I’ll soon start a course to learn operate a manual lathe and mill at a local workshop run by volunteers. I actually found a nice US army machinists guide to prepare for the course [0] as a welcome alternative to the youtube machining rabbit-hole. If others have other great text-based resources or advice on what to make as a beginner, I would love to hear about them!

[0] https://archive.org/details/usarmymachinistcourseprincipleso...