Civilization101Blueprint

Tools & Industry

You cannot make a part more accurate than the machine that made it. The sector runs from a cutting edge through woodworking and the forge to the machine tools that make interchangeable parts possible. Those parts also need standard units, from Knowledge & Education, before a factory can exist.
5 steps 7 field guides 7 builds 2 reference sheets 51 books and archives

Tracks

Each track is one line of development climbing the eight levels. A cell holds the step written at that level; cross-listed steps have their home in another sector and are shown here because this subject depends on them. Dashed cells are planned and not yet written; blank ones have nothing planned.

Hand tools

The cutting edge that every other tool is made with.

L0 Triage
L1 Foothold
L2 Forge
L3 Mill
L4 Engine
L5 Current
L6 Logic
L7 Frontier
t0-cut A cutting edge Guide ×3Sheet
Level 1: nothing planned
Level 2: nothing planned
Level 3: nothing planned
Level 4: nothing planned
Level 5: nothing planned
Level 6: nothing planned
Level 7: nothing planned
Open the track, level by level →

Woodworking

Felling, seasoning and joinery, the pole lathe and the first machines.

L0 Triage
L1 Foothold
L2 Forge
L3 Mill
L4 Engine
L5 Current
L6 Logic
L7 Frontier
Level 0: nothing planned
t1-woodwork Woodworking and the first machines Guide ×2Build ×2
Level 2: nothing planned
Level 3: nothing planned
Level 4: nothing planned
Level 5: nothing planned
Level 6: nothing planned
Level 7: nothing planned
Open the track, level by level →

Metalworking

Forging, hardening and tempering, then machine tools and precision.

L0 Triage
L1 Foothold
L2 Forge
L3 Mill
L4 Engine
L5 Current
L6 Logic
L7 Frontier
Level 0: nothing planned
Level 1: nothing planned
t2-smith Blacksmithing Guide ×2Build ×4Sheet
t3-machinetools Machine tools and precision Guide ×3Build ×3
Level 4: nothing planned
Level 5: nothing planned
Level 6: nothing planned
Level 7: nothing planned
Open the track, level by level →

Production

The factory and interchangeable parts.

L0 Triage
L1 Foothold
L2 Forge
L3 Mill
L4 Engine
L5 Current
L6 Logic
L7 Frontier
Level 0: nothing planned
Level 1: nothing planned
Level 2: nothing planned
Level 3: nothing planned
t4-factory The factory and interchangeable parts Guide
Level 5: nothing planned
Level 6: nothing planned
Level 7: nothing planned
Open the track, level by level →

Everything in Tools & Industry

Gathered from the steps above: the guides and builds that serve them, the reference sheets those carry, and every book the steps, guides and builds cite.

Field guides

Level 1
Wood and the forest

The forest is the first material store, the first fuel supply and the first thing a group kills itself cutting down. Managed, it is also the only one of the three that grows back.

 Level 2
Smithing

Iron is shaped by colour. Read the heat right and a bar of scrap becomes a chisel that holds an edge; read it wrong and it cracks, burns, or stays as soft as a nail.

 Level 0
Hunting and trapping

A trapline works all night while you sleep. A hunt works only while you are awake, usually returns nothing, and burns the calories it was supposed to find.

 Level 3
Engineering

Turning the sciences into things that work: machines, structures, water in pipes and channels, heat through walls, and feedback control. Each result with what it lets you do and who first found it.

 Level 2
Charcoal

Throw away two-thirds of the energy in a pile of wood and what is left is the only fuel that reaches the temperature of molten iron.

 Level 3
Calculating by hand

Four-figure logarithms and trigonometry, square roots by Newton's method, and the two instruments that did the world's arithmetic before electronics.

 Level 3
Properties of materials

Density, stiffness, expansion and melting point for the materials the ladder makes, and what each number decides.

Builds

A pole lathe: springy pole, cord, treadle. The first machine that shapes a part rather than a tool.
Level 1
Spring-pole lathe

The first machine tool — a sapling, a cord and a treadle, and the direct ancestor of everything in tier 3.
The buck of the post mill at Drinkstone, Suffolk, photographed without its sails. The whole body — frame, stones, gearing and miller — turns on the single oak post beneath it.
Level 3
Post mill

A whole building balanced on one oak post so it can be turned to face the wind — the first machine that let a settlement mill grain where there was no falling water.
Twin bag bellows worked alternately into a hearth — the two-chamber arrangement this build describes.
Level 2
Double-chamber bellows

Continuous forced air — the component that decides whether you get metal or roasted rock.
A forge fire in use: a small, deep heart of burning fuel, not a spread bed.
Level 2
Blacksmith's forge

A controlled hot spot you can hold a bar in — the hearth every other trade's tools come out of.
An earthed charcoal clamp part-way through its burn.
Level 2
Earth charcoal clamp

Turn wood into the fuel that reaches smelting heat — no kiln, no metal, just a stack, a cover and a week of attention.
A clay bloomery shaft after a smelt, with the slag pit in front of the tap.
Level 2
Bloomery furnace

A clay shaft that turns rock into iron — the first machine that makes every other machine possible.
An overshot wheel at work, water entering over the top of the wheel rather than under it.
Level 3
Overshot water wheel

A few kilowatts, day and night, without eating — the first energy surplus large enough to support full-time specialists.

Reference sheets

Drawn overview sheets, each with its corrections printed under it. They orient; they are never the thing you identify from.

Snares, deadfalls, cage and live traps alongside the fish traps, each shown in three build stages with its materials, its best quarry and where to set it.
Trapping: passive capture on land and in water On: Forage, trap, fish · Hunting and trapping: Snares
Seven panels: the fire triangle and a wood fire, charcoal made in an earth clamp, a charcoal forge with bellows, how coal forms and how coke is made from it, crude oil and its fractions, the fuel pathway from biomass to petroleum, and a table comparing wood, charcoal, coal, coke and petroleum.
Energy: fire and fuel On: Charcoal · Coal and coke · Charcoal: What charcoal is for · Energy sources: Fire and fuel: wood, charcoal, coal, oil and gas

Books and archives

← Previous sectorMaterials & Chemistry Next sector →Transport