Usually, I live over on the Neanderthal side of the Creek. I thought this may be of interest here, though. Back in my high school days I was a pretty handy machine guy. This is the arbor press I made in my senior year. It was one of two tools I had to make in order to make my teacher happy (getting an A, in other words). The other was a drill press vise. I believe I was the only one who ventured to make both that year, most of the other guys botched one or the other and never finished them. The rack and the handle are stainless. The body is all mild steel. The pinion, knobs, and end cap are brass. I dug it up off the shelf at my Dad's house a while back and cleaned it up. Still pretty proud of it.
Much of the layout was done with scribes and dye. We had to do all the math for the gears, no digital assistance on anything, save for the readout on the mill, which was not installed on all of our mills at that time.