Wood working clubs?? Do they work?

[Victor Robinson]

That club is ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous.

Larry - is it not feasible to have a shop at home in the garage or basement? A 10k investment will get you a pretty decent setup in a basement or garage. Even less if you look for used tools.

I'm not questioning the value of woodworking clubs and shared equipment at all - just those situations are difficult to find. You CAN get started on your own, especially with the wealth of information and videos available on the internet. And not to mention extremely helpful folks on forums like this one!

[Larry Brannan]

We live in a condo - no room whatsoever. Our garage stores two cars plus it's COLD in Michigan in the winter! I have purchased DVD's from Woodworkers Guild and watch them every day while walking on the treadmill. First preference would be to have my own shop, but I'd have to rent space or buy a building. At this point, I'm unsure of my ability to make the cabinetry items, so that would be a big investment as well as a big risk.

Thanks for your response!

[Eric DeSilva]

Check into whether your county offers classes (mine does at a local HS in the evenings) or whether there are other adult education opportunities (we also have an artist's guild that does classes). A lot of those types of programs also offer "shop time" and I've found (in other areas) that they have been pretty accommodating when it comes to doing your own project and deviating from the "class."

I find the "membership charge" absolutely ridiculous for that CU club. I remember having an argument with someone advocating for that before and the cautionary note I'd throw out is that it is a clearly a "for profit" venture. It is "affiliated" with a woodworking store, and I'd argue that the store has to buy most of that gear for demo purposes anyway. Besides, they say they have $100K worth of gear. That means it is fully paid for with a dozen members, and that includes $20K in consumables and maintenance. I much prefer things like: http://clubworkshop.com/. They manage to have 18K sq ft of space and have a pretty expensive range of gear as well--including metalworking stuff like a 3 axis CNC milling machine. Yet they manage to offer this for $90/mo. for a year with no membership fee.