8 h 1 minAudiobook12 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What could curiosity and a little patience help you discover?
In Things To Make, Archibald Williams invites you to see practical craft as a source of pleasure and understanding. This handbook starts with a simple belief: you can do more than you think. Its plain explanations give curiosity a clear purpose and encourage confidence through experience.
The book also offers a way to understand how things work. Balance, leverage, air resistance, and the flow of a current connect practical interests with science. Williams brings these ideas within reach of general readers, while his emphasis on patience and care gives the handbook a steady, encouraging spirit.
What you’ll discover
- Curiosity with a purpose Explore a handbook that treats practical interests as an invitation to understand the world.
- An earlier craft tradition Discover the outlook behind a handbook for people interested in craft at home.
- Science you can explore Meet balance, leverage, and air resistance as ideas connected with everyday practical interests.
- The value of patience Discover why patience and care stand at the heart of Williams's approach to craft.
- Confidence through doing Find encouragement in the belief that practical skill is something anyone can learn.
Who will love it
For tinkerers, model makers, parents looking for weekend projects, and anyone who enjoys the feel of tools, how machines work, and the pleasure of making a useful thing with their own hands.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Start with good tools and benches
- Build sturdy things for the home
- Use cheap materials with care
- Signals and circuits from simple parts
- Steam engines teach by building
- Turbines, tops and boilers need caution
- Water, pumps and the pull of the air
- Experiments, instruments and amusements
Formats and delivery
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- Large-print eBook
- The same book in bigger, clearer type, from the first page.
- Audiobook
- 8 h 1 min, complete, read by Lucas Linden.
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas in about 12 minutes, to read or to hear.
- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Hardcover
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
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Read and hear Things To Make in 25 languages and switch at any time. Or read two side by side, paragraph by paragraph: the way to learn a language with a book you love.
Things To Make
by Archibald Williams · 1918
A trestle, a steam turbine, a box kite and a pendulum drawing machine all wait for your hands in one workshop book.
Medium level5–10 hours to read25 languages
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In short
Things To Make is a workshop book by Archibald Williams, who died in 1934. It was written in the days of shillings and pence, when a boy or a grown hobbyist built nearly everything from wood, tin, brass wire and a few pennies of glue.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
Start with good tools and benches
The book opens with the equipment every maker needs. The first chapter builds a sawing trestle, a stable stand with four angled legs and a notched top. Williams argues that wood cuts far more easily when it is held firm, and anyone used to sawing on a wobbly chair will notice the difference at once.
The legs are set into notches cut in the top, and each leg gets a shoulder so that the top's weight rests on wood and not on nails. Williams tells you to use each leg for marking only once and to number the legs and their places. He admits the method sounds complicated but says it goes faster than it can be described.
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What is Things To Make about?
It is a collection of practical projects with step-by-step directions, covering woodwork, furniture, electrical gear, model steam engines, kites, gliders, scientific experiments and toys, all made with simple tools and cheap materials.
Who wrote Things To Make and when?
Archibald Williams wrote it. He died in 1934, and the book reflects the early twentieth century, with prices in shillings and pence and equipment like gramophones, dry cells and acetylene bicycle lamps.
Do I need a workshop to use this book?
Many projects need only a knife, a saw and glue, such as the matchbox cabinet, wrestling puppets and paper gliders. The engine and boiler chapters are for those with files, drills and a soldering iron.
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