Woodworking Clubs

[custard]

If facilities like this (all for £50 a year!) were more widespread in the UK who knows how popular woodworking might become?


http://www.popularwoodworking.com/woodw ... -guild-wow

 

[Grahamshed]

I wood be there,

 

[marcros]

a valid point- if something similar was available locally, I would cut back my machine collection to the bare essentials.

 

[Baldhead]

I would also welcome a club like this.

My local technical collage used to have night classes for all sorts of trades, woodwork, metalwork, routine car maintenance etc etc, these were always filled up straight away, now they offer nothing, it's a shame because I know of several people who would happily pay to use the facilities.

Perhaps a retired cabinet maker or similar could get some sort of funding to start such an enterprise, if I were clever enough I would definitely give it a go, I would gladly help out and pay weekly to be a member.

:-k :-k got me thinking now, how much would it cost to start such a scheme?, how many members would it need to be self financing? Anyone in Northumberland unemployed, with a woodwork background want to start something along these lines, as I said I would happily give my time to such an enterprise.

Baldhead

 

[custard]

Reading the article I was surprised that the club appeared to be self funding with annual subscriptions of just £50 per member, although they did some small scale commercial work as a fund raising initiative. I can only guess that premises come cheap in Kansas!

 

[carlb40]

I would also welcome a club like this.

My local technical collage used to have night classes for all sorts of trades, woodwork, metalwork, routine car maintenance etc etc, these were always filled up straight away, now they offer nothing, it's a shame because I know of several people who would happily pay to use the facilities.

Perhaps a retired cabinet maker or similar could get some sort of funding to start such an enterprise, if I were clever enough I would definitely give it a go, I would gladly help out and pay weekly to be a member.

:-k :-k got me thinking now, how much would it cost to start such a scheme?, how many members would it need to be self financing? Anyone in Northumberland unemployed, with a woodwork background want to start something along these lines, as I said I would happily give my time to such an enterprise.

Baldhead

Apart from the cost of any machinery/premises etc you would need public liability insurance. Then there is the matter of the dreaded H&S I'm not sure whether it would require properly trained members for the machinery. It's one thing using machines at home etc, but technically now it would be public. So someone with a commercial machine shop might be able to help further? In fact it might be easier to try to hire a commercial shop?

 

[Peter Sefton]

Have you seen men in sheds http://menssheds.org.uk this looks like such a great idea, I had a mature student from OZ a couple of Christmases ago, he joined us for some short courses and had been involved with the setup back at home. He was telling me it had come about after an alarming amount of retired men were committing suicide so they decided to start something to try and help, fantastic :!:
Best of luck Peter

 

[AES]

Gents,

Bugger the UK (excuse me!) but personally I'd give my eye teeth for something like that here! When I was living in UK (30+ years ago) there were all sorts of college night school classes etc, but from what I read, all that's gone in UK now.

We do have something a bit similar here in Switzerland (e.g. the model aero club I belong to has a very well-equipped workshop which one can use as part of the club fees - a bit more than £50 a year though), and the same with some model engineering clubs and societys, but in comparison to "proper" woodworking, the outlay for plant and the space needed for aeromodelling is generally relatively limited.

Personally I don't use my clubs workshop facilities at all, a) because of the time taken to get to and from; and b) I have all the space and the tooling that I need in my own cellar.

But to have anything like those Kansas facilities available for "proper" woodworking here would make me definitely interested - apart from anything else, I'd no longer worry about not having the space for a table saw or a decent bench, AND would have the benefit of more experienced people to help me along.

It seems from the comments above, my feelings are shared by some members of this Forum.

Alas there's nothing exactly like that here (as far as I know), it seems there's nothing much like that in UK, apart, perhaps, from the Mens' Sheds idea, which seems to be catching on fast.

But I think I'm right in saying that Forum member Steve Maskery belongs to something similar (I think he mentioned a "Community Workshop" some time back) so perhaps he'll be along in a while to tell us of his experiences.

Carlb40 raises some interesting caveats, and I'm sure he's right about insurance and H&S, etc, etc. OTOH, the US is not exactly known as a pushover when it comes to law suits, risks limitation, insurance, etc, etc, ( :roll: ) so it seems that at least in some cases in the US, these problems can be overcome. Though we don't have H&S here to the same degree that you do in UK, there are still a goodly number of rules and regs to be obeyed, and insurance is definitely an issue, so I'll try to find out a bit more about how all that stuff works here. If what I find out has any relevance to UK I'll let you know.

And as said, perhaps Steve Maskery (or anyone else with experience of broadly similar set ups) could advise?

I wonder how that Mens' Sheds system works from that viewpoint?

Interesting, thanks to the original poster.

Krgds
AES

 

[AES]

My post crossed with Peter Sefton's.

AES

 

[marcros]

hudson carpentry offered workshop time by the day. not sure what the uptake is.

 

[mind_the_goat]

There is something called a hackspace which is a similar idea, but perhaps more focused on the geeky side of the maker movement. Shared, not-for-profit spaces where people can get together to share skills, projects and equipment. Some will have machinery available to use, however I am still wondering about H&S and insurance. I'm fairly sure signing a piece of paper that says 'I promise to be safe' would be shot down in seconds in court and finding an insurer to cover anything but the most simple (and blunt) machinery will be difficult (but not impossible). There is a group in my area trying to set something up, but raising funds up front and getting people to commit is difficult. £50 a year wouldn't do it, I wonder if that's a misprint.

Another option is a Fablab, this tends to be more commercially orientated but will often provide services for individuals at cost. Generally the machines used are CNC based so reduces the risk of injury by not allowing direct human operation.

Marc Fish in Newhaven, Sussex runs a shared workshop space, I remember reading he struggled to find an insurer and that was for qualified craftspeople

http://www.hackspace.org.uk/view/Main_Page
http://www.fablabsuk.co.uk/
http://www.marcfish.co.uk/

 

[John15]

From memory there was a post about a year ago regarding setting up local woodworking clubs but after the initial interest shown I haven't seen anything since.
Cheers,
John

 

[Grahamshed]

Not wanting to put a downer on this but it may be worth saying that the whole point of the article was that even in America this workshop was 'unusual'
Here..... would you ever find enough people within travelling distance to make it self sufficient ?

 

[devonwoody]

~The MensShed in Australia are a well established way of life.

I visited a local shed (to me) in Sydney weekly for six months, there were quite a number in Sydney. (and are open daily in some circumstances)

They are sponsored I believe by a group which included the United Church and a retirement organisation which I think had charitable status.

I don't think any of our County Councils would want to know, most probably nothing in it for those councillors!

I cannot see any other way of one getting off the ground here unless it was purely a commercial venture.

Perhaps someone here is a friend of a Bishop?

 

[carlb40]

There is something called a hackspace which is a similar idea, but perhaps more focused on the geeky side of the maker movement. Shared, not-for-profit spaces where people can get together to share skills, projects and equipment. Some will have machinery available to use, however I am still wondering about H&S and insurance. I'm fairly sure signing a piece of paper that says 'I promise to be safe' would be shot down in seconds in court and finding an insurer to cover anything but the most simple (and blunt) machinery will be difficult (but not impossible). There is a group in my area trying to set something up, but raising funds up front and getting people to commit is difficult. £50 a year wouldn't do it, I wonder if that's a misprint.

Another option is a Fablab, this tends to be more commercially orientated but will often provide services for individuals at cost. Generally the machines used are CNC based so reduces the risk of injury by not allowing direct human operation.

Marc Fish in Newhaven, Sussex runs a shared workshop space, I remember reading he struggled to find an insurer and that was for qualified craftspeople

http://www.hackspace.org.uk/view/Main_Page
http://www.fablabsuk.co.uk/
http://www.marcfish.co.uk/

This is from the mens shed link above

Maintaining Health and Safety in a Shed is a constant activity. Fortunately it mostly calls for care and common sense with the area most likely to be neglected being the record-keeping. This is needed as evidence that you were careful. A policy is evidence that you have thought about the issues. Plans will need to be made for example for safety training for all members, maintenance of machinery and tools, electrical circuit adaptations, hazardous substances control e.g dust, finishes, and keeping the place tidy and uncluttered etc.

Taken from the Getting started section.
http://menssheds.org.uk/index.php/getting-started

 

[mind_the_goat]

Maintaining Health and Safety in a Shed is a constant activity. Fortunately it mostly calls for care and common sense with the area most likely to be neglected being the record-keeping. This is needed as evidence that you were careful. A policy is evidence that you have thought about the issues. Plans will need to be made for example for safety training for all members, maintenance of machinery and tools, electrical circuit adaptations, hazardous substances control e.g dust, finishes, and keeping the place tidy and uncluttered etc.

Taken from the Getting started section.
http://menssheds.org.uk/index.php/getting-started

Thanks
My partner worked for a small engineering company and she was involved in the H&S aspect, and has experienced the litigation side of it too. Everyone has to sign a risk assessment to confirm they have been properly trained on each machine, which makes sense. But that still doesn't seem to matter much when insurance companies just fold when someone doesn't follow procedure, and just payout because it's easier/cheaper.
I do wonder in a 'club' environment if the trustees/committee members would be held responsible for any incident.
Maybe it's sign of getting old that I worry about it.