Please Note: This website is out of date. The Steward Community Woodland sustainable living project ended
in 2018 for legal and planning permission reasons. The contents have been left here as a historical archive.
How to Guides
Below is our growing collection of DIY 'how to' guides. Originaly we planned to write up how we built various things at Steward Wood but we soon learnt that different people, resources and situations call for different approaches. We switched to writing guides based on techniques and ideas rather than as step by step instructions. The collection has grown and now includes guides for stuff we have not yet built ourselves. While most have be written by members of the project, some are based on guides found elsewhere. A few (usually in PDF) are the unedited work of other people. If you have a guide that you think might be of interest to visitors of this website then please let us know. We intend to produce leaflet versions of some of these guides and will provide PDF versions when we do so. If you create printable version of any of the guides, please send us the files so we can make them available here.
Online DIY guides: How to...
How to guides
- How to make mauls or mallets
- How to build, use and not abuse, a tree bog
- How to build a small charcoal kiln
- How to make a bender
- How to make and use a 'bunjip'
We are currently in the process of transfering the howto guides from our old website to this new one, Below is a list from the old website (you will need to use the back button on your browser to get back to the new website. Also you may find the images are broken on these versions. If this is the case please use the howto guide on our archive website):
* ... have a productive meeting
* ... build consensus
* ... make beams without a sawmill
* ... turn a chainsaw into a sawmil
* ... build a yurt [PDF]
* ... make and use a solar oven
* ... build a wood fired hot tub
* ... make washable sanitary towels
* ... build a compost bin
* ... make your own paper
* ... make a peg loom and rag rugs
* ... use natural plant based dyes
* ... build a cycle power generator
* ... make diesel from vegetable oil
* ... set up a small hydro system
@nti-copyright. You are welcome to copy and distribute any of our 'guides in any form, with or without crediting the source as long as it is for non commercial use. If you plan to sell any of this information for profit, in any form, then you should get our consent.
Disclaimer. We can not guarentee that you will get any of the stuff to work as described. If you try any of this stuff you do so at your own risk. If you think that is unfair then don't use the guides. While we endevor to check the accuracy of the information in these guides, we can not guarentee that all the information is correct. If you find an error or have comments, additions or improvements that you think should be included, please let use know.