Ooh, that's a very wide question! I was always interested in machines from a very young age. Being anno 1946, steam trains were the only trains I grew up with, although I rode on electric trains in London when dad occasionally took me to his office on a Saturday morning. I was mighty impressed by the acceleration of those tube trains from stationary. We lived then in Hastings and aged 7 my mum let me wander the town alone (I am the archetypal loner), and I used to walk down to the Old Town where there was a miniature railway with proper steam locomotives, built to scale from scratch. I could spend most of the day there, watching Mr Hughes the father and his son, also Mr Hughes, light the fires and get up steam. Once they let me sit on the locomotives! Aged 11 we moved to a smallholding in Kent and I was forever tinkering with my dad's Versatiller 2-stroke cultivator. Later, I expanded to my mum's 4-stroke Suffolk Punch lawnmower. She was always concerned that I would break it, as it was her pride and joy, being a keen gardener. A few more years on, but not old enough to drive legally, I started acquiring old cars, one after another. A 1934 Morris 8, a 1939 Hillman Minx, and several others. I loved taking these old cars to bits and putting them back together. By the time I left school at 15½ and started an apprenticeship, inevitably it was motor vehicle mechanics, and I had a head start from all my tinkering. Working on old cars gives any DIY enthusiast a great grounding for all manner of crafts. A car contains so many different bits and pieces: engine, brakes, steering, electrics, paintwork, interior headlining, seats, and much more. Brakes alone can be hydraulic, rod brakes, cable brakes. One can apply such knowledge and experience to a great many things later in life. Even just getting the right feel for tightening a nut with a spanner, but not so tight as to strip the threads, that is a very useful experience to have even when constructing IKEA furniture! I could go on, but I expect you were only expecting a brief summary. Thanks for your interest, and thanks, too, for this forum, because over the last few days I've found out such a lot about heating programmers that I ordered a new Drayton LP722 this morning from Screwfix and will fit it myself. My heating engineer won't be back from his winter skiing for some while, you see.
