Sustainable Small-Scale Brick Production

Increasing efficiency in small-scale brick production without reducing quality or under-firing.

A Simple Retort

How to make and use a simple retort for separating gold-mercury amalgam.

Lime Production

There is a long history of production and use of lime in Sri Lanka. Its main use has been as a cementing agent and as a decorative whitewash in the building industry.

A Woodworking Bench

This technical brief shows how a woodworking bench with vice can be made without the use of steel components.

Alternatives to Portland Cement

Cement is an important binding agent in concretes, mortars and renders, and is used for the production of walling blocks and roofing tiles.

Methods for Testing Lime in the Field

The acknowledged standard test for available lime is the ASTM Rapid Sugar Test, which uses relatively simple, portable laboratory glassware and common reagents.

Utilization of Cow-dung in Brickmaking

Addition of certain organic materials improves the plasticity of clay making it more workable.

Plant Fibre Processing

Cyril Jarman

This is the last of the Small-scale Textile series and covers the pre-spinning processes which make plant fibres suitable for textile manufacture. The book includes not only familiar plant fibres such as cotton, sisal and jute, but also less well known fibres from plants such as Himalayan nettle, pi...

Technology Development in Rural Industries

Hannah Piek

This book is a study of the development and acquisition of technology by a group of small and medium-sized rural industries in Sichuan province, China. The enterprises are mainly collective ones, but they are compared with other ownership groups, such as private and state enterprises. Careful analys...

Natural Dyeing of Textiles

This fact sheet looks at types of textiles, equipment, dyes and mordants for home dyeing and very small-scale commercial dyeing.