The big goals are to be sustainable, comfortable, and off the grid.

• Autodesk Instructables, Backyard Projects - a wealth of ideas with tutorials by the builders

Wood

• Lee Wallender, the Spruce, Learn the Basics of Floor Joist Spans
• The Handmade Home, Building a Handmade Hideaway
  • The Handmade Home, Handmade Hideaway 2.0 – Building the Foundation
• Family Handyman, 8 Tips for Building a Deck That Will Last for Decades
• Bamboo Art

Metal

• Artfully Rogue
  • Gasless Flux Core Welding Basics For Beginners
• Edd China
  • Everything You Need To Know About Welding | How To MIG | Workshop Diaries
• Death Toll Racing
  • Flux Core Welding For Beginners; Cheap Welders That Actually Work!
• Miller
  • Buying Your First Welder: A Practical, Informative Guide for Do-It-Yourselfers
  • YouTube, Welding Basics for Beginners → three types of welding
  • ArcAcademy.com
• TimWelds, Stick Welding Basics for Beginners: How to Stick Weld

Welding

Welding is the liquefaction of base metals with heat to fuse them together. There are three basic elements: heat source, filler metal and the shielding gas or flux. The three most common types of welding processes are MIG, stick and TIG. MIG welding is the most common type of welding and it is easier to learn, much cleaner than stick welding and can be used on a variety of material thicknesses. Stick welding is a flux process, so is better suited for outdoor use and with thicker or dirty materials. TIG welding provides the highest quality weld, both cleaner and more esthetically pleasing.
→Miller Welders

In welding you have three basic elements:

• Heat Source:
• Filler Metal:
• Shielding gas or Flux

MIG (Metal Inert Gas)

Filler metal is your electrode and it's on a spool of wire. Uses shielding gas → advantages to this are:

• Advantages
  • it's much easier to learn, because you preset all your parameters
  • Cleaner welds possible with no slag
  • wide variety of metal thicknesses
  • Great for indoor welding - perfect for in the garage or shop
• Metals
  • steel, stainless steel, aluminum

Stick

Flux-based Process

• Advantages
  • Wind doesn't affect it as much → better suited to windy, outdoor conditions
  • Works really well on thicker materials
  • More forgiving when welding dirty or rusty metal
• Disadvantages
  • More spatter, vapor, off gassing, and fumes → so not something you want to do indoors
  • Welds aren't as clean/pretty → for a frame (or automotive mount) prefer either MIG or TIG
• Metals
  • steel, stainless steel, cast iron

TIG (Tungsten Inert Gas)

Leg/foot controls the heat, opposite hand is typically controlling the filler metal deposition rate, and finally there is the non-consumable tungsten electrode that is creating the arc as you move through the bead.

• Advantages
  • Provides highest quality, precise welds
  • Aesthetically pleasing, "pretty" weld beads
  • Works great on thinner metals
  • Allows adjustment of heat input via hand/foot control
  • Great for automotive and motorcycle enthusiasts — e.g. automotive sheet metal
• Disadvantages
  • Difficult to control because you're controlling all three of your elements
  • Considerably slower process than the other methods
  • requires more skill and practice to master than the other methods
• Metals
  • any metals that conduct electricity
  • steel, stainless steel, aluminum, copper, brass, chromoly
  • exotic metals such as magnesium and titanium

Fabrication & Metalworking

• Skill Panda → angles, jigs, & tools
• Alva Welding
  • *I Regret Not Knowing These 5 Angle Grinder Jig Ideas Sooner! *

Plastic

• Autodesk Instructibles, Milk Jug Vacuum Forming - Recycled HPDE Plastic
• HubPages, How to Build a Milk Jug Igloo - also, Ideas2Live4, Making an Adorable Milk Jug Igloo With Kids – DIY Style 101 has lots of photos
• Autodesk Instructibles, How to Recycle HDPE Plastic the Easy Way

Masonry

• Mike Day Concrete — YouTube Playlists
  • Concrete costs and Pricing Jobs
  • Concrete Pool Decks
  • Pouring Concrete House Floors and Slabs
• This Old House, The Basics of Masonry
• This Old House, How to Make Concrete → "While there is a bit of leeway, making your own concrete requires following a certain recipe. Using your smaller bucket as a measuring cup, dump a ratio of 3 buckets of sand to 2 buckets of gravel to 1 bucket of portland cement into your wheelbarrow. You can make as much or as little concrete as you’d like, as long as you follow the 3:2:1 ratio."
• hunker, How to Make Lightweight Concrete Using Styrofoam → "Lightweight concrete, also known as EPScrete (expanded polystyrene concrete), is a material widely used in the building of environmentally "green" homes. The substance is often made using small Styrofoam balls as a lightweight aggregate instead of the crushed stone that is used in regular concrete. While it isn't as strong as stone-based concrete mixes, it has several advantages over the more traditional mix. EPScrete has increased insulation properties, and because it's up to 88 percent lighter than stone-based concrete, it has smaller structural support needs such as foundation sizes and steel reinforcement requirements."
  • Wikipedia, Rastra → "Rastra created the name Insulating COMPOUND Concrete Form (ICCF), used to make walls for buildings. It is one of the earliest such products, first patented in 1965 in Austria. Rastra is in production since 1972, and is composed of concrete and Thastyron. Thastyron is a mixture of plastic foam and cementitious binder that is composed of eighty-five percent recycled post consumer polystyrene waste that is molded into blocks and panels."
  • Rastra, ICCF Insulated Compound Concrete Form
• The Cool Down, These light, ultra-powerful bricks are made of sugar — and there’s a big reason they may replace concrete in our buildings

Plumbing

• Learn for Ideas