Does anyone have any experience with a public Wood/Metal workshop? I'm thinking the concept might work well where I live. I think the garage condo concept incorporated with a workshop / clubhouse would draw lots of interest. Does anyone have something similar to this near them?
Some years ago a small co-op attempted maintaining automotive work space but the liability issues shut them down - there is no way to insure random walk-ins, even with a hold-harmless agreement there are still people working to perfect injury claims against ANYONE anywhere anytime...
I think it's a great idea. More and more people are living in tight quarters where they don't have room for a workshop, and I think people will find ways around the liability issues for this concept in the future.
I was actually thinking the same recently. How great would it be to have a public wood shop with all the tools I needed to use and I could just buy time in the shop to do my project(s)? For large projects that folks couldnt take home you could rent floor space for storage while the project was under construction. It would also be great to have a spray booth there for finishing.
Like someone else said...the liabilty insurance would be substantial!
Stephanie, This looks alot like I have envisioned. Are you a member?
I haven't really needed a workshop for my recent projects, but I was excited when I heard about it opening up. I could really see joining something like that.
I think the idea of a membership is the way to go a lot of non member "walk ins" would probably do more harm than you would care for plus the chances of someone untrained getting hurt failing to use proper techniques is very high. At least with a membership you would be dealing with someone with more than a causal interest.
Another idea to go with the shop is exotic woods there were two places in Tulsa OK at one time doing a good business selling the wood and giving classes.
I would love to free up a lot of the space my wood working tools take up. I hardly ever use the planer, jointer and would like to down size the table saw and once I was comfortable with the club to survive would consider selling my stuff.
Not sure how often I would use the shop but would like to see and talk to others that were in the process of building stuff so I would join for that reason IF the membership was reasonable.
If it were me I would set it up like a private golf club (or the like) where by there would be an larger initial membership fee and then annual dues. This way you would attract legitimate long term members/enthusiasts that would treat the equipment/facility like there own. Other wise you might end up with a lot of transient members who sign up for a single project then leave the club.
That said, I also recognize that it will be harder to attract members in that type of arrangement. Good luck with it and let me know when you ready to open one in Maryland.
I would be willing to pay say $500.00 initially and 150.00/yr after.
Yeah, I own a hanger and this is where I got the idea. It would work something like this.
Condo garage:
-Setup a corporation
-Draw up site plans
-Issue shares of stock for each of the "sites" or garages.
-Must purchase stock in order to "buy in to"
-Set cost for building per size
-pay monthly maintenance fees; Tax, Insurance etc.
Clubhouse / Workshop
-Buy into Clubhouse /workshop
-Monthly fees similar to condo + "shop manager on duty pay"
There's a Woodworkers Club not too far from me that has a 1 time fee of $199 and monthly $45 dues. Or you can buy 5 hours for $75, 10 for $125 or 25 for $185.( Woodworkers Shop Rental ). I took a class from them once and the shop was spacious with plenty of equipment. It was on top of a WoodCraft which would sell you the wood or any tools if need be. As far as I know, it's just a wood shop, no metal. Not sure how they got around the liability issues. I would have considered joining but it was a little too far away to make it worthwhile.
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