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[PTTG??]

I think we're looking at wood-framed rammed-earth. We'll probably have cement, though. Maybe we could do a plaster thing.

[Hubris Incalculable]

Rammed earth is damned cool. just saying.

[Max White]

Yeah, bricks aren't the best way to go when you can make a suitable house out of timber, though I'm not sure if any of the machines in that set can produce siding, or in-wall insulation, unless we're talking about log cabins, but that's a ton of timber comparatively.

What are you building?
Making residential homes, then sure, but you are going to need to keep all those new machines you built in a dry place, and just personally some of this stuff I would rather kept in a fire proof building.

[Montague]

So I had this discussion with some guys at work. How could you produce a perfectly straight line if you had no reference of one? Out in the wilderness or somewhere with no rulers, machines, lasers, tools or instruments or anything else that is trued to a straight line. This seems like a pretty basic thing you'd need to figure out if you were to start producing machinary from scratch and whatnot

As for houses, adobe and bricks are easy to produce and don't use scarcer or more valuable resources. Wood is better used for fuel and other things, wood frame houses are really a modern product. Without pressure treating, fiberglass insulation and other modern artifacts, a wood frame house is flimsy and flammable once built and it's basically a termite mound in about 20 years.

[Max White]

Pull a string tight?

[Montague]

Pull a string tight?

That'd be good enough for building a table or something, but it would'nt produce a perfectly straight line like you'd need for a precise machine.

[Max White]

Eh, use your string to make a wooden ruler, should be good enough.
They had to start somewhere remember, so at one stage a string must have been good enough.
Now bootstrapping a 90 degree angle would be a bitch...

[Montague]

Eh, use your string to make a wooden ruler, should be good enough.
They had to start somewhere remember, so at one stage a string must have been good enough.
Now bootstrapping a 90 degree angle would be a bitch...

Yeah a true 90 degree angle would be even more difficult. A plumb bob and a flat and level surface, maybe.

[Max White]

You can do it with a protractor and ruler, but still, that would require an even more accurate devices than your machines.

[Montague]

The problem with a wooden ruler is that wood warps, why they have that metal insert on one edge. No idea how you could fabricate a trued protractor without a benchmark to gauge it off.

Unless there is something found in nature with perfectly straight lines or 90 degree shapes. Some rocks and crystals sheer or form at such angles, though it'd be difficult to tell if it was truely straight or not. Gravity goes straight down, basically, so a plumb bob works. Fluid in a glass is basically horizontal, depending on things like surface tension.

So maybe pouring molten metal in an open trough in a controlled enviroment would solidify into a perfectly level surface on top? Or would it almost always cool unevenly and result in something slightly warped?

[Carnes]

You could try using a swinging pendulum to build a tool to measure precise angles?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendulum_%28mathematics%29

Or maybe using a compass to trace a circle.. fold it in half for a protractor shape and subdividing it into units?  Perhaps there is a star configuration with the right angles that could be used to recreate a protractor?

But really i think you're better off copying existing standards. 

[Blargityblarg]

Bricks look great, and there's lots of great historical buildings built with it, but for a house there's no practical reason to use them when you have something cheaper with better insulation, i.e pretty much every other building material we have. There's a reason you don't see many new houses (or buildings in general) with anything more than brick accents - it does nothing to insulate and it's expensive as hell, both for labor and materials. Soil, on the other hand, beats it on both counts because it beats it so easily in cost.

What are you talking about? Double brick is great for insulation; you trap a layer of air between them and it's just dandy, or at least according to my bricklayer-for-25-years dad, who built one of our house with his own two hands. Then again, I'm in AUs, and we only need a tenth or something the insulation of a Canadian house...

Eh, use your string to make a wooden ruler, should be good enough.
They had to start somewhere remember, so at one stage a string must have been good enough.
Now bootstrapping a 90 degree angle would be a bitch...

Yeah a true 90 degree angle would be even more difficult. A plumb bob and a flat and level surface, maybe.

Pythagoras' Theorem. If you can measure length accurately, you can get a 3-4-5 triangle with one right angle.

[Darvi]

Pythagoras' Theorem. If you can measure length accurately, you can get a 3-4-5 triangle with one right angle.

Or, if you want to be fancy and original, 12-13-5.

[PTTG??]

So I had this discussion with some guys at work. How could you produce a perfectly straight line if you had no reference of one? Out in the wilderness or somewhere with no rulers, machines, lasers, tools or instruments or anything else that is trued to a straight line. This seems like a pretty basic thing you'd need to figure out if you were to start producing machinary from scratch and whatnot

As for houses, adobe and bricks are easy to produce and don't use scarcer or more valuable resources. Wood is better used for fuel and other things, wood frame houses are really a modern product. Without pressure treating, fiberglass insulation and other modern artifacts, a wood frame house is flimsy and flammable once built and it's basically a termite mound in about 20 years.

I live in California, so I don't have much experience with brick... because the brick buildings here all fell down. Wood frames, though, they flex. A well-built wood house, one that isn't half-buried with no foundation, should last a nice long time. Longer that 20 years, at least.

[sneakey pete]

Gravity goes straight down, basically, so a plumb bob works. Fluid in a glass is basically horizontal, depending on things like surface tension.

You just answered your own question.