Brrrrrr. Freezing start to 2025 – but not in Tassie

Looking forward to a rise in temperature!

Nevertheless, Norton carries on.

Big Brian has sent a photo of his finished table lamp.

A very good start to 2025 woodturning, Brian!

Great for me to see a snippet of the Monday Chat Group!! 

Martyn videoed the scene and sent it to me in case I felt homesick.  Hmmm. 

However, I do miss my mates on any day of the week!

Some quite exciting news from Staithes Men’s Shed that Norton might also be able to help with occasionally.

Also the other Whitby Sheds in the cluster, of course.  Keith Pickering of Staithes Shed has been a Monday tour guide at the Land of Iron museum in Skinningrove for the past couple of years. It suddenly came to light that the Land of Iron had been considering hosting a shed as part of their community support etc. That has kicked off significant potential for collaboration. 

It has resulted in a visit from LoI CEO Marie with Keith to the Staithes Shed on Monday.

Jim Crooks has summarised the opportunity below. This is a welcome development for Staithes Shed.

Hi all

For those Shedders not at Staithes today we had a visit from Marie who is the Chief Exec of the Skinningrove Mining Museum….Keith Pickering brought Marie to the Shed and we had a very productive meeting.

In a nutshell Marie has the premises on the Museum site for us to establish a Shed , but not to relinquish the Staithes location in the first instance .Basically she has given us a blank sheet.

Malcolm and I went to visit this morning and we were given a tour of the Museum by Keith and beside the Shed discussions the Museum is very impressive and the quality of the displays and tour would not be out of place in any major city attraction.

The potential shed location is a workshop , maybe 1.5 to 2x the size of our workshop and the tea room/meeting / planning area is ……..a brick built house …..yep a house , called the Annex ….it has an L shaped kitchen lounge , another room , toilet , heating , running water , upstairs two more rooms ….😀…….there is tidying up to do and workshop to re arrange , it has plenty of workbenches ….

Additionally the Museum have a project for us to make a mock up stable for the mine horses for visitors to see….the folks at the mine are going to give us drawings photos etc so we can start the design and build ….

Oh ..and there is a garden area for a greenhouse etc ….

So , it seems we have an opportunity that we all need to discuss and plan a way forward given the uncertainty we have at Staithes ….we can start this on Thursday ….its steady as we go but some of my initial thoughts are ..

1.Do we want to go ahead with this ?
2.The stable mock up is a good project for us to do .
3.If we agree we should plan a tidy up day and get the Annex ..kitchen, mess , planning building set up then we have a base to work on setting the workshop up.

Anyway , early stages so have a think , we should aim to get as many Shedders as possible to visit …..the Museum have made us very welcome and are very enthusiastic to work with us ……

Regards….Jim

If you are interested in visiting Land of Iron, Graham hopes to go in the last week of January.   Maybe they need a horse for the stable???

Evolving 3D scanning and printing

Below is the first full body scanning exercise with a patient subject. Lots of lessons learned about how to go about things and how to correct mistakes. So successful learning if its still not perfect. Yet to attempt 3D printing . . . . .

The big lesson to learn is to stay motionless or you can end up with hands that have 8 fingers!

One step closer to the idea of a Terracotta Army! Below is a Toyota HiLux hub cap.  Graham’s Aussie son destroyed one and Graham tried scanning another but ultimately created it using TinkerCad. Trying to rival Paul, of course.

The Australian Army have set up Makerspaces in some facilities for “any ranks” to learn hands-on about the technology. In part it is for mental wellbeing reasons too. A creative, a useful and satisfying challenge. potentially money saving also.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-01-12/army-makerspace-solving-problems-latchford-barracks/104707680 

Graham in Tasmania visited the Sorell Men’s Shed near Hobart

 

Come fly from Norton Men’s Shed to Sorell Men’s Shed, half a world away.

Sorell Men’s Shed, Tasmania was established in 2008 and like all the Aussie Sheds I’ve visited it is large. In total probably 10 times the size of Norton’s facilities. It Australia’s situated alongside a facility for Sorell Lion’s Club on the site of a former council maintenance and storage facility.

The exciting news is they have been awarded about £300,000 from Federal (i.e. national) funds to build a new Shed! It is a similar story at the Labrador Shed on the Gold Coast (our friend Len’s Shed). There is currently significant public investment in men’s health and wellbeing through the voluntary Shed movement.

Graham was welcomed by Ray, the duty overseer at the Shed session. The Shed is open each weekday from about 9am until 2.30pm, and on the particular morning Graham attended there had been about a dozen Shedders, a number of them women.

Their website is https://www.sorellmensshed.org.au/.

Let’s watch some snippets from Ray.

First about some Tasmanian hardwood we would die for! 

Next Ray talks about the formation of the Shed (2008) and the plans for 2 years time. 

Finally, Ray instructs a Shedder who is making a decorative wheelbarrow

Now take a look around the Sorell Men’s Shed.