This is one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. The idea is, after a little scrounging, to construct multipurpose shop machinery out of discarded engine blocks using hand tools. The basic design is labeled the Multimachine, which consists of a 3-in-1 lathe, drill press, and mill, but options are given to customize into whatever machine shop options you may want.

MultimachineIt is billed as an humanitarian, open source machine tool project for developing countries, and I think it meets that goal nicely. Not to mention that it would be the perfect project for the garage tinkerer.

Check out the Multimachine page which includes detailed step-by-step instructions in both PDF and html.