  The twist construction is a method to build new interesting examples of
geometric structures with torus symmetry from well-known ones. In fact it can
be used to construct arbitrary nilmanifolds from tori. In our previous paper,
we presented a generalization of the twist, a shear construction of rank one,
which allowed us to build certain solvable Lie algebras from $\mathbb{R}^n$ via
several shears. Here, we define the higher rank version of this shear
construction using vector bundles with flat connections instead of group
actions. We show that this produces any solvable Lie algebra from
$\mathbb{R}^n$ by a succession of shears. We give examples of the shear and
discuss in detail how one can obtain certain geometric structures (calibrated
$\mathrm{G}_2$, co-calibrated $\mathrm{G}_2$ and almost semi-K\"ahler) on
two-step solvable Lie algebras by shearing almost Abelian Lie algebras. This
discussion yields a classification of calibrated $\mathrm{G}_2$-structures on
Lie algebras of the form $(\mathfrak{h}_3\oplus \mathbb{R}^3)\rtimes
\mathbb{R}$.

Differential Geometry