Book reprints after Lindsay

Home Model Engine Machinist Forum

Help Support Home Model Engine Machinist Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

WisJim

Well-Known Member
Joined
Dec 8, 2020
Messages
92
Reaction score
58
Location
Menomonie, Wisconsin
When I look at online sources of used/new books, I find that since Lindsay quite publishing his top quality reprints, there are a number of other new to me companies offering reprints of many titles similar to what Lindsay offered in the past. Has anyone here had experience with any of these newer publishers? A couple that I recall are Legare Street Press, Forgotten Books, and Sky Horse Publishing. I'm tempted to order some books by some of these publishers, but I have also gotten some print on demand books that were of poor quality.
Anyone have any experience to share about newer reprints of older titles?
 
I think Lindsay Books was sold to someone who may still offer those titles, but I forget where the new seller is located online.
I think it was a closeout sale of remaining Lindsay inventory.

I think some of the books at the link below are accessible.
I am not sure if they are downloadable.

https://openlibrary.org/publishers/Lindsay_Publications

.
 
Last edited:
I did buy a number of Lindsay books from someone else, probably the seller you are thinking of, and they had a final clear out sale awhile ago, with quite a limited selection of books. I'm hoping that at least one of the newer publishers is producing books up to the standards of Lindsay. His publications were high quality--I just wish that my finances would have allowed me to buy all the books I wanted as each catalog arrived in the mail.
I often look at books that are archived online, but I much prefer to have a good hard copy to refer to and read. The online versions, such as on Google or openlibrary, do let me look them over help me to decide if I want to spend the money on a hard copy or not.

Jim
 
When I look at online sources of used/new books, I find that since Lindsay quite publishing his top quality reprints, there are a number of other new to me companies offering reprints of many titles similar to what Lindsay offered in the past. Has anyone here had experience with any of these newer publishers? A couple that I recall are Legare Street Press, Forgotten Books, and Sky Horse Publishing. I'm tempted to order some books by some of these publishers, but I have also gotten some print on demand books that were of poor quality.
Anyone have any experience to share about newer reprints of older titles?

It turns out that publishing has reached a giant of giants stride. Publishing, now, is capable of printing a SINGLE book for the same price each as hundreds, thousands, milliions! I bought a book a couple years ago that said "used" on it (online bookstore) but when it arrived, it was new and never had been opened. I was flabbergasted, as in the online bookstore, right next to the "used" book, was the same exact "new" book but for a higher price! I really don't like deception like that.

Then I found a book I wanted to see if it was any good. It was poorly written in HUGE type with at least one space between lines and only about 90 pages. The story was childish but this "awthor" had half a dozen titles. Naturally I wrote a scathing review so others would not be scammed. Honestly, and especially Steamchix, Greentwinx, and jasonbx could ALL write better stuff than this fellow. These guys can write a book in a day, why not publish?

PS, Learn to kill off your hero in the middle of the book. I just can't do that and thus my stories are KRAP! My heroes are just too wonderful, it is the same as committing sewerside.
 
I did get a six part series on the casting and building of the green twin published in Live Steam Magazine.
It was a bit time consuming to write all that and make sure it was easy to read, coherent, and most importantly correct.

I know Jason has published in ME, and another fellow here published in ME using a freelance of a Dake engine using my Dake drawings.

For the green twin engine, I asked the publisheer for guidance, ie: where did he want the emphasis; on the foundry aspects, machining, assembly/painting, etc.?
They basically tell you "Do the best you can", and so most articles are about machining, which is what most hobby folks know.
I spanned the entire process, which was 3D modeling, pattern making (3D printing and manual pattern making), mold making, casting, machining, assembly, etc.

The problem with publishing in a magzine is that they own that particular arrangement of your work, and can use it forever.
In order to use my green twin material, I have to write it up in a different form, with a different arrangement.
I was glad to be able to reach as many as possible in the hobby, but from this point onwards, I would self publish articles in pdf format.

I have purchased a publishing program (I don't think it was very expensive; maybe $100.00), and will use that with the 1/2 scale Ball Hopper Monitor article that I will create. I plan on distributing the BHM article for free, and open-sourced, so that it can be shared anywhere, any time, by anyone, without any copyright problems (for non-commercial use).

It is a bit of an art to writing, but once you do some of it, it becomes easier.

To avoid copyright issues, I develop 3D models of engines from photos of the original engines, and thus the material is orginal and unique.

Edit:
I have also posted a number of sets of drawings here, including drawing for the Dake, a No.21 engine, the Bernay, and the Green Twin Oscillator, and they are also open-source for non-commercial use.
I basically plan to open-source everything I do, in support of the hobby.
.
Edit2:
Rich Carlstedt is a member here, and he published his Ironclad Monitor engine plans (somewhere) in the public domain.
Rich has spent countless hours/years in creating these drawings and accurately documenting the Monitor engine, and he has shared them for free with the hobby community.

.
 
Last edited:
Edit:
I have also posted a number of sets of drawings here, and they are also open-source for non-commercial use.
I basically plan to open-source everything I do, in support of the hobby.
.
I want to thank you for your generosity, not many people in today's society would take the time the effort to support anything let alone a hobby.
 
I did get a six part series on the casting and building of the green twin published in Live Steam Magazine.
It was a bit time consuming to write all that and make sure it was easy to read, coherent, and most importantly correct.

I know Jason has published in ME, and another fellow here published in ME using a freelance of a Dake engine using my Dake drawings.

For the green twin engine, I asked the publisheer for guidance, ie: where did he want the emphasis; on the foundry aspects, machining, assembly/painting, etc.
They basically tell you "Do the best you can", and so most articles are about machining, which is what most hobby folks know.
I spanned the entire process, which was 3D modeling, pattern making (3D printing and manual pattern making), mold making, casting, machining, assembly, etc.

The problem with publishing in a magzine is that they own that particular arrangement of your work, and can use it forever.
In order to use my green twin material, I have to write it up in a different form, with a different arrangement.
I was glad to be able to reach as many as possible in the hobby, but from this point onwards, I would self publish articles in pdf format.

I have purchased a publishing program (I don't think it was very expensive; maybe $100.00), and will use that with the 1/2 scale Ball Hopper Monitor article that I will create. I plan on distributing the BHM article for free, and open-sourced, so that it can be shared anywhere, any time, by anyone, without any copyright problems (for non-commercial use).

It is a bit of an art to writing, but once you do some of it, it becomes easier.

To avoid copyright issues, I develop 3D models of engines from photos of the original engines, and thus the material is orginal and unique.

.
Did you kill your protagonist? Technical writing is quite different from most other types. Even in colleges they teach Technical Writing as a different subject, class or kind of writing than "English" (or french or german or thai or chinese)

Did I ever give you mi spiel on how different classes of peeps write? Well, it goes like this: as you know there are three major classes of peeps, lower, middle and upper. But in each category, there are also three classes, so for middle, there is lower middle, middle middle and upper middle. Seems sort of silly, but there are actual divisions that mean something here.

When writing or speaking, persons (generally) of upper middle class cannot speak or write well. The reason is that they corrupt their message by concatenating meaningless phrases--exactly like a politician does. These phrases actually SOUND like they mean something but when examined closely, they are meaningless. For an example of something that looks good but is totally meaningless, look at this:

https://www.fractalfield.com/

This guy, however, is simply a scammer trying to suk in sukkers who thimpfk he has something to say. Just so you know, he has fled to Europe where he is hiding. If he sets foot on American soil, he will be arrested.

Anyway the uppermiddle class writers are not consciously trying to fool anyone, it's just that they simply do not know how to get to the point. That's where technical writers are good at writing--they get right to the point. It turns out that Middle Middle class, and lower people already KNOW how to write without using meaningless or useless filler words. The Upper middle people actually believe those empty filler words are the way they are SUPPOSED to write and speak. (How often have we fallen asleep listening to an idiot speak?) Good writing describes all the circumstances, activities, personalities and everything else without using fluff and filler. If you've noticed, most writing from the 1800's were filled with krap. Notice the writing of Henry Fielding. Even tho' he was actually of the Upper classes, he was an excellent writer. He read the krap of other writers and became disgusted at the fluff they added, of course, they were writing for other "fluffies", that is to readers who thot fluff was the way to write. Fielding also knew a little more than other writers about the reall world. So he wrote Tom Jones and became an instant best seller. He was a magistrate and died in 1754.

When I was yuounger (last week), I had a TRS-80--Radio Shacks screamer of a machine that did 4megabyte/sec! I bought a "magazine" that came on a tape and used a tape recorder for memory. On one of the tapes there was a "political speach writer" program. It concatenated phrases that actually seemed like they were meaningful but when examined, th;ey said exactly NOTHING. Really, REALLY like politician speak.

OK, so Steamchix, kill your protagonist!

PS, there was one excellent writer in the 1800s: Ulysses Grant who wrote a two volume work of his memoirs. Very little fluff and only a bit of prevarication when it came to Shiloh.
 
I had a good teacher in the last english writing class I took, and I recall a few points he made about what he thought was a good writing style.

One point was "Spill the beans early", ie: don't make the reader try and guy what the article is about; tell them explicity right at the beginning.

For technical writing, I am not sure what a good approach is, since I have so far just made it up as I went.

There are two articles published in the 1920's detailing compound model engine casting/building, and those are well written and well illustrated.

I tend to write way too much, and so it gets boring, so now when I write something, I first write out what comes to mind, and then remove 90% of that material.
These days, I try to adhere to the adage "Less is More", and there is an art to doing that.
"Less" is far more readable than "More".

.
 
Last edited:
I had a good teacher in the last english writing class I took, and I recall a few points he made about what he thought was a good writing style.

One point was "Spill the beans early", ie: don't make the reader try and guy what the article is about; tell them explicity right at the beginning.

For technical writing, I am not sure what a good approach is, since I have so far just made it up as I went.

There are two articles published in the 1920's detailing compound model engine casting/building, and those are well written and well illustrated.

I tend to write way too much, and so it gets boring, so now when I write something, I first write out what comes to mind, and then remove 90% of that material.
These days, I try to adhere to the adage "Less is More", and there is an art to doing that, but less is far more readable than more.

.
Apparently, I read somewhere, that that was the way Ernest Hemmingway did: wrote 1500 pages, then cut out the krap. He had the sewerside gene. I often wondered what happened to Muriel, his daughter, then found out SHE had the sewerside gene too. Strange, no?
 
When I look at online sources of used/new books, I find that since Lindsay quite publishing his top quality reprints, there are a number of other new to me companies offering reprints of many titles similar to what Lindsay offered in the past. Has anyone here had experience with any of these newer publishers? A couple that I recall are Legare Street Press, Forgotten Books, and Sky Horse Publishing. I'm tempted to order some books by some of these publishers, but I have also gotten some print on demand books that were of poor quality.
Anyone have any experience to share about newer reprints of older titles?
Many of the book Lindsay had republished have been scanned and are online at google books. Many can be downloaded in several formats. Just verify the book has the illustrations, many of the earlier scans seem to have only stored the text, leaving white space where an illustration or drawing should be. EPUB format downloads seem to often be of better quality than PDF files, but perhaps that's a difference in readers on my machine rather than the files themselves.
 
I have looked at many of the scanned versions online, but I am not interested in reading them completely online. I am interested in hard copies of good quality books, and my question, as I mentioned, is about the quality of the available reprints, especially some of the publishers that I mentioned by name.
I often check them online to see if a book has the kind of information that I am looking for, and then I try to find a hard copy of the book. Some of the versions that I have gotten online are incomplete, poorly edited or poorly printed, and want to avoid those if possible.
 
Hello Together

I have one book reprinted by Lindsay Publications.

"Model Engineering" A Guide to Model Workshop Practice.

It is reprinted in 2004, from originally puplished in 1915.
ISBN 1-55918-312-8

Henry-Greenly-Model-Engineering-resize.jpg


I bought the book in new condition years ago from a used bookstore for 20 euros (~ $22).
If you invest a little time and effort in a search, you will definitely find original Lindsay reprints.

Regards
Dieter
 
My guess is that most home workshop practitioners stick to the manufacturing technology of the 1950's and the 1960's. Basically before advanced cutting tool materials and before Numerical Control. At least I do. My most important workshop manual is the one I got in trade school 65 years ago. It handles all operations in a very practical and hands-on manner. Some sections I use less, like fine tuning a shaper and black-smithing, but they still make an interesting read. Very useful are the many descriptions how to make your own tools, necessary in a time where nothing was readily available from internet. See enclosed example how to make a boring tool from a square toolbit. So my advice would be to try to get hold of such a trade school workshop manual.

IMG_6066.jpeg
 
I think things have moved on for anyone starting out these days. A large number will have imported far eastern machines that really need using in a different way., be it a lathe or mill.

Old school would have been to turn a large diameter part like a flywheel at a low backgear speed. Do that now by turning down the speed control pot and you are more then likely to stall the machine. A modern import needs to run where the motor can give some power not at the bottom end where they can be gutless so wind up the speed, shove an insert tool into the toolpost and take light but fast cuts.

As for the boring bar many will now simply order an insert one off the net than grind HSS. BTW I would not want to use a tool like that for boring, might have been OK for thread cutting judging by the angles.
 
At age 10 (I'm a first ripple baby boomer) I did my first lathework on the Myford Super Seven at the home workshop of one of my fathers friends from the machine factory. About two years ago I got a similar one from the estate of a deceased friend. This 60 something year old machine is an addition to my Swiss 70 years old Schaublin 102 VM lathe and my Swiss only 50 year old Aciera F3 milling machine. I'm happilly never been tempted to consider Asian stuff.
 
I managed to get a very good Asian lathe from Grizzly, which is right in the Soviet of Washington. Grizzly has stringent requirements and apparently inspects each machine while in Asia. I do have small complaints about the machine: 1) the change gear cover has to be removed, that is, it doesn't have hinges ( I can live with that), 2) the ways need to extend about 2 more inches toward the head (only because occasionally I need the steady rest to fit up closer and I guess I can live with that too), 3) the crossfeed table doesn't have slots (I feel that I can't live with that permanently, so am building a better one), 4) the slowest speed I have is 70 RPM,. I would like to have 50 RPM, 5) the stand has a plate between the legs that is in the way. I intend to move it back so that I can put a shelf for tools. All in all, the problems are picky except for the crossfeed mount slots.

Oddly, I got the machine just before a price hike. It cost me 4000$US but now is closer to 6000, only 4 years later. I bought the thing with cash and the clerks lookt at me like I was crazy. Of course, if one pays for anything in cash for more than 5000$, they are required to call the cops--freedom? Hmmm.

Before I bought the Grizz, I searched the Chinese manufacturors ( and there are literally hundreds of them) and just couldn't justify the gamble of a lathe of low cost to be a good gamble, that is, if something were wrong with it, to either get it fixt or returned or whatever particularly with reputation of the Chinese caveat emptor. However, Grizzly has an EXCELLENT reputation for customer care. Indeed, I had a problem with the four jaw--Actually, it was the jaws themselves that had bad machining in the screw threads. Two jaws had the problem, so I contacted Grizz and they wanted to send out a new chuck--the whole, heavy thing. I talked them into just sending the jaws, and honestly, I had to convince them that all I needed was the jaws, NOT a new chuck. Finally, they agreed and sent four new jaws. --saved a lot of trouble and postage and now I have six good jaws.

There are reputable dealers for Chinese goods. I was tempted to fly to China to inspect some lathes and manufacturors as it would be a fun trip, and I could take my son to practice his Mandarin but that would have increased the real cost substantially unless I flew in from Philippines when I am living there. It's very cheap to fly to close by countries from Cebu and Manila.
 
Well the Chinese are able to send a machine to the moon, shovel some dirt there and get it back, so as long as you know where to look they are clearly capable to make anything at a quality level that at least matches ours. Still I'm happy with my old world machine tools that are only a few years younger than myself. And I'm happily restoring a pre-world war II GOTHA gear and cutter grinder that will bring the average age of my machine tools even more in line with my own age.
 
The ways stopping short of the headstock probably allow a larger dia to be machined on afaceplate so there is a plus side to it.

If you want to make the most of the space between the two cupboards then draws work well for the smaller items



20191117_082357_zpsijtkalch.jpg


draw2.jpg


20191117_082820_zpsti3feh61.jpg
 

Latest posts

Back
Top