I went through my Fitting & Turning Apprenticeship in the 70's, before CNC was widely available, so I learnt how to do it all by hand & head.
I still love the pre CNC way of doing things (although I do have a lot of plans for precision machines stuff coming up), cause you can do an awful lot with a hacksaw fle and drill if you put your mind to it.
Here's a link to a 'chopper site' with a huge amount of downloadable eBooks plus YouTube for hands on skills.
Just have a look around it, I found it fun and I hope it might inspire some members onto new projects

http://www.knucklebusterinc.com/