Have spanner, will travel.
I'm an engineer, my dad was an engineer, his dad was an enginner and so on. Run it back all the way, we're engineers of various types. From the chap many generations back whose hobby ws drawing beautifully detailed pictures of various steam engine gear linkages down to me and my delight in building intricate little solar powered devices from cast off electronics.

Unfortunately all this selective breeding has left us with one very solid quirk. Every male on one side of the family becomes uncomfortable in the presence of broken or badly adjusted mechanisms. It seems to be the same kind of feeling that some people describe when seeing a picture hung askew or a disordered bookshelf and occasionally it gets strong enough to require us to do something about it.

From the Washing Machine Incident*, to the day I had to spend sitting on my hands when visiting a girlfrind's parents. On the wall they had an old wooden clock, a stopped clock, a clock which GF's father had inherited from his father and was just sat there not working, a clock which I could almost feel ticking like some kind of mechanical phantom limb pain. Eventually GF's mother took pity on my twitching and handed me the clock with a look to her husband that clearly said "well he can't make it any worse, can he..."
For the next hour I was happy as a pig in cheltenham. Disassembling, cleaning, straightening, rebuilding and balancing to my little ticky heart's content. Finally finished, hung the clock on the wall and was rewarded with a good solid regular tick that even now I remember with a certain degree of pride. Even better was the slightly odd look that GF's father gave me when the clock ran, and stayed running. He'd been told that it was a hopless ireparable case and would never work again.

Some children are born with a silver spoon in their mouths, mine I expect will have a screwdriver in one hand and a spanner in the other.

*In which my dad and I were visiting my uncle. A brief mention by my aunt that the washing machine was making a funny noise and the three of us had the thing disassembled on the kitchen floor within 15 minutes.
( DukeEuphoria Comes highly reccomended, Tue 6 Jul 2010, 16:18, 10 replies)

*Goes green with envy
With the exception of putting computers together, my limit of mechanical expertise was changing the kitchen light fitting and changing the air filter in the car.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Tue 6 Jul 2010, 16:33, closed)

(grin)
Invite me and my cousin pete over for dinner.
We'll be programming your video recorder and re-seating the bearings in your tumble dryer within nanoseconds.
( DukeEuphoria Comes highly reccomended, Tue 6 Jul 2010, 18:17, closed)

the ice dispenser on the fridge
Does make an awful racket as if the screw isn't seated properly
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Tue 6 Jul 2010, 18:48, closed)

Twitch, Twitch.
(reaches for screwdrivers)
( DukeEuphoria Comes highly reccomended, Wed 7 Jul 2010, 10:33, closed)

Most definately yes to this!

I can't bear to buy a new anything until I've had a go at repairing the old. I've had the backs of old monitors and TV's (although electronics are witchcraft), even the Wife's washing line has had a repair when the pole buckled (I straightened it out and filled it with concrete so it couldn't bend again)

The only downside is that I'm sure my children are less careful, because they know that there's someone around to fix it!
(jono_h, Tue 6 Jul 2010, 17:04, closed)

I know the feeling
I fixed a pepper grinder in swank restaurant once, and the waiter came over and took it off me.
( Sextant goes to him is emotionally erect, on this day, Wed 7 Jul 2010, 7:00, closed)

I really like this
I'm a bit like you minus any sort of training (and probably minus a lot of your apparent skill); I just know I'll be a man with a tinkering shed when I've got my own garden. That feeling you get when something you've built or fixed works perfectly is so satisfying. As an added bonus we'll be useful after world war Z...
(ElectricSexPants would like to be the Sultan of something, Wed 7 Jul 2010, 10:16, closed)

On Skill and training...
Practice.
Read books, and practice on things that won't matter if you mess up the first time.

Fear not the aquisition of a shed. A shed can be a place of wonder.

Come ZombieTime we'll be, well not kings, but that really important chap that the king relies on to come up with The Plan.
( DukeEuphoria Comes highly reccomended, Wed 7 Jul 2010, 10:32, closed)

I do practice, but it's normally boring stuff like fitting locks or fixing an angry dérailleur on my bike rather than ancient clock disassembly! I'm always taking stuff apart though, just to see how it works.

I always wanted to be the guy who built awesome stuff but by the time engineering came to my attention I was fixed on a course towards other areas. Bloody college careers advisers made sciences and engineering out of my reach by selfishly telling me to take their subjects! German was not a good substitute for physics...
(ElectricSexPants would like to be the Sultan of something, Thu 8 Jul 2010, 10:48, closed)

Physics also comes in books.
There's nothing stopping you being the awesome guy who builds awesome stuff.

By Day I'm a coder. By Night I make Stuff and things

Try taking a peek Here for good ideas
( DukeEuphoria Comes highly reccomended, Thu 8 Jul 2010, 13:41, closed)