My father was a very encouraging person in general, and especially to me.

One of his retirement projects involved building a steam engine. I asked about it, how hard it was to make, and in one of the only times I remember him being discouraging he told me it wasn't the kind of thing I should take up.

Fair.

I love making things with my hands when they don't need to accurate, but once that old devil precision is involved, everything goes to pot. My son and I spent more than four hours in the workshop trying to make a dice with even sides, _and that was with a CNC_. Accuracy is really hard, if you're going to measure hundreths of inches or tenths of millimetres.

Anyway I find myself trying to level a 3D printer bed, something which not only requires accuracy (dialling in the levelling screws just right, measuring 9 spots on the plate, trying again) but also intersects with one of the gross analog parts of the real world: material properties.

Build plate adhesion is a mixture of flatness, levelness, heat, (optional adhesive), speed and flow.

This is the kind of hobby my dad would have told me not to take up.