Make stuff

[duke of new york]

What kinds of hobbies or activities do you partake in that involve making or building things?

I like to work with my hands, and I'd like to try a new a hobby. In the past, I've done stuff like woodworking and diy things around the house, but the place I live now doesn't really give me the space to do large-scale stuff or stuff with serious tools (apartment with no garage and no outdoor space other than a very small parking lot).

 

[Solitaire U.]

I used to build model cars. The plastic kind, that is. This was back when you could buy 1/24 scale model cars at K-Mart for $3.99. I understand the prices have gone up quite a bit since then.

Of course, that doesn't include paint, equipment like airbrushes, and all the other great stuff that will allow you to go wild with the details. Still though, it's probably still a pretty accessible hobby price-wise.

My favorite part was painting and detailing the engine. I had a pin vise and micro-sized drill bits I would use to drill holes and then put tiny bits of wire to simulate things like spark plug wires and carburetor linkage. There's really no limit to how far you can go with the fine details.

The introduction of babies into my life kind of forced me to give it up. Time constraints combined with too many small, dangerous, easily swallowable substances and all that. A two year old running through the house with your razor sharp x-acto knife in his hand sort of puts a damper on the hobby. And my kids still can't seem to grasp that the finished products are NOT TOYS to be rolled along the floor and jumped off tables like common Hot Wheels. They are works of art, heh heh!

 

[eagor]

i agree with solitaire, models are fun to make though i can never get the paint right

i personally like modifying old toys i find at garages, for example

anything with wheels you can add lasers and model rocket engines to them, or convert them to rc

nerf guns are fun and simple projects, you can take out air suppressors and fit bigger springs to them.

and even if you cant think of anything you can always buy them for parts to other projects

and there is always knife making, it's simple and time consuming especially if you use nothing but hand tools

 

[Meer]

I built an analog synthesizer from a kit a few years ago. I still have to fix some parts of it, add some new stuff and actually make a proper enclosure for it all. Buut I did put new sexy knobs on it.

 

[eagor]

I built an analog synthesizer from a kit a few years ago. I still have to fix some parts of it, add some new stuff and actually make a proper enclosure for it all. Buut I did put new sexy knobs on it.

...what i really want to know is how sexy are these knobs?

 

[snafupants]

The introduction of babies into my life kind of forced me to give it up. Time constraints combined with too many small, dangerous, easily swallowable substances and all that. A two year old running through the house with your razor sharp x-acto knife in his hand sort of puts a damper on the hobby.

I'm probably sick in the head but I have this mental image of a decomposing yet paradoxically alive Gage from Pet Sematary haphazardly wielding daddy's scalpel.

 

[EditorOne]

I build wooden boats. keeps me out of trouble

 

[Meer]

...what i really want to know is how sexy are these knobs?

They are very similar to these knobs.

 

[Oedipus]

They are very similar to these knobs.

Hot.
I'm really not handy, so I don't do much of this sort of thing. When I was younger I used to make Bionicle masks and weapons for my brother and me out of polymer clay.

 

[pjoa09]

I used to build model cars. The plastic kind, that is. This was back when you could buy 1/24 scale model cars at K-Mart for $3.99. I understand the prices have gone up quite a bit since then.

Of course, that doesn't include paint, equipment like airbrushes, and all the other great stuff that will allow you to go wild with the details. Still though, it's probably still a pretty accessible hobby price-wise.

My favorite part was painting and detailing the engine. I had a pin vise and micro-sized drill bits I would use to drill holes and then put tiny bits of wire to simulate things like spark plug wires and carburetor linkage. There's really no limit to how far you can go with the fine details.

The introduction of babies into my life kind of forced me to give it up. Time constraints combined with too many small, dangerous, easily swallowable substances and all that. A two year old running through the house with your razor sharp x-acto knife in his hand sort of puts a damper on the hobby. And my kids still can't seem to grasp that the finished products are NOT TOYS to be rolled along the floor and jumped off tables like common Hot Wheels. They are works of art, heh heh!

I did that once with a Tamiya kit. It was a fairly life consuming thing that pretty much made me unproductive for two days at anything else. Crazy stuff. I was just gluing up shit like mad and ended up with an unintended purple matte exterior to my R33 Nissan Skyline GT-R.

I really want to work on an actual car though. My hands are very shaky so I think if I were to handle a micro drill bit I'd probably make it look like it came from Libyan Rebels.

I've written some little snippets of code. That is similar to building but not quite it.

 

[The Gopher]

Oh yeah that reminds me I was going to make an air conditioner.

 

[crippli]

I'm quite handy. Once I motorized an old milk separator. To get delicious cream straight from the cow, without all the effort. Took me a week, and it still works, It's much better then what you get from the supermarket. The alignment and variable speed was the challenge, and the work, as I find it tedious and I can barely operate things like a lathe. A slave would have been handy. I once knocked myself unconscious when my hair got caught in a grinder. And in the next moment it banged into my head. Luckily the hair was torn from the scalp, or that could have ended up worse.

When I was 16 I built a tree house, with the floor 20 feet above the ground. Very proud. Simple, yet sturdy. Probably next summer I will build a new one with view over two lakes. Bigger and higher. Not sure how to do it all yet, but have made plans for quite a time now, and I think I am approaching the build phase. 20 feet to the floor is what I considered to be on the limit of what I would survive if it tipped over, against all odds. But I want it higher.

 

[Cognisant]

Oh yeah that reminds me I was going to make an air conditioner.

There's copper tubing at toys'r'us, mini fans at officeworks, funnels & buckets at Mitre10, I've got plenty of thermoplastic and assorted hand tools, we're looking at about 2-3 hours from start to finish, obviously a bucket of ice won't last forever but if you add insulation (or use an esky, an "icebox" for those in the US) it should work for several hours.

Of course if you want to cool your room, not just blow a jet of cool air on yourself, then just pack your room full of buckets of ice and add salt.

Alternatively if you want to build a personal cooling unit that, well now that's an interesting project, the tricky bit will be getting a small thermos of liquid nitrogen...

 

[Cognisant]

Think I've found some dry ice, that'll do.

Gilrow Engineering & Ice Sales
92 Deshon St Woolloongabba QLD 4102

 

[EyeSeeCold]

I wouldn't say I'm a creator or from-scratch builder. I do enjoy concrete labor though where I can work with my hands and thinking energy(e.g. assembly or repair). I like seeing the functioning product of my labor.

 

[eagor]

They are very similar to these knobs.

well im aroused

 

[EditorOne]

I like seeing the functioning product of my labor.

Ditto. I wonder if that fits anywhere in the INTP scheme? For me it was simply good to build a boat that would last for some time compared to the ephemeral work of writiing for a daily newspaper. Although now thinking about it I realize I enjoyed building stuff on summer vacation while in college, before the journalism jobs.

 

[Trebuchet]

Last summer my 8-year-old and I had a mommy-daughter project to build a function generator. We ran waves through my pocket oscilloscope and a set of speakers we had lying around. Great fun. Lead-free solder isn't as good as the stuff we used when I was a kid, though.

It seems like most of my projects are with my kid these days. We pull out Sculpey polymer clay quite often. She likes to make Daleks and tiny models of the TARDIS, and we plan and make those together. I sometimes make beads for jewelry, or decorate frames as gifts, too.

Both of those were easy to do on a pair of little folding tables (they are called TV tables I think) and could be put away when we were done for the day, so they are good for apartments.

 

[INeedToPee]

how about starting with your personal interests? if you're an audiophile, try diy projects like building a headphone amp. or other electronics projects. you can learn so much on the internet

or find things that need fixing? for me, i like to tweak things to my liking, whether it is a shoe that doesn't fit too properly (i cut up a doctor scholls gel insole for a shoe thats too big) or a headphone with a cable that is too heavy (solder in a new cable and audio plug)

check out sites like instructables.com for some inspiration too

 

[The Gopher]

Think I've found some dry ice, that'll do.

Gilrow Engineering & Ice Sales
92 Deshon St Woolloongabba QLD 4102

Oh perfect, Will have to do it after I get back (and after I procrastinate) In other words probably never but! I must at least start...