# Best Old Machining Books?



## cheepo45 (Dec 20, 2011)

Hi Everyone,
 I just got a Kindle electronic reader, and I have found some great old machining and steam and gas engine books on google books (all Free!) Does anyone have any suggestions for more books?
 Here are some of the books I have downloaded:
Modern Toolmaking Methods by Franklin Day Jones
Machine Shop Catechism by American Machinist
Gas, Gasoline, and Oil Engines by John B. Rathburn
Machine Tools and Their Operation by Fred Colvin and Frank Stanley
The Boy Mechanic by Popular Mechanics

There is a wealth of information available in these books!

                       Thanks, Cheepo45


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## Sshire (Dec 20, 2011)

Great list. I have the google books app for my iPad and would add "The complete practical machinist" by Joshua Rose to the list.
Stan


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## PTsideshow (Dec 20, 2011)

Here are a couple more sites that you will enjoy
 craftsman space  plans for projects and e books scroll down the whole page.
 internet archive lots of books and such steam, metal work, welding, you name it
 a great ebook handling and sorting program this is free program only drawback is they up date about once a week, too often for my tastes but they are paying attention to correcting bugs and such. Also has a great list of free and paid live feed subscriptions for magazines and newspapers. :big:


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## gmac (Dec 21, 2011)

Cheepo45;
Thanks for the list. I've been considering buying a Kindle but am concerned about it's ability to present line drawings and images - how easily read are they? Can you adequately zoom the drawings to read their content?
Thanks - Merry Xmas!
Cheers
Garry


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## shred (Dec 21, 2011)

gmac  said:
			
		

> Cheepo45;
> Thanks for the list. I've been considering buying a Kindle but am concerned about it's ability to present line drawings and images - how easily read are they? Can you adequately zoom the drawings to read their content?
> Thanks - Merry Xmas!
> Cheers
> Garry


On the traditional Kindles, it works but is sort of a pain to zoom in and out on scanned PDFs. I've resorted to wearing my Optivisors a time or two (the Kindle has enough resolution on the screen that works ok). I've not tried the Fire and Touch versions yet.


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## PTsideshow (Dec 21, 2011)

I have an old style B&W kindle they don't do PDF real good drawings in the books are ok but regular PDFs are a pain.

I bought mine in late oct because they said that the fire New color one wouldn't be out till some time in Jan. Well they lied 
I thought that I wouldn't want a tablet, after my son showed me his ASUS 10.1" transformer tablet. Boy was I wrong. 
As at the the time all of the apple polishers, are crazy about the I tablets etc. And that's all I could get responses on even when I said I didn't care to hear about the Ipad, as I didn't want one and still don't!
I am considering getting one of the Asus 10.1 tablet after the holidays, Wifi only! No monthly bill like the Ipad for 3/4G data use. it works with the home connection or other wifi's.

There is nothing wrong with the e readers but the tables can give so much more mainly a larger screen for us aging old farts.

I like my Kindle I did get the one with the 3G/wifi connection to do away with the adds. I like mine other than some of the scanning of numbers and fractions and some drawing for E books really sucs. If you use a larger font. The drawings, photos will not be on the same page as the info, just the nature of the small screen.

I would suggest to go to a big box store like Best Buy and check the tablets and e readers out before you buy whether it is on line or brick and mortar.


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## cheepo45 (Dec 21, 2011)

I use the Adobe Reader app. on my kindle fire. I download the pdf from google books to my laptop, and transfer it to the kindle. It works great-you can double tap the screen to enlarge the page. 
The line drawings come out nice and clear. Don't use the pdf through amazon-too blurry. I love these old books. They were written when machinists were much more respected than we are today! And to think that back then it was done with no electronics! ;D


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## Blue_Rock (Dec 21, 2011)

Hi, on the subject of whether Kindles are OK to read documents with diagrams and pictures, in my experience, with a B&W 6" Kindle, the answer is they do a reasonable job in that it displays images clealy but I have found that unless the images are relatively small, it's a pain to use because the Kindle software truncates the PDF images and shows a portion of the image across two or more pages.

I also have an Acer 10" tablet and find it much better to use to read PDFs. The screen is much larger and it displays images in a more convenient manner.

I suppose it horses for courses. The Kindle is great to read ebooks, especially paperback novels, but I prefer using a regular computer or my tablet to read PDFs as I think the screen on the Kindle (either the 6" or 7") is too small to conveniently display anything but smaller images.


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