Is this hobby dying?

[Axel BentellParticipant @axelbentell]

[Axel BentellParticipant @axelbentell]

I dont really have the benefit of being able to join a club, since there are no such things in sweden really. I know of one 7.25″ RR club in all of sweden. So my impresion is solely from the internet and ME; Is this hobby on its last breath? I see very few ppl w o grey hair in the pictures? Are there any younger ppl in this hobby. Im 39 myself…

 

I know young ppl today dont learn much in schools, but some must have caught interest in mechanical things? 

[dixieParticipant @dixie]

Hello Axel I think the answer to your question lies in the fact most young people just do not have the time to spend rather than lack of interest, most seem to busy actually making a living to even live. As for my self I took up this hobby for the first time aged SEVENTY

Regards Brian

[John CoatesParticipant @johncoates48577]

Well I’m a newcomer, albeit starting at 45 yrs old !

 

I’m not into trains but motorbikes and am here because this is where the knowledge is about lathes and milling, which are the skills I need to learn.

 

So maybe some people are joining and spending their money to help keep everybody going. I’ve subscribed to MEW, spent about £650 on tooling, joined my local model engineering society, and will shortly subscribe to Classic & Motorcycle Mechanics.

 

And thanks for everyone on here who answers my questions, which probably seem basic and obvious to some!

 

John 

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

I personally don’t think it’s dying as such but redefining itself.

Over the last few years when I have been attending shows I have noticed that the total gate has remained pretty constant, so at least there is the same interest.

 

Now I know that it’s basically an older persons game and as such these people naturally tend to pass on but given they pass on and no one takes up the mantle then show attendance would have dropped ?

 

I follow a few various forums and ironically in a conversation only last week with Tony Jeffree I mentioned that I was seeing a lot more posts from beginners with one of the cheaper Chinese lathes asking for advise on using it, many being of a younger age or just freshly retired. I can only conclude that this is the next generation on of old fogies ! ?

 

Add  to this I also run / moderate a couple of CNC forums and the new members signing up on them are very high. Most are younger people, 25 to 45 and all are very keen.

 

Whether they will go on to build models is another matter, just as most of my friends have workshops but none build models, most are into vintage or classic vehicles.

 

John S.

 

[Billy MillsParticipant @billymills]

There is a lot of variation from one Country to another. But at present I don’t think that we will see the end of model making –  just a shift in it’s nature.

 

There are some great new ingredients, this website being one. The growth of forums and some of the excellent personal sites has made it very much easier to get inspiration and information on almost anything. The tooling from the far east is very cheap and available to everyone with an interest – it is at least an inexpensive entrypoint.There is also a fair bit of industrial machinery available. And like it or not E-bay gives us an international perpetual car-boot sale for tooling and materials. So the environment for M.E.’s is pretty good. I wish that we had  these advantages years ago when life and money were much harder.

 

However the number of younger people in the hobby is low in the UK. There seems to have been a considerable influx of  50+ people who are developing hobby interests after the kids have flown the nest and are looking to develop new interests. So perhaps the answer is that the hobby has an older entry point than before.

 

regards,

Alan

 

 

 

[adyParticipant @ady]

Definitely not.

 

The internet has created opportunities for people which never existed 20 years ago.

 

I wouldn’t have had a hope without the existence of ebay.

Younger folk will gravitate, the need to create and make things is genetic, it’s really not an educational thing.

 

“Making money” simply isn’t enough, individuals needs to find out what they are capable of to fulfill themselves as human beings.

 

In modern British society huge swathes of people are on glorified welfare, working for national or local government sections, like in the USSR.

 

When you get a bit older you know that you’re better than that, you’ve GOT to be!

You can’t lie on your deathbed staring at the ceiling and thinking:

“My entire life was spent helping a bunch of tossers to become rich and powerful.”

 

…and it’s a personal journey which you may share with others at some point.

 

 

Long live the lathe.

[John OlsenParticipant @johnolsen79199]

The hobby must be dying, the topic keeps coming up at regular intervals in the magazine, ever since about 1898. All those people who have been worrying about the hobby dying over the years can’t be wrong can they?

 

Meanwhile there seem to be plenty of people enjoying thhemselves  making things.

 

regards

John

[Axel BentellParticipant @axelbentell]

thanks for your input, good to see so many optimistic points of veiw. And I can agree with most. Its not a cheap hobby even though China sells us machinery at bargain prices, and it does require space, two things young ppl often lack (money and a house). I read someone long ago commenteing this is a hobby many enter at an older age, for reason stated, but also because it requires patience. Most young ppl like more action oriented things!?

 

But still, will my generation or othere younger, feel any attachment to steam locos for example. My fathers generation remeber them since youth, but I have only seen them on festivities and on display… Is there a trend towards other types of models?

[John OlsenParticipant @johnolsen79199]

There may well be a trend towards other types of models, and this is not a bad thing either. People do tend to want to model things they have some connection with. Some things are of course a little more difficult to model, especially if you want to build a working one. Still, when I was young they were telling us that model sized gas turbines would be impossible, people are of course now building them.

 

regards

 

John

[KWILParticipant @kwil]

So you build a gas turbine, you then need to use it, so it must be model planes  or locomotives (I have not yet seen a gas turbine powered model boat) OR is it just the journey getting there and not the arrival?

[Ian S CParticipant @iansc]

I’v met quite a few people on this and other sites, and the ones on the other sites mainly who are interested in my subject (hot air & stirling engines) haven’t got a clue about engineering principles, and metallurgy ie materials and how to form them into suitable shapes, also some don’t seem to be able to read, or at least do a little research. They are not thick, they just haven’t been taught how. Ian S C

[ChrisHParticipant @chrish]

I don’t think it should be dying, but I do think many young people do not have the time and money to devote to the hobby.  Although some may think things are cheap it is a relative term and when you have family commitments then justifying the expenditure, even if the money is available, is difficult when the children need new shoes, food on the table etc. etc. – I know, I’ve been there.  

 

Only now, when I am retired and able to spend the time and hopefully the money am I able to start the hobby, even though I had dreams of making a steam engine 30 years ago.

 

I remember when my Father retired he took up model making as in his words he had ‘spent a lifetime not making anything other than money for someone else’!

 

But I have to admit that when I look around there does seem to be a lot of folk with grey hair!

 

regards, Chris.

 

ps. With the death of engineering manufacturing in this country I suppose another factor is young people do not initially have the skills/interest when they are young to go down this route. 

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

It is the journey for some, I know a guy who builds traction engines, takes him about 2 years to do one and then he sells it and does another.

He’s got a lot of interest in them but admits running them bores him to tears.

 

At the other end of the market are the kit builders like the Polly models loco’s. Bought by people lacking the time / skills / machinery but fills a need for the finished product.

 

This is another area that’s changing, a few years ago rolling up to a club day with a bought loco would have all the flat earth society looking down their nose at you.

 

Now it’s accepted that they fill a niche market and they even have Polly days at various tracks, It would be interesting to ask Andy Clark, the owner of Polly models how many go on to build a second model after buying the first.

 

The term Model Engineering is a bit misleading, as stated before many don’t build models.

The Yanks have a better term in Home Shop Machinist to bring more people under the umbrella of having a workshop at home.

 

We have our specialist magazines with people like Warco, ARC, Chester and others advertising to suit our needs but if you take say Clarke, Seeley and Machine Mart customers, then add in all the specialist magazines seen in W H Schmidt  [GMBH ] like the classic bike mags, tractor mags, historic vehicle mags etc, etc, then that userbase, unknown to us , is probably larger than our offering ?

 

 

Sir John of the unslotted cross slide.

[chris stephensParticipant @chrisstephens63393]

What do you mean “no youngsters”, why only yesterday we at SMEE voted in a new member who is only 50 !!!

chriStephens 

[adyParticipant @ady]

That Unimat SL does very well indeed on fleabay, they fight over various hard to find parts.

 

There seems to be lots of younger folk/newbies on the yahoo unimat  site as well.

 

As mentioned previously, time, money and workshop space are very limited for youngsters, maybe more than ever now.

 

But a unimat can be posted by joe average and fits on a desktop, and the trade in unimats seems to be flourishing because of that.

 

The unimat is how I started, because you don’t know how interested you’re going to get and it’s a bit of an investment in the dark.

So if the unimat doesn’t appeal just fire it back on ebay and it flies through the post to the next wide eyed lathe wannabe.

 

In my own case I became a hopeless pathetic drooling lathe addict.

[BogstandardParticipant @bogstandard]

I personally think the main problem nowadays is that youngsters want instant gratification, and the thought of spending even a month making something fills them with horror.

 

Having come thru the ranks of trials and tribulations, I have noticed a great difference in the way the ‘hobby’ is now being carried out.

 

At one time, you solved the problem and made it by the best method you could come up with, mainly due to lack of machinery and tooling.

 

Nowadays, with more money about as disposable income, and I am guilty of this as well, you just buy another bit of tooling to get the job done, rather than relying on old fashioned techniques.

 

My grandson has now chosen to go into engineering, so as well as his college work, I will be getting him into the shop for the next couple of years to give him a good grounding in using machinery. Whether he carries on with it after that can only be his decision.

 

Bogs

[Axel BentellParticipant @axelbentell]

Thank you all, I think most things have been pointed out now: Deindustrialisation is a key, ppl arent trained to work with metal anymore. I have the impression ppl generally think what ME´s do is really very hard/impossible for a amateur. The graduates from trade schools here often lack compentence to run a manual machines. Some shops ask retired ppl to fill in when they have jobs that they feel is best done on a capstan or similar. Ask a 20yr old to use a old fashioned dividing head, and you prolly get a blank stare back!

 

Also, its true that modeling has changed, a magazine that fills half each issue with steam locos will attract people who feel conection to that. There was a two part article on RC truck construction, it was brilliant I think!

 

The term ME is misleading, but the magazine has changed names over time, used to include “electricity” in the title…maybe it should have stayed in the title, its increasingly dificult to separate electronics from mechanics, if one wants to stay current. (no pun intended)

 

And most importantly, too many underestimate the tabletop machines we have today, the Unimats, Taig´s, Cowell´s, and my favorite Sherline. I can say my Sherline will do 4 times bigger jobs most think it could!  

[Sub MandrelParticipant @submandrel]

I always thought I would take up model engineering on retirement – it needs time and money. I had been making many other types of model since I was knee-high to a small grasshopper. I had my own ‘workshop’ at 13 with an ancient juneero, a huge vice and a set of BA taps. Left home at 18, mid-30s realised I now had my own home (and family) and a proper workshop again. My Dad gave me a pile of old MEs from the 40s and 50s, and that was enough to make me buy a customer return mini-lathe from Machine Mart.

 

Since then its everything on a budget, except the C3 mill which was paid for by a series on the minilathe for ME. Now I have almost as many unfinished engineering projects a electronic, plane and boat ones. I am also able to fix the most surprising things!

 

Truth be told, if you have the scrounging instinct and a bit of patience, don’t delay – start today!

 

Neil

[John HaineParticipant @johnhaine32865]

Definitely dying.  Has been for 40 years……..!

 

When I first got interested all you could easily get was Myford and a vertical slide for milling. ME was weekly yes, but now there are 3 monthly mags.

 

Look at the huge range of machines that people can buy now for (relatively speaking) low prices and remarkably high quality for what you pay, not to mention that we now have 3 “national” annual shows.  The nature of the craft is changing but not IMHO the level of interest.

 

The publishers mut have the data to tell us whether it’s growing or shrinkig.

[David Clark 13Participant @davidclark13]

Hi There

Magazine sales growing but slowly.

Bear in mind it shrank drastically over the last 40 years or so.

Magazine sales are slowly going up especially subscriptions.

Individual magazine newsagent sales vary depending on content.

 

I would think there are far more people with machines now than there have ever been due to the ready availabilty of cheap Chinese machines and Ebay.

regards David

[Ian S CParticipant @iansc]

John, you say about being weekly, when The “MODEL ENGINEER and Amature Electrician”first came out in 1898 if you wrote in you could get an answer the next week, it was almost as fast as the internet is today. Even back then people said the mag would be a flash in the pan, and would die out fairly quickly. I think they had to do a reprint of the first one, because they ran out. Can’t think of more at the moment its still a bit shaky here in Canterbury NZ (after shocks). Ian S C

[Axel BentellParticipant @axelbentell]

Surely more individuals have machine tools in their shops now, but are they making models or tuning motor bikes?

[John HaineParticipant @johnhaine32865]

Does it matter?

[John CoatesParticipant @johncoates48577]

Posted by Axel on 06/09/2010 13:50:45:

Surely more individuals have machine tools in their shops now, but are they making models or tuning motor bikes?

 It’s motorbikes for me!

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