I can say that a lot of my projects have more time in them than the cash value of the items would warrant.
At the time it was more of a matter of limited cash, but of course now I tend to like those guns more than ones with more intrisic value.
"I did it myself" is hard to quantify, but it has real value. It also does a lot for stripping down various emperor expert trades. I'm not denigrating gunsmiths (or lawyers, etc...) but there sure are a lot of them who talk as though assembling an AR upper, or mounting a scope should only be performed by someone who has been doing it for a job f