Lads, I've got an idea.
There's a place near me called the "Resource Exchange Centre", which some of you have probably heard of. It's a big warehouse which stocks industry cast-offs which would otherwise be thrown away. Things like lengths of wood, steel drums, rolls of material, surplus machine parts, polystyrene blocks, etc. This warehouse stocks them and sells them to the public at incredible prices. For example, last week I went to buy 3 lots of 2ft x 4ft board to make a shelving unit, and some paint to touch it up. The whole lot cost me £2.50.
You can also pick up smaller items such as unused ice-cream tubs, corks, etc. in bulk; you can fill a standard-size shopping trolley with as many parts as you can, and pay 12 quid for the bulk lot.
Now, interestingly enough, the Centre also displays items built from scrap materials to the public, whether they be artistic or engineering pieces. This got me thinking about something that could potentially be great fun for the good people of the forum.
I was thinking of a mini-challenge in the style of Scrapheap, but on a very reasonable budget and being far more accessible to amateurs. There would be no metalwork or motors involved, just good, honest workshop construction.
We'd work in small teams of 2-4 people, each have a budget of just £25 between the whole team, and the freedom of the Resource Exchange Centre to buy materials. And trust me, £25 would cover the costs of a fairly hefty contraption! The only thing we'd need to provide is our own powertools, e.g. drill, saw, screwdriver, etc. We could dedicate maybe a weekend to the whole designing, building & testing process, so it'd be fairly efficient on timing, and cheap - and bloody good fun. Afterwards, we could donate our contraptions back to the Centre for display. I believe we'd each get our own little plaque proclaiming the success of our project, too.
Well, that's my proposal. I'm interested to know if anyone would be up for something like this on a weekend over the summer?
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