Is this hobby dying?

[Peter G. ShawParticipant @peterg-shaw75338]

Thankyou for your kind comments re my grandson.

 

He is well aware of the less savoury aspects of vet life. When all said and done, his dad (not my son) comes from farming stock, he himself has been involved in rearing guinea pigs and chickens, has also had one or two weeks work experience with a vet, and given half a chance helps his dad with his agricultural contracting business.

 

On a personal basis, I hope he manages to do it because I think it may well be better paying than engineering, but at the same time, I do hope he retains his interest in engineering. Certainly I’m doing my best to assist him, but without pushing him too hard.

 

To be honest, his only problem is that if he doesn’t get on with people, eg his English teacher, he doesn’t put the work in. Which is a shame because he needs English! Otherwise, on current grades he’ll get there without too much effort.

 

Regards,

 

Peter G. Shaw

[Axel BentellParticipant @axelbentell]

Talented people are often the same who dont get along with others, not meaning they are anti social, but more self motivated persons with a “can do it myself” attitude. It´ll get better with age for most, in my experience!

 

Veterinary is probably a good education for having a job in the future too! I´m sure we in the western world will make our own food more then, since transportation will be more expensive.

[DustyParticipant @dusty]

Posted by John Coates on 08/09/2010 12:45:28

All I am short of is time, being in full time work with a young family (1, 5 and 19). That’s where I envy all you retired folks as this gets further away for me every time the Govt ups the retirement age!

 

Whoever told you that retirement gave you more time to indulge in hobbies cannot be retired. I have found that when half your neighbours and most of your relatives find out you no longer work they give you projects with a little (it won’t take you long) and a clasp on the back. Most of these ‘little jobs’ turn into time consuming and major projects. Because most Model Engineers don’t like doing bodged jobs. This cuts into workshop time dramatically. Gone are excuses for doing decorating, visiting relatives who you have not seen for 25yrs and so on.

    You have been warned

 

 

[Geoff TheasbyParticipant @geofftheasby]

Having retired three years ago, I revelled in doing nothing for the first time in 45 years.

Then I started doing things which interested me, I joined the local model engineering club, I toyed with the idea of helping out at a steam museum, I became chairman of the local advice centre, and did things which I wanted to do, rather than those which I had to.

 

Now I have a job working from home, doing something I am interested in, which keeps me busy from one week to the next, and gets me out and about on nice days.

 

I recommend being retired, one of my friends said “you wonder how you found the time before you left work” and that is so.   Finally, you can indulge yourself, to the extent that you wish to, not that you have to…

 

Regards

Geoff

[Sub MandrelParticipant @submandrel]

Ho Ho!  I didn’t become a vitinarian because I read the James Herriot books.. no way I was going shoulder deep into the wrong end of a cow!

 

Neil

Edited By Stub Mandrel on 08/09/2010 20:26:39

[John OlsenParticipant @johnolsen79199]

Here in New Zealand lately we are called “sheddies”. A bloke will have an old shed out the back, and  he goes out there to indulge in his various hobbies. There have been a couple of quite successful books illustrating the many and varied activities that Kiwis get up to in their sheds. There is also now a magazine, called “Shed Magazine” which comes out once a month. It covers a variety of topics, from basic home improvement stuff  like building an outdoor barbeque through to making your own linisher, machine work and so on. Since we have a reasonably large land area, nearly as much as the UK, but only 4,000,000 people, we tend to have to be generalists rather than specialists, and we have had to learn to fix things as we go along since the spares are liable to be six months away.

regards

John

[DiggerParticipant @digger]

Hi, I thought I may contribute my five penneth, I am (was) an engineer working in the aerospace industry until an accident forced me to retire early (very early) after not doing much for a year or two, I just had to get myself a workshop then a lathe and a milling machine bandsaws etc, I just like to tinker around making things or modifying things, it’s a grand hobby and I am a young 44 years old.

[Stephen RowleyParticipant @stephenrowley13300]

It is sad to say but the hobby is dying.  The younger population require something now.  something they can get and use when they want not when the track is open.   I have seen so many young people in the past come to a track and see what is happening and want to get involved only to meet the “jobs worth” as I call them saying “don’t touch that, don’t do that” not come in and have a look they just say “don’t”.  I have watched the same thing happening in the cinema organ world where if a young person comes along who can play one song with one finger and loves the sound of the organ and would love just too try they get chaste away instead of someone saying “come up here, sit down this is what happen” and letting them have a go so you loose one then another.

But you also get the things where the young people do not know it exists.  I was working in the shed making an amplifier and one of the kids next door heard me and asked what I was doing.  He did not know you could make an amplifier.  Now we can not stop him.  I had lost of meters and soldering ions I had collected over the years so set him up with some bit and away he went.

With some it can just be that simple as saying yes.

jsk 

[Peter G. ShawParticipant @peterg-shaw75338]

jsk,

 

Couldn’t agree more with you about letting them have a go. And similar to you, I have had a basic sort of education in electronics and do in fact have lots of electronic test gear & bits & pieces at home. Unfortunately, none of my children or grandchildren have shown any interest in it, and wouldn’t I love to at least show them how to build even a lamp flasher (astable multivibrator) from basic components, but no, there are too many other distractions.

 

Oh well, back to my monastic life tinkering with whatever takes my fancy.

 

Regards,

 

Peter G. Shaw

[Ian AbbottParticipant @ianabbott31222]

We’re feeding the grandkids Bob the Builder and Thomas the Tank Engine while they’re little, maybe it’ll spark an interest.  As soon as they are old enough, it’ll be tool kits; they can work on all the furniture that their parents scrounged off us.  Three of them are girls, but no gender stereotyping here, they can all wield a hammer.

 

Evil laugh echoing around the room……

 

Ian 

[Axel BentellParticipant @axelbentell]

My stepdad, at the time, had a wood workshop. At first I wasnt alloed to use the bandsaw. But it was too tempting for me, so I was defiant, and soon enough, when I had showed my work I was allowed. And I was only 13 or so at the time. I think we baby kids there days, just as society baby all of us! A few years later when I was 15 or so, I sent mom to the hardware store to buy .22 cartridges, now you need a permit just to buy them!

[Sub MandrelParticipant @submandrel]

JSK,

 

One of my stepson ‘s has a real affinity for things mechanical – he’s learning to be anarrowboat engineer on the job, ten years ago he would change the oil on his car and that’s about it. Now he does the engine and electrical maintenance for a fleet of a couple of dozen boats and is about to do a welding course.

 

Best thing is seeing how a ‘young person’ genuinlely appreciates the old mechanical stuff – he uses alot of my gear and in due course I reckon I’ll get him to try turning etc, but in his own time.

 

Neil

[KWILParticipant @kwil]

We must to an extent blame ourselves, we elect “career politicians” who have never done a proper day’s work and think they know all the answers to the problems, but merely end up creating even more. They are all short term people, need to be re elected next time. What we really need is for politicians to have held a proper job (not just some so called reseacher), once elected they should serve a constituency for two terms maximum and then be required to move on to convince a different set of voters. This way they may get away from that cozy long term local setup they all seem to crave.

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

Leaving the political vies out of it and even the personal views one thing I have noticed that can be proved is that recently there has been a rapid influx of beginners.

 

Many on this board starting with ” I have just bought a C3 lathe, what small mill do I need, info and advise on a speed 10, will a Tiger tank fit in a single car garage [ select as required ]

 

And that’s just this board. I am also a member on a UK CNC board that caters for mainly router people and they are getting 2 to 4 new people PER DAY and that is no exaggeration.

 

This is not a personal view it’s a fact I have noticed recently.

 

John S.

[Peter G. ShawParticipant @peterg-shaw75338]

John, that’s good news indeed, but what AGE are they? I have a friend through my choir who has taken up the hobby. He has also just retired! And that is what seems to be the brunt of a lot of the earlier posts.

 

We need to encourage the younger end and preferably before they get infected with the “want it, and want it now” syndrome so that they do realise that there is an alternative way of doing things. This is why I let my grandson loose and to hell with any breakages.

 

Regards,

 

Peter G. Shaw

[Sub MandrelParticipant @submandrel]

Don’t forget that a lot of clever younger people are using the same bits of their brains to hack digital cameras and playstations or to play with digital electronics (I dabble in microcontrollers myself).

 

Neil

[Peter G. ShawParticipant @peterg-shaw75338]

Which is absolutely fine Neil, but what happens when the equipment fails to work? Those people with NO practical knowledge won’t have a clue what to do whereas those with some practical experience may at least be able to have an intelligent guess – I mean, it could something as simple as a fuse blown!

 

I’ve not put the above very well. I hope you understand what I’m fumbling towards.

 

Regards,

 

Peter G. Shaw

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

Peter, hard to say on the people who have posted on this board as regards age.

The CNC board tends to be younger to middle aged people and it’s not all electronics, that’s only a small part of CNC most of the router crowd make their machines as opposed to converting a mill or lathe.

 

True they start off with MDF frames, drawer slides for linear rails, screwed rod for leadscrews and they usually get some help off others with the turning of the ends, bearings etc.

 

However the MK 1 leads to the MK II and somewhere along the line they have a small lathe, working router and by the MK IV possibly a mill and they are the people helping the next generation out.

 

Just had a thought to put it in perspective,and this is what I mean by it’s not dying but evolving. On the web is a site called CNCZone, stick www in front of it and .com after if you want a look.

 

This is the www, equal to the  UK CNC router forum but covers far more. It has 162,400 members and so far there have been just over 800,000 posts, 433 posts  in the last day alone.

It was started on March 1st 2003 and before that nothing existed.

 

This site covers everything from little desktop routers to large machining centres but all owned and run by hobbyists but they are mostly very practical people.

 

John S.

[Axel BentellParticipant @axelbentell]

John S., with all due respect, but I think you are takling about a different hobby now! My intention was to ask if Model Engineering was dying!

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

OK if you want to define it as tight as MODEL engineering then yes it probably is.

 

This is probably due to lack of time and skills needed but as I was trying to get over it’s evolving, home workshops are not receding, in fact given the cheap imports they are expanding.

 

Life is moving on a lot faster than before and people don’t want to spend years building something if they can get greater or equal gratification quicker.

 

As a humorous aside you have to blame people like Cherry Hill for some of this.

you would think that her stunning work, every one for the last 30 years has won a gold medal would be a perfect example ?

 

Not so. I was at the centennial show at Ascot stood just below the escalator to the first floor where her work was being displayed.

 

All day groups of modellers were going up in fine spirits only to return half hour later silent, dejected and crestfallen as they realised that if they lived to be 200 they could never imitate this level of workmanship. It was quite amusing to point this out to various people who were visiting the stand

 

John S.

[Axel BentellParticipant @axelbentell]

I see your point, and I belive this form of Performance anxiety is all over society today. Models don´t have to be about exebitions and competitions! And they dont have to take years to complete! Aeromodeling is good for them who want quicker results, and cars too! I wish we could see more young ppl scrach building model cars! But I´m convinced ME is dying by now…

[Keith LongParticipant @keithlong89920]

Axel

Would you define someone who puts together a r/c car from bought components, and modifies and races it as a model engineer? In many ways that person is the equivalent of someone 50/60 years ago scratch building a locomotive to run on the fairly crude track that was them available. Similarly is someone who puts together a machine for “Robotwars” a model engineer, they are using the same skills as someone who machines parts for a traction engine for example.

Another thing to bear in mind is the modern availablity of components/ mechanisms for models. When I first got interested in model boats and the possibility of controling them by radio, steering mechanisms could be engineering projects in themselves. Now I can walk into a model shop hand over £5 and walk out with a perfectly suitable servo complete with gear trains and electronics. The skill now moves to getting it all assembled and working to a high standard of scale/presentation/performance.

As John says “it’s evolving”. Over the years ME and MEW haver published innumerable designs for home built machines and modifiacations to bought machines. Modern machines are CNC so youger peoples interest will tend towards that and things like CNC routers are acheivable at home from scratch and using cheaper and more readily available materials. A 8×4 sheet of 12mm MDF is relatively pocket money prices and available at a DIY shed – try buying a 8×4 sheet of 12mm steel, DON’T try putting it on the car roof to get it home!

Keith

[Axel BentellParticipant @axelbentell]

I think you misunderstood me, I´m all for articles on R/C model mods, if they are to a certain level of complexity of course! I think the hobby of technical modeling have evolved to be more specialized, with diferent branches, with their magazines, but it took this route very early.

 

All techincal things have evolved into using more store bought components, some like that some dont. The hobby of modeling, with all of its facets, reflect that naturally. Some probably feel comfy with ME being a refuge from that (to a large extent)…

 

Yes battle bot builders are ME´s to me!

[Ian AbbottParticipant @ianabbott31222]

Something which is a problem when relating to most model engineering projects is that anyone under the age of say fifty, has no concept of what it was like when steam trains and lorries were in regular use.  I can only just remember steam wagons, but they were still in use when I was of an age to notice them, and of course, steam rollers were a regular sight well into the sixties; in our backward town anyway.

 

Watching preserved railways and steam fairs do give some idea, but it ‘aint the same.  If I stand a couple of feet away from a GWR 2-8-0 tank engine across the river, in the midst of the oil and steam I’m barely tasting what being on a Paddington platform was like when a few Kings, Castles and Halls were lined up with the roof arches swirling with sulphur smoke and steam.

 

Oh damn, I’m getting all nostalgic.

 

Ian 

[Sub MandrelParticipant @submandrel]

A lot of complex ideas flying around in this discussion.

 

I tend to enjoy most the things I am not naturally ‘gifted’ at, but that I can become competent, or even reasonably good, at through practice and effort. Model engineering is definitely in this category; I don’t a have the patience to achieve ‘Cherry Hill’ standards on even a single part, and I am crap at painting things. When I was a boy making airfix kits I was delighted to discover ‘weathering’ and ‘battle damage’

 

I console myself now by accepting that the majority of the prototypes I model are more battered and worse painted than the models.

 

Neil

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