The real action at techshop in Menlo Park, Calif, is a few rooms in the rear of a 15,000-square-foot warehouse. A plasma cutter is spewing fireworks atop a metal sheet, almost silencing the buzz of the welding machine nearby. Next door a laser cutter is zapping an etching into a glass bottle, and across the way someone is carving elegant curved strips of wood to make a wine carrier. If you want to pay the $ 125 a month it costs to get inside TechShop, you can make almost anything you want.rnTechShop is the nation's first full-service gym for the tinkering crowd, and James Newton, its 45-year-old founder, is their Jack LaLanne. "Your brain is a muscle, too," says Newton, a college dropout and former graphic design teacher who was once the science adviser on the Discovery Channel's hit series MythBusters.
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