Couple Questions

What's up everyone. I'm really liking the idea of lasers and I find it really interesting how they can burn small things with just a beam of light.

The thing is that I can't really find anywhere that a person actually builds the laser from the ground up. Is it possible to build everything like the mirror array and everything, or does it require extremely expensive equipment?

I don't know. I figured it would be really cool to make every part completely by hand. I'm sure it wouldn't be all that powerful, but it sounds fun to me lol.