What are Open Shop Visits?

Open shop visits  are where one of the club members volunteers to open their shop up for one night and invites fellow club members to come visit them. In the past, we have used the same hours as the club meeting on weeknights so we start somewhere around 6:30pm to 7:00pm depending on the person that opens their shop, they decide! Weekend's are obviously more flexible and a host can set just about any time.

The process is someone volunteers their shop. They give out their name, phone number and town that they live in. We try to get a good geographical coverage of New England so that people can visit a shop close to their home and not have to travel all around New England in the middle of the winter.

Anyone that would like to visit this shop, calls the shop's owner and says that they would like to visit. This way, the owner can control the amount of visitors since most of us have small shops and can only accommodate a fixed amount of people. It would not be good to have a shop that holds 6 people and then have 12 show up.

Each person that would like to visit a shop, gets a confirmation (and directions) from one of the shop owners for the open shop visit. Once you have a confirmation (and directions), you're all set!

The hosts of the shop have lots of flexibility in what they do!

• They can give a quick tour of their shop only,

• They could choose to do a demo themselves or by a visitor,

• They could allow each person to turn something (providing the materials and tools or not),

• Do a joint turning project where everyone gets to turn on one item or they could do anything thing else that they want!

• There are no rules nor expectations here!!  It's entirely up to the owner since they are opening their shops to the club!!

If you don't have another idea, demo's are always a fun thing to do. This could be anything from let me sharpen all my tools and you watch, to let me turn my favorite item to whatever the imagination can create!

It's always best if they owner decides what they want to do so that there is a plan in place before the night of the meeting. It's probably also a good idea to know this when people want to visit so that this can be criteria to enable someone to make a decision to visit or not.

I've also heard of owners having snacks and drinks for visitors but that's not a requirement and is entirely up to the program and the owners choose.

In summary, it's a chance to visit the shop of a fellow club member, getting to see the layout and setup of their shop. The gatherings are usually filled with lots of "shop" talk and that's fun for all of us.

It's always best if one person visiting each shop can take notes or make a write-up later to share with the club. One person should also  take a dozen photo's (digital preferred but not required), we will put them in the newsletter and onto the web site.

From my personal experiences... Just visiting someone else's shop is sufficient for me! I like seeing how someone set up their shop, where they placed their machines, and their tools. I've been on visits that were tours only and that was great. I've been to ones where I saw someone cut a project and I learned several things! I've also opened my shop last year and was able to do a quick tour, sharpening demo and some turning. Everyone one was different and everyone was fantastic!! Each night went by way too quick!!

I hope that this article helps people understand what an "open shop visit" is and that we get lots of people interested in volunteering to open their shop or make a visit for the next Open Shops Month...

--- This article originally created by by Dennis Daudelin in 2006 and has been modified since.