Long live kits! Here is a fantastic collection of 175 of the best kits available today. Each one selected, tested, and reviewed by the folks at Make magazine. Each kit is rated on five criteria.<\/p>\n
Kits offer many of the benefits (fun, thriftiness, satisfaction, personalization) of making something yourself while removing many of the hurdles. A kit relieves you of sourcing all the parts (only a mildly creative task), insures compatibility of ingredients, and increases the likelihood you’ll finish it and that the project will work. These are no small advantages, and worth the small extra expense of a kit — which may still be less than buying a similar product. This kind of directed assistance is perfect for kids, giving them confidence they can eventually build things without kits. <\/p>\n
Kits are also perfect and cheap way for adults to try out new areas of interest. In recent years I’ve completed a number of kits to get a feel for a brand new craft. My greatest achievement was in making a dulcimer from a kit.\u00a0 I’ve also made some things from kits that did not work as advertised, which is why the recommendations from Make are worth getting.<\/p>\n
Kits have been around a long time but are undergoing a renaissance due to innovations in fabrication which permit small economical runs for niche products. There’s an intoxicating variety to choose from. About half of the kits reviewed in Make’s Guide involve electronics, but the other half are refreshingly diverse. There’s a kit to make a working replica of the original Apple I computer, or to make airplanes (both model and actual), an egg decorating machine, RC vehicles of all sorts, real boats, complex scientific tools, cool toys and rockets, food and wine-making, and various musical instruments. <\/p>\n
Of course, kits make great gifts, too. I recommend this Guide as a first step, or even as a gift itself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
DIY Gift Guide<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5969"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5969"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5969\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10687,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5969\/revisions\/10687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}