I tore apart
everything in the house when I was young. I also made a remote controlled car, boat, and hovercraft mostly from scratch (reused the controller and receiver from an old car, but structurally and mechanically it was all "home made").
So I got a master's in mech. engineering... what else was I going to do?
For those of you who love magnets,
this site is a godsend. They have tons of surplus neo-iron-boron magnets at very reasonable prices. They have some rather large ones... very painful.