- How pioneers stayed dry in the rain.

From the Home Mechanic book of 1896, a recipe showing how the settlers and pioneers waterproofed their clothing, shoes and boots.

The Home Mechanic book is about as hard-core a DIY book as I've ever seen.  There's no messing around in this big book.

The candy recipes all start off with a pound of this and a gallon of that and the baking instructions include directions for making your own industrial size brick oven.

The books covers carpentry, painting - from houses to frescoes to carriages, furniture finishing, horse shoeing, soap making, candy making, baking, taxidermy, tanning, etc, etc.  And it's no light dip into the subject, every one of these chapters is close to 100 pages long.

It doesn't out and out say this anywhere, but I get the feeling the book is largely for people starting out a home business and are ready to take an industrial approach to things.

But is also has a lot of general DIY, how-to and recipes for everyday people with everyday needs.

From the chapter called "Receipts for Manufacturers" is a recipe for waterproofing shoes and boots.  It  would work on clothes too if the cloth had a nice tight weave.

To make this waterproof mix:

"Melt 3 ounces of bees-wax, and the same of resin; then add one pint of boiled oil.  Stir well together. Let it boil up; remove from the fire, and add three ounces of the oil of turpentine."

The instructions don't go any further, how you apply the mix is not explained, but a smart guess would say you paint the stuff on when it's good and hot.

The things that go unsaid in these texts are one of the great challenges of using them.  The writers didn't bother adding the stuff that any fool would know, not realizing that 115 years later we would have an over-supply of fools.  Me included.

If you are wondering about the use of the word "receipts" in the title of the chapter, it was in common usage and meant the same thing as recipes do today.

Up until the 1920's and 1930's, everybody of English heritage would have used the word receipts to describe a list of instructions for making something.

At some point the French version of the word, recipe, came into vogue (as did the word vogue) and receipt was relegated almost entirely to the checkout line.

It does survive in one overlooked place.  The iconic Rx from a doctor's script or prescription.  It originally stood for receipt and instead of a brand of medicine, the doctor would have written out instructions for making your medicine, that you or a pharmacist could follow.

It really was a DIY and how-to world.

For more free DIY and how-to from the settlers and pioneers of the 1800's visit www.PioneerHandbooks.com.

Even if you never expect to be waterproofing your own boots, you can still hit the Facebook Like button below and save this how-to from disappearing into history

It's easy enough to do and a great way to keep this knowledge alive.