Tinkering is a skill best gained after you have worked up mining because you can use the ingots you have collected rather then purchasing them from the bulk stone in North Britania.

I have found that the best way to gain in tinkering is to start by purchasing it up from Jack of all Trades. You can find him in Britania by following the multicolored path of logs and ingots south from the bank. Once you have purchased this skill you will need a tool kit this you will find in your bank. The first thing you need to do is make 1 extra tool kit and put it in you bank and leave it there. This is your emergency tool kit that you will need when you forget to stop tinkering and run out of uses.

Using the ingots you have and the tool kit you will start out making tinker tools and various tools and put them into the tool chest located at the Tinkers house next to the bank of Britainia. Be sure to pull them back out when you are finished. I made things like saws, mortar and pestle, sewing kits, and more tinker kits as you will use them to work up many other skills.

When you reach 45.1, stop! Grab up all the ingots you can carry and make lock picks over and over again but do not sell them because you will use them to work up lock picking later on. When you click on the box to the right of the word lock picks you will see where it says success chance. When you have 100% success chance stop and switch over to making spyglasses. Now spyglasses have to be thrown away as you make them as they are not sellable so instead I bought boards and ingots from the smith shop in north Brit and made Nunchaku until I reached 120. These can be sold as you make them to a ninja and samurai dealer in Tokono or the Mini Mall.

Keep in mind that as you work up skills think about what other skills are based off each other. This will enable you to select which skills to gain and when to work them because they all interact so much. For example to work up tinkering you should work up mining first and then after tinkering work up blacksmithy or carpentry as they are all connected for a well rounded crafter.

Storm's note:

When I trained tinkering, and carpentry as well, everything I made sold to the vendors. Once your skill is high enough to make lockpicks, you can make those all the way to 99.7 and then switch to nunchaku and sell those to the ninjitsu or samurai dealers at the mini mall. Everything sold and I made money.

Other related links:

• Tinkering on Stratics
• Tinkering on Origin UO