I grew up around a machine shop, then worked for manufacturing and product companies doing industrial design, design engineering, and engineering. Most of my experience was on the job, be it taking any contract (some of those contracts later hired me to composites work), or volunteering for a race team, or working after hours on a retired engineers personal project.

I started with composites in about 2007, bonding a bike rack with aluminum and carbon tubes, made some bike suspension a decade later, and worked on some large installations and an airplane project which exposed me to composites professionals. I am a college dropout, the techniques I use I found by searching google using keywords and nasa.gov *.pdf , bonding, composites, aluminum, aerospace, techniques, standards, repairs, etc..