My resources for research, informations and entertainment

Last Update 13-02-2019

Books of course!

Even as the Internet got usable and more and more websites for the hobbyist popped up, books are still an excellent source for projects, techniques and ideas.
Some of my favorite books, that get read more than one time and found very helpful, interesting or even entertaining:

  • Holes, Contours and Surfaces by Richard F. Moore
    • This is a book by the Moore company on how-to run a jig borer, jig grinder and a profile/surface grinder. It is full with usefull techniques even if you are only running a normal milling machine or surface grinder.
  • Foundations of Mechanical Accuracy by Wayne R. Moore
    • Another book by the Moore company, this goes into detail about the construction details of precision machines like jig borers or coordinate measuring machines.
    Interesting book if you are going to build or rebuild machine tools of any kind.
  • Metalworking, sink or swim
    • The book by Tom Lipton. It is a more or less loose collection of tips and techniques, sorted by some general topics like "milling machine", "lathe" or fabrication. Also a good portion of the book handles shop infrastructure, rigging and material handling.
    Some more or less funny anecdotes are also included, lots of photographs but sometimes it is a bit hard to get the connection between the text and the photographs.
  • Machineshop Trade Secrets
    • Almost the same style as the previous book, a lot of useful shop techniques. Bunch of b/w photographs, very good organized into different topics
  • Machinists Bedside Reader
    • These are three of the most fun books for the hobbyist (And everybody else interested in machining)
  • The Model Engineers Workshop Manual
    • One of the best books ever written for the model engineer. Very good drawings for a wide range of projects, beginning at very basic stuff like clamps up to complex tools like boring heads or ball turners.

    ...then there are different websites:

    Personal websites, blogs or project logs

    :
  • Tom Lipton, Nothing to strong ever broke - Tom Liptons Blog, good amount of interesting Posts, seems like most of his new content is directly postet on his Youtube channel
  • ZK Project Notebook - Metal- and Woodworking projects
  • Clickspring - Clock- and Instrumentmaker, builds projects to a very high standard - You should definetly check out his Youtube channel too.
  • Gadgetbuilder - A very early website for homeshop machinists, showing a lot of usefull shop projects and gadgets
  • Dans Hobbies - The site of Dan Sherman, metal- and woodworking - He has also a Youtube channel thats worth to take a look at.

    • Reference websites:


  • Lathes.co.uk - the worlds’ largest MACHINE TOOL REFERENCE ARCHIVE
  • Anglo-Swiss Tools - A collection on pictures, manuals and references on swiss machine tools and accessories.
  • Precision Instrumens - 50 Tidbits for precision engineering/machining

    • ...and webforums:

  • Practical Machinist
    A forum thats targeted at the professional machinist - Questions about hobby-/import machines are not well received and topics in that direction will be closed generally.
    But it is a very viable source for more advanced informations, a lot of very talented persons write there and are willing to share their knowledge.
  • Homeshop Machinist
    A forum for the homegamer, hobbyist and weekend warrior. Lots of off topic threads there, but also good topics on the subject. The famous shop made tools thread is worth a read!
    Very old school forum software, very limited on posting pictures (No board upload, only four pictures per post), so not much projects get postet there.

    • ..and Instagram! Wait, what?

    Thats an information source that I found very late - I was thinking that it is only a photo platform to show food or pictures of yourself taken at an angle from above. But thats not the case, there is a good amount of people that share photos of their projects that they do in their shops at home and at their day job.

    A good way to search on Instagram for certain topics are hash tags - Thats like a search term that everybody can add to his photographs.
    Very common machinist related hash tags are for example:

  • #instamachinist
  • #machinist
  • #manualmachinist

    • Browsing trough those pictures can be a lot of fun, it is like visiting a friends shop and looking at what they are working on.

    Podcasts

    I commute roughly one hour per day, that is a lot of time to listen to audio books or podcasts in the car. Those are my favourites to listen to, most are not exactly machining related, but still fun and interesting to listen to: