Could you link to a copy of the Oxford history of technology you mention? I can't find anything by that name.
All of that is EXACTLY what I mean about filling in the gaps. It's not about being ornery and doing everythind yourself "just because." It's about figuring out where you can compress the industrial system into a smaller footprint. Maybe some things just plain work better as massive, centralized facilities. I have a hard time believing these little 200-person OSE franchises are going to be able to produce everything they need. There are plenty of exotic "vitamins" that are impossible to make; you have to just dig through enough stuff to find them. That means mining and that means not only do you have to settle in a place with concentrations of those elements, but you have to devote people and space to digging them up.
Is that just an old-and-busted paradigm? Is it possible to get all the iron ore you need out of a little mine if you're clever enough? I dunno.
Maybe it doesn't even make sense to focus on iron and aluminum. Maybe if self-sufficiency is that important we should go back to copper and bronze. The Iron Age didn't come until later, after all. There's a lot you can do with metals that are easier to gather and work with. So, in the same way grass pellets aren't as energy dense as fossil fuels, but they are prefferable because they can be sourced and refined locally, maybe OSE should work on local bronze production.
The sort of information we'd be looking for is old enough it's free http://www.farlang.com/gemstones/agricola-metallica/page_001
You can go either direction. Since we're starting in the middle we can go up and down the tech curve at the same time.
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I was thinking more along the lines of making our own c-channel, rather than using structural c-channel. Like this http://www.pgadams.com/truckframes.php
Making c-channel out of sheet would ensure we could use whatever dimensions we wanted. I don't think it would be all that hard to build a little rolling mill to bend a long strip of steel into a c-channel. A rolling mill is on the GVCS list right now anyway. Cold forming existing metal, rather than hot forming something out of the furnace, would be a good proof of concept. The system should be tested on smaller/lighter vehicles/machines anyway, so I don't think the steel would need to be thicker than 1/8" based on what car and truck frames seem to be made out of.
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