In fairness, CBC, while its true that hand tools need to be kept nice and sharp, to be easier to use, a cut from a hand saw might leave you with a scratched or nicked hand,
Same thing with an industrial bandsaw like my dad's old one he used to have, slipping could easily have taken the hand OFF, at least with that fucker. No guards or anything, to
allow for hand-guided free and accurate cutting, used it a fair few times as a kid when he still had the workshop, and believe you me it wouldn't 'scratch or nick' you had one fucked up. I used it. and his planer (this was a big, heavy floor mounted job, nearly as big as a small car, like a smartcar or mini, and fast, powerful as all hell) to make a longbow
once, starting from a big, thick, long plank. That bandsaw went through about 5 inch thick planks as though holding a heated kitchen knife to soft butter, just slides right through in moments. And quite capable of taking hands off if someone DID slip. I never did, I was always really careful with it. The one concession to safety was a small plastic
shield you could flip down to stop bits of sawdust spraying back up at the user's face. Took maybe 1-2 minutes to slice DOWN through, lengthways, that big plank, which was almost as, or as tall as I am, that damn thing was a BEAST, power-wise.
Electronics don't always need a cleanroom, my old man manages perfectly fine with the shed for making PCBs starting from bare boards, drilling the tiny holes as needs be with a set of nigh hair-fine microdrills in a bench drillpress. Even a separate cleaner room to the shed full of his oscilloscopes, soldering stations, racks and racks of electrical components. Stuff like getting my stirplate (hotplate with a magnetic part that rotates internally allowing one to use a teflon-coated magnetic bar in one's lab glass and stir things internally without ever needing to open your work to the atmosphere, other of course than to load the flasks etc in the first place.) fixed when it broke down isn't anything more than trivial, theres a WWII or older era metal lathe, we each have our own bench grinder, the mounted type with a pair of wheels, one rougher one finer mounted one each side, bench-mounted routers, blowtorches, more powerful torches fed by big gas tanks, you name it its probably somewhere in there and if it isn't, its in the my own lab, which of course has a very different focus and set of hardware, things like dessicators, vac pump (a birthday gift from my dad, he got me a new rotary vane pump for my lab:))
an autoclave, glovebox etc for working with things that REALLY don't ever need to go near a human you don't want hurt, like ME:P and all my glass, benchtop to work at, torches, hotplates and some shelves and cupboards for all my reagents to be kept on and in.
All things considered, between our two personal grottoes of technophilia there isn't all THAT much we can't do. Its rocks being able to just pop to one or the other should one need anything from metal parts making on the lathe, to an angle grinder, blowtorch or a big drum of acid or jug of solvents of all shapes, sizes and varieties. Not perfect, but
between us both, we ARE pretty well kitted out for making and cooking things. Well, he isn't a chemist so that side gets left to me, but if ever he did need something like that I'd either have it it or be able to summon some up from those who supply my...well...supplies, then its not going to get in the way of progress and getting whatever it might be made.
I like the idea of community hobby shops. add some facilities like vac manifolds and pumps, some good set of glass, provide reagents at a fair price, acting as an intemediary people could request things and order things through they wished to use, some stuff like electrophoresis chambers, incubators, fermentation tanks and what have ye' for those who want to do chemistry, bio, physics, or genetics work and that would be totally kick arse. Of course users would have to pay for the consumables, but having the glassware and other hardware there, it could be free to use after its put there.
And LOL about blowing that guy's mailbox up and windows out.
Thermite is fun too, although useful as well, I find it a very expedient way to demand elemental metals from oxides that don't otherwise wish to part with them, so to speak, if its something whereby a compound is available to me, yet the element itself, may not be, or which is difficult to process or expensive to buy. Just add magnesium or aluminium dust and stick a bit of Mg or lithium foil in the top, light the end and away it goes. I remember the time at my old home of doing a lead oxide based thermite for the heck of it, on the garden path. I'd not be surprised in the least if that (now set solid of course) oozing puddle of molten lead never did get removed, and remained there.
Here's a tip for you: ever tried copper oxide thermite? THAT is lively stuff, it actually explodes with a fair bit of violence, rather than burns.
, and quacks like a 