[Animats]

> Maybe I'll visit a makerspace? Ah, but every one in my area appears to have gone defunct since Covid year zero.

Yes. I miss TechShop, where I did CNC machining. It's not all that difficult. Maybe 100-200 hours to minimal competence.

What's left of the maker movement seems to have been taken over by little old ladies into crafting. Gluing construction paper and macrame, not machining and welding. Activities classes for middle schoolers where they assemble kits, not original work. In the early days of TechShop, it was people making rocket engine nozzles for the X-Prize, and people who commuted to Shenzhen to get their stuff made in volume. Four Bridgeport mills, all going at once.

[switchbak]

I haven't checked into a makerspace in a while, and it's sad to hear that's where it's gone (for you at least).

Then again I live in the (relative) boonies, so the closest I'll come to a makerspace is what I stick in my garage :)

[bsder]

Some makerspaces are still around, for example:

Austin, TX: https://asmbly.org/

Worcester, MA: https://technocopia.org/

Irvine, CA: https://urbanworkshop.net/

The problem is that none of them are what I would call "cheap" anymore.

> Activities classes for middle schoolers where they assemble kits, not original work.

Don't look down on this. Assembling an electronics kit is what got a LOT of us greybeards into electronics. Debugging something you put together is non-trivial.

[hef19898]

We now have a couple in my city of 300k people, I go for blacksmithing and welding (have to soon to finish something for family that lies there since November...). Or if I need some heavy woodworking machinery, luckily I have quite a bit of smaller machines at home, most of which inheritence of my late grandfather. Time permitting, I like manual work like that, good counterbalance to an otherwise typical office job.