 15y agoThis reminds me of the Heritage School [1], which teaches people skills such as blacksmithing, knifemaking, working with Damascus steel, and woodworking. I think it's great these skills haven't completely died out. [1] http://www.bc3.edu/heritage-school/about-heritage-school.asp http://www.bc3.edu/heritage-school/about-heritage-school.asp
- pixdamix 15y agoIt reminds me of a Marcin Jakubowski talk at Ted about "Open-Source blueprints for civilizations"[1] From TED: Using wikis and digital fabrication tools, TED Fellow Marcin Jakubowski is open-sourcing the blueprints for 50 farm machines, allowing anyone to build their own tractor or harvester from scratch. And that's only the first step in a project to write an instruction set for an entire self-sustaining village (starting cost: $10,000). [1]: http://www.ted.com/talks/marcin_jakubowski.html http://www.ted.com/talks/marcin_jakubowski.html
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- BenSS 15y agoI was thinking of the Global Villege construction set too, they've come a long way (good summary vid) http://vimeo.com/16106427 http://vimeo.com/16106427
- tsuraan 15y agoThe project's site is http://openfarmtech.org http://openfarmtech.org . I don't think they have their full 50 machines, but what they do have looks pretty interesting.
- chrisjsmith 15y agoBack in the past, we just made knives with what we had. Sticks, couple of nettle stems and a few minutes flintknapping and you had a perfectly good blade. I've actually done it myself. Metal is way higher tech than is required to survive.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- sixtofour 15y agoSome pictures are missing from the site and Google cache. You can see the pictures if you "view image" on the blank pictures. Hard reloading seems to pull some in too.
- crocowhile 15y agoThe link here has all the pictures: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2644988 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2644988
- pbhjpbhj 15y agoIt was running slow for me so I used nyud.net mirror and it seemed to speed things up and pick up the missing images: http://www.arscives.com.nyud.net/bladesign/tamahagane/main.htm http://www.arscives.com.nyud.net/bladesign/tamahagane/main.h...
- flexd 15y agoThis is amazing (still) but hasn't it been on here before? I remember reading through it ages ago.
- flexd 15y agoI might be wrong (search turns up nothing), I have seen this before though and thought it came from here (since this is usually where I find my quality reading material). No need to get all downvotey, I wish I had the authors abilities.
- RomP 15y agoAlso, this reaction by Seth Godin some time ago to this guy's project: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/10/what-youre-up-1.html http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/10/what-youre-u...
- RomP 15y agoI sometimes wonder how long would it take for the civilization to re-create the current level of technology, if all the material artifacts disappear one day: books, computers, robots, factories, even hammers. If all that remains is the current level of knowledge in the heads of 7bln people, how long would it take from the stone age to Core i7, heart transplants and Boeing 787s? And how much different the world would be if we had to re-create this from scratch without the legacy of previous technological generations?
- toddh 15y agoA question I've had about this is where are the ready supplies of materials that could be used in the recreation? Could we spread across the hills and still find iron and copper deposits? Aren't these all played out by now? We would need to shift to another economic base from new materials I think rather than recreate what we had before, because that's gone.
- btilly 15y agoAccording to http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2010/11/building-a-telegraph-from-scratch.html http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2010/11/building-a-telegrap... the materials still exist, at least in sufficient amounts to build a simple telegraph.
- kragen 15y agoWell, if the artifacts actually disappeared, yes. But if they just got buried somewhere until they rusted into unusability, we could dig up the rust and smelt it.
- DrCatbox 15y agoTechnology is also a sociological concept, it is in the minds of the people, it is not merely the products such as blades and core i7s. All those products of technology are the result of a specific culture, it is the result of specific societies and the interaction and relationships that people have with each other. For technology to happen a society requires permanent hierarchical organization (enslavement where the earliest examples) and strict divison of labor. Resources are merely a by-factor, which a society can workaround, when you dont have X to do Y, you make Z from A and do Y. Its an interesting question, if you removed the artifacts, and kept the same organizations and relationships, my guess is that would mean almost no change. Instead of doing calculations with computers you would do computations with computers. (The first computers where human). If you removed the books and tax-software, still the tax people would walk around collecting their taxes and "inventing" bookkeeping. And we, fellow programmers, would still ponder of nice mind tricks and think of their solutions then apply them in society.
- jrussino 15y agoThis reminds me of the "Metalworking Shop From Scrap" book series: http://www.lindsaybks.com/dgjp/djgbk/series/ http://www.lindsaybks.com/dgjp/djgbk/series/
- WalterBright 15y agoI'd like to see someone make a knife without using any modern technology precursors whatsoever. That means starting from using ones hands and what is available from nature in its natural form. I think it'd be quite an accomplishment.
- gaustin 15y agoPeople already do this. Some only go so far as stone blades, or allow modern tools for certain steps. Others bootstrap the whole process from stone-age to steel. I've never done it. It's incredibly time consuming but satisfying, from the first hand accounts I've read. You can cut hours or days off of your work time by using modern tools for some of the most seemingly trivial steps.
- hugh3 15y agoI sharpened a stick. Isn't that the next best thing?
- kragen 15y agoWho are these people? Do they stop at steel? What should I be Googling?
- user24 15y agostart at [flint knapping] and work from there
- gaustin 15y agoWhat do you mean stop at steel? Search for Tai Goo, Tim Lively and Wayne Goddard. Primitive knifemaking is another good term to search. <a href="http://www.aescustomknives.com/>Ariel http://www.aescustomknives.com/>Ariel Salaverria</a> doesn't do primitive as far as I know, but he does have some tutorials for making some things that most makers buy/outsource. Tutorials for resin impermeated handle materials, like denim micarta. This cool post showed up when I Googled "primitive knifemaking" <a href="http://paleoplanet69529.yuku.com/topic/40386#.TfYp7UfW5oE>http://paleoplanet69529.yuku.com/topic/40386#.TfYp7UfW5oE</a> http://paleoplanet69529.yuku.com/topic/40386#.TfYp7UfW5oE...; If you (or anyone else, for that matter) is interested in talking about this stuff, shoot me an email (it's in my profile).
- jws 15y agoBought his ore? Terry Pratchett dug his own ore from his estate when he smelted the iron for his sword, though he used a blacksmith after getting to the iron bar stage. http://www.news.com.au/technology/terry-pratchett-creates-a-sword-with-meteorites/story-e6frfro0-1225926584339 http://www.news.com.au/technology/terry-pratchett-creates-a-... (Being a knight no longer conveys the right to carry a sword, it is a violation of the knife laws, so he keeps the sword hidden. Such days.)
- dmm 15y ago> Being a knight no longer conveys the right to carry a sword Come to America. Open/concealed carry is legal for every sane and non-felonious adult in many areas, gentleman and commoner alike.
- anamax 15y agoBe careful - some knives, such as switchblades and dirks/double-edged knives, are illegal/restricted in a lot of places.
- khafra 15y agoI think it's funny that in most of America, someone with a permit can carry a brace of automatic pistols and enough extra magazines to mow through a dozen preschool classes; but brass knuckles and spring-opening knives are still off-limits.
- dedward 15y agospring OR gravity-assisted knives. Yup. That's a silly law. Really, really silly.
- dmm 15y agoMany laws in the US regarding weapons were motivated by racial and economics tensions, as in people were worried about disenfranchised groups acquiring weapons and revolting. Maybe that has something to do with it? > automatic pistols Automatic guns are extremely expensive and hard to get because none manufactured after 1986 can be sold to civilians. They are rarely used in crimes. Automatic weapons are not magic killing machines. They are excellent ways to turn money into noise but have limited tactical use, suppression fire, etc.
- ramchip 15y agoI remember a cooperative online game, with a mostly text-only interface, in which you could build smelters and tools and climb gradually the tech tree. It was very detailed and interesting but I lost track of its name and URL. Does it ring a bell for anybody?
- lzm 15y agoDwarf Fortress, perhaps?
- teamonkey 15y agoThat's probably what he means, but the same is true for the more-accessible Minecraft.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- IsaacL 15y agoSounds like my own game, Shintolin (http://www.shintolin.co.uk http://www.shintolin.co.uk). It was a mostly text-based multiplayer game set in the stone age, where players started from scratch but could gradually develop the tools to build a village and farm. I planned to have a whole technology progression through bronze and iron age technology, but I stopped working on it a while ago (it still has a few players though). Don't know if it's the one you're talking about.
- ramchip 15y agoThat's not it, but thanks for the input. It's interesting that you've released the source.
- jholman 15y agoA Tale In The Desert ( atitd.com ) is a subscription graphical MMO which has some limited properties in common with what you describe. It's cooperative, it's not graphically sophisticated, and collaboratively climbing a (relatively shallow) tech tree is the main goal of the game.
- dfranke 15y ago"If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe." --Carl Sagan
- DeanCollinsLCC 15y agowow!!! makes my weekend of doing stuff around the house look weak.
- zeteo 15y agoA really interesting melange. This is a Spanish guy, using Japanese metalworking techniques, and Imperial measurement units... (They use metric in Japan and Spain, don't they?) For the purists: using modern technologies is OK, as long as you're fully aware of the alternative. There's no enlightenment in using a stone tool for days to achieve what a powered tool does in minutes.
- rumblestrut 15y agoMan, I take a lot of things for granted.
- dedward 15y agoI may have missed something - My one curiosity would be if his decision to not fold, but just straight mash the bits of steel together was not skipping a crucial step - folding to ensuring uniformity. Would that not make the sword have weak spots here and there?
- dandrews 15y agoHe folded five times.