How about a razor blade from Dad and a few pins from Mum's sewing box. This is sufficient for a decent chuck glider.

Next step is a pair of pliers for bending piano wire and a soft brush for dope application. We are now into rubber powered free flight.

When Santa delivers your first engine you may want to add a small hand drill, screwdriver and soldering iron. The sky is then your oyster (if you can find anywhere far enough away from the H & S and noise police to actually fly the thing).

MikeD

I think part of it is that kids grow up thinking the minimum is what they see in their dad's shed. Consequently, as each generation gets wealthier, the minimum gets greater.

Heaven help my kids.. Especially the one that inherits my workshop.

Regards,

Richard.

Probably all part of the “I want and I want it NOW!” syndrome of life today.

Mike – reading that brought back a rush of nostalgia – Galloping Ghost RC anyone?

I just love those people who look at a problem and think "Of course I can do that, why couldn't I do that?" and then go on to create one of those well documented DIY disasters!
The local education authorities have a great deal to answer for – I remember the new head of the local (very, very successful) technical college selling ALL of the tools and machinery because 'Computers are the future'.

Enter stage right the local DIY emporium with lovely glossy adverts for those time saving tools. Apparently it is impossible to put a shelf up without the thick end of £400 of Power Tools.
Cheaper to employ someone who knows what they are doing.

Then of course we have the new and latest generation of motor cars, something that many people did was service their own cars, you quite soimply cannot do this nowadays with the average toolbox. You need a laptop, the appropriate software and a cable – which can cost as much as £120 just for the cable – so you can reset the service interval and look at any fault codes.

In the spirit of the original question though I am thinking that maybe what we should be looking at as a sort of starting point for a workshop. Although we look back with nostalgia to those "Good Old Days" – and many were – I would look at today. What should a basic workshop contain? Making your first set of 1-2-3 blocks as an apprentice is great, and you learn much from the experience, it is just not a practical starting point for the Home Hobbyist. In My Opinion.

I hope to go to the Chester Tools open day next week and I am going to be interested to see the age range of the people there.

graham.

I think i was 14 when I started to build up my own workshop. I was given the space and the use of any of my Dad's tools I could use without being caught… I had to scrounge my own junk furniture etc. for things like making a workbench.

I had a 4" quick release vice – reclaimed by the aged P some 33 years ago a venerable Juneero machine, and antex soldering iron, a nice steel rule (I still have it!) a decent modelling knife, pliers and assorted junior hacksaws, screwdrivers (including a meccano one made from bent wire) random allen keys etc. On a good day i could sneak access to my dad's brace and bit and I took possession of a slightly blunt hardpoint saw (in the days when these were a novelty. Curiously all this random junk was complemented by a really high quality Eagle multimeter (almost AVO standard) and my Dad's Heathkit oscilloscope – he had another one of the meters (without the replacement bunch of 1W 1ohm resistors in parallel for the current range)) a real AVO and a 'proper' scope. I was very pleased with eh screen hood ogf teh scope, which I made from a plastic flower pot with the bottom cut off.

These saw a few model boats and planes, a few random electrical and TTL electronic projects, a decent hifi amp and speakers, a model railway and lots of plastic kits.

I even pre-empted the modern trend for valve-based fuzz boxes by building the amplifier from an autochanger into the chassis of a lightly butchered 'Trough Line' radio (someone had pinched the tuning capacitor – at the time it was obsolete, but not a collector's item!) I just added a 1/4" jack at input and output, then into my 'power amplifier' which was made from another autochanger, but with the turntable discarded and a 10" speaker grafted into the box.

Amazingly these adventures did not cause any loss of life, more by luck than judgement.

Sadly, when I went off to Uni, I lost my workshop (a draughty 6×6 victorian 'conservatory&#39 but kept some of the gear, although it was nearly 20 years before I was able to reclaim the multimeter!

Looking back, I was extraordinarily lucky, at the time, I assumed that it was perfectly normal. We were neither poor nor well off, but my parents gave me a space of my own, which is the best thing an inquisitive boy can have. I think I spent more time in it, just enjoying being there with my junk, than I ever did making things. To be honest, i still enjoy just sitting surrounded by my 'junk' and dreaming of what I can do.

So the minimum? Something to dream about, and a little space to dream in.

Neil

Graham,

I'll be going to Chester too Im looking for a heavier milling machine. Oh Im in my early 50s.

PhilH

And those who know this are probably the ones who know most of all

All the best machinists I have known have been those who are so aware of their own limitations and have such high standards that they cannot see the quality of work they do produce. Shame really.

Regards,

Richard

Hi Guys,

I'm with Bogs, which I might summarise with:"the only thing new in engineering is what I have not come across yet"

chriStephens