I came across a book, copyrighted 1918, which I’d picked up for next to nothing at a bazaar and forgotten about. It is “Scientific American: Handy Book of Facts and Formulae,” and it contains a variety of information on all sorts of practical skills for mechanical things, chemistry, metallurgy, cleaning metals, coloring metals, working and cutting glass, using lubrication, and creating various finishes. It looks like its target audience was hobbyists who had a limited set of equipment at their disposal. While I’m sure some of it has become rather dated since 1918, much of it is probably still a relevant reference, so perhaps some of you will find it useful or inspirational.
I scanned it all and put it online here. It’s in DjVu format, so you’ll need to download something like DjView to see it. I’ll convert to PDF if I can figure out how to do it without drastically increasing file size.