I think Colleen is on to it. At least Van Til agrees with her:
"The Bible is thought of as authoritative on everything of which it speaks. Moreover, it speaks of everything. We do not mean that it speaks of football games, of atoms, etc., directly, but we do mean that it speaks of everything either directly or by implication. It tells us not only of the Christ and his work, but it also tells us who God is and where the universe about us has come from. It tells us about theism as well as about Christianity. It gives us a philosophy of history as well as history. Moreover, the information on these subjects is woven into an inextricable whole. It is only if you reject the Bible as the word of God that you can separate the so-called religious and moral instructions of the Bible from what it says, e.g., about the physical universe."
-- Cornelius Van Til, Christian Apologetics (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1976), p.2.
I had an old book called "The Everyman's University: Practical" that told you how to do everything from slaughtering a pig, building a barn, overhauling a car, fixing a wireless receiver, to wiring a three-way switch. It was published in the late 30s. After the Bible, that would be a good place to start. I wish I could find it.