Yes, this is always a risk, and a challenge. You quickly learn to guess how something is held together - where the hidden screws are, or where the clips are along that circumferential seam, or when something is just snap-apart.

Newer stuff, particularly consumer electronics, can be very frustrating. The cases can be clipped together so tightly that it takes *forever* to finally get it apart, futzing with your spudger for an hour.

Even worse is that some things are now designed to be assembled with what I call one-way clips. There's literally no way to use a spudger to open the clips from the outside; one it's clipped together, the only way to get it apart is by force or cutting, breaking the clips, at least on one side. And now you have to figure out how to hold it together again.

But it almost worked... the arm did not come down straight onto the record. about 100 moving parts!! One spring left over... hmm. No good manuals / diagrams I could find.

I had one blurry picture that I could just see the edge of a spring I forgot to put back on. It worked!

Be brave. Take stuff apart and learn. Take pictures! Happy tinkerer for 50 years...

This is indeed a mysterious process that I've experienced myself. I think it's related to the missing socks.

Being safe is good! Triple-checking is also good. There's also the habit of sticking one hand in your jeans back pocket before poking around in electrical panels or boxes, because that makes it near impossible to get a hand-to-hand shock across the heart. You keep it there until you absolutely need two hands for something, and then you re-check it for being live before doing that.

Well, I've been doing it for close to half a century, so it's not really new to me ...

Clocks! I'm fascinated by them, still know very little. Though I did take a brief look at a mantel pendulum clock at the last cafe. Learning, learning...

Learned things and done things I wouldn't have dreamed of a few years ago. Still learning which is what I like.

Start with simple stuff, and basic safety precautions.

You can try #electrical stuff, as long as you unplug it and short any big capacitors (large cylindrical things) it has, in case they don't have a bleed resistor on them.

Even better is to start with something that plugs in with an external low-voltage plugpack - it's much harder to kill yourself with a tower fan that runs from 24 VDC than one that runs directly off the mains.

Maybe do a brief web search on the device if you're not sure about it, just to see if there are warnings about working on it.

Surprising (in some sense) things to avoid working on:

Microwave oven. This is the object in your house that is trying hardest to kill you. High frequency, high-voltage AC will kill you dead if you get it across your body.

Old-fashioned CRT (TV/monitor) tubes. Very high voltages, and frequently hold a charge for a long time.

Gas-powered equipment. You can't "unplug" them, and there's always a chance there's enough gas hidden in the carburetor or the removed spark plug wire bumps into the plug that it could puff to life if you turn the crankshaft. One revolution is enough to maim or kill you.

Have fun!

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#danger #DangerWillRobinson #DIY #fixit #DarwinAward #NaturalSelection