Men's Shed Blog
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We have been busy creating and selling products for the Lower Kingswood and Banstead Village Fetes. Bird Boxes, Bug Hotels, chopping boards and pens were just a few of the items that we sold to make valuable funds for Age Concern Banstead. Our stall in Banstead also sold donated plants and in total between the two events we raised about £600. We were also the chosen charity for the Lower Kingswood Village Fete for which we were very grateful to receive an additional £300.
These bug hotels were best sellers. More pictures of the day are available here
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Our Shed extension is almost complete. We just need the lighting and power sockets installed and this will be taking place in the next week or so. Many thanks are due to Reigate and Banstead Council for funding this project which will give us more space which we'll find useful, especially in the warmer months.
The shed team have been busy all year with various projects. To see some pictures of what we have been up to please have a look at our gallery pictures. This is updated regularly.
Do you have any commissions for us? You can see from the pictures that we are a talented bunch and can create many woodwork based items to order. We price extremely competitively and you'll have the knowledge that everything is produced locally with care and expertise. Please get in touch to our email
Pictured below is a Tawny Owl box made recently for a birthday present. Even we didn't think an owl would move in that quickly.
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We have not updated the blog for a while but that does not mean we have not been busy. In the last couple of months we have completed several projects which culminated in sales of almost £500 for our artisanal christmas goods. All sorts of items from bookends to hedgehog houses were available for sale at the Age Concern Banstead Volunteer evening and at our stall at the Banstead Christmas Light illuminations evening.
Our existing sessions are now full and we intend to open up on a Tueday afternoon commencing in February. If you would be interested in joining us please get in touch.
We have several projects in the pipeline for the New Year. We have been commisioned to replace some of the Banstead in Bloom display wheelbarrows and we have also been asked to get involved with a project to make Trench Candles for the Ukranian troops. We need to collect lots of tin cans (pet food and baked bean cans ideal). If you have any please drop them into the shed or office after they have been cleaned. Click here for an article about the candles.
click here to view some photos on Flickr
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The Workshop needs a bit of ongoing TLC. Dave, and others, spent time applying a second coat of varnish to make sure the building is ready for the winter. We have also been completing our first commisions. We fixed the planting signs for Banstead in Bloom and our Cricketers have now been installed on the planters outside Pizza Express. We are now working on making items to sell at Christmas events. These will be updated on the blog as they become available.
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A quick update to illustrate the type of projects our Shedders are doing. Jim has almost finished his bird feeding table and we are making a planter for one of our customers. This picture proves that you can never have enough clamps!
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Another request. This time to rejuvenate a worn out house number. After planing and sanding down the surface our shedders used the laser engraver to redraw the number. Then a few coats of varnish and a spot of black paint and the sign was back in service.
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Our Repair Cafe takes place on the first Saturday in the month and we had a succesful session in August with several pieces being given the "FIXED" sticker. These items range from lamps to vacuum cleaners to lawn mowers and the picture shows Chris examining a mower before taking it apart.
To find out more about the Repair Cafe and how to book in a repair please visit our Facebook page by clicking here. If you don't use Facebook then you can access the booking form here.
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We have been busy making all sorts of things in our shedder sessions on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We were asked to create some cricketing silhouettes by Banstead Cricket Club and we are pleased with how they turned out. Other projects have included making puzzles, bird boxes and Christmas decorations to sell later in the year.
We have very few places left for shedders. Please get in touch if you would like to join our team.
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Our opening ceremony was held today. The Mayor of Reigate and Banstead Council, Cllr Eddie Humphreys and Sally Pulsford did the honours as you can see from the picture above. We asked Sally to take part as it was her idea all those years ago which led to the completeion of this project.
Our Chairman Nick P gave a small speech to thank all those who helped with the project and afterwards we enjoyed tea and home made cake in the Shed garden.
We are now operating for three sessions each week and these are almost all filled so we will need to start operating a waiting list very soon. Hopefully we can open a few more sessions each week but this will depend on the availability of supporters.
Our Chair, Nick Pulsford giving yet another of his ever popular speeches!
Sally and the Mayor finding out what's inside the shed
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We have been concentrating on various projects and the picture below shows a box that Frank and Supporter Nick J have made for Frank's Grandchildren. After the box was finished we laser engraved a picture of the children on the box. What a great present that the children can keep for ever.
Nick J has also been making a few demonstration projects. Here is a mobile phone or iPad holder which our Shedders will copy.
We wanted to thank some people for all the work that has gone into making this project a reality and Nick P spent some time working out how to use our laser engraver. Once he had sorted this out he made these two plaques which are displayed in the shed. There may be more to come.
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We have been holding our Shedder sessions for two weeks and all is going well. The Thursday afternoon session is full and there are a few spaces left for Thursday morning and Tuesday morning. We hope to start a Tuesday afternoon session soon but need to find another Session Supporter first.
The picture above shows Chris enjoying his new found hobby of sharpening chisels. The Tursday afternoon team have been hard at work as you can see from the pictures below
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Chris and his Repair Cafe team held a practice session in the Shed on the 11th March and all went well. There is a picture of Chris and the team below.
The first Repair Café sessions will be held in our Shed on Saturday 1st June. From 10-12.00 our volunteers will be repairing textiles, jewelry and general household stuff. Anything electrical should be included in our second session from 12-14.00. Visitors can find out more on Facebook here - https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61557635163505. For now we are asking everybody to make a booking and you can do that for the June 1st sessions here - https://forms.gle/kbTyE5VH3usbAn7J7 "
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Our first proper sessions with Shedders took place today and all went well. We had two sessions. The morning session supported by Trevor and Derek and the afternoon supported by Nick P and Dave.
We provided some training and have already been able to authorise those shedders that wished to use some of the kit. We have supplied some ideas and timber for various starter projects and the shedders have already made several sugegstions.
The next session will be on Tuesday morning supported by Nick J and Chris.
Some potential projects to get started with. We have a boot remover, puzzle and mobile phone holder. You can see examples of the finished product and the timber to make them with.
Our final picture of the workshop before the shedders are let loose.
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A project as involved as the Shed needs some guidance and rules and we have been busy deciding how best to manage this resource so that the shedders get the most out of it. We have created several documents which explain how this will run and copies are being made available to all our shedders. More will be added to the list in the coming days.
We are asking our Shedders to sign up for either a session a week or fortnightly. We will charge £20 membership for the year and then a £2 fee for each session attended. We want to keep the cost as low as possible and we don't want to make any surplus but we do have to cover our costs. Although much of the kit was donated we are being charged for insurance, electricity, security monitoring, consumables and a few other bits and pieces and we hope that the charges cover all of this.
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In addition to the Men's Shed project we also operate a Repair Café service in the Shed on the first Saturday of every month. The Repair Café will be open from 10.00 - 14.00 but booking is required. To make a booking please click here .
There are about 3,000 Repair Cafe's worldwide and almost 1,000 in the UK where teams of skilled community volunteers will advise and work with local residents to fix a wide range of their household stuff - https://www.repaircafe.org/en/about/. The main purposes of Repair Cafés are to reduce the amount of waste we all create by throwing things away, and also to save people some money - no charge is made for repairs though we do ask for donations to cover our costs. Repair skills have become scarce and are often more developed in older generations making Repair Café great places for intergenerational skills transfer; we would be delighted to hear from anybody wanting to volunteer to help us repair stuff, or to help host and run the repair sessions. If you would like to email the Repair Cafe