Question Deviser/Gadgeteer on a Budget?

It's fairly clear that the gadgeteer and devisor are the most expensive traits for a mutant to have as they require equipment and materials with which to make things. While Whateley Academy likely provides those to students to use, it's hard to imagine the average household having everything necessary to show off a newly manifested devisor or gadgeteer.
From my understanding, most start out by disassembling household apliances, but that still doesn't explain the necessary tools, or how their parents let the disassemble parts of their home. The only 2 characters I know who bypassed this are Roulette who has access to her mother's workshop and Fixx who specifically works with low-tech materials. I think it's implied that Lady Havoc borrowed her dad's garage, but the equipment to work on cars is not the same as what would help with electronics.

Do all Devisors and Gadgeteers come from houses that conveniently have the equipment necessary, or is something else going on that I'm not seeing? Thank you for any information or discussion.

Devisors can work around these limitations, if they are strong enough. If they are really convinced that by smearing their mother's lipstick on a banana and then microwaving it for 47 seconds it will turn into a ray gun, then don't be surprised when that banana emits a laser beam when squeezed.

Gadgeteers... well, yes, it would suck to be a gadgeteer with a natural inclination for electronics in a home with not even a soldering iron. But even so, they might improvise. Hold a nail on the stove with pliers, you have a makeshift soldering iron. Of course you won't be able to do stuff as good as if you had a proper lab, but you still should be able to do something. And don't get me started on chemically-inclined ones and stuff you can find in the average kitchen... I mean, The Anarchist's Cookbook and Steal This Book have plenty "amusing" recipes.

Yep, cooking and chemistry have far more in common than the average person realizes! Next to that is probably electronics. A soldering iron isn't something that is particularly expensive or rare. And junk appliances? Johnny (now Mandy) took her little red wagon down the road and asked, did anyone have anything they wanted her to haul away in the way of electronics. She came back with a broken camcorder two defunct microwaves, a vcr that didn't work and a tower computer that was ten years old, and was invited back by the odd dude who made her feel uncomfortable, which is why she's making a tazer!

Given the disposable society we currently live in, finding some of the tools would be harder than finding components for electronics. But also consider if you can fix Mr. Brown's $300 TV for $20, you can buy some of the tools you need. All those trashed electronics, because they are "outdated" or a single component has failed. They are chock full of parts.

The really problematic Gadgeteers are the ones like Spark working on stuff that there aren't tools available for.

Looking at the Gadgeteers we know something about their pre Whateley days, they had access to what they needed. Bugs, Jobs, Loophole, Pejuta, Skids, Triaxial. Others we can make guesses because they come from wealthy families, Mega Death, Dynamaxxx. And others like The Stratosphere Siblings, and Techwolf have backgrounds where they had access to tools and materials.

The same thing for the Devisors, the ones we have some background on seem to have had access to tools and equipment available. 'Shine, Bugs, Jobe, Cerulea, Dredz, etc. even Buck Swift showed up with stuff.

But there are a lot of Devisors and Gadgeteers that we don't know anything about their early days. And some like Dr. DNA, well where do you get a My First DNA Splicing Kit ^TM anyway?

Welcome to the world of circuit bending .

Thanks for the info, guys, gals, and in between! This will definitely help with the character that I'm thinking of. After my last writing attempt didn't go so smoothly, I'm trying to be more careful this time. Due to how I'm imagining her power set, I haven't found a way to reveal her gadgeteer trait yet and this will help integrate it a bit more. I still have the issue of fabrication and metalworking, but anything helps.

I suspect for fabricating (welding etc) I want to be able to do it means I can do it to a certain extent to a gadgeteer. Mom and dad won't buy a welder? Again, scavenge parts broken stuff, odd jobs from neighbors. Yes, Mrs Johnston I'm sure I can fix your computer, microwave, stereo, car, lawnmower etc. Oh is that a dead computer? I'll take the hard drive out of it for you if I can have it for parts.
A lathe and a mill are actually probably harder than a welder to obtain for fabrication, and a gadgeteer with 500 dollars could get beginner's stuff from Harbor Freight.... Same with a pretty extensive tool kit. 500 dollars to Harbor Freight and you will have a fair to middling set of wrenches, screw drivers, maybe even a power drill and small air compressor. Welder? Harbor Freight has one, cheap, but hey why are you a gadgeteer any way if you can't improve it!?

Two car battery,s will suffice for a basic arc welder.

Sir Lee wrote: Devisors can work around these limitations, if they are strong enough. If they are really convinced that by smearing their mother's lipstick on a banana and then microwaving it for 47 seconds it will turn into a ray gun, then don't be surprised when that banana emits a laser beam when squeezed.

I will be very disappointed if I don't see a laser banana in some story now.

Angeldude wrote:

Sir Lee wrote: Devisors can work around these limitations, if they are strong enough. If they are really convinced that by smearing their mother's lipstick on a banana and then microwaving it for 47 seconds it will turn into a ray gun, then don't be surprised when that banana emits a laser beam when squeezed.

I will be very disappointed if I don't see a laser banana in some story now.

Monkeywrench is probably working on it.

Angeldude wrote: It's fairly clear that the gadgeteer and devisor are the most expensive traits for a mutant to have as they require equipment and materials with which to make things.

Wait...I need how much silver, magnetic chalk, refined parchment, sterile lances, hemostatic gauze on hand at all times, and my affinity is for mythril which means my athame's raw material is how much?!?!

Katssun wrote:

Angeldude wrote: It's fairly clear that the gadgeteer and devisor are the most expensive traits for a mutant to have as they require equipment and materials with which to make things.

Wait...I need how much silver, magnetic chalk, refined parchment, sterile lances, hemostatic gauze on hand at all times, and my affinity is for mythril which means my athame's raw material is how much?!?!

And I just made the mistake of trying to combine both.

Rose Bunny wrote:

Angeldude wrote:

Sir Lee wrote: Devisors can work around these limitations, if they are strong enough. If they are really convinced that by smearing their mother's lipstick on a banana and then microwaving it for 47 seconds it will turn into a ray gun, then don't be surprised when that banana emits a laser beam when squeezed.

I will be very disappointed if I don't see a laser banana in some story now.

Monkeywrench is probably working on it.

He was but it attracted laser Mosquitoes.

Valentine wrote: Given the disposable society we currently live in, finding some of the tools would be harder than finding components for electronics. But also consider if you can fix Mr. Brown's $300 TV for $20, you can buy some of the tools you need. All those trashed electronics, because they are "outdated" or a single component has failed. They are chock full of parts.

The really problematic Gadgeteers are the ones like Spark working on stuff that there aren't tools available for.

Looking at the Gadgeteers we know something about their pre Whateley days, they had access to what they needed. Bugs, Jobs, Loophole, Pejuta, Skids, Triaxial. Others we can make guesses because they come from wealthy families, Mega Death, Dynamaxxx. And others like The Stratosphere Siblings, and Techwolf have backgrounds where they had access to tools and materials.

The same thing for the Devisors, the ones we have some background on seem to have had access to tools and equipment available. 'Shine, Bugs, Jobe, Cerulea, Dredz, etc. even Buck Swift showed up with stuff.

But there are a lot of Devisors and Gadgeteers that we don't know anything about their early days. And some like Dr. DNA, well where do you get a My First DNA Splicing Kit ^TM anyway?

I'm a creative engineer, so i can understand this situation as it's one that i've been in myself.

I've been boot-strapping my own workshop recently, mostly following the pattern that i laid out here,

This is also why i have a great interest in the stories about the Gadgeteer/Devisor trait mutants. I really enjoyed reading the Ayla stories about how he was helping them avoid being ripped-off/getting-better-value-for-their-effprts.

While it's written as fiction, there are a lot of useful lessons in there.

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How expensive it will be to get set up, will entirely depend upon the fields that the Gadgeteer/Devisor will be working in.

The price-point of hardware is dropping, so that almost anyone with a basic set of skills can make the infrastructure that they need, but to reach a minimum standard in workshop/laboratory is not that hard, and requires less energy than it used to..

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For Bio-Gadgeteers/Devisors, in the last couple of years there have been breakthroughs that allow baselines with the relevant skill-set to make equipment to do home-based DNA-splicing very easily.

Have a DuckDuckGo for CRISPR technology, or the versions that can be found here, www.bento.bio/bento-lab/

This is technology that exists today.

And it was built by baseline humans.

The main thing to think about is why this technology is not more wide-spread.

As William Gibson said, "The future's already here. It's just not evenly distributed."

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As for the mechanical engineering point of view, have a look at the books by David Gingery, ( A Gadgeteer 2 is my guess... ). He wrote a series called "How to build a metal working workshop from scrap." www.gingerybooks.com/

Also have a look at the tools that were designed and built here, opensourcemachinetools.org/

There are some wonderfully chewy ideas in there, but all of the original designs date back more than a century.

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If any of the authors would like to chat or get advice about designs or materials that don't include narrativium, then please feel free to drop me a DM.

Also, @nullotrooper, loving the "If i had a hammer" series.