Volume 6 of the Foxfire series covers shoemaking, 100 toys and games, gourd banjos and song bows, wooden locks, a water-powered sawmill, and other fascinating topics.
The toys and games section was pretty interesting. They even had a 'fidget spinner' they'd carve, called a bull grinder, do nothing, or smoke grinder. A way of "passifying" oneself instead of twiddling thumbs.
Going back and revisiting the series as Autumn progresses. Was searching for info about gourd banjos. It's in this one. Had forgotten all about wooden locks. That's in here too. Forgot how fascinating..and useful these books are.
After the seemingly never-ending slog of Foxfire 5, I was a little hesitant to pick up this book, but Foxfire 6 gets things back on track and redeems the series. I especially enjoyed the sections on toy-making and the American chestnut. Entertaining and informative.
Foxfire 6: Shoemaking, gourd banjos, and songbows, one hundred toys and games, wooden locks, a water powered sawmill, and other affairs of just plain living (The Foxfire Series #6) by Eliot Wigginton (Editor), Foxfire Students (Anchor Press 1980) (917.58). More transcribed interviews by the students at Rabun County High School in Georgia with their rural elders (See The Foxfire Book). My rating: 7.5/10, finished 1980.
A Great Series on how on people use to do thing when they were mostly self sufficient, and not store dependent different volumes cover everything from snake handling. to log cabin building to planting by the seasons, a must for DIY'ers and survivalists. Check out amazon.com for individual contents.
Another in an ongoing series of great books capturing many aspects of rural Appalachian life in past generations; as well as painting a portrait of a vanishing culture, it covers concrete information on how to do lots of things both practical and fun.
These are some awesome books. Okay, sometimes the writing isn't what I would call... entertaining, but I love to see people preserving knowledge that might be lost otherwise. For this reason, these books soar with awesomeness.