This study asks: what are the internal rewards associated with amateur making, and how do they offer satisfaction and fulfilment to those who participate in the activity? People considered in this research make furniture, jewellery, model engineering projects, canoes and cars. They all maintain and make use of an amateur workshop of some kind, and use a variety of tools, machines and materials in their constructions, carrying out work-like activity as a form of leisure. The research aims to understand amateur making not purely as a form of symbolic production – as the fabrication of signs and symbols that have a life after the making process is complete – but to focus instead on the experience of making, and the material interaction that occurs as part of practice.