Hey. I’m trying to brainstorm things that will be valuable again in the future. Things that do the job without electricity & oil and all that. Crafty stuff and food stuff. Any ideas?
How about:
- Pedal-powered sewing machine.
- Loom
- ???
any kind of stainless steel utensil or cookware, i.e. knives, fryingpans etc.
I have plenty of ideas for the million or so miles of rebar in roads.
you mean not-stainless steel knives?
they sharpen better, and jsut happen to rock harder…
ew. I got another one: a straight razor. Gonna be hard to find Mach3 cartridges in a few years.
I find that letting my wooly red beard grow out greatly decreases my need for a razor. 
Yeah, that’s what I’ve been doing lately. Sometimes I look “Amish”. Sometimes I look like a serial killer.
/shrug
Ah, well, what’re ya gonna do…?
I refuse to become a Beardo.
mwahahahaha… Resistance is futile! ;D
But seriously, didn’t Native American men have their facial hair plucked with some sort of wood tweezers…?
They used clam shells. Plucked all their body hair off with them. I don’t like plucking, I’d rather just shave.
That’s right, you’re in the PNW.
In my neck of the woods (Ohio) I’m pretty sure it was partially split wood or maybe bamboo…?
At any rate, I think I could deal with it, but it’s not much fun, esp depending on just how thorough “all their body hair” is! 
my “all their body hair” is pretty thorough… except on the top of my head.
but back to razors, i remember reading in jean auel’s “the valley of the horses” that jondolar (the main male protagonist) who was a flint knapper… excuse me, let me e-prime that statement …who knapped flint, could make a blade sharp enough to shave with. granted, 1) it’s fiction and 2) the author doesn’t define the degree of shaved-ness. i can hack off my beard with a dull pocketknife, but it doesn’t compare to the mach3.
so, the question remains: can you knapp a blade that can compare with the mach3?
I would say Obsidian definately squashes the mach3 in sharpness. Obsidian flakes off 10,000 times sharper than a razor blade. I’ve seen microscopic photos. It’s nuts. One of the tracker school instructors shaved off his arms hair with a flake to show us.
that rocks! metamorphism trumps the steel industry.
any idea how beer-bottle-bottom blades compare?
pretty much same thing. obsidian = volcanically induced glass.
Where I come from we have razor clams. I think they are called that because they look like a straight razor, but I think they were also used for shaving unless that’s just a myth. Anyhow they are sharp. Don’t want to step on one. As for your original topic…how bout washboards, meat grinder, grain grinder, all things cast iron, hand drills, planes, and any other type of woodworking tools, oil lamps that will run on multiple fuels. I’d say just head to some garage sales and antiques shops…most antique shops have some cheap stuff along with the expensive furniture.
How about a metate y mano?
They’re kinda expensive… But maybe worth it. Coffee grinder, corn grinder, cocoa grinder…
Anyone here made one?
A mortar and pistel set, candles, fire wood, tinder, pots and pan made to be used over fire pits, raw hide and goat skin condoms [gross], wool clothing, rewilding like classes, medicine [I hate to sale medicine, but if ‘they’ want our resources there must be some equal-minded sharing going back and forth, this way and that way, at least to make everything equal and a fear trade of energy…maybe not right away, a person can take time to heal and then pay back (return the favor) when they are healed…but it’s not our job to keep people alive forever, our job is to survive individualy in the end and and try to stay together, I say so], shoes,
A two man cross cut saw would be valuable once there is no gasoline for the chain saw.
Snowflower
Yeah!
Scout, the appropriate tech class where I work is building a hand/foot powered grain thresher and a grinder this semester. I’ll take notes - we’ll see how it goes. There’s a lot of pedal power activity/inventing going on in this area (western MA).