Oh sorry, I just saw your edits with the additional questions and gpt image.

So for specific keywords and rabbit holes, I highly recommend both the cable swaging and turnbuckle rigging and here’s why:

1. Cheap as hell: any home improvement store has braided cables, ferrules, eyebolts, turnbuckles, etc for next to nothing
2. Extremely strong yet light: braided cable is versatile and reliable when you want to hold things up or pull them together in a controlled and reliable way
3. Turnbuckles just look cool. You’ll see them on suspension bridges and boat rigging. I used them to make various walnut-stained 2x12 suspension shelving and a hover desk in my old apt for <90 in materials.

I picked way overspec cable and hardware for looks only; the braided cable in the first photo is rated for the weight of an SUV and I just put books and a turntable on it.

But it was legit useful to know 2 years later. A friend’s garage had a wall frame damaged by flooding and the roof corner was sagging. One turnbuckle cable ran across the hypotenuse of the damaged frame stood the wall back up and held the roof up for weeks while he arranged the repair.

Anyway I’d look at that one first for sure 👍 GL

In my case, I learned by making stuff I wanted or needed that didn’t exist yet I couldn’t find. Once you start doing that you inevitably start running into problems that require slightly more specialized knowledge to solve correctly. But you don’t have to learn everything at once.

So I imagine any “maker” category of content would be a good start, since they often start with the same premise and talk through their techniques, resources, and tools in the process.

Here’s a maker from the old mythbusters TV show talking about making things: https://www.ted.com/talks/simone_giertz_why_you_should_make_useless_things

GLHF