For example, I’m sure the average joe doesn’t know just how expensive calligraphy pens can be, or how deep the rabbit hole goes on video game speedruns.
Keyboards are generally known about, but the ergo part of it is a rabbit hole within the rabbit hole. Some people literally design, 3D print, wire up, solder and program one-off keyboards because they don’t like the ones made by other people.
It’s infectious too. I REALLY want to get good with one! and don’t get me started on the absolute craziest style: chorded keyboards! Insane!
I wonder if someone could outperform a Stenographer with a chorded?
Steno machines are also “chorded”, and they type in a form of shorthand where sounds, words, and phrases can be represented by just a few characters. My guess is that given equal skill levels, a steno machine would still be faster.
Stenographers usually use something pretty similar so I doubt it. The ones I’ve seen (to be fair, live captioners, not stenographers) use something that’s closer to a piano than a normal keyboard, and it types full words rather than letters, but also has a regular typing functionality. Pretty cool to watch honestly.
No way. Stenographers can transcribe speech live. Some have been timed at close to 400 wpm. While the top chorded typing is closer to 250wpm. Good, but nowhere close to a stenotype. Both are pretty ridiculously fast though. A pretty fast typist can barely approach 100.
Have you tried one? I’ve been pretty curious about them
Not yet but I am seriously considering building a badass ergo keyboard at some point once I see a good enough design to copy.
I switched to colemak-DH a while ago and it’s been great. Much more comfortable than QWERTY even on a standard keyboard.
Oh my gosh, I searched it and it looks hard to use but once you get good, you can type faster than the fastest typist using a regular keyboard.
Interesting!
Oh hey, you called? https://imgur.com/a/INk7FzQ
O good lord, the way those wires are bundled is porn to me.
Love the wires (that are hidden) also fit the color scheme
that is a fantastic build. and the wax lacing! It’s such a lost art, but it works so damn well! Next PC build I do I’m lacing all of my cabling.
You’re very brave showing your wiring.
Just built a simple 3x3 macropad and I spent several hours trying to keep every last bit of the wiring clean and I still have a rats nest…
Woah…
Have run across a community for that a lot since coming on Lemmy. It is pretty crazy and I had no idea.
They were/are one of the largest enthusiast groups on Reddit, so it makes sense they have a large presence on Lemmy too.
I did exactly this! It was super fun! Ergodox keyboard is very expensive. I spent about $40 on my custom one. It works great too :)
How did you spend only $40 on a custom ergo? When I built mine, I 3d printed the cases myself, but it’s still $30 for cheap key switches, $20 for cheap keycaps, $20 for a pro micro, and at least $40 for PCBs,unless you handwire.
Or did you reuse existing switches and keycaps?
Sorry, forgot to mention, I handwired and reused key caps. I have a lot of extra sets from liking keyboards for a while lol.
I also used a pi pico which took some extra tlc but saved a good chunk of money (1 pico is 7 dollars and only one is necessary).
The DIY fallacy. “You can do this yourself for just $20. You only need some string, a plastic bottle cap. And $5k of equipment and materials that have accumulated in your garage from around a decade of on and off hobbyist hoarding. Then you too can own a solar powered battery 3D printed fusion ferromagnetic screwdriver.”
I get it, but to be fair, the keycaps I already had were only about $20 on Amazon. So if you want to be pedantic I spent $60 total. Still beats the $300 plus for the ergodox. Also, if you really want to get into it, it took me around 25 hours to fully complete since I opted to hand wire. So factor in whatever your hourly rate is times 25 hours to get the opportunity cost of the diy job. Maybe you’re right and it just makes sense to buy the darn thing. At least I had fun though.
Most people don’t even own a soldering iron to wire it all. That’s another $20 right there. Just, it’s fine to say DIY is about the fun. And by all means, anyone who wants to have fun tinkering with some tech, go ahead, it’s a blast. But it’s never about the money. It’s disingenuous to tell people, “Oh I did this $300 at retail machine for $10”. No, you didn’t, you are just doing creative accounting and failing to report previous expenses. Because if it could be done for $10, big manufacturers would be doing it for $7, because they have the advantage of economics of scale.
Dactyl manuform user here. Can confirm
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There used to be smaller keyboards. Chyrosran22 reviewed one from the 80s, but I can’t find the video right now. Maybe someone else remembers the model.
check out Drops Preonic. because it is ortho, all the keys are much closer together. I have one at home and at work.
The nice thing is that it’s possible to find your “endgame” where you are satisfied without spending a TON. I’m happy with my Drop ALT, stock key caps, and Zeal Zilent v2s. Mind you that was my 3rd or 4th board of varying “depth” in the scene. 🤣
Maybe not as expensive as the others, but crochet/knitting/sewing all start off fairly cheap, and then the next thing you know you’re offering to service old men behind a Joann’s fabric because you need this particular fabric and you need an entire bolt of it, and it’s the one fabric in the entire fucking store that isn’t on their amazing buy one get 73 free sale for the week.
Nothing like spending $100 and 80 hours on a pair of socks for yourself because they don’t sell the ones you want.
Those are gorgeous though. I don’t have the skill to do anything like that yet. I’m mainly stuck on sleep masks and warshrags. Haha. That cabling looks amazing
I feel like there’s a collision of fetishes here about to start paying for your yarn habit.
Do you have a link to this pattern? I like the heel here and I don’t love the one I currently use.
Pattern? No, I never use patterns. The heal is a standard “afterthought heal”. You can find instructions on YouTube and other sites. It is my favorite heal and the easiest to darn when the time comes.
When doing socks I do a test swatch to figure out my stitches per in for rows and columns. Then the rest is all math. Once I finished the first I just started cabling the top of the foot. When I got to the ankle I started cabling all the way around. I kept going until they were as high as I wanted them.
When I learned to knit my instructor was pissed by the end of the fist days lessons because I had knitted several things with no patterns. “How do you know what to do?” “Math.”
Thank you so much for the name of it! I’m a beginner and only knit the same socks over and over again. I have been experimenting with different sock patterns without a guide, but not the heel construction.
Those are gorgeous!!
Wow, these look amazing! Great job :)
I just started crocheting this week 🥲
It’s a wonderful habit! Don’t listen to me. Haha. Fiber crafts are seriously awesome. I’m a total novice at crochet, an intermediate knitter (Portuguese style), and I sew half way well. It’s so much fun, and so worth it. … Just read your coupons carefully.
After one project I’m already feeling that about the coupons 🙃 But it’s really fun and I enjoy it a lot! I can’t wait to dive deeper into it
The problem is not the price of the yarn, the problem is that none of us have self control and will hoard thousands of dolars in yarn in a closet and not use it because “it’s too pretty I need the perfect project for it”.
…and then we go out and buy more yarn
I do not appreciate you spying on me and posting about it. Rude.
Yep! Especially buying like ethically sourced yarn and stuff. It’s why I buy acrylic yarn because buying yarn from local dyers is difficult as.
Same boat. I’m poor as fuck. I hate that I make so many decisions to buy things I know aren’t the option ethically, and that applies so hard to yarn. Really anything in the textiles industry. I try not to buy animal fiber at all unless it’s thrifted.
3D printing! You can start out cheap but you can get STUPID expensive, and it’s the biggest most meandering rabbit hole I know of
It’s expensive, but it’s also expensive in lots of different avenues. It’s not like you can just go “well I’ll never buy a big pre-built proprietary printer then I’ll just make it myself! Open source forever!” Because that’s the road to leads to sourcing and building your own voron from scratch and spending a thousand dollars on parts
Because that’s the road to leads to sourcing and building your own voron from scratch and spending a thousand dollars on parts
Looks at my 2.4 sitting on my workbench.
Can confirm, that’s exactly how it happened. 😬
I’ve been amazed at how cheap it’s become since I built my first few printers. I spent thousands building printers that aren’t half as good as a $300 printer today.
And getting consistent prints at a decent speed can be challenging! (Slow and good vs fast and unreliable is a common choice.)
I can highly recommend the Klipper firmware if you haven’t already, I can print at much higher speeds than marlin firmware and the print quality is actually better
I just bought an elegoo neptune 4 pro and thought about buying more filament already. Hopefully it will only be filament and not more machines or something
3D printing really isn’t expensive, especially since you can create a lot of stuff for cents. I’m considering a new extruder for my Ender 3 (Looking at the LDO orbiter v2) and that’s €70, which sounds expensive for the printer, but compared to any other hobby that’s peanuts
It can get expensive - especially if you start looking into high-end / commercial quality printers.
…or if you burn through 3 reels of TPU just to get one goddamn wrist rest to print. 😩
A bambu x1 Carbon is like €1000 right? That sounds expensive, but with the amount of money spent on my car, I could have had multiple of those
Sure, but if you wanna get crazy, you can spend car-levels of money on something like this
Sure, but it’s definitely not a hobby at that point
Yeah, €70 is not much for an upgrade for a hobby. That’s the price of a mid-range chain for a mountain bike and chains are not upgrades, they’re consumables, which you buy at least once a year, lol.
3D printing can be expensive, but I disagree that it is stupid expensive.
But I NEED all the different filament colors @___@
Gymnastics. The skill part is obvious but monetarily its more than i expected. I thought it would be like going to a regular gym but its usually much more expensive to use the gyms and thats if you can find a time slot where adult males can train.
Magic: the gathering.
There’s several different styles of play known as “formats”.
The Cheapest being “Standard”. Which is the latest 3-5 sets released. The deck of 75 card deck can cost upwards of £500.
Then the most popular format, modern, which is the last 20ish years of release. The average deck there can be upwards of £1,500.
Then there’s legacy and vintage where decks are in the high 4 figures and some even in the 5 figures.
My roommate is big into magic, but he refuses to spend a lot of money on it. He makes counterfeit cards of whatever he wants and gets a deck custom printed for $40. He’s also part of a discord group that makes cool fake cards or changes artwork on existing ones.
They’re not allowed to have the official back but since he uses sleeves no one can tell. He’s really up front about it and talks about how he couldn’t get into the hobby or make the decks he likes if he had to pay for real cards.
There’s nothing wrong with proxying. It only becomes an issue if you’re playing in a tournament, or your opponent insist on using real cardboard since they probably spent a lot and so everyone should as well.
Absolutely based.
Don’t forget commander, which a lot of places claim is now the most popular format. Pre-constructed commander decks can cost as little as $20-40 and competitive commander decks can easily go into the thousands.
The game also has a very high skill ceiling. I think that’s one of the main reasons why magic has such a broad age range to its player base. There’s plenty of weird lines of play, from strange card / rule interactions to weird deck themes no one else would think of.
Isn’t “pauper” cheaper than standard?
Also don’t forget that when the meta changes that expensive deck’s value can change (usually for the worse)
I quit playing in 1996. It wasn’t too rare to have a $2000 to $3000 deck even back then. And that’s when every card store had a Black Lotus for sale without having to notify their insurance company.
I always felt like Modern was cheaper in the long run than Standard. Spending hundreds of dollars every few months on a new set didn’t speak to me. Whereas I could buy a few cards here and there to upgrade me modern decks.
I’d assume a lot of people sell/trade as the next set rotation is coming around no? I’m not sure how card economy works in magic but in yugioh today’s meta is tomorrow’s budget, surely there’s people that want to buy in play in non rotating formats
Photography can start with your smart phone and get expensive in a hurry.
Digital SLRs begin at $2k and the lenses range from $400 to $3,500. The more you try and break into high end photography the more insane the costs are.
I probably dumped about $10k into cameras and realized I still wasn’t that good at it. That’s the painful thing. Realizing your skill doesn’t match your fancy tech.
DSLRs start at like $400-500. Bought a Nikon D5300 years ago and the part that makes the biggest difference is the lens.
Yes, I should have written full frame DLSRs
EOS RP (full frame) with the starter lens is only (lol) about $1300
Fair enough, I’m not in the business anymore and no doubt competition and innovation has dropped prices significantly
But there is a low entry point with this one. I bought a used Canon Powershot that has a 50x optical zoom. Only stores JPG. Can’t swap out the lense. But it was $200 and now I can zoom in on birds. Since it’s digital I don’t have to pay for film or prints.
That phenomenon is known as GAS, Gear Aqcuisition Syndrome. I sold all my shit and just have a 1" sensor compact now. I take a lot more pictures ironically.
The old adage I learned when I first got into photography (that I’ve only just started following) is that if you have $5000 to spend, spend $1000 on camera gear and $4000 on plane tickets. You’ll end up with my better photos that way.
What is challenging in photography? Point and shoot.
What is challenging in art? Just put a pencil on paper and move it around.
composition
What is challenging in photography?
To get the shoot you want it to be in the best possible quality.
My semi professional advice would be to point and shoot.
I have some pictures of my kids that I love, you should absolutely listen to me.
Some people prefer accidental strokes of luck, others enjoy planned projects. 😎
I feel like games workshop table top games(e.g. Warhammer 40k) would fit in to this description if an individual had never heard of table top wargaming, or their reputation.
They’re made of plastic? It can’t cost that much right!?!?
but the rules, they can’t be too complicated? It’s just game !?!?
Oh you wanted to understand the story? Well let me show you a library on the first ten thousand years after the dawn of time to get you started
1page rules!
Rock climbing. To start out you basically just need $150 worth of shoes and some $5 chalk. Trad climbing or big wall climbing can be 5 figures and a dozen years worth of experience. And the skill ceiling is probably obvious, but it’s become an Olympic sport for a reason.
I think rock climbing has a fairly interesting cost curve, you’re right.
- Bouldering in the gym: Membership fees, shoes, chalk bag.
- Bouldering outside: Crash pad, gas to crag, shoes, chalk bag.
- Sport climbing in the gym: Rope, belay device, shoes, chalk bag, membership fees.
- Sport climbing at the crag: Rope, belay device, quickdraws, shoes, chalk bag, gas to crag
- Trad climbing: Rope, belay device, rack, shoes, chalk bag, gas to crag
And then if you add ice climbing and mountaineering you’re really screwed. Thousands of dollars in goretex, travel, supplies, rescue kits, avalanche training, etc
Mountaineering was the next level I couldn’t afford to join my friends on.
“ice climbing” “screwed” Oh youuu
This is how a friend of mine got into ice climbing. They went to work as a glacier guide and got a avalanche training for free. They work to find their ice climbing hobby.
Bouldering here in the Netherlands can start pretty easily:
- € 10-15 entry
- € 5 to rent shoes, although you can bring any clean sport shoes yourself
And that’s it!
You can look into buying shoes and memberships if you’re really into it, but even then € 150 for shoes and € 40-60 a month for a membership is cheaper than my idea of an expensive hobby, like Magic the Gathering or PC building and gaming.
I am still amazed about how much money you can spend on making coffee at home. 300€ for a manual grinder - “that’s the cheao chinese stuff” wtf
I’ve got a £1000 espresso machine and that the cheap one. We also have all the pour over shite - scales, grinder, gooseneck kettle, Hario… It adds up quickly.
And when you invite a bunch people over and tell them yeah we’re into coffee and they ask you for coffee and you’re like… Ok I am incapable of making coffee for more than 2 people in under 15 minutes, I need to pull out the senseo pad machine.
Absolutely… someone at work was like, grab a coffee, see you in 5. Dude, it takes at least 15 minutes to make a coffee in this house.
Imagining making 3 cappucinos with a flair neo or picopresso is killing my soul
We have a ROK and my husband once did 3 espressos for guests in a row, it did break his soul a little bit.
Oh God, I’m sorry for your loss… haha
Thank you xD
You know what the most painful part is? When your guests try the coffee and are like “aaah wow yeah that’s… nice! It’s really, uhm, intense” because they are so used to their crap coffee and don’t get the flowery berry fresh aroma of specialty coffee and you’re just smiling and dying inside. I mean I would have hated this kind of coffee 10 years ago myself so I get it but man…
This is why I still have a senseo pad machine. I’m not wasting my time, energy and coffee to make fancy hand filter coffee or manual espressos for people who really don’t care (unless they ask for it, in that case, waste away).
I feel that exactly! Haha. My partner hates coffee, but will occasionally sip espresso just to contort her face into a brand new form of disgust I’ve never seen before, just to humor me. I have lots of non-coffee nut family members as well, so it’s usually just me loving it.
I’ve been thinking about getting an easy bulk coffee maker for guests, all I currently have are single dose hand grinders and whatnot. One day…
There’s coffee, and then there’s espresso. The former is much more sane, and unfortunately I’m into the latter…
I’ve purposely avoided getting into espresso because my wife already thinks i’m crazy for wanting to spend $6-700 on a new grinder and drip machine when our current ones “work fine”.
You can spend that much on a competent espresso setup with a Flair 58 and 1Zpresso K Plus/Ultra, or J-Max if you want something more modern and less traditional! However, you run the risk of the endless accessory game, and the urge to upgrade to something like a Zerno…
Yea, I have extreme fomo when it comes to hobbies, so i inevitable “have” to upgrade. I think it’s better I stick to my coffee. But, it’s nice to know I can start lower if I ever change my mind.
Yea, I understand that! You can go even cheaper if you are willing to sacrifice workflow, like using a Nomad or cheaper Flair model, or Cafelat Robot. Espresso hand grinders are really affordable now if you’re willing to hand grind too.
Workflow? Jesus Christ I just want a coffee that’s nicer than the instant powder.
And that’s perfectly fine. Coffee isn’t that complicated to make. Espresso on the other hand takes a lot of work to get right, and even if you can make it with a couple hundred bucks, it will take 20 minutes of work for a single shot, rather than 3-4.
Where $50 for a small bag of coffee seems reasonable.
Yeah because it apparently tastes like blueberries, moss and the left knee of Mussolini’s grandma after a late afternoon walk in the summer rain
To be fair, you totally can taste the difference between roast levels and washed or natural coffees, and better coffee does taste better, but there are severely diminishing returns after around 25 dollars a bag.
I agree of course. It is just nice to have a variety and it is also worth the money to a degree.
Although, I must say, I use rather cheap coffee (not more than 10€-12€/250g with the price resulting rather from fairtrade and organic labels than from it being high quality) if I want to make a milk based drink. I personally don’t think most of third wave/specialty coffee tastes good with milk. So using it on a latte macchiato seems like a waste to me.
Oh, for sure. I close to never drink milk drinks, so third wave stuff is great for me, but acid and milk don’t mix at all.
In general, I personally don’t think milk and coffee go well together at all, to be honest. I don’t drink milk drinks often, but when I do, I add tons of sugar and sirup and consider it a dessert and not “coffee”.
Honestly I actually tend to think Oat Milk goes with coffee better than cow’s milk, and I’m not a vegan at all. Something about the oat taste I guess.
Love coffee as a hobby for this reason. You can start with $20 to get simple pour over equipment or even nicer venas but you can go far and high with it eventually or stop at the $20
Warhammer 40k
Comparably, Gunpla also goes hard on costs (though imo its more for associated materials like paint then the models themselves, which can be pricy but tend not to be.) and the quality of some of what folks put out there is staggering, as shown in the 10th Gunpla Builders World Cup
I appreciate that link, thanks. I have built a few, haven’t even painted though. I just like building stuff I don’t need glue for.
Those builds remind me of a guy I worked with that back in the day would be a model builder for cars that the model companies hired to build the model for the box covers before they mostly started using photos of real cars. He was just so talented. Even bashed some kits so they could be molded to create new models for some companies. One of them was when they wanted an old woody station wagon so he basically took 10 different kits and created it for their mold.
I don’t think the average Joe would know how expensive Warhammer 40k or model trains are.
Is it cheaper if you 3d print your own minis?
Short answer is probably not, it depends.
If you have a printer set up and ready to go, it certainly can be. But for me to get a printer and all the fixings (printer, cure/wash station, resin, tent and ventilation for fumes) I was out about 700 Cad. And then you gotta get stls, some are easy others are way harder. Some of those are free and some are paid. And then I myself am paying for lychee pro, so that’s around a Netflix sub down the drain. Once that’s all clear there is the insane time investment. I can easily spend 30-60 min processing a job and prepping the printer for the next print. Finding, prepping an stl to print if everything is good can take as short as an hour, but can take much longer if things are hard to find, or if it’s a complex object to support. And then if you fail that print, all that time and resin (not too terrible, my large prints are like 5 bucks, small minis are under a dollar) is wasted.
After all that, there is still things I plan to buy. I lack the patience to try printing void dragon c’tan, and there’s only one source that I could hope to buy a decent imotekh stl, and it’d be more expensive than buying the model (I regret buying it. That is the first and last time I ever get a finecast model).
For me the fun is in the journey not the product. I’ve had a lot of fun printing my necrons. I don’t plan on playing in anything official, just friends so that angle isn’t an issue. I went into it wanting to take up 3d printing as its own hobby and I do not regret going this route, but building a single 2k army like I plan to is not worth it. Past that I imagine the savings will roll in, but I don’t really care for another army. Ethics wise I’m happy to vote with my wallet by diverting money to printing VS. paying for overpriced models.
I feel like learning how to 3d print is a skill that could be very useful. Maybe I’m trying to justify it 😅
I’m not sure if that’s viable for 40k. You might not be welcomed to play with fake minis. You could surely do that with friends though.
My understanding is that you’re only allowed to play what you own, no stand ins.
So literally pay to win?
Well, more pay to play.
But if you want to participate in a battle with a large army, you need to have that army.
It is a bit more complicated than that. Basically, people you play with won’t care so long as you’ve painted it to a reasonable standard and there isn’t some massive size difference that’d give some notable advantage or disadvantage compared to official minis. The same is true of official ones where people are picky about unpainted plastic but its likely more a thing with printed ones. Independent game stores also won’t really give a shit since you’re likely buying paints and stuff from them anyway.
GW stores are the ones that will have a problem with it, along with tournaments they host. I have heard stories of people getting shit for using forgeworld stuff (which is GW’s speciality site basically, they sell the really big models and some more niche like, regiment-specific stuff) in stores because it isn’t something the stores themselves will specifically sell. This is because of corporate policy though, no one wants to lose their job.
Onepagerule is cheaper.
Probably more well known but with the whole ‘live edge’ fad from a couple years ago now, some people don’t realize you can spend upwards of 20-30k on a single piece of some types of raw lumber.
I feel like woodworking is one of those traditional “this hobby is expensive” things, but I was shocked by just how hard it is to do some things (like hollow out a bowl-shaped divot in a piece of wood) without the proper tools. And the proper tool is sometimes a single hook knife that’s $89 dollars.
You can get 8 foot of pine from any hardware store for $10, but if you want to do anything other than cross cut that pine to different lengths, you’re going to need to drop some cash.
Of course, the skill ceiling for woodworking is enormous.
Woodworking can get crazy expensive, but like most hobbies, you can get into it gradually for relatively low cost. I started with a cordless drill and a circular saw, then gradually bought used tools and restored them. If I were to buy everything new in my shop, it would easily be $15-20k, but I’ve spent maybe $2k over 5 years. The most I’ve spent on any one tool was a $400 miter saw a few months ago on sale, almost everything else has been stuff that’s older than me or inexpensive tools that work just as well as pricier options.
Good hardwood is fucking expensive though. I found a local mill where I can get cherry for $4/bdft or walnut for $5.50/bdft (bdft = board foot, volumetric measurement equivalent to 12"x12"x1"). Somewhere like Woodcraft charges $15-18/bdft for walnut, which is $60+ for a 6" wide, 8ft long, 1" thick board.
ETA: It does annoy me when every woodworking video comment section is bombarded with complaints about how expensive tools are. Yes, Sawstop and Powermatic are obscenely expensive. A DeWalt job site table saw is more than enough for most hobbyists starting out. So is a used saw you can get for $100 or less. It’s very easy to blow through $20k outfitting a shop, but it’s also very easy to outfit a shop with old, quality tools for a fraction of that price. This is what I’ve spent over five years
- 6" Jet jointer from 1973: $240
- 12" Parks planer from 1943-1986 (no idea on exact date): $200. Used a 13" Woodtek lunchbox planer for a few years before this. I got that for free because they don’t make linkage gears for it anymore, and I was able to 3D print replacements.
- DeWalt job site table saw, new in 2018: $325
- Wen drill press, new in 2019: $70
- Wen scroll saw, new in 2019: $60
- harbor freight miter saw, used: $80 (fuck this thing, would never cut square no matter how much I tried to tune it)
- DeWalt compound sliding miter saw, new 2023: $400
- Harbor freight lathe, new 2020: $150-200 (don’t remember exactly)
- shaper from 1978 + $2k in tooling: $40 at auction
- 7-10 various hand planes, all used from eBay or marketplace: $80
- knockoff 14" delta bandsaw from late 80s: $40
- harbor freight dust collector, new 2023 (gift): ~$250-300
- slow speed bench grinder, new 2021: $90
- various hand saws, 2016-2023: probably $100
- various chisels, new 2016-2023: ~$120
All in, $2,100 over 5 years. I sold ~$1,500 worth of random projects in that time, and gained a ton of enjoyment from it.
Even if you do go big and spend a lot of money on tools, as long as you have disposable income and you’re not forgoing your/your family’s basic needs, there’s nothing wrong with spending money on things you enjoy. It’s ok to enjoy things.
I hear you on lumber prices. Woodcraft near me ended up having a sale on some exotics around the holidays and I bought as much of it as I could afford. I justified it by making basically everyone I knew salt boxes as gifts.
Otherwise, it’s hard to get ahold of gorgeous lumber without having a huge bankroll.
It’s hard man. I was living in Alaska when I really got into woodworking, and I had one overpriced option for a really limited selection of hardwood. I managed to get some old maple flooring from a guy that was contracted to replace a basketball court, and got some old redwood from a water tower that was taken down, but otherwise I just used pine for everything for the first few years.
Best advice I can offer is to find a local mill. Facebook groups are good for finding local people that just do it on the side and/or don’t have a website. Ideally, find someone with a kiln, or be prepared to wait for months to years for it to dry. You can also find some good deals at auctions and sometimes on FB marketplace
The only wood I buy at Woodcraft nowadays is for small lathe projects when they have blanks on sale
I’ve never gone to a mill or even a lumberyard (only some speciality stores from time to time), but I think I’m going to take your advice and look around.
I tend to use the ol’ pine and plywood for most of my projects, but I want to get more into making furniture and getting a source now ain’t a bad idea.
They’re generally a great experience. It’s way different than Lowe’s/HD, and generally better selection for cheaper than places like Woodcraft or Rockler. There’s typically a wide range in widths/thicknesses, so have a rough idea of what you need and be ready to mentally adapt your build if they don’t have as many wide boards as you need. Some places will have a minimum purchase requirement, but the few I’ve gone to don’t. Typically, I spend $200-400 for a trip, which covers a few projects for me.
Added bonus of going to a mill instead of a distributor, sometimes they’ll have waste you can take for free/really cheap! Great for small projects or lathe stuff
There’s a YouTube channel I saw a while back where the guy films the process of cutting slabs. When you take into consideration the sheer size of trees that have to be used to make a slab, and then the size of the equipment that has to be used, and the weight, it’s easy to see how the cost of even a clean grained slab can be through the roof, not to mention something that has artistic or desirable figuring in the grain.
Warhammer 40k. I heard about the game years ago and thought it sounded pretty cool. Didn’t realize that unlike D&D, it’s not something generally played without minis. And it’s a massive war game. So you need a lot of minis. And it’s a massive war game. So you need to know how to strategize or you’re gonna suck. High cost and high skill.
I just read the lore instead. 🤷🏻♂️
Wargaming is something I’ve always wanted to try but don’t want to spend the time and money to actually try it. It’s just way too high of a barrier.
There’s a cool game called Moonbreakers that has great model painting tools. I hope someday Warhammer 40k gets a tabletop accurate video game with model painting and everything. I can see why they wouldn’t, because it may take away from tabletop, but I’d bet it’d work the other way. It’d create a way for people to try it before committing that much to it, instead of seeing the barrier and backing out.
Model trains. Sure, you can have a lot of fun with a 100 dollar toy train, but those brass engines are very shiny and very expensive.
Seen a couple basement setups in my time though tbh never saw an especially impressive one. Most tend to just emulate rural routes and small towns. Always thought more fanastic scenery (Surely there has to be at least one person out there who does D&D figure stuff and trains.) would be great, but I suppose that it would detract from the star of the show.
Surpringly not, no model train manufacturer does fantasy stuff. Best you can get is custom stuff.
Sim racing. An entry level wheel cost 100, an okay one 300 and the most expensive I’ve seen is 100,000
https://www.f1authentics.com/products/red-bull-simulator-championship-edition
Same thing with flight sims
There are people who recreate complete cockpits from old or newish parts…
If you can buy a decent car for the cost of your sim racing rig, it’s time to evaluate.
I know people with real race cars, it’s lots of breaking down and hitting things for big money.
A full sim rig with VR and motion is probably cheaper with the same brain chemicals, and you can just do it whenever.
