My name is Ben and I'm an avid supporter of the open source model. I am a boilermaker by trade with interest in every construction trade. I have good general knowledge of I.T. side of things. I have had a growing interest of late in getting the knowledge and hands on experience in self sufficient sustainable living practices and in particular, solar energy uses including alcohol fuel production. I live on a 320 acre block in the north west area of the Sydney Basin (Watagan forest) in NSW, Australia. I first became aware of OSE from the movie Owned and Operated, which I watched maybe 12 months ago.

I've been working my trade for several years now for many companies. I am interested in starting my own shop now, here in the bush. So step one is to build a fabrication shop that I can store heavy machinery, fabricate anything and be able to store lots of raw materials (steel racks). I have found a location and am currently working on a 3d model of the freestanding shop design in Inventor. It will have a very large main beam which will span 28m and hold a couple of 2t cranes and a counterbalanced roof covering half of the beam length. I might start a blog when I figure out the rest of the site.

So when I kick start the fab shop I am very eager to start producing and testing various OSE designs. Maybe an end goal in this respect would be to have a functioning OSE Australian base where lectures could take place, maintenance and parts could be purchased etc etc.. maybe years down the track. I do plan on running a profiting business from this shop as well and will be trying to get contracts from mining companies while this boom lasts. I predict that most of the profits from this however, will go to the OSE projects.

Anyway, there's a five year plan in a nutshell xD.

I'll be looking forward to working with some of you soon.

Regards
Ben