Comment by MisterTea

I read an article in a woodworking magazine showing how an amish shop runs its traditionally electric machines on diesel power.

A long trench runs part the length of the shop with a shaft supported by bearing blocks. It terminates in an adjacent room housing a diesel engine. A belt system couples the engine to the shaft and air compressor.

Along the trench are all the standard machines you'd find in a shop: drill press, planer, sanders, table saw, joiner, etc. Each one had its electric motor removed and retrofitted with an elaborate system of shafts, belts and sheaves which connected to the main shaft in the trench.

They turned them on and off using a simple yet clever lever operated belt tensioner. By default the belt had enough slack to allow it to slip on the drive sheave preventing the machine from running. When the lever was pulled, it forced the belt between two tensioning sheaves tightening it which then started the machine. Very simple and clever and all made from wood.

Power tools were all air operated and one clever hack they made was a pneumatic wood glue dispenser. It was a 1-2 foot length of 3 or 4 inch PVC pipe, capped at both ends, one end being a threaded port. Plumbed to the top of the tube was an air pressure regulator to lower the pressure to just a few PSI. At the bottom, a hose which ran to a blow gun. You shut the air, opened the cap, filled it with glue, closed it and turned the air on. press the blow gun and now you have a glue gun! Really neat and my father built one for his wood shop.

One bonus of using air tools is they are lighter and more rugged than equivalent electric power tools. I've heard claims of 3-4x lifetime so long as they are fed clean, lubricated air. Nowhere near as efficient though as a lot of power is lost as heat in air compression.