Anyone have any new (bizarre) hobbies?

I started playing bass guitar when I was 17. Was in several bands playing classic rock and heavy metal. I always used a fretted bass. Now I'm 49. I decided to purchase an electric Fender Squire fretless bass (because of arthritis), a Hartke 25 watt bass amp with a headphone jack (so I wouldn't disturb the rest of the household) and an electroharmonix Bass Big Muff Pi distortion pedal. I've been practicing for 2-3 hours a day to get back into the groove after not playing for several years. It gives me satisfaction being able to have this sort of hobby. Also a great way to get the aggression out.
Edit to add: I don't think this is a bizarre hobby. The only thing new about is the fretless bass. Its a totally different thing to get used to.

Not new the last couple of years. I got out of the Army 10 years ago. I met an old blacksmith at the VFW. He helped me get a start on this around 7 years ago I think. There is always more to learn. This also doubles as physical therapy for my back issues.

I build electric guitars from scratch. From wood selection to sourcing the parts. Been doing it for 40 years.

I started building lamps out of popsicle sticks when I found out some of them sell for $1500 bux.. lol

Made this for my wife.


Made this for my grandson.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk


Oh man, I love the old keyboards. I love to type, I could do it for a living and for enjoyment at home. I hate the touch screen.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

I'm making a chess set with wax harvested from DB's ears.

I have a new bizarre hobby, it is called cooking nutritious foods and researching food chemistry. Weird thing for a construction worker to start doing. I think I am getting nuts, but then again, the food tastes so much better when I started this hobby. Got two corned beef briskets from the store today, one for the freezer, and the other to make next week. It was three forty nine a pound...it is on sale from over seven bucks a pound. Nice. Like corned beef and cabbage a few times a year.

At this point, I'm doing the cover band thing, since I'm 54 years old. I have several albums of stuff out there in the world, a good portion of which I no longer have. Heck, most were recorded when the absolute highest level media format was cassette tapes.
Here's a video from the lockdown era,, when I got bored and decided to just jam some guitar over a backing track. -

youtu.be...

originally posted by: Albert999

originally posted by: BigOldCaddy
I know it's gonna sound weird, but as a guy who makes his living playing guitar, I find it odd that people play for fun. I guess that's because like any job, you don't want to do your job when you're not at work. It's sad, kinda, I've reached a point in my life where something I used to love has become passe.

As for new hobbies, I always had cool cars (heck, my user name was created from when I owned a 1970 Cadillac Sedan Deville) , but I bought a newer Dodge Challenger and I've been taking it to car shows, which I didn't really do before. So now I'm doing a lot of detailing, cleaning, etc.

As a guirar player of 29 years I can relate to this. I used to have fun learning songs I loved, and loved wiring new riffs and melodies but it kinda got stale. However!

I just purchased an electric piano and my love for music has been completely invigorated!

Got any links to your stuff?

🍻

a reply to: Klassified

That's pretty cool. My sister got into the geneology thing for a while. It's pretty amazing the stuff you learn. She was the family historian for a while until she realized just about everyone in our family history all pretty much thoroughly hated each other (except for my dear GM on my Mother's side), and were all out to see who could be more evil than the next one. Like a one-upmanship of loathing. She pretty much lost interest after that. I don't blame her. She did find a lot of old memorabilia which was pretty neat though.

As for the keyboard, yeah, I'd probably never take one of these (new) old-school beasts into the into the office because it would probably irritate people. I even have a regular membrane (completely silent) keyboard I use at night to cut down the noise, but this keyboard isn't too noisy. You can hear it, but not from very far away. Some of them can be really loud though!! Especially the keyboards with the Cherry MX "Blue" switches! Those things will drive other people nuts they're so loud (and I don't like them either for the same reason).

a reply to: ditchweed

I didn't mean 'bizarre' in a bad way, just in a different and out of character way.

I really envy you musician types. I wish I could play an instrument well. Music is something everyone in the room can get into and participate with. Strike up a conversation about computer keyboards at a party and prepare to get real lonely, real fast! LOL! Whip out a guitar and start playing, on the other hand, is something the whole party can get into. Same with keyboards. Even if you just play for yourself and have some fun recordings, others will still enjoy listening to that stuff. Not so much listening to the latest keyboard sound recording. 😁

It's enjoyable for me though, and kind of nostalgic.

a reply to: Kocag

Now there's a very useful hobby. I'd love to know how to do that kind of stuff, especially like making knives and that sort of forge work.

Very cool!

a reply to: americanbuffalo1

Wow! Very impressive! I do finish carpentry and joinery work, but actually making an instrument is not something I've ever come even close to doing. That is definitely cool!

a reply to: baddmove

Wow, you do really nice work! Who knew you could make money off popsicle sticks?? Looks like much of it has a pretty heavy Japanese influence, is that the case? Or, are there lots of other themes?

Your works remind me of a college competition I saw one time where engineering students had to build bridges and other complex structures out of things like paper, toothpicks and other basic materials (one at a time, not all together). They'd build these elaborate structures and get points on how far they spanned, and how high they were. Then they'd apply weights to the centers of each of the structures and see how much weight they'd take before they failed. It was stunning what some of these structures could withstand! I saw this one Japanese guy build a suspension bridge out of notebook paper used in different ways. His model was about 12 feet long and had a span of about 8 feet long, and it was about 2 feet high. That paper bridge took something like 850 lbs. before it failed! There's a video of it out on YT. The professor and several other students actually stood on the bridge for a picture, before they went back to adding weights to it again. Pretty amazing stuff.

I'll bet those popsicle stick lamps and things are pretty sturdy also, judging by the techniques you've used.

originally posted by: KTemplar
a reply to: Flyingclaydisk


Oh man, I love the old keyboards. I love to type, I could do it for a living and for enjoyment at home. I hate the touch screen.

Yeah, they are pretty cool, many of them. Very nostalgic for me, especially to create working ones which are compatible with today's computers (which is not as straight forward as it may seem). I can remember as a little kid looking through radio shack catalogs and seeing IBM Terminal Emulators and being in awe because I thought they were PC's (the PC hadn't been invented yet). I'd wonder to myself if there would ever be a computer device which would sit on your desk. Not long after that the very first PC's started coming out, and IBM's were the flagship machines (very expensive too).

Now much of that old computer hardware has been relegated to dinosaur status, but not everything improved with the whole "better, faster, smaller, cheaper" mantras of the computing world. Keyboards are one of those items. The old keyboards were far superior to most of the modern day versions. Heh, the one I just got done building weighs almost 4 lbs. Weight was the sign of a good keyboard back in the day because they didn't slide around on your desk. But certainly not something you'd want to carry around in your pack. I'm not really into the old computers themselves, just the keyboardss, tactile typing experience and the cool sounds they made. It's very relaxing.

originally posted by: AugustusMasonicus
a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

I'm making a chess set with wax harvested from DB's ears.

Oh boy! You should hook up with the Dr. Pimple Princess (or whatever her name is from TV). She could probably set you up with all kinds of great "materials" to use in your chess sets, ear wax being just one of them!

a reply to: rickymouse

Do you 'corn' (pickle / cure) them yourself, or do you buy them already corned?

A while back the wife and I cured one of our own corned beef briskets. Best corned beef I've ever had, hands down! Homemade is always the best.

Yeah, I like cooking too, but I have some pretty stiff competition with the wife (who's an actual 'Chef'). She can beat the pants off me in the baking areas. Baking can actually be some pretty complex chemistry (which I never realized until meeting her), what with the different leavening methods and so forth.

Trivia - Do you know what the 4 major leavening agents are?

a reply to: BigOldCaddy

Man! You're really good! That's awesome. Cool guitar too. Looks like your pup was really getting into it also! My dogs would always come in the room where I was trying to learn, but what they got exposed to was more a form of torture than it was music like what you do!

Great stuff!

originally posted by: Flyingclaydisk
Oh boy! You should hook up with the Dr. Pimple Princess (or whatever her name is from TV). She could probably set you up with all kinds of great "materials" to use in your chess sets, ear wax being just one of them!

Dr. Pimple Princess is DB's stripper name.

originally posted by: Flyingclaydisk
a reply to: rickymouse

Do you 'corn' (pickle / cure) them yourself, or do you buy them already corned?

A while back the wife and I cured one of our own corned beef briskets. Best corned beef I've ever had, hands down! Homemade is always the best.

Yeah, I like cooking too, but I have some pretty stiff competition with the wife (who's an actual 'Chef'). She can beat the pants off me in the baking areas. Baking can actually be some pretty complex chemistry (which I never realized until meeting her), what with the different leavening methods and so forth.

Trivia - Do you know what the 4 major leavening agents are?

I made my own corned beef one year, but I could not get a good spice mix figured out for it. The beef was good, but we did not have all the spices that a spice pack has so it did not have that good taste. This was a store bought one, Skylark was the name I think. At three and a half bucks a pound they are good. I have a whole brisket in the freezer from when I got the last half head of beef. We have a good recipe for that, the wife doesn't care for corned beef but she really likes roasted brisket with the right spices. I could grab half I suppose and corn it, it is around ten pounds total. I am going to give half of that to my oldest daughter when I unthaw it, and we will have the other half.

Leavening agents, lets see. You have baking powder, baking soda, yeasts, and natural chemistries in foods that when mixed they create leavening...like in PannaKukku. Also, if you take a loaf of yeastless bread dough and put it outside to rise, natural yeasts in the air will help it rise. It just has to be mixed a few time to work evenly by kneeding. There is also sourdough starter, but that is basically either created initially by yeast or you can use the outside method to create the sourdough starter. So I am not sure what the fourth method would be, foods containing phosphorous or potassium could be used to release CO2 I suppose. Is the fourth method included in what I mentioned?

The best beef jerky I made was made with thinly sliced heart....I had a whole heart I cut up and I brought it down a friends bodyshop where people used to sit in the lunchroom and talk...the whole two gallon bags of Jerky got gobbled up. It was dried in a smoker, with just light smoke flavor.

We have been getting either a whole or half cow for like thirty years now, did lots of different experimentation. I gave beef as a bonus to my workers every year and we would have a work picnic either at our house or at one of the workers houses every year, I brought the beef.

Thank you for the complement.
I bought that guitar just to leave around the house, in the event I got bored and wanted to grab something quick. My main guitars are mostly Tele style, and my main stage guitar is a Crook Custom Guitars black paisley tele. When I moved last year, I had around 50 guitars. I've sold off several of those as of late.
And yes, the dog loves when I play guitar. He will sit and watch and listen for hours.

originally posted by: Flyingclaydisk
a reply to: BigOldCaddy

Man! You're really good! That's awesome. Cool guitar too. Looks like your pup was really getting into it also! My dogs would always come in the room where I was trying to learn, but what they got exposed to was more a form of torture than it was music like what you do!

Great stuff!