[emdadul97]

I’ve been trying to pick up something creative to do in my spare time, and it made me wonder…
Do you guys have any other DIY hobbies outside of slot cars?
Could be woodworking, painting, electronics, model building, anything really.
Always cool to hear what people enjoy working on.

[JasonB]

Yes, I do some woodworking.

I trained as a furniture designer and cabinet maker, and still keep it up, but now as a hobby.

[Gordon Steadman]

    It seems wood is a popular choice. Although I do very little but read these days, I still indulge when I can get Ronnie to put up with the sawdust.

A bit of woodturning, wooden toys (cars of course) and whilst I seldom make musical instruments these days, I still intend to do a cello before I go!
               

[dazee]

My woodworking skills are not as finely tuned as others, but I do enjoy to get my hands dirty.

This is still a work in progress that has been going on for quite a while.  This is a vision of a new Bar Billiards table.
   
   
   

This currently works in 3 modes.
A basic mode where scoring is "manual" by pressing buttons on the end of the table.
An automatic mode where the table detects and performs the scoring.
An advanced mode where it can run with a computer for new game modes.

A mix of wood working, electronics and software development.

[dvd3500]

Does drinking wine count as a hobby?

[Scuderia_Turini]

I am a genuine "Car Guy" and my life centres around historic cars and toy cars. My fingers reveal the scars of decades working on my 1:1 cars.

[Kevan]

Plenty of DIY but on a maintenance basis.  As a qualified Plumber & Heating Engineer the only thing I'm not allowed to touch in the house is the oil boiler...so not a hobby, more a necessity.

A couple of years ago I started reading F1 autobiographies and have become addicted to them.
Currently reading Guenther Steiner's 'Unfiltered' and absolutely love both his books, it's a shame he hasn't written more.

I must get a couple of Bernie Ecclestone books

[roguejackal]

I do play with wood but not to the skills of the previous posts, I find the scenery side of the hobby keeps me busy in the mind sometimes.

[ePilot]

On beautiful summer days, I run my live-steam trains on a temporary track through my small garden...

   

At my model flying club, I try to keep my model helicopter in the air...

   

And lately, I've been too much of an armchair hobbyist...

[JMay]

Now that I have retired, I have also been reviewing past hobbies, ranging from RC model boating, 40K wargaming, and buried deep in the loft was a 130mm diameter Newtonian telescope with an equatorial mount tripod. This was picked up on a day off from working in China at the indoor market in Schenzhen, some 30 years ago that I managed to get it home in my luggage. This was used for a few years planet gazing then placed in the loft so that the children couldn’t knock it over and be brained by the tripod/counterweight. There it languished until a few weeks ago and I pulled it out and started cleaning it up.

The plastic tripod inter-connecting struts were UV brittle so 3d printed some new ones, and started checking out YouTube videos on set up and calibration so printed a Collimator and otherwise brought it back to a usable state. A lot has changed in the last 30 years and intrigued by the videos of people hooking up their mobile phone to the eye piece to capture images, so printed a mobile phone holder and plumbed that in.

Below is a mobile phone picture of the moon, where I found the limitations of the existing focuser, which wouldn’t allow the use of a Barlow magnifier or some of the eyepieces (to get higher magnification) and still get focus with the phone. Definitely not going to give NASA a run for their money but pleased I managed to get this using what I had to hand.

   

Doing the research via the Net now makes me realise how cheaply constructed this telescope is, the subsequent limitations, and that ultimately I will need to buy a much better one if I am going to be serious about imaging planets and deeper with a dedicated camera. In the meantime I’m having fun with the low cost option of taking the existing one to pieces and replacing parts to improve it (new focuser off Ebay, printed a more accurate secondary mirror holder, tube cap etc), and learning as I go along.

Cheers John