Scale modeling – you can pick up a cheap kit at a big box craft store with some paint and glue for $40. Before you know it, you’re importing specialty kits from Japan, rigging up a spray booth in your basement for your airbrush, and taking trips to air museums to get reference photos of the zinc chromate primer for a cockpit interior.
3d printing. I started out with a cheapish Chinese model, got annoyed by the lack of accuracy and bought a Prusa.
Then there’s the filaments, accessories, post processing stuff… I own a Dremel now for some reason!
And I’m constantly eyeing those resin 3d printers, telling myself the higher resolution is totally worth it…
The only thing saving my bank account is my low attention span and dozens of other interests :)
It can also save money. I love just printing things I need rather than buying them! Even if I have to do some test fits, I can easily beat off-the-shelf prices with some meters of PLA.
Happy with my Prussia mini, but starting to feel the post-processing itch.
I feel you, started with a cheap 200$ ender 3…. I know have two ender 3’s, an ideaformer belt printer, a bambu p1s, and. Tronxy 400 I’m converting into a Frankenstein printer. Oh and an anycubic mono x resin printer and a laser cutter.
Yea, 6 printers and a freaking laser cutter/engraver. All because I thought it would be fun to tinker with 3D printing
Bought a cheap printer and it worked, but I couldn’t fix it.
Then I got another cheap printer that was bigger, but it was a fire hazard
Then I got a not as cheap printer, then it broke in the stupidest way possible
So I got a the Popular Cheap Printer, and it was good enough
But I needed a Prusa since I was now selling my parts, and it was good
Then I got a bigger prusa since the popular printer turned into a sunk cost fallacy.
What should’ve been a one time cost of $350 turned into multiple $350-500 printers until I started a business with it and spent $1000 to stop messing with it
3D printing turned into building printers. Im 2 Vorons deep, and the annex k3 is starting to look interesting. Machine in general. I know I have no Real use for a co2 laser, but damn does it look interesting.
So I’m just gonna quickly add in on the resin printers.
Even a dirt cheap used anycubic model from years ago is going to be much more impressive and fantastic resolution than a standard FDM printer.
But the build plate is really small and the resin is super toxic. You will need to get something to wash the prints in and a constant supply of high proof alcohol that if you want to save money you need tools to filter as well. Then you should get UV lights for curing or you will have to wait days to harden naturally.
It’s not nearly as expensive as you would think if you buy used and fanagle parts and pieces of stuff from weird sources but it’s smelly, messy and more of a pain unless you really need super clean but small parts or minis.
Every time I feel the temptation, I think about the mess and chemicals and rubber gloves (that last one always does it for me somehow).
I don’t have the space for it, nor the ventilation. It’s just… I like to design stuff and print it. And whenever my printer can’t match my design, I get annoyed and blame it on my tools. Even though I know I should adjust my design instead.
I have like elbow length chemical gloves and wear n95s and still will walk away feeling woozy if there is a lot of cleanup to be done.
I only have one at the request of my significant other and think that sometimes this push to move everything from factory to the consumers house doesn’t always work. Some things need a proper setup and place and the home isn’t always it.
Don’t get me wrong I love the aspect of it literally making something from a digital mockup but would in a better world just want a space down the street to go to and have it done there. But makerspaces never really took off.
Wait until you get a fishing buddy, and you start gifting him tackle. Then a few days later you realize that hey you miss that rod you had, so you decide to buy another, but now they’re like an extra $100 then they used to be. So you pick up ot at work but now your whole week is thrown off, and you can’t find the motivation to go down to bass pro, buy a rod, reel, and line and tackle because you’ve worked 70 hours this week, and you figure it’ll be best to wait until next week to do it.
Next week rolls around but car registration is due and you decide to use your hobby budget instead break into your savings. Now you’re back where you started. To make matters worse the guy you gifted the rod to isn’t into fishing anymore.
It’s funny because you can go buy an old rugged K-1000 with a basic 50mm prime lens for under $100, a couple rolls of film for less than $20, and the developing costs you can put off until later. That’s still about a tenth of the cost of a good new digital camera and this thing is built like a tank and forces you to learn the fundamentals. Very quickly, you’ll discover that your film and developing costs will quickly outpace the initial investment on a digital camera. Moreover, you’ve discovered that finding good glass to match you camera is no cheaper and a lot more difficult than finding lens for that sexy new digital camera that was outside your budget initially.
I ended up having a lot of GAS. So I now have tons of bodies and lenses in 35mm and 120… I’ve spent more obsessing over film stuff than I ever could have with digital.
oh, I haven’t tried this developer on this film yet. Guess I have to go shoot a $10 roll. 😅
It does make you think twice before hitting that shutter. Lots of life lessons when shooting film, such as learning to appreciate a lot less instant gratification.
I started playing MTG when ice age came out. Sold all my cards back in 2018 for $13k. Most of that was from having all the dual lands and fetch lands. Also had an original foil tarmagoyf
In defense of the ~8 year old me, who had no clue how to play the game and just liked looking at the fancy cards, no one told me anything :) Also, that was around the time Urza’s Saga released so it really was wayyy less expensive at that time.
For me it was Badminton. You can start off with cheap $15 rackets and plastic shuttlecocks. Now my racket is $260 and I play with feather shuttlecocks which are about $2 a piece and only last a few rallies.
Hiking. You start out with what you got. Then on the first few hikes you find out what gear you absolute have to bring with you. Then when you have a fine little gear stash, you begin adding things from the never ending “nice to have” list. Then you go to outdoor stores just to have a look around… HA!
Any art medium that requires canvases. A small one at WalMart is no problem, but as you move to larger works and need better canvas material it gets expensive fast.
Oh! And Arduino programming. A simple kit to get going isn’t too bad. Then you’re trolling Adafruit for parts, then you go big and start importing from China directly. Now you’re building a garage addition for the electronics lab… Or is that just me? At least it’s also able house my first motorcycle… First…
Hunting. When I was younger, poorer man I used a hand me down lever action rifle and a $5 orange vest to fill my freezer with cheap venison that I would butcher myself. for less than $100 in licenses, ammo and packaging material I could put 3 or 4 deer in the freezer in 1 weekend.
Now, I have multiple gun safes full of various guns, all of them to serve “different purposes” like long range, brush gun, restricted weapons hunting areas, slug gun restricted areas, hunting shotguns, competition shot guns. Then there’s the hunting gear, knifes, packs, laser range finders, reloading equipment, hunting lease payments, guide fees, out of state application fees.
Last year I shot 1 deer and paid $140 to have someone else butcher it for me.
I’d like to get into hunting. I’m getting my firearm license in a couple weeks. Going to get hunting license and plan to start soonest. Any advice for someone starting out?
Get with a friend or family member who knows what they are doing and follow them around. You can look into dedicated hunting groups but that can be hit or miss. It’s usually not hard to find a group dedicated to helping kids, women or veterans to get out and hunt, but if you are a grown man there’s not much options.
That’ll only happen if you build your own boards and stuff. Not like me! I just got a simple Moonlander with some custom keycaps, dampeners, and red switches rather than my initial brown. After that, I realised that the Kinesis Advantage 360 is the way to go, so I’m fully settled now, not like everyone else … right?
I’ve had the Advantage360 for 6 months or so and it’s life changing when typing for 10 hours a day. Haven’t gotten around to relearning on Dvorak or Colmak layout as I learnt qwerty on the 360 first.
My first “good” keyboard is my current one, which is a Ducky One 2 Mini with MX Cherry Browns I bought really cheap 2nd hand. It has been almost 2 years I’ve been using it and I recently got a coiled cable for it. I was cleaning it the last time and I started to wonder how hard it would be if I wanted to change my switches and fell into a hole where now I want to desolder everything and install sockets. My spouse got lubs for his stabilizers (he has a Filco Majestouch 2 Ninja with MX Cherry Blues) after watching a few videos… We just started diving into this deeper and deeper after using keyboards from the time cherry still had the patent up for so long. Yeah, we are screwed.
I never got the appeal of mechanical keyboards. If you actually have to type all day, a proper flat keyboard like in the old MacBooks ('09-ish) is way nicer and costs much less.
That’s extremely subjective. I definitely don’t feel like flat keyboards are nicer. These days I use a split keyboard with an angle and I will never go back.
Your experience is not universal. I type all day and if a client/employer gave me one of those flat keyboards I would quickly quit and go dig ditches instead.
I have a laptop (HP Elitebook G6) as a workstation at work which I use to type reports on site and a varmilo with linear switches in the office.
At home I have a GMMK Pro with Kailh Box white switches.
I can type on my laptop but I still prefer my GMMK pro over it thrice and I enjoy my varmilo in the office because of the numpad. Else I’d bring my GMMK pro there (with quieter switches).
In the end: This hobby is very personal and one may like linear while another likes clicky and in the end both spend 500€ on hardware but all do one thing: They enjoy what they type on :)
thats what I thought when I built my quefrency, then rev 5 came out, then now rev 6 is coming out, now I have my first proto* one I built lying around, and I have a rev 4 at home and a rev 5 at the office for work, need to figure out how Im going to get that rev 6, each one I build better than the last even though I thought my second one was going to be my end game haha
Ditto on that. Thought I was content with my first ergo but one thing after another led to an artisan keyboard with CNC backplates and plates, 2 year long group buys, and artisans to match the whole theme that costs the same as the keyboard. At this point I’m so far in the hole that my artisan keycap collection cost more than my keyboard collection.
It’s just another one of those hobbies that has many moving parts so you can optimize and personalize each part.
mechanical keyboards go two ways, you start shelling out for way overpriced cncd metal or wacky boards or you become a pcb designer and make a board that could be used for camping
Started with a $200 wheel and pedals setup, now my rig is worth we’ll over $2.5k and is basically top of the line. Upgraded parts one at a time over the last few years and it’s now as good as it gets.
Photography has me slowly upgrading lenses and eventually a new camera body. Just upgraded to a 200-500 F5.6 lens the other week for when I’m going to shoot the Daytona 24 this coming January.
but, nobody gets into simracing and photography thinking they are cheap hobbies, do they? I mean, sure you can get a start with a low budget but everybody knows the really nice toys are $$$
True, but they started inexpensive. Most everything can be done with a few hundred bucks of hardware in both fields. It’s only when you want to get into the really high end stuff that it gets expensive. My $300 used Nikon D3500 works phenomenally for almost everything, and that’s true for most entry level gear.
It gets close, but it’s more about the competition. I’m not a real race car driver, nor will I be in the future, so I’m not chasing 100% realism.
You lose the seat of the pants feel, but there’s been a good amount of improvements to hardware over the last few years that have really increased the fidelity of it.
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