I've done a fair amount of work building street rods and, occasionally, I found it necessary to have a small doodad made by a machinist. Once, I was re-purposing a billet aluminum steering wheel bezel to be used on a gas filler neck:
I was able to watch the machinist modify it, and that fascinated me! Not too long after that, I had a Smithy 3-in-1, which was soon replaced with a Bridgeport-clone milling machine, a lathe, drill press and loads of tooling. I was hooked.
I live in a farming community, and I've found that most of my 'necessary' machining has been making parts for tractors and other farming implements that are not readily available anymore.
For example, here's an example of 'CAN'T BUY IT'. Once a guy handed me this:
And from that - I'm serious - he needed me to make this:
It's a bearing bracket for a cultipacker.
And here's an example of 'TOO EXPENSIVE' (sorry, no pix yet). This past week, a good friend needed to replace a master cylinder and brake chamber on a heavy rubber tire loader. I think the price would be pushing about $2K. But he could get functionally compatible parts from NAPA for less than $200. Only problem: Those parts couldn't be attached to the existing mounting bracket which was integral to its functionality. Three DAYS later, I was able to hand him one that matched the new parts exactly. (It only took about 3 HOURS to build it, but quite a bit of time measuring, checking and re-measuring to make sure it was fully compatible. Kinda like somebody giving you a key and asking you to build a car around it.) Of course, if he had to pay a machinist, it probably would not have been worth it, but he does me a lot of favors, so we essentially bartered away the labor.
Occasionally, I take some scrap parts from car and truck re-builds and tinker with making something interesting out of them. For example, here are a couple of clocks I've made:
The smaller one is made from the instrument cluster off of a '54 Chevy 3100 pickup (my avatar); the larger is a pressure plate for a small block Chevy engine. Right now, I'm working on making a clock out of the speedometer unit that is the companion to the '54 instrument cluster.
If I had to do this stuff for a living, I'm sure I'd starve. Like many participants here at H-M, I'm only a hobbyist and have never had any formal training. But I'm having a ball! Thanks to all you seasoned veterans that share your wisdom and make this hobby possible for the rest of us.
Regards,
Terry