Hobby Thread - July 18, 2026 [TRex]

Welcome hobbyists! Pull up a chair and sit a spell with the Horde in this little corner of the interweb. This is the mighty, mighty officially sanctioned Ace of Spades Hobby Thread. For this week, the Wheel of Hobbies (TM) is into Heavy Metal. It spun and spun and landed on a metal working theme for this Hobby Thread.

Top photo: The first 52 cars bearing the Porsche name were built in a small sawmill near Gmünd, Austria. They were hand hammered aluminum on wooden forms. The example in this photo is the 8th oldest Porsche in existence and still runs.

Let's talk Heavy Metal! Much of hobbying, building, and bodging generally involves either joining things together or cutting things apart. If you join or separate metal, you get to use hammers and fire. Sounds good, right?

Many home hobbyists are not welders or metalworkers. Some are and either learned in school metal shop or under the wing of a mentor. Some work with metal as a profession and transfer those skills to hobbying. Wood is cheaper than metal but it is also softer and less durable. Nobody builds engines out of wood.

Metalworking can involve shaping, forging, welding, casting, punching, milling, bending, extruding, rolling, and more.

Are you wise in the ways of metal? What skills do you have? How do you use them? How did you learn? What would you like to learn or try?

What are you hobbying?

The thread is not limited to to the theme. Anything (legal) you are hobbying is welcome. Even if the theme does not speak to you, you might learn something or be entertained. If not, find something else or offer something else relating to hobbying. If all of that fails, just check in and say hello.

As per usual Hobby Thread etiquette, keep this thread limited to hobbying. Leave politics and religion to threads elsewhere (unless your hobby is building or restoring churches). Pants are optional. As always, puns are welcome and encouraged.

Play nice and do not be rude. Do not be a troll and do not feed the trolls.

Welding basics:

Metal crafts (the pipe wrench T-Rex at the beginning is awesome) - BTW, watch because there are some fun pieces, but mute the sound to avoid the AI narration:

This is a great example of a video that pulls you into a rabbit hole you didn't know existed and then makes you care about it. "What makes this anvil so special?" (I also did not know that some people collect anvils. No reason why not - just never occurred to me before.)

SuperfastMatt gets two entries in the content today. If you're into 3D printing, watch this video. You might be thinking "doesn't 3D printing involve plastic, not metal?" Watch and learn.

Yes, the title says V12 epoxy table, but the video also has plenty of metal work. But V12 epoxy table should be enough to get your attention.

A master coppersmith at work - lots and lots of little hammer taps:

Where did that copper come from?

Forging axes by hand in Sweden (not so much a hobby as it is an industrial documentary, but fascinating to watch):

Inheritance Machining is a YouTube channel that specifically focuses on machining metal. The scripts are very well written and presented and the videos well produced. No overdone clickbait bells and whistles. I struggled to pick a representative video but eventually landed on this one because it compares and contrasts different tools to accomplish the same objective.

Watch this for the backstory and shop tour - it is a good story told well and an enjoyable watch even if you're not into machining:

Are you wise in the ways of custom metal cutting and fabrication? Do you like factory tours? This video is for you. Very impressive.

This is not a commercial or endorsement but SendCutSend operates an online platform for instant quoting and ordering. Customers upload CAD files, get immediate pricing, then customize with services like bending or finishing. Parts ship within days with no no minimum order quantities.

The company targets makers, hobbyists, small businesses, startups, and large enterprises by removing traditional manufacturing barriers like long lead times, high minimums, and outsourcing.

They operate several facilities across the US and Canada.

This is way beyond hobbying, but watch this if you want to see the future of metal working. It is called Roboforming from a company called Machina Labs.

Both SendCutSend and Machina Labs are trying to solve the impediments to metal working - customization and scale. In the past, the fixed costs of tool and die making meant zero iteration and a high minimum production volume to make the cost worthwhile. Cost effective customization, with scale when needed? 3-D printing is another closely related technology that is changing the equation. Interesting times...

Investigators release preliminary report on LEGO 747 and Space Shuttle crash

Did you miss the Hobby Thread last week? We did a small scale theme. The comments may be closed, but you can re-live the content.

Notable comment from last week:

Bonus content based on last week's theme: this mixes woodworking, epoxy, electrical and a touch of 3D printing. Way too small and fiddly for my dino fingers and patience but quite an impressive result.

Words of wisdom:

"Because despite all our troubles, when things are grim out in that wide round world of ours, that's when it's really important to have a good hobby." Posted by: tankascribe at June 22, 2024 07:41 PM (HWxAD).

Reminder: if you put links in the comments, use a URL shortener and describe what you're linking to. Failing to do either or both makes you barrel-eligible. Don't make people click to find out what you're linking.

A metal thread without an Iron Maiden link? Surely not. Here you go. Send thoughts, suggestions and photos of your hobbying to moronhobbies at protonmail dot com. Or just email to say hello. Do mighty things.