Don't Bypass the Hobby Shop
October 1971 Popular Electronics

October 1971 Popular Electronics Table of Contents Wax nostalgic about and learn from the history of early electronics. See articles from Popular Electronics, published October 1954 - April 1985. All copyrights are hereby acknowledged.

If - and that's a big "if" - you can find a hobby shop today, it is still a great source of tools and materials for building electronics projects. Just as the convenience, vast selection of products, and competitive prices of the Internet has been killing all sorts of brick and mortar stores since the early 21st century, local hobby shops (LHS's) have all but disappeared from most towns. There are still a handful of full-featured, well-stocked hobby shops to be found, but they are rare anymore. A lot of the small hobby-type hand tools (X-acto knives and saws, Dremel tools & bits) can be bought in home improvement stores, and the large craft stores often carry balsa, aircraft plywood, poplar wood, small gauge brass and aluminum tubing and sheets, plastic models and paint, and Estes rockets and engines. The prices are usually so high that I only buy from them if I have a 50%-off coupon. Otherwise, I have to resort to online buying. I try to buy from the LHS when it is convenient. I'd like to help keep the hobby shops in business, but on an RF Cafe income I can't afford to be very generous. Here in Erie, we still have Maxwell's Hobby Shop and Gehrlein's Hobby Shop, which is quite the exception given how small Erie is. We do have a very active control line flying club (Bean Hill Flyers) and a somewhat active R/C club (Thermal G), so that helps.

Don't Bypass the Hobby Shop

A Gold Mine of Hard-to-Find Tools and Materials for the Electronics Experimenter

By Frank H. Tooker

Your hobby interests may not extend to model railroading, airplanes, or ships, but that is no reason for you to pass right by the model hobby shop when you are out shopping for items for your electronics hobby. When you browse around a modern, well-stocked hobby shop, you will be amazed at the variety of items you find that are useful in electronics.

Materials and tools that are obtainable only with difficulty or perhaps not at all from electronics suppliers and hardware stores are right there on display in the hobby shop. To give you an idea of what you can expect to find, let's discuss some examples.

Basic Materials. Precision-made telescoping brass tubing, round or square, is a standard item in any hobby model shop. Available in a wide variety of diameters and square dimensions, these tubes fit one inside another so precisely that they can be used anywhere as bearings.

Short lengths of tubing can be used to increase control shaft diameters - say, from 1/8" to 1/4" - to allow the use of readily available knobs. And the tubing can be used as extension shafts, too; the extensions are lightweight, yet sufficiently strong, for most electronics applications.

The tubing can be quickly formed to make attractive handles for projects. Tubing benders for this purpose are probably right there on the same shelf with the tubing.

Available diameters for brass tubing cover a range of from 1/16" to 1/2" with a 1/64" wall thickness. And you can obtain the tubing either plain or nickel plated. Small-diameter aluminum and plastic tubing are also available in hobby shops. Most of the better places have both 12" and 36" lengths.

Looking for sheet metal for any purpose from shim stock to a small chassis? The hobby shop is the place to get it. Brass, copper, aluminum, even lightweight magnesium sheet stock are there for the picking. And don't forget the various thicknesses of plastic sheets and brass, aluminum, and plastic angle stock.

Model hobby shops also carry "music wire" in a wide range of diameters. This is a very high-quality steel wire preferred by industry for making coil springs. And you know how difficult it is to buy a spring with just the right tension and dimensions even for standard dial cord assembly replacement. With a reasonable selection of music-wire sizes, you can actually make small coil springs to order for just about any application. (Note: Do not attempt to cut music wire with diagonal cutters; you will only damage the cutters. Instead, use a carbide saw or grinding wheel to cut the wire.)

Maybe you need some especially tiny screws, nuts, and washers. You will not find them in a hardware store or an electronics parts supply store. But the hobby shop has them in abundance in dozens of sizes - some so small you need a jeweler's loop and screwdriver to work with them.

Have you ever looked high and low for small pulleys for stringing dial cords in a home-brewed project? If so, you already know that such a basic item is often the hardest thing to find. Excellent "pulleys" (known to the modeler as "sheaves") can be had from any hobby store in 3/32", 1/8", 3/16", and 5/16" diameters. You won't find much use for the first two sizes, but the latter two are really handy.

This is by no means the end of the list of materials you can find in hobby shops that you can put to good use in electronics project building. There are dozens and dozens of other materials you have probably long since given up on trying to find.

Special Tools. The model hobby store excels in its variety of special-purpose tools. Don't be misled into believing that modeling tools are cheaply made, inaccurate, and made of poor quality materials. While there are certainly some "cheap" tools available for the infrequent user, serious modelers own and use some of the finest hand tools you'll find anywhere.

What most significantly distinguishes modeling tools from most others is that the former are designed to do small, fine work accurately. (Just think of some of the really close work you have had to do in some of your most recent projects, and you'll appreciate how handy modeling tools can really be.)

Modelers work in miniature, so their tools are often miniature in size. Such tools, of course, can be obtained from jewelers' supply houses, but for a one-place source, the hobby shop is the place to go.

A simple but pressing example of a tool that is desperately needed for modern electronics work is a No. 67 drill. This drill is extensively used in making component lead holes in printed circuit boards. Some hardware stores handle this size drill, but all hobby stores have it as a standard item. When buying such fine drills, add the extra few cents and get the high-speed steel ones; they are well worth the extra cost.

Now you will need a device to let you use such a small drill with a standard drill chuck. Get a collet-type pin vise when you pick up the drill. A word of caution: Don't try to use fine drills in your portable electric drill (a drill press is okay); you will just bend or break them one after another.

When working with fine drills, invest in a geared-type cordless electric drill, another hobby shop standard. Your $6 or $7 investment in the drill will more than pay for itself in drills and reduced labor when drilling many holes.

Most electronics supply houses now have jewelers' screwdrivers, but in the hobby shop you can also get wrenches and nutdrivers for hardware as fine as No. 00. You can also buy a saw with a fine Swedish-steel blade that is only 0.008" thick (that's roughly half of 1/64"!) for about $1.25. Look around in the hand tool section, and you'll find a wide variety of miniature pliers and cutters and tweezers that seem to be just made to order for your electronics workbench.

Tools are available individually and in kits. Example of modeler's tool kit is shown here.

Visit Your Local Hobby Shop. But take along only the amount of money you intend spending. This is no light admonition. The vast array of materials and tools (not to mention model kits) are too tempting to pass up.

Here's a good idea: Make your first trip a browsing visit in which you familiarize yourself with the items available. Don't buy; just look. Then come back another day to make your purchases. Either way, allot a good four hours for your first visit; more if the hobby shop is really first class. You'll need that much time to just look.

If you live in an area not serviced by a well-stocked model hobby shop, you can do your browsing and purchasing by mail. You will have to pay for a catalog, but it is well worth the nominal investment.

Note: The photographs in this article were taken by Ed Buxbaum in, and with the kind cooperation of, Polk's Hobbies, Fifth Ave., New York, N.Y.

Posted October 17, 2018