Ask Lemmy

I have a halfway decent woodworking setup, plus a 3D printer and a cheap laser, but metalworking is just not really an option. The space dedication, plus the oils and the fire hazards and the scraps/shavings/slivers/chaff/god-knows-what-else all being completely incompatible with sharing a space with the rest of it. Sigh, just not likely to happen until and unless I can get in with the makerspace mafia. I am thinking of trying to figure out designing for mills and using metal-bending workbenches in CAD, though, and sending more designs off to be fabbed.

Basic metalworking needs a stick welder (£50-150), angle grinder (£30-80), mask (£20-100), other safety gear (£20-100), assorted hand tools (£20-200) and a dry workspace with light, power and ventilation.

You can setup a simple workspace in any room with some basic protection for your fixtures and fittings. Or you can get popup workshop tents you can put in your garden.

You can get all your metal precut and drilled, even folded in a brake when you order it and get it delivered to save costs on drills and saws.

There's always lots of cheap tools and things around if you look at online listings locally especially since it skews older as a hobby so lots of house clearances selling good quality tools.

This is exactly how I started!

I LOVE counting money

Depends on your budget, but... discovery flight lesson doesn't cost a whole lot for an actual aircraft. I live in a somewhat expensive region, and it's around 100 USD equivalent for an hour.

And if you know someone with a 3D printer, an RC aircraft can be built relatively cheaply (working on this myself, but I already had the radio and receiver)

Don't you have a recurrent one? For me was origami, I tried dozens of hobbies over the years but origami was one that got my attention every few years and never disappeared entirely.

In the UK you also need permission from the wealthy to do it on their land.

Obviously a lot of location factors are at play, but a crossbow is relatively inexpensive, has plenty of ability to humanely kill a deer (if that's your intended target), and the bolts and broadheads are recoverable.

Smaller game can be taken with a .22 or .25 cal air gun, which can be far more cost effective than a standard firearm, depending on if it is a spring, piston, or pre-charged pneumatic model. Side note, Lewis and Clark brought air rifles on their famous expedition.

Check your local hunting regs for legal options!

sewing is a fun hobby. I started when the world was shut down. watched a bunch of youtube to learn how. Sewing machines are intimidating but really not that hard once you get into it.

Look up Paul Sellers on YouTube. You'll have to pull up his backlog, cause he's pretty old and doesn't do as many project videos anymore. There's also a ton more "hand tool only" woodworkers on youtube, but I found that he's an easy one to watch.

He shows you how to bootstrap a workshop from nothing with just hand tools that you can ebay for not much.

You can start with smaller projects that you can not worry about much, and then work your way up to "dining table for life"

Just build a small box with a couple drawers out of the hobby boards at your local hardware store. Try to stick with harder woods like poplar, oak, walnut, etc. They're a little more expensive, but they're easier to work with cause they don't smoosh so much when you try to cut them, and building small things doesn't take a lot of wood.

You'd be surprised just how accessible woodworking is. You just have to be ok that it's going to take a lot longer if you don't have a giant workshop full of high end, expensive machines.

It's not as hard to get into as you'd expect. Right now** is a great time to get into it. There are a lot of instructors right now trying to build hours waiting for the airlines to hire again. You can find higher quality instructors for cheaper than normal

My instructor works for free. He's just glad to be getting free flight hours. I wouldn't recommend doing a formal flight school unless you have money to burn. If you're good at self-study, get Sporty's or another online course. Few hundred dollars for the ground school. Then rent a plane to do your hours in

**Huge asterisk here due to gas prices being elevated. It's not too hard to find cheap 100LL/UL, but that window is closing. As long as the war in Iran is ongoing, higher fuel prices will be a concern. That being said, my Cherokee gets 16-20 MPG equivalent

The new sport pilot rules may be for you then. There's also Ultralight aviation or powered paragliding.

If you ever pick it up, a couple things to know: 1) your fingers will bleed until you've built up some kinda thick callouses. The E string is brutal. If you want to avoid that, do scales on the G and D strings until you have callouses.

\2) you don't need a $1,000+ violin, you certainly don't need the multiple $1,000+ bows you can find. Get a cheap ($250-$300) student violin to learn with, and if you get good enough to actually perform, then look at the expensive toys. (And good Lord do they get expensive quick.)

\3) some people will tell you not to tape your finger positions, some will tell you to tape your finger positions. I don't actually know if it matters, it certainly made learning the correct position for my fingers easier, and I haven't used the tape in decades since I stopped using my 3/4 size violin. What is important is that you do not get into the habit of resting the violin on your fingering hand. If you don't train your chin and shoulder to hold the violin by themselves, learning vibrato technique is damn near impossible.

Yep, learning an instrument would be mine as well

Grow rosemary. Drought tolerant shrub and just stick it in the ground somewhere. Does depend where you live but a lot of places you can do absolutely nothing and it will keep on growing just fine.

There's probably diving in your local area. You'd be surprised, but almost everywhere has at least a few good diving spots. Quarries and lakes are common dive spots

I do a lot of diving in the midwest. Water is cold, but otherwise it's got some good diving. Ship wrecks are especially cool since cold, fresh water will preserve them for an extremely long time. Once you get drysuit certified, the cold water isn't much of an issue too

It's really cool how friendly and curious most life is underwater, and being able to move in 3 dimensions will always be amazing to me