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Ryan Bollig of Sun Prairie wears the "brain goggles" he invented, which put the wearer into a relaxed, semihallucinatory state. - Mike DeVries/The Capital Times

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When Ryan Bollig got frustrated with the short battery life of his wife's battery-powered Swiffer Vac, he didn't take the inconvenience in stride by throwing out the appliance and buying a newer, more powerful model.

Instead, the Madison-area handyman took out the old battery pack and replaced it with a newer, stronger battery pack. The result: a hot rod Swiffer Vac that runs three times longer than it used to.

"If you're not able to change it in whatever way you think is appropriate for your life, you're not really invested in it. You're just paying to use it," said Bollig, a Sun Prairie resident who recently launched madcitymakers.com to unify the scattered assortment of locals who fix, invent and re-invent.

Bollig takes a hands-on approach to his possessions: if it breaks, he fixes it. If it needs to be modified, he changes it. If it doesn't exist, he'll try to invent it. Using parts scavenged from thrift stores, broken appliances and specialty retailers, he has made everything from brain goggles that put the wearer into a relaxed, semi-hallucinatory state to a sensor panel for his 1960 Corvair that monitors engine functions.

Bollig is part of a new, mechanically focused subgroup of Madison's thriving do-it-yourself (DIY) scene. Their pursuits hark back to the days when it made sense to repair objects instead of throwing them away. These Mr. and Ms. Fixits and home inventors aim to keep objects out of landfills by repairing them and "hacking" them -- altering their original design to suit new applications. It's a pursuit that seems to make a lot of sense now, when people are watching their wallets as well as trying to protect the environment.

"You're seeing more of it now out of necessity, because the convenience lifestyle we've been accustomed to isn't affordable in these economic times," said Jason Gullickson, a movie producer and programmer from Beaver Dam.

"[Many] products are designed so that they can't be repaired. It reduces manufacturing costs but there's a huge ecological impact," he said. "What's really amazing is as far as technology has progressed, the overall reliability has decreased."

When he's not working or with his family, Gullickson can be found at his workbench, fiddling with his latest project: using solar power instead of a gasoline-fueled generator for his father-in-law's off-the-grid hunting shack in northern Wisconsin.

Though he could easily cook on the cabin's wood stove, Gullickson decided his goal was to power a microwave. He started with a rugged solar power kit from Harbor Freight, the mecca of supply shops for DIYers. The kit had to be heavily modified for Gullickson's purposes, and he had to learn a good deal about the nuts and bolts of solar-powered homes. After a year of tinkering, he got the system to power compact fluorescent lights, a radio, a television and phone chargers.

It just can't power a microwave -- yet.

Still, Gullickson was able to build the system at a fraction of what it would have cost for a professional installation. And because he now has the knowledge of how to build it, he can fix it, too, saving him on future repair bills.

Another unified contingent of DIYers and home inventors are bicycle mechanics, whose inspiration to invent started with their introduction to the wonderful world of being a bike grease monkey.

What started out as a hobby of building and repairing bikes evolved into a way of life for Madison resident Tyson Klipstein.

"If I didn't have this outlet I'd go absolutely mad," said Klipstein.

He was first bitten by the bike tinkering bug when he lived on the West Coast. A local cafe had a pile of old bikes and some tools people could use to fix and build their own bikes.

When he moved to Madison, he found a handy home at bike-making group SCAB (Skids Creating Apocalyptic Bicycles). Helped along by community bike shop Freewheel, Klipstein began making pedal-powered mutant creations.

He built a chopper bike with super long handles he felt "strangely intoxicated on." He built tall bikes that gave him a birds-eye view of the street. And on the practical side, he built cargo bikes capable of carrying whole sheets of plywood in the space between the rider and the front wheel.

But bikes were only the beginning. Motivated by thrift and helped by metalworking skills acquired through his work on bikes, Klipstein found the DIY philosophy became ingrained into his life, coloring the way he approached everyday problems.

For instance, his tinkering necessitated a workshop -- but how to build one without dealing with the hassle of securing a building permit and the appropriate zoning?

He chose the logical solution and built his workshop on top of a flatbed truck trailer, complete with workbench and a wood stove. "If it's licensed and titled as a trailer, you don't have to get zoning," he said.

Though a mobile workshop serves an obvious, practical purpose, some projects are built for kicks.

Take, for instance, the bouncing chimenea, a small fireplace used for heating and cooking. That's right, fire on springs. Klipstein carefully modified a propane tank and welded it onto springs. He originally wanted to mount it onto a swing but decided springs would pose less of a fire hazard.

And Klipstein is delighted with the slightly safer result.

"It's kind of fun to have a fire that bounces. It's one of those things that doesn't come together too often," he said.

Though projects differ and areas of expertise vary, local do-it-yourselfers are unified by one common trait: a determination that you can make just about anything yourself, despite a seemingly insurmountable lack of expertise.

All it takes to build something is the right attitude, patience and a willingness to learn, said Sarah Weiss, a volunteer with the Freewheel community bike shop.

"You need to decide for yourself that you can do something. Keep in mind that you can do it, but it takes time," she said.

Weiss confesses that she used to be mechanically inept: "I didn't even know how brakes work. All I knew was that you pulled the lever and the bike stopped."

As an avid bicyclist, she grew tired of depending on other people to do repairs and began learning bike basics at Freewheel. Eventually she picked up enough know-how to do her own repairs, and even built a vintage-style cruiser from leftover bike parts. She says Madison has an incredible amount of bike waste, and parts at the shop are scavenged from broken and abandoned bicycles.

"It's fun to build weird junk," she said. "It expresses your personality. You'll take more ownership and appreciation of your bicycle."

The time and effort DIYers put into their projects builds a unique connection with objects they have spent countless hours fixing, building and modifying -- a connection that doesn't form if something is just purchased and sent off for others to fix.

Chris Gefvert, known as "wiener stick" to friends because of his exceptionally tall, lanky frame, confesses to a certain affection for the first bike frame that fit him -- a frame he's broken and mended several times.

"As much as I don't want to be attached to a hunk of metal, I'm attached to it. It looks like a turd but it's a tiny gem in my eyes," he said.

Gefvert, who was instrumental in kickstarting Freewheel, likes to build bikes entirely from scratch -- down to the wheels, which he painstakingly assembles spoke by spoke.

"Once you acquire the skill, you want to do it yourself. I'll probably only ride on frames that I've built and wheels that I've built," he said.

And with his extensive knowledge about exactly what makes a high-quality bike, it's no longer logical to buy one. "There's very little out there that's new that would even interest me to buy," he said.

Gefvert's passion about bikes has developed into a lifestyle. He recently left for Guatemala to volunteer with Maya Pedal, a nonprofit group that converts bicycles into a range of pedal-powered machines, including a roof tile press and a water pump.

The DIY spirit in these mechanically minded folks isn't new, it just skipped a generation or two. In some ways, it's a throwback to a time when Popular Mechanics regularly published how-to's, when every house was outfitted with a workbench and basic tools, and when the ability to repair objects was a fundamental part of supporting a family.

Ryan Bollig's grandfather and family improvised their way through the Depression -- doing things like building their own farm tractor from a Ford Model A truck.

"To be honest, a lot of my inspiration comes from a generation back," said Bollig.

He's carrying on his family's mindset in his small basement workshop, except now it's more a matter of attitude than necessity.

For Jason Gullickson, his DIY mindset was spawned in childhood. He couldn't just buy stuff. It either didn't exist or he couldn't afford it. So he did the obvious: he built it. "There didn't seem to be any other way to do it," he said.

And now he's passing on the satisfaction he gets out of tinkering to his young daughter.

"When you're making something, especially if it doesn't exist, you've really invented something," he said.

Maker Movement making progress with Faires, TV show

When Ryan Bollig calls himself a "maker," he's not just talking about being a mechanically minded handyman. He's referring to the Maker Movement, a push to change the very definition of ownership and shift the relationship between manufacturer and consumer.

The Maker Movement burst out of California's San Francisco Bay Area in 2005 with the publication of Make, a magazine that was created to feature do-it-yourself projects. It currently has a circulation of 110,000 and is launching a television show, "Make: television," on PBS this month.

Makers flock by the tens of thousands to the annual Maker Faires, which are probably best described as family-friendly, invention-laden Burning Man festivals hosted by Make.

The events feature makers' wild creations, like "Carmadillo," a fire-breathing robotic armadillo mounted on the chassis of a go-cart. They also feature makers' more practical sides, like an eco-friendly how-to on building a solar oven or a low-cost DIY graywater system.

The first Faire, which was held in San Mateo, Calif., in 2006, drew 22,000 people. The number of attendees doubled in 2007 to 45,000 and grew again in 2008, when 65,000 people showed up for the gathering. The event expanded to Austin, Texas, in 2007, drawing 20,000 people.

The movement's public face is a man known only as Mr. Jalopy.

"Innovation does not end when (companies) produce a product at the end of an assembly line. You're merely handing it off to your collaborators," said Mr. Jalopy, a handyman and home inventor who has worked on everything from an 80-foot-long mobile rattlesnake mounted on six bicycles to a "wildly complicated mega machine" that digitizes records.

Mr. Jalopy argues that objects should be manufactured so that they are repairable and "hackable" -- able to be altered to suit one's needs.

He helped craft the "Owners Manifesto," a consumer bill of rights that has become the movement's flagship document.

The bill, which bluntly states "If you can't open it, you don't own it," contains guidelines for manufacturers on how to produce maker-friendly objects.

Its suggestions range from "ease of repair shall be a design ideal, not an afterthought" to "profiting by selling expensive special tools is wrong, and not making special tools available is even worse."

The bill was spawned out of Mr. Jalopy's frustrations with manufacturing techniques that intentionally kept consumers from performing repairs.

For example, when the power adapter broke for his Apple computer, he had to saw it apart to fix it because the manufacturer had glued it shut instead of using screws.

"If I bought it, I should have the rights to fix it ... It's a pretty clear, fundamental right of the consumer," he said.