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What are Open Shop Visits?
by Dennis Daudelin
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. We typically use the same hours
as the club meeting, so we start somewhere around 6:30pm to 7:00pm
depending on the person that opens their shop, they decide!
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 it on the
night of the meeting.
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 owners of the
shop have lots of flexibility in what they do!
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They
can give a quick tour of their shop only,
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They
could choose to do a demo themselves by a visitor,
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They
could allow each person to turn something (providing the materials
and tools or not),
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Do
a joint turning project where
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Everyone
gets to turn on one item or they could do anything thing else that
they want!
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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 night to visit the shop
of a fellow club member, getting to see the layout and setup of their
shop. The meetings 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 next month's
[February] meeting...
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