Making a classical American Rocking Chair

Making a classical American Rocking Chair

Nick who joined us in November 2019 is a skilled joiner and furniture makes. He has set himself the project of making from scratch and by hand a rocking chair as designed by the famous American Sam Maloof (1916 – 2009) furniture designer and woodworker whose work now sells for thousands of pounds. You can compare Nick's chair with the original Maloof in these two photos

 

Sam Maloof Chair

 

Nick Larder chair

Visit to a design technology lab

Visit to the design technology lab at Prestwich College

We had a visit to the design technology lab at Prestwich Arts College. We were shown around by the head of department of Design Technology, Helen Thom who showed us the range of equipment available. The aim was to give us some ideas as to what we might aim to provide in our own workshop

As we walked across the school yard on our way to the lab, it was the dinner break with many of the pupils out in the yard.  One of them shouted out "are they from OFSTED miss?" What? seriously? us?  (see photo below) Apparently they had an OFSTED inspection and they were in special measures

 

John. who is in his 80's couldn't resist showing us how to use a lathe

Garden Benches

 Garden Benches

This week in early June 2019  we have been busy  repairing and refurbishing garden benches. Chris and Gudrun have recycled some donated wood; cutting it down and successfully adding new slats to make this one as good as new.

By the way, even though we are 'Men in Sheds' about a third of our active users are women. We are a community workshop that is open to all

Bike stand day

Busy day at the Shed today (23-04-19). Dozen people there, plus others who dropped in. Several people dropped in with bikes to repair

Hmm.. the back yard is filling up with bikes

Rick repairing a saddle

Terry with a hoe that someone had brought in to mend and which he did

But the biggest achievement of the day was to put up tow Sheffield bike stands. This took a lot of digging, mainly by Rick and the use of a posthole digger (see Chris wielding one below)

Juen in fromt of the new bike stand together with its first occupant
(my bike)

There always have to be two watching when anybody is digging a hole. This time its Jim & Sal

It was a busy day on the Parade generally as we basked in what might be the last of the good weather

A team from "Songs of Praise" were busy interviewing people from the Den community cafe next door on the pavement cafe they had set up. Great for the free coffee and cake we got. Not so good in that we had to wait until they finished before we cold use the hammer drill to make holes for the bike stands

Rick & Terry in front of the completely concreted in bike racks

Meanwhile at the end of Merseybank Parade,
the mural has been finished

Finishing the Rain Shelter

Only four panels left to go on the rain shelter and we (mainly Michael!) managed to fix them very quickly yesterday, so it is finally done. Checked them out this morning and it did its job with the rain

Checked them out this morning and the rain shelter
did its job in keeping the rain off

Building the Rain Shelter

The Rain Shelter

Today (30-03-19) was the day that we worked on building a rainshelter in the back yatd of the Men in Sheds shop. Thanks to the hard work of Michael Schaefer a volunteer for Chorlton Good Neighbours who agreed to help us with this, we were close to finishing the rain shelter today. Here are photos of the day which mercifully was sunny  and no rain or (importantly) wind

The shelter will be used for bike repairs and storage. Thanks also to Chris, Saleem and Malcolm for their assistance. We aim to put on the final 4 panels on the roof of the shelter, this coming week

Flame Painting with copper

On March 5th Denis Colbridge came to the Merseybank shop and gave a presentation about Flame Painting with copper. 

This involves working with thin sheet copper with an open flame (oxy-propane) which can produce copper of almost any colour. Denis who has an engineering background got interested in flame painting when he was based in the United States. He went on a course run by Skip Mathews (see photo) in Arkansas. 

Skip Mathews at work

Below are some examples of flame painting. He enthused us about the possibility of doing this at SMMiS. Denis has much of the necessary tools and materials and could teach us how to do it

We will set up a group to look at the possibility of engaging in this craft, safely and affordably. Hopefully if we get into production we think there would be a ready market for the bowls, pendants, jewelry, butterflies, copper leaves etc that we might produced