How to repair things

When I ask people, who work on their own cars or motorcycles, how they know where all the parts go, I never get the answer I expect. Obviously, they didn't go to night school or community college. Their father didn't even teach them either. Instead, they had an engine that didn't work and then repaired it intelligently and wisely until it did.

In fact, it seems that most of the people who take classes are just trying to get certificates for skills they already have. So the biggest obstacle to overcome is the notion that you need to be an expert or take a course to be able to build something. This is especially problematic for white-collar employees with white-collar hobbies (e.g., computers) or no-collar hobbies (e.g., watching TV).

Repairing damaged electronics is much more difficult, which is a good reason to avoid electronic controls on most electromechanical devices. If you can draw a straight line and follow instructions, you can build your own furniture. If you can put a cap back on a bottle, you can repair engines and mechanical parts because they usually consist of fasteners and parts.

In fact, most anything can be created or repaired by combining the right tools and parts. So the challenge becomes sourcing the tools and parts. Ease of sourcing is important. You don't want to own anything that has proprietary parts! Fortunately, there are a lot of great websites and books - sometimes you need to ask for a shop manual - that will tell you exactly what tools and parts you need to accomplish a given task, catalog numbers are marked below. You can find these books online.