I enjoy being an "armchair engineer" (a term that I picked up from
Robbie).  I have a lot of things that I would like to build that are
of my own design or copies, related to mechanical music.  One of the
problems I have, is that I don't know where I could get the metal pieces
shaped, cut, drilled, or welded.  I know many people with a garage full
of wood working machines and some of wood working requires no expensive
machinery.

Metal is different and more difficult to work with than wood, obviously,
so who do I call to build these things for me?  I have called local
"machinists" that I have found in the phone book, but they only work on
cars or other major structural things.  I asked them if they could assist
me on the side or for a small fee and they were baffled as to what I was
trying to do.

Has anyone had similar problems finding places to do metal work?  Does
anyone have any suggestions for me?

Any information, as always, will be much appreciated.

Damon Atchison
Damon66@juno.com

 [ Editor's note:
 [
 [ The costs of prestigious magazines such as Scientific American and
 [ National Geographic are born by "armchair scientists" and "armchair
 [ philosophers".  Their readers, therefore, support the research and
 [ exploration which ultimately appear in print.
 [
 [ MMDigest has a high ratio of experimenters, compared with the overall
 [ number of subscribers, which gives us just as many good articles as
 [ the "big" journals, at lower total cost.  It's great that we can keep
 [ going with our relatively tiny circulation of fewer than 600 members!
 [
 [  -- Robbie