For some time, the desire to work with wood has been at the heart of many of our members' reason for belonging to the Women's Shed. However, without our own space or workshop, this has been difficult to facilitate. So, being the resourceful group that we are, we've found another way. We hope the following information is helpful and inspirational in helping use to get this side of the Yack Women's Shed underway.
To kick-start our own Woodworking sub-group, we've established a connection with the Albury Wodonga Woodcrafters.
The AW Woodcrafters operate under sub-groups and you can join any group you wish. You will be welcomed and given help and advice to get you up and running. Groups include pyrography, furniture making, timber milling, carving, scroll sawing, wood turning, pen turning and box making. Each group has a specific day and time when they use the workshop, some overlapping. You can find out more by getting in touch with Juliana Vaughan Ph: 0423 678 176 or julianavaughan@gmail.com
Joining the AW Woodcrafters allows you to visit their shed any day it is open and use the array of tools and machinery they have on offer. You cannot be in the workshop along; at least one other person must be in attendance. You must also have been given instruction on how to use their power tools and equipment and be given accreditation to operate these independently. You make those arrangements at your convenience.
Membership fees to the AW Woodcrafters comprises a once off joining fee of $60, applicable to a single and group family members (excludes juniors), plus a $40 single or $60 family annual fee, payable in October.
You can find out more at their website https://awwinc.com.au/
A place to begin - Carving!
One of their members, Doug Malsen, came to Yack and gave us an information session on whittling and carving; his work is impressive! Dough has offered to help us learn the basics of caring and made a suggestion that he would come to us at Yack, however this won't happen until the new year. As it is only using hand tools we could do this at the YCC. The Woodcrafters will also welcome us to join their carving group but it is not meeting again until 2023.
Yack Women's Shed Woodworking Sub-group
As we currently have no workshop of our own from which to work, the option of joining the Woodcrafters is appealing. It could be an excellent solution to have a shed to go to, where you are under the guidance of master artisans, have access to a beautiful range of tools and machinery and meet like-minded crafters. Then, hopefully, we can meet up in Yack to work on our projects after getting started. In the meantime, we are looking for a suitable venue where you can bring your tools use use the selection of power and hand tools donated to YWS.
We need to know if there is enough interest in wood working to form a sub-group ready to set up in early 2023. Please email yackwomensshed@gmail.com to let us know if you are interested. Joining AW Woodcrafts is your personal choice and certainly isn't a requirement if you want to join our YWS sub-group.
Great news …. We knew we would find away bring on 2023