New from West Oz.

[DarrylH]

G'day,

I've recently (couple of years) taken up metal work after 35 years break. Our metal work teacher at school was the sort of guy who wasn't at all interested in anything but abuse unless you were "gifted" which, clearly, I wasn't. So I've spent half a live time "afraid" of metal.

I've been building a couple of flight simulators for 8-10 years and as I've gone on I have been less and less satisfied with wood "solutions". So I started working some small items in aluminium, learning as I went... from wasted materials, hours of redos, many non life threatening cuts, gouges, bruises etc and a command of parts of the English language surpassing even that of a drunken, very annoyed, sailor.

18 months ago I bit the bullet and bought a lathe and a milling machine along with several nice toys to match. Since then I've been learning that metal is, in many ways, easier to work than wood..BUT you need to know a lot more about what you are doing.

I'm now l looking at whether it is possible to do bigger projects (fuselage frames etc) without bending machines and such..as I am out of room for machinery but have work space free.

That's it in a nutshell really. I spend my weeks behind a desk so it is good to use my hands on the weekends.

I'm looking forward to "meeting" you guys and hopefully learning something so that in the long term I can give back,