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As an aside, this was a book, obviously, but it was also his final project for his degree, so he was on a timeline. He had 9 months to make this toaster from scratch. The Toaster Project helps us reflect on the costs and perils of our cheap consumer culture and the ridiculousness of churning out millions of toasters and other products at the expense of the environment. If products were designed more efficiently, with fewer parts that are easier to recycle, we would end up with objects that last longer and we would generate less waste altogether. The essential premise behind Thomas Thwaites' The Toaster Project is that in this modern world of ours, we take a lot for granted. Like toasters, for instance. Does some basic household stable like a toaster epitome the marvelous technological advancements in simplifying modern day living or is it a little white elephant sitting on our kitchen counter as a daily reminder of the destructive power released upon our planet to meet just one seemingly innocuous need?
Ultimately, the conclusion of his experiment is a bit of a disappointment, after-all, he had lofty goals that feel like he gave up on without really mentioning that he gave up on them. In the book ‘The Toaster Project’ by Thomas Thwaites, the author (a young man) goes through his process of creating a toaster from nothing. In the first part of the book he talks about his plan/what he considers to be acceptable by his standards for creating his toaster. What this means is he decided not to use and industrial processes or buy materials that have already been collected. The contrast in scale between between consumer products we use in the home and the industry that produces them is I think absurd – massive industrial activity devoted to making objects which enable us, the consumer, to toast bread more efficiently. These items betray no trace of their provenance. Secondly, yes I realise I cheated quite a lot! Though I really did naively set out with the intention of only using pre-industrial tools and methods, I soon realised that a) it was impossible, and b) by taking things like trains, or using wikipedia, or even not making my own shoes for walking to a mine, I was already in a sense ‘cheating’. In the end my view is that it’s the cheating rather than slavishly following the rules that make the project more interesting, and lead to discussions of questions other than whether it’s possible to make a toaster alone.He ended up figuring something out, I forget what it was. But I was also appreciative of the chemistry lesson of plastics too. I didn’t realize that at room temperature, most of the stuff of plastics would normally be a gas, but that under pressure the atoms start lining up and bonding with one another, it’s apparently very complicated, and as was explained to the author by one chemist, ‘there’s a reason we weren’t making plastics a thousand years ago: It’s really hard to do.”
Never finished a book in such short time frame. It’s a lean volume with touches of hilarious (rationalized) absurdity. (Some) level of insanity (and grit) appears to be a must have to to get to the bottom of just anything.As well as visiting disused mines in the Forest of Dean, England, the Knoydart Peninsula in Scotland and the Isle of Anglesey in Wales, he has consulted experts in mining, oil drilling and recycling (as well as a drunken deer stalker) to turn his vision of a making a toaster from scratch into a reality. He decided to create the steel components first. After discovering that iron ore was required to make steel, Thwaites called up an iron mine in his region and asked if they would let him use some for the project.
Finding ways to process the raw materials on a domestic scale is also an issue. For example, my first attempt to extract metal involved a chimney pot, some hair-dryers, a leaf blower, and a methodology from the 15th century – this is about the level of technology we can manage when we're acting alone. I failed to get pure enough iron in this way, though if I'd tried a few more times and refined my technique and knowledge of the process I probably would've managed in the end. Instead I found a 2001 patent about industrial smelting of Iron ores using microwave energy. This book chronicles the Master's project of a British design student to make a toaster "from scratch". By from scratch he means that he wishes to take each component from its natural state to whatever form it needs to be in to be in a toaster. He starts off well enough by disassembling a cheap toaster. He then proceeds to jump in the deep end. He warned off by many well intentioned experts but pursues his dream. News about our Dezeen Awards China programme, including entry deadlines and announcements. Plus occasional updates. I heard about your book on NPR this morning. At first blush its an interesting idea. Though carrying it further if you are bound and determined to make an electric toaster from scratch, would you not also have to generate electricity to power it? We know more now, don’t we? We are more expert than our ancestors, aren’t we? Yet, at the same time, we are also reliant on the knowledge they produced.”
What you get is mainly a story of exploration and adventure into sourcing the basic raw materials to build a toaster, told from a design student's perspective. This means a lot of detail is missing or skipped, while at the same time the book contains lots of anecdotes, verbatim conversations, etc.
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