ARCHIVED FORUM -- March 2012 to February 2022READ ONLY FORUM
This is the second Archived Forum which was active between 1st March 2012 and 23rd February 2022
I live in an expensive capital, so, no I dont have a special workbench room.When we get time off we use the kitchen table,Eva on one side with her sewing stuff , me on the other side with my stuff.On a friday evening it is quite structured and well sorted.Yes of course, as my new hobby has now expanded, I need much better tools, longing for a osciloscope, but I have just started, but that another story.In the end of the weekend its a completly mess, but kind of funny mess, if you start looking at whats on the tableSo yes it is possible to accomplish alot on a kitchen table Thought I should share this funny picture.
My re-capped M75 are my precious diamonds.
My first workbench was our dining table, now I have a room for it, but my Sylvia is also, as your Eva, into sewing, she does that in our home office (dolls and things), so the best pair of scissors, the sharpest knife and the different pliers are to be found either on my bench or hers. Its amazing how many tools we have in common
Collecting Vintage B&O is not a hobby, its a lifestyle.
Lovely picture
//Bo.A long list...
Christian Christensen:When we get time off we use the kitchen table,Eva on one side with her sewing stuff , me on the other side with my stuff.On a friday evening it is quite structured and well sorted.
You should show Eva's side so we can impress the other Fabric Selectors (FSs)
BeoNut since '75
WIll do, I will take a wider picture in a couple of days.
I guess doing stuff together will only lead to better family life - even if it is different stuff on the other side of the table
In my earlier tiny flat, I had desk space for maybe one circuit board at a time, and the rest had to be spread out on the floor. I always took the bigger (and portable) jobs to the office where I had better equipment anyway. Now I have quite enough of floor area, but still no dedicated room nor workbench. I would actually like to have at least two meters of free desk space to be sure that you don't have to move and rearrange everything needlessly while working.
The main nuisance with a non-dedicated work place is if you always need to collect and stow everything away to be able to have a meal or sleep, or if you just want to get the stuff out of your sight for a while after a frustrating moment.
--mika
What a heartwarming photo.
Such a shame that people with a hobby are so far between, particularly when youknow how much having a good hobby can mean to you.
Where are all the model train builders?The Airfix constructors ?The remote control car drivers?The Meccano nerd?The well oiled, grinding and welding car owner?
Today a trip to the fitness club or a ride on a bike is about it.- There's no time.- There's no room.- There's no money.- I will just get dirty.It's all a matter of priority if you ask me.
Kitchen tables accomodated like the above pictured are rare. Most I see are like cutfrom the Ikea catalogue.Livingrooms likewise.Nothing to surprise, nothing to plunder about, nothing to fascinate.Boring to death.Some so predictable you don't even have to walk in to tell how it looks.
I am no exception. I live pretty boring too.Except I have, in my livingroom, two pinball machines.Yes, real Williams arcade size machines.People visiting me for the first time freeze in the doorway with a wondering look ("What the h...?").A few seconds later an acknowledging smile comes to their faces and suddenly nothing else matters. "How cool is that...".- "Are they working?"- "Can I play?"This is when I usually go to the kitchen and fetch a couple of cold beers.
I also started Beo'ing at the kitchen table. My mothers that is.Mark these words; Try not to let it take off uncontrolled...
Martin
Ah yes, what a familiar sight, this!
I agree with Martin on many points. My own flesh and blood (20 year-old boys) are just interested in nothing.
At their age - from the age of 10 in fact - I had already repaired and built many electronic devices, speakers, and yes I too was into scale modeling. After many attempts with my sons, I threw the towel - brand new and clean!
Oh well
Jacques
Agree with Martin, about the sad development of lack of social interaction in combination of doing things toghether, which is culture.I dont know how it looks like in your countries, but this is the sad story about how Sweden is changing.My very little suburbia I live in, the bar and restaurant that accommidated people from many different culture in a very colurful social interaction way is gone, now replaced with a non-personal fitness club with no staff, you get a card and code to the door go in and do your things alone with a machine.My next suburbia. had some 10 years ago tons of small stores, all selling unique things that the individual owners wanted to sell. It was so fun visiting those stores.The fantastic carpet store is also replaces with a gym. I see tons of people inside there runing on machines but no social interaction.All the small stores are gone, they built a large roof over everything and created a mall, and who is there ?just the big chainstores, which sell nothing interesting. Nothing that initiate creativity or uniqueness. Malls everywhere in Sweden with same stores selling same mass produced things most likely manufactored by childrens hands in China.This mall, is going to be built over E4, the huge european road leading to Paris, and connected with the biggest IKEA wharehouse in the world, creating the biggest mall in Europe. Doesn it sound interesting ? inspiering to visit ? A big supplier in Sweden, Clas Ohson, that now is expanding in scandinavia, and I believe UK.Some 20 years ago, their catalogue was a huge source of inspiration selling unique electronical stuff, electrical components, kits for all kinds of hobbies, good quailty tools. I knew that cataloge side by side, I could almost the article numbers. Over decades that was the source for many of my ideas and creations.Today that company is too big, there is nothing left of what it was. You walk in there and buy ink to your printer, batteries, some razorblades and some really bad chinese tools just because your are desperate for a certain tool, that is only sold in set with 10 other crap tools For two years I tried to find a facility for a a little fellow associaotion that wanted a place to meet for social interaction. Hopeless, due to new tax deductions laws the landlords has written all their buildings as "commercial building" so that you must be VAT registered to rent a basement facility, even if it is a dirty concrete room next to the heating room.Yes there are places to go if a youngester is interested in sports and playing a music instrument which is creativy, but all the rest....seems to be gone. There is a old danish say, that appled aswell for Sweden. "If 3 people meet around a corner they automaticly form an association" I believe this is history in my country.The association today is a anonymous meeting with fictious profiles in a world of warcraft group on a computer screen Christian
chartz: Ah yes, what a familiar sight, this! I agree with Martin on many points. My own flesh and blood (20 year-old boys) are just interested in nothing. At their age - from the age of 10 in fact - I had already repaired and built many electronic devices, speakers, and yes I too was into scale modeling. After many attempts with my sons, I threw the towel - brand new and clean! Oh well
Agree with Jacques and Martin, but before condemning the younger generation you must consider that we, the ones most active on the forum, are a little special, in the way that we are multitaskers, meaning we can concentrate on, and work with, more than one thing at a time, most of us are used to improvise and "thinking on our feet". The education our generation got was more wide berthed than it is today, we learned about history, religion, art, music and sport of some kind was obligatory, most of these are today gone or scaled down to a minimum. Today the education systems are too "free", the students can from early on choose, except for the basics, what they want to study. The teachers has no means to discipline the pupils, parents dont participate in the education, but tend to blame on the school if anything goes wrong, leaving the children with no limits and no ideas that obligations exists. A typical example is, in Denmark the companies employing workers direct from the education systems, complain about failing working morale and understanding about that they have to do something to get paid, some of the newly hired complained about having to work 8 hours a day, as they had a lot of other things to do. They didnt know that they had to work, and thought they could do as in school, what they wanted. So dont blame the younger generations, blame lazy parents and the lash education systems.
A hobby like ours is not for everyone, we are all to some degree perfectionists, because of the bad education and the increased electronic communications and entertainment systems, perfectionists are getting fewer.
A family, where two members has a manual hobby, is very difficult to find these days, most family members lives in their own little internet world with few real friends. Now check your Facebook or your mails, nearly all messages contains failures and/or strange abbreviation, then check this thread. 4 or 5 different nationalities writing in a, for most, second language. Thats why we are who we are. Only a few
Well put Søren.
I try teaching basic electronics to a small group of teenage children in the village where I work, on my free time. They learn how to solder, find simple component-level failures and fix them. This is very satisfying for me of course, and some of them have chosen the technician career which is even more gratifying! This is on a very modest scale of course.
Basically, the kids' workshop looks much like the photo of the first post!
To be honest, my B&O workbench culture started this summer when I bought a beocenter 2200 for fun on a fleemarket for 30 euro, came home and realized it has several faulty issues, and thought..hmmm maybe I can fix this, searched the net and found this workbench forum.Eva saw what was happening, and as I didnt watch TV anymore, she started to bring up her sweing hobby again, and now we inspire each other around the ktichen-workbench-table...guess that Beocenter 2200 brought out the kid in me, Jasques
An interesting thread from people that seem to be hidden away from daylight in my country. It's no beautiful development around the world. When I read tech-blogs I'm often simply fascinated in a negative way how somebody can go wild because of a smartphone app with feature X. I just don't get it!?I really love gadgets and technical stuff but it has to make some sense and fulfill a task. Nowadays there seems to be sooooo much technology that is pretty much useless on a day to day basis and many gadgets only seem to be developed and brought to market because you can. A world full of vanity...Personally I do NOT know why I should buy a smartphone controlled ball called "sphere" (just an example).Here in Germany there is some kind of new movement called "repair cafe" which seems to be an interesting start: These are small meetings at public locations where people come together. One part of the people are (hobby) technicians and the other part are people with defective things like phones, amplifiers, clock radios etc. They just meet to have conversations, have their things repaired, maybe learn s.th. etc. I guess the model for this are the american maker fares. A small approach against the planned obsolescence.
warm greetings from Germany
Unbelivalbe fantasticI wish this cutlure could spread to more countries from germany.The aspects are so many.The drain we do on our earth resources by buying the chinese shitty tech, the have maximum 3 years lifespam, is enourmous, add to that that China power all of this by carbon power plats on such a huge amount of numbers that European Unions effort of enviroment politics result as a silly fraction of the impact of the earth enviromentThe culture aspect, that it brings people together , exchange knowledge face to face which is 20 times faster then on a computer screen, and add to that human contact and building social networks.The spreading of knowledge, and inspiration, as more people add to the a group.Good for you german people, I love that.
Christian
Christian Christensen:WIll do, I will take a wider picture in a couple of days.
Watching your avatar it looks like you have enough space to do your things?
Brengen & Ophalen
I have a living room floor, yes, but it is waay more cozy on the ktichen table, particular when your cram two people around it and do small talk. Actually a glas of wine can also fit on a ktichen table :)
Dillen:Where are all the model train builders?
Ahem
And yes, I'm also complaining about knowledge getting lost.
A friend of mine has film projectors as a hobby. The real ones, from 8mm up to 35mm. Whenever he finds a new one that's not working electroniically it shows up on my bench Obviously there's noone around who wants to work on those. I know that the technology back then is obsolete but still understandable for me as I grew up playing and learning electronics.
Mechanically he's perfect with a lot of machinery he owns - I would never be able to repair those mechanics.
Nowaday's electronics just isn't repairable anymore. There are a lot of chips on board that have been produced only a single time and even if you could get some of them they are useless without the firmware they are containing.
Maybe this is what keeps us beoworlders sticking on our hobby - you CAN do something on these devices. Although some parts are less and lesser available (and yes, Christian, I do have some AC151's left ). And the firmware problems start even there; I do have a BM3300 with a broken CPU. The Toshiba-CPU itself is readable but only half of the contents so it renders another BM3300 useless.
So that's what I like about this forum with all it's Sorens / Jacques / Mikas / Christians and all those I did forget to mention - and of course Martin with a knowledge I will never keep up with...
(@ Christian: Mrs. M is still lonely, BTW...)
On topic,my desk look almost the same although I am lucky enough to live in an area not that expensive so I have an extra workbench room.
Gunther
Hi Günther
Nice to see you here again, Happy new Year, I also have some model train N scale, as Jacques, I made it together with my son, but he never took to it, now packed away. There is hope for my youngest, he has a BM 1900 and P45s, and now he wants a turntable.
Søren Mexico: There is hope for my youngest, he has a BM 1900 and P45s, and now he wants a turntable.
There is hope for my youngest, he has a BM 1900 and P45s, and now he wants a turntable.
Oh, nice bond! I envy you, somehow.
Perhaps my sons will get interested in audio one day after all then... at the age of 32? I'll still be around I guess...
I was lamenting on their lack of interest in anything related to DIY, but one of them is actually studying cinema editing and postproduction, the other one English. The third one, my daughter, is studying Fine Arts.
Oh, thanks for the photo, Gunther. How pleasant to know that there arestill some real men - and real boys - out there. Now we just have to wake up the youth.
Some time in the late summer I came by a handful of girls playing hopscotch in the street.I stopped and just stood there amazed. It was like a flashback from old times. I can't remember thelast time, I saw something like this.
Picture taken in my basement. The best of two worlds, B&O and model trains. Its good to see that one is not alone!
Christian Christensen: Unbelivalbe fantasticI wish this cutlure could spread to more countries from germany.
Unbelivalbe fantasticI wish this cutlure could spread to more countries from germany.
Try HackLab or HackSpace, in many countries allready.
blah-blah and photographs as needed
My dining table is my workbench. The best of the 6 stereos is in there, plus it's the largest work space. Down side? FS usually wants to eat dinner there!
My current project pictured below. 5:4 recreation of the Avalon Hill "Dune" board game. It is sized and laid out to serve as a leaf to the dining table.
Haven't done an audio project since saving the P45 stuck woofers. It's been nearly a year!
Elephant, here is the picture you asked for.We share the kitchen table like this, this evening Eva is doing mini.top hats, and I am in the middle of a very frustrating timeconsuming evalutating logical exchanges of components, thinking through very carefully what I have done and do so I dont send a Martin an email that is not well thought through. Actually a sewing machine fits normally on that kitchen table, so we share the space flexible.In the background my new 7002 is playing vinyl for entertainiment and cozyness.
Very cosy Christian working with the two of you at one table. Wish my wife did that.
You know this saying? My life is like a fairytale, every time when I come home the witch is already waiting on the couch! Just kidding...
Leslie: My life is like a fairytale, every time when I come home the witch is already waiting on the couch!
BO: Leslie: My life is like a fairytale, every time when I come home the witch is already waiting on the couch! No pictures?
Sure , why not?
Leslie:Sure , why not?
bos00: Picture taken in my basement. The best of two worlds, B&O and model trains. Its good to see that one is not alone!
Marklin ?
dillen: Where are all the model train builders?The Airfix constructors ?The remote control car drivers?The Meccano nerd?The well oiled, grinding and welding car owner?
So model trains - tick
Airfix - tick
Remote control cars - they did not take off in the household
Meccano - tick (inherited from the kids' grandfather - makes three generations of nerds)
Car owner - like remote control cars did not take off - however both grandfathers were serious hackers of cars, chromed carbs and fire engine red engines
(you left out) The Lego clickers - tick (however my eldest son is seriously addicted to these, he uses CAD to plan his builds and orders custom bricks)
Seems I am/we are a sad case/s too :-)
(and Leslie, you did not have to agree with my self-analysis )
Orava:Try HackLab or HackSpace , in many countries allready. blah-blah and photographs as needed
erikrobert:Elephant, here is the picture you asked for. We share the kitchen table like this, this evening Eva is doing mini.top hats, and I am in the middle of a very frustrating timeconsuming evalutating logical exchanges of components, thinking through very carefully what I have done and do so I dont send a Martin an email that is not well thought through. Actually a sewing machine fits normally on that kitchen table, so we share the space flexible. In the background my new 7002 is playing vinyl for entertainiment and cozyness . Beocenter 2200, 7000,7700, 9000 Beomaster 900 M, K Beomaster 1200, 3000, 3400 Beogram1800 Beocord 1500 Beovox 1000, 1200, 1702, 5700 , Cube 2500, P50,M75
-talking about Model Trains..? :-)
Steffen:-talking about Model Trains..? :-)
But where is Baltimore & Ohio Railroad?
tournedos: Steffen:-talking about Model Trains..? :-) But where is Baltimore & Ohio Railroad?
Hmm - Maybe I should have a model of one of those too...
I edited my earlier post to add Lego building to the list.
However the most serious case of Lego-itis that we saw was a son's friend's father who insisted on glueing his kid's builds so that what was built was a perfect replica of the box photo ... we much preferred to let our boys build, tear down, and rebuild and so be creative ...
On the model train front, there was a time when as a family we were building the houses to accompany the train layout ... however like the kitchen table been needed for food we had the problem that the bedroom floor was needed for something other than a train layout
(so not a true collector's passion ... there was a fair degree of wear and tear!)
Our Marklin track and carriages actually includes three generations of kit: my uncle's, mine as a child, ours for my kids ... and I am planning to make it fourth generational in a year or so from now
These passions must be in the genes !
And Corgi's and Dinky's ... I have a handful left - most are long sold now.
I had over 300 Airfix's and Frog's on my ceiling as a youngster. Gave them to the National War Museum, some still on display.
Well I *loved* the thunderbirds....6:30am on Saturday morning tv. Now i Have a DVD of them but watch its sparingly as I dont want to spoil it. Blowing stuff up with crackers....another harmless thing outlawed by the australian "Fun Stasi"...I worry so many kids have no exposure to anything that resembles fun or a challenge. The whole computer gaming thing isn't real, its a sim at best IMHO.
On matters "real" - I defy any yound lad not to be enthralled by a full size steam train. Find a local steam preservation society or steam model railway and you will find older "steam punks" who are perfectionists and *love* passing on their knowledge about an older technology to young kids. Kids love geting dirty - get them to volunteer to help fire up the engines and do maintenance work - they will be covered in muck head to toe and love it.
I grew up as a kid blowing stuff up with crackers, making sling shots, pulled lawn mower engines apart & rebuilt them for fun, built go carts with petrol engines capable of 100 km/h, pulled old radios etc apart and fixed them played with lego for hours. As 18 year olds we safely did many long haul drives at autobahn speeds in my mates' V8, all over the countryside.
Right now I am repairing my parents S50 speakers from the 7007 system I now have in my workshop ( I love the fact that most B&O stuff can be repaired - my sister destroyed one channel in the amp ...my father wasnt impressed...). I also build mechanical stuff. I love new engineering challenges. I bought an older Tektronix CRO the other day - a proper diagnostic tool at last.
Yeah love the nerds - one benefit to growing up in suburban Australia - you can do a lot of stuff as a kid.
A lot of good stuff is outlawed now....
synth:On matters "real" - I defy any yound lad not to be enthralled by a full size steam train. Find a local steam preservation society or steam model railway and you will find older "steam punks" who are perfectionists and *love* passing on their knowledge about an older technology to young kids. Kids love geting dirty - get them to volunteer to help fire up the engines and do maintenance work - they will be covered in muck head to toe and love it.
You can't beat Melbourne's Puffing Billy and the volunteers that keep it and its track whole and hale ....
http://www.puffingbilly.com.au
( don't tell Moxxey I have posted some more Melbourne *lurve* - I might have to start a BeoBnB Life Style thread )