With an inventory of over 900 tools in our shop, the volunteers on our Tool Committee have their work cut out for them. When they meet every few weeks, the Committee repairs and maintains the tools to keep them in tip-top shape for our members. New tools are arriving all the time, each of which must be tested and entered into the inventory before it is loaned out. This involves naming, numbering, and describing each tool (witty descriptions are encouraged).
Freshly inventoried
It’s no small feat, and clearly a huge test of organizational skills and methods on the part of our volunteers. Luckily they’re always up to the task!
Making sense of hardware in the shop
VTL Director of Tools, Brian Beaudry, who generally leads the meetings of the Tool Committee, says that the volunteers also undertake building projects that need to be completed in the shop. Recent additions to the shop have included new shelving to accommodate the growing inventory and track lighting to brighten up the place. At the most recent meeting, a new home was created for the sanders. Making additional space for them will be helpful to members trying to locate specific items.
Steve and Bruce add new shelving
Stop in and see what the Tool Committee has been up to! If you wish to become a volunteer, please apply here.
We want to hear about your goals for 2013! Are you finally going to build that storage unit? New garden beds? Fix that old bike?
The Vancouver Tool Library wants to help you achieve your goal. You could win $100 from RONA to get started on your project. Fill out this form and explain what your project is, which VTL tools you’ll need to complete it, and how you’ll use the $100 if you win. A bonus entry will be given if you upload sketches or designs to our Facebook page or tweet them to us (@vantoollibrary). The contest entry deadline is January 31, 2013. A winner will be randomly selected on February 1, 2013.
If you have questions about the contest, e-mail lauren [at] vancouvertoollibrary [dot] com.
Happy building!
Last July, the VTL turned 1 year old. As we grow older, we are beginning to understand our co-op more and more. Due to high fixed costs and our determination to move off of grant revenue, the Vancouver Tool Library needs to adjust its prices. This email is to notify you that the Board of Directors has approved a new fee structure that will take effect on January 1st, 2013. Our new fee structure takes into account the feedback we heard from our members in a survey conducted earlier this year, as well as our better understanding of the costs associated with running the library.
The new fee structure is:
- Standard Annual Maintenance Fee: $45
- Low Income Annual Maintenance Fee: $30
- Power Tool Loans: A new fee of $2 per loan period will be applied to all power tool loans. Power tools only!
Note that the Membership Share value ($20) will remain unchanged.
We believe that the new fee structure is affordable and fair, and will allow us to keep our doors open into the future. If you have questions or concerns about the price increasesor the special offer on annual maintenance fees, please talk to us in the shop or reach us online at info@vancouvertoollibrary.com.
Save up your pennies, VTL supporters! Ten Thousand Villages on Commercial Drive has generously offered to donate 15% of their profits from all sales to the VTL on December 22nd. Not only will your money go toward continuing positive, fair trade relationships with international artisans through Ten Thousand Villages, but it will also help out your local tool library. The store is located at 1204 Commercial Drive and is open from 10am-8pm. We will have a table there for the duration of the day – we’d love to have lots of people come down to say hi!
Every month, we feature a project created by a different Vancouver Tool Library member. This month, we’re talking to Scott and Kim, who worked on two projects this summer: cedar planter boxes for their backyard and the restoration of their boat. They have been kind enough to share with us how the VTL’s tool inventory helped them with these endeavours.
Tell us about how your project helped you start growing your own food in your backyard.
We’ve been wanting to grow our own veggies for some time and were finally motivated after moving into a place with a lovely, sizable, south-facing deck. After researching many different planter designs (we also find the book library quite useful), we drew up plans for some substantial planters for our garden. The father of a friend of ours runs a cedar processing plant and he graciously donated some beautiful cedar planks to the cause. With that, we were away. We were building six of the 2’x4′ planters, and rather than build them slowly one at a time, we decided to just get on with it and build them assembly-line style using VTL tools! Tools were everywhere: planks were first cut using the library’s sliding mitre-saw, drilled using the drill-press, and finished off with a skill saw for the base. To boot, all the work was supported on saw horses from the VTL. In one long day, we got through most of the work and ended with a stack of empty planter boxes waiting to be filled with soil. The next weekend we piled them high with dirt and planted our crops. We had a bountiful harvest of fresh veggies – notably a HUGE haul of tomatoes! A project definitely worth doing and highly rewarding!
You’re working on a boat too! How did you get started on that?
Now, we’ve been focusing on the restoration of our 33′ sailboat. This project came about when we decided to take a few months off work next summer and go explore the BC coast. We’re going to head for Alaska, but it’s likely we’ll get side-tracked on the way up exploring the Great Bear Rainforest and maybe Haida G’waii. Since we weren’t in a position to purchase a “ready-to-go” boat, we found one that had everything we were looking for (solid full keel, pilothouse, cutter rig, good engine) but needed a bit of work.
What did that work involve, exactly?
Throughout the summer, we worked away on restoring the hull, scraping and sanding the old failing paint job off the boat, and re-applying a new paint system that should keep the hull protected for another 15 years. The job was totally gross and really dirty but the resulting paint job is fantastic. The VTL was awesome for us. We were regularly in to pick up random tools that we didn’t have on hand: large wrenches for loosening and re-installing thru-hulls, grinders for sharpening scrappers and tidying up teak with stubborn varnish, hole-saws for cleaning up holes that needed filling with fiberglass, various sanders for hard-to-reach places, and additional clamps which were super handy when we were epoxying together the pilothouse roof. As our boat project takes us into winter, it has been great to borrow the work lights to allow us to work into the evenings. Many of the jobs required unique tools that we would probably only use once; the VTL has been a huge help by giving us the opportunity to borrow the tools rather than buy them!
What is still remaining before you go?
The list of ‘to do’ items left for us is mostly made up of cosmetic stuff, including sanding, painting, and varnishing. We’re also in the process of replacing the boat’s pilothouse roof as the previous owner had dropped the boom on it, cracking the fiberglass and leaving a big soggy mess. Besides that, we have some smaller projects inside the boat but nothing that needs immediate attention; we’ll likely pick away at them during the trip. We call it a “project” boat…but we should really be calling it a “projects” boat!
Since there seems to be no end to a project of this nature, we are truly grateful for the VTL shop. Having tools and resources readily available is helping this project go by quicker than expected and making it much easier on our pocketbooks. Your staff and volunteers are always offering encouragement and interest in our work too! Thanks VTL!
Great job Scott and Kim! Have fun on your coastal adventure next summer.
Written by The Vancouver Tool Library, December 03rd, 2012 | No Comments »
Filed under: Projects, Uncategorized | Tags: BC Coast, DIY, planter boxes, restoration, sailboat, sailing, urban agriculture, Vancouver Tool Library
