Hand-cut tracks vs etching - which way would you go?

I stuck with the knife method for about two years before trying anything else, and yes, it does get tidy, but only once I stopped freehanding the lines. The trick for me was scratching a light guide line first with the blade and a metal ruler, then going back and deepening the cut in two or three passes instead of trying to do it all at once. A fresh blade matters more than people think. A dull #11 blade tears the copper and leaves burrs, which is where most of that dust comes from. I swap blades after maybe four or five boards now and the edges come out clean enough that people ask where I ordered them from.

On the toner transfer idea, I did try it with a cheap laser printer and a clothes iron, and it does work without any etching chemicals if your plan is to still remove the copper by hand. The toner acts as a printed guide, and you just cut inside the black lines like paint-by-numbers. Glossy magazine paper worked about as well as the specialty stuff for me, honestly. What I never bothered with was the milling machine, purely on cost. My whole upgrade was a ten pack of blades and a steel ruler. If you clean the dust off with a damp cloth right after cutting instead of letting it sit, you stop tracking it all over the kitchen too.

For what it's worth, I never got on with the knife either, even after years of it. What worked for me was treating it like manual milling. I picked up a cheap rotary tool and a couple of tiny engraving bits, clamp the board flat to a scrap of MDF, and remove the copper in shallow passes instead of trying to slice through it in one go. The bits last a long time if you keep the pressure light, and the traces come out with clean edges that look almost commercial under a coat of flux or spray lacquer. The dust you're complaining about is actually worse with this method, so a shop vac nozzle taped down near the board helps, or just lay a strip of masking tape sticky side up next to your work and tap the dust onto it.

On the toner transfer idea, keep in mind it's really a preparation step for etching, not a standalone method. Without the chemical bath you'd still be left cutting or milling the copper, so it doesn't really solve your parents' objection on its own. As for whether hand methods stay homemade looking, mine got a lot better once I stopped fighting the corners and just used wider traces and bigger pads. Simple circuits like a regulator and an LED don't need fine geometry, and a slightly chunky board that works beats a pretty one that doesn't.

One thing I'd add since you're cutting rather than etching is that the leftover copper between tracks tarnishes fast, and a dull brown surface makes it harder to see hairline slivers when you're checking for shorts. I wipe mine down with isopropyl, then rub on a thin coat of flux before soldering, which leaves the pads bright and stops the oxide coming back for a while. I also run a fine abrasive block along the cut edges to knock off any burrs I can't see without a magnifier, beacuse those little curls of copper are exactly the sort of thing that bridges a gap at 2am when you think you're finished. Does your drill wander much on the first bite, or do you center-punch every hole first?

On the drilling side, since you mentioned doing every hole by hand, the thing that fixed my wandering holes was a light tap with a centre punch first so the bit has something to bite into. I also keep a scrap of wood under the board, learned that one after putting a neat little hole in the worktop. Small bits snap easy too, so I let the drill do the work and back out to clear swarf every few seconds. Once I started doing that my boards stopped looking like Swiss cheese gone wrong, and the parts actually line up with the pads instead of fighting me on the iron.