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Alex Weir's CD3WD project

PostPosted: Thu Apr 03, 2014 4:24 pm
by philslade
Please see Alex's cd3wd collection of educational material for the developing world

http://www.cd3wd.com/data/index.htm

Alex on Twitter https://twitter.com/Alexweir1949

of course we'll have to print out our survival info, no good on a dead computer.

Re: Alex Weir's CD3WD project

PostPosted: Sat Apr 05, 2014 5:58 pm
by lewis
Thanks very much for that Phil - the CD3WD is a really good resource of information. I used the Appropriate Technology Library (ATL) whilst researching for The Knowledge, which shares a lot of the same references with CD3WD, but doesn't seem to be easily available any more - a really pity.

Re: Alex Weir's CD3WD project

PostPosted: Fri Apr 18, 2014 2:06 pm
by SANEAlex
Quite often if info was freely available on a website and it has since disappeared you can find it or some of it on the internet archive :- https://www.archive.org

A quick search can up with

https://archive.org/details/I_Teach_Des ... tenceFarms

Not sure if it was what you were referring to but maybe useful but as you said in the book you can't rely on a fully functioning net staying up for long after a major civilisation collapse but the site could be a useful resource if you prepare by download a few things you might find useful in a bad scenario if it ever happens.

Re: Alex Weir's CD3WD project

PostPosted: Sun Sep 07, 2014 5:21 pm
by Billy
Clicked the link, but it keeps asking me for my Identification and Password.

Erm... even shortening the address line to www.cd3wd.com nets me the same result. If I click "cancel", it says I am not authorized to view such-and-such... if I click "Okay" and enter nothing, then it just keeps coming back up, asking me for my ID and password...

Soooo, what's a guy to do? Anyone got a bone they can throw me?

Re: Alex Weir's CD3WD project

PostPosted: Sun Sep 07, 2014 9:21 pm
by lewis
Hmmm, CD3WD doesn't seem to be working any more does it... The links in http://the-knowledge.org/en-gb/bibliography/ still work for references, but it would be good to get a stable repository of these important texts

Re: Alex Weir's CD3WD project

PostPosted: Mon Sep 08, 2014 3:06 pm
by Billy
Thanks Doc...

Would still like to know what was at the original link. Maybe we can find a substitute that deals with the same information...

The bibliography... great, now I have another great huge pile of books to buy. :)

By the way, saw John Harrison mentioned in there. What a coincidence. I bring this up because I recently came across a Repeater Pocket Watch - extremely rare and just a fantastic piece of the old world that makes our lives richer just by existing. Further research led me to the conundrum of how the balance wheel of an old clock would expand and contract in the heat and cold, which threw off the clock because it would run faster or slower, which in turn would throw off the ship's navigation since they needed a clock that ran regularly to figure longitude, not one that speed-ed up or slowed down...

His workaround was one of those fixes that leave you standing there, feeling like a 4 year old. Simple, elegant and, in hindsight, so obvious a caveman should have been able to figure it out... but it took over 50 years for Mr. Harrison to come along and make everyone else look downright foolish...

Re: Alex Weir's CD3WD project

PostPosted: Mon Sep 08, 2014 5:34 pm
by lewis
I know problems of variations in temperature and humidity that plagued early marine chronometers (affecting the length of components or viscosity of lubricants, for example), and that Harrison invented components like caged ball bearings, but how did he solve the problem of expansion of the flywheel..?

Re: Alex Weir's CD3WD project

PostPosted: Mon Sep 08, 2014 8:06 pm
by Billy
but how did he solve the problem of expansion of the flywheel..?


Differential expansion. Brass, being an alloy of copper, expands and contracts more when compared to steel (and the temperatures being the same).

So, he put a brass "tire" (tyre?) on the outside of the steel balance wheel. When done correctly, the brass tire's expansion would counteract that of the steel wheel. The outside diameter of the brass increases, but the inside diameter decreases, which squeezes the steel wheel, which is busy trying to expand. Same with contraction. The brass tire wants to contract more than the steel wheel, so the steel resists the "squeezing" of the brass tire.

When in equilibrium, the wheel does not change dimension (diameter) at all, despite the two alloys fighting with one another.

A story about the Elgin Watch Company, from the July issue of Harper's New Monthly Magazine, 1869:

How shall it (the watch) be made to go uniformly through summer and winter? A steel rod maybe fitted into a hollow steel cylinder so perfectly that it will not drop out of its own weight, and yet it can be turned or pulled out by the thumb and finger, and it moves with the softness of velvet rolling on velvet. Hold the same rod in the shut hand for five minutes and the warmth of the flesh will expand it so that one can not drive it in with a sledge-hammer. Then put it in a refrigerator and it will contract till it rattles in the cylinder. If the metal is brass, temperature affects it still more. Winter will so contract the balance-wheel of a watch that it may gain two minutes in a day; or it may be thrown out of time by a few hours' sleigh-riding, or by hanging all night against a cold wall. Uneven temperature is the deadly foe of uniform time-keeping.

In 1767 John Harrison was awarded a premium of L20,000, under an offer of the British Parliament- which had been standing fifty three years-for any invention which should so far overcome this difficulty as to enable shipmasters at sea to determine longitude within thirty miles of accuracy. He gained it by applying to ship chronometers the principle of the compensation-balance, now used in all fine watches. It is simply a balance-wheel with outer rim or tire of brass, and inner rim and cross arm of steel. The cold, which would Contract steel alone and make the circumference of the wheel less, equalizes that by contracting the brass still more, the brass being so confined that its contraction enlarges the wheel. Under the influence of heat the steel's expansion would enlarge the wheel, but then the greater expansion of the brass contracts it. When these two influences are so nicely adjusted that the one exactly counterbalances the other, the watch will keep equal time whether in Alaska or Havana.


http://www.antique-pocket-watch.com/elg ... watch.html

Interestingly, 1 English Pound in 1767 is worth 1510 English Pounds today. Which means Mr. Harrison's prize of 20,000 pounds was worth the equivalent of 30,200,000 pounds today. Translated into dollars, that's $48,648,123....

Not too shabby for a day's work, hey? Told y'all it was one of those "Now, how come I didn't think of that?" types of things... brass expands more than steel, so if you put them together, they'll fight each other to stalemate...

Re: Alex Weir's CD3WD project

PostPosted: Tue Sep 16, 2014 12:08 am
by SANEAlex
Billy wrote:Thanks Doc...

Would still like to know what was at the original link. Maybe we can find a substitute that deals with the same information...

The bibliography... great, now I have another great huge pile of books to buy. :)

By the way, saw John Harrison mentioned in there. What a coincidence. I bring this up because I recently came across a Repeater Pocket Watch - extremely rare and just a fantastic piece of the old world that makes our lives richer just by existing. Further research led me to the conundrum of how the balance wheel of an old clock would expand and contract in the heat and cold, which threw off the clock because it would run faster or slower, which in turn would throw off the ship's navigation since they needed a clock that ran regularly to figure longitude, not one that speed-ed up or slowed down...

His workaround was one of those fixes that leave you standing there, feeling like a 4 year old. Simple, elegant and, in hindsight, so obvious a caveman should have been able to figure it out... but it took over 50 years for Mr. Harrison to come along and make everyone else look downright foolish...


The internet archive does have some of their old pages cached before their site was hacked and I assume the new security login has something to with them being hacked.

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.cd3wd.com

If you wish to explore

I have copies of a fair bit of their stuff about 45 GB their main 6DVDs and their 4 CD novel set one of which is probably mostly duplicates for me as it seems to be Gutenburg Novels there is lots of stuff in pdf form on various forms of farming and machinery on the DVDs.

Re: Alex Weir's CD3WD project

PostPosted: Sun Oct 04, 2015 11:36 am
by thepostman2020
There seems to be a link to the individual files at this siteL

http://www.fastonline.org/CD3WD_40/CD3WD/INDEX.HTM

The Download the Full CD does not work.

It appears Alex Weir passed away in 2014 and a domain name squatter jumped on his site. See: http://www.cd3wd.info/about.html

There is a Reddit Threat with a link to a Torrent of the files. https://www.reddit.com/r/homestead/comm ... are_still/

I would highly recommend as many people as possible downloading and seeding the torrent.

Of course you will need to comply with local laws. Plus your Internet Service Provider may have rules about the use of torrents. In this case I think the torrent is 100 percent legal, like downloading a Linux iso file. But because torrents are associated with software piracy some ISP's are funny about them. But I am not a lawyer, I only drink beer with them sometimes.