sure about exactly what they mean don’t sweat it, we’ve got your back. There was a time when we didn’t understand their significance either. We’ve learned and we'll share. 
Consider this an open invitation to visit our 
Mechanical Home Page
Gasoline, nut, bolts, smelly exhaust and greasy fingers – it must mean that 
something mechanical either quit working or it’s about to quit working. For a DIYer, welcome to a world where you’ll spend a fair amount of your time either fixing something that quits working or you’re maintaining something so that it doesn’t quit working. Either way, mechanical goodies tend to need a fair amount of love to prevent them from leaving you high and dry.
If you’d like to just get straight into some of the mechanical projects we’ve faced as do- it-yourselfers you need to get out of here and have a look-see at the mechanical projects page.
I’m Lost, Where’s The Boat Stuff?
Speaking of high and dry, we have such a love affair with our marine-mechanical schnit that everything relating to the water is over on the marine page. So if your propeller isn’t propelling you anymore you might want to navigate straight to the marine page and get all nautical over there. This is a turf-only page. Sorry, Queequeg.
I'm Suddenly Thirsty
If you’re more of a dry-lake kind of guy or girl then this is your place. To preface, if it’s loud, scary, has a bunch of moving parts and spins a blade, gets hot, has the potential for catching fire, is over-engineered, or is otherwise just flat cool then it probably meets our random definition of something mechanical.
Who’s Got A Small Tool?
But you know what? Fixing a piece of jewelry, for example, 
would also meet our definition of something mechanical. We’ve got a lot of chick-types in our families and their jewelry breaks. Lots of chicks means lots of bling. Their blingie things usually have a mechanical clasp, a chain that has been soldered, split rings, some sort of attachment arrangement for the big chrome and may contain all manner of creative arrangements so they can flutter their stuff. Could you consider jewelry as a mechanical item? Who knows or really cares, it needs to be fixed and that’s what we do here. Jewelry repair happens on the same bench, in the same shop and it’s done by the same guys and girls who tear out an intake manifold of a V-6 engine. We just use smaller tools to do jewelry repair.
Who’s Lucky?
Fix a girl’s brakes and you’ll certainly be admired. Fix her jewelry and you’ll achieve god-like status. And, if you’re lucky, you might get lucky too, Lucky.
Before you go running around the house looking for broken jewelry to fix you’re going to need to keep a few things in mind so you might want to whoa-up for a minute Lucky.
Let’s consider the following:
You cannot fix something you do not understand. You will seldom understand every component of a mechanical system but having a basic understanding is almost always a prerequisite.
I’m Sophisticated? Who Knew?
Your tool collection will become more important as your level of expertise increases and the nature of the repairs you undertake becomes more sophisticated. There are basic tools and there are specialty tools. Specialty tools usually do one or two things really, really well and that’s all they do. As your sophistication increases your investment and acquisition of specialty tools will also increase.
I Thought Muster Was A Condiment
Courage, or lack thereof, and not necessarily your talents or skills will tend to be the deciding factor for the repairs that you attempt. If you lack the courage to attempt a repair then it will not be repaired, at least not by you. Notice how skill has nothing to do with it? If you can’t muster the courage, the repair won’t happen regardless of your skills.
I Don’t Like Reading. Got A Video?
Your ability to find, read, process and apply technical information will really start to have an effect on your overall success rate for fixing mechanical things. It is wholly unreasonable for you or anyone else to believe that just because you’re good at fixing jewelry without a manual that you can diagnose and repair a car check-engine light without additional information or tools. It isn’t going to happen.
All This Talk About Amputation Makes Me Hungry
Your approach, or mindset, when attempting to repair something will be far 
more useful to you than anything else; especially for things you’ve never tried before. It’s the difference between thinking like a surgeon and thinking like a chain-saw murderer. Both of them are quite capable of cutting your arm off but a surgeon can reattach your arm and a chain-saw murderer can’t.
I’m Going To Do What?
You will screw things up and fail at making some mechanical repairs. Sometimes you’ll make the problem worse than if you’d done nothing at all. Your failures will usually cost you money. Give yourself some latitude here and consider what you’ve learned from your failures. All people that are good at fixing things have gotten themselves in over their heads. In fact, that’s one of the main reasons why they’re good at fixing things. They learn from their mistakes, gather their courage and do it again.
Who’s Johnson?
Be smarter than the object you’re trying to fix. No, really. When you’re standing at your workbench, you’ve pulled something apart and you can’t figure out what the devil is going on you should state the following sentence aloud as many times as are necessary:
“Be smarter than the broken widget, Johnson.” Be smarter than the broken-widget, Skeeter.” Be smarter than the broken-widget, Crack Monkey.”
See if that doesn’t get you thinking in another direction and reveal possibilities that you’ve not considered before.
But I’m Afraid
Check out the mechanical projects page and get your groove on, time is a wasting…