You can do your own surface mount soldering on boards for assembly, but it's an awful lot easier to design a single sided board (at least for the surface mount

You can do your own surface mount soldering on boards for assembly, but it's an awful lot easier to design a single sided board (at least for the surface mount stuff) and hot plate it to get the solder melted. It's rather magical to watch surface tension in action - parts just... zoop right into the positions. I live in weird circles, I suppose, where this and "do your own PCB etching" are still things.