What started you down the rabbit hole of scrapping?

Hey all.

Was having a chat with my dad earlier today, and he commented on my constant....accumulation, shall we say, of random projects, items, and hobbies. Him being a government office worker for his life, and having been raised in an urban area with books and video games as my main hobby, he asked "How in the heck did you end up doing all of this?"

So that got me thinking, and I remember the moment when I took my first step into scrapping and how it let me from studying electronics engineering to where I am now.

I had taken appart my dad's Pioneer P26 chainsaw. Couldn't get it running again cause I was 12 and didn't know what a carburetor was My neighbor saw us trying to start it, came over and said "I have one of those sitting in the shed. I don't want a chainsaw with no carb, so you buy the whole thing and you can use the carb."
Gave me the chainsaw for 10 bucks, took the carb off, and sold the rest of the saw for 25$. From then on, I always kept an eye out for deals and was a living nightmare for my parents as they never knew what I was going to tear appart next. In comes college, and I still liked tinkering and taking this appart, so I made the switch from technology to heavy duty mechanic on those cool big underground mining equipment, and never looked back!



Maybe it's just the beer making me reminisce, but can you remember what got you started in this?