Buy with 5 others and pay only 1/5th. You've formed a loose Club, to get Club Deals. Like borrowing a tool from a friend. Each person can use it when they need it. Learn. Get advice and ideas. Things like trailers or ladder you need sometimes that otherwise take up space. But how do you find people for your venture? And what if you want a lightly more formal Club, so people can join, use the tools, maybe leave for other interests? Read on.
Another lawn bowling club won't save the planet. A Woodworking Club might. You'd use lumber and trees smartly and as a group find ways to replant. A MetalCrafting Club might. You'd jam for ideas to reclaim and recycle metal, motors and electronics for a wide variety of products. A club can form around using plastics smartly, and imagine all the things you can make with glass! Those are clubs formed around materials and the special tools you need to work them. You can also form a Club around a process. Baking, sewing, building e-bikes and small electric vehicles, aluminum casting and milling, making products from recycling paper and plastic. In general, this is a Tools Club. You want to buy bulk with others at a fraction of the cost of doing it by yourself.
It's not just woodworkers chipping in to buy a bandsaw mill to cut planks from trees. You can form a Club around tackling problems in the insurance industry or banking. There, your tool is Java programming, and you may chip in to buy a server. That's a tool too!
This is a place to add your Club. Describe it. Add your name as the group lead. Find the people you need to achieve critical mass. Feel free to place ads in all the usual places. Clubs in bold are backed by business plans and folders full of developed products, markets and ideas. Join as a Club, get a feel for it, grow into a business.
WoodWorks: Trenton and area. We want CNC routers, planers and saws of all sorts to build and carve solid wood panel doors, furniture, windows, tables, counters, shelves and signs. We want a workshop and then a place to sell from, a Trenton Make & Sell Store. Lots more too. Add your name if you want in:
MetalCrafters Club: CNC machining, pipe bending, welding, green sand casting of low-melting metals including Aluminum and Zinc, air plasma cutting, low-temperature Aluminum welding, sandblasting, painting, beading machines, English wheel shapers...... Add your name if you want in:
CNC Tools Club: It's not just CNC routers. It's attaching all sorts of tools to the front plate to be driven by CNC control and computer programming. Using computers to control machines is now affordable, vastly increasing personal production, giving us the chance to go for local production, local consumption Saving gas, driving, shipping, making us price competitive while reducing damaging environmental effects. Add your name if you want in:
GlassCrafters: Lighting, fine art work, resins, storm windows, greenhouses, slab melting, mixed materials, signs and displays, reclaiming, low-temperature gels, lenses and optics, fibre glass and glass fibre, mirrors and solar, cutting and polishing. It's not just art, it's industry. Do you want in?
Sewing Club: Yes, you might need a machine once in a while. You might want tips and ideas from friends. But what about programmable embroidery to make logos on hats and T-shirts? Or turning a $20 dress shirt into $80 evening wear? If you get set up with a sales outlet, and you can do that with a Club, think of all the things you can make with fabric in general, from buying rolls wholesale to re-using the fabric from unused clothes or sewing waterproof saddlebags for bikes. Add your name here to get in:
Off-grid Tool Makers Club: Ever since Tesla went into making cars, batteries have become better. More powerful, lower weight, long-lasting. The price has dropped. Tie those batteries to DC motors and now you can make all sorts of off-grid power tools. Solar recharged. Free forever from you-know-who. So many tools run directly off a motor shaft. Sanders, cutters, grinders, bandsaws, circular and table saws, drill presses, and each of these is not that hard to make. There's so many how-to videos! But you need to get your hands on the supplies at a bulk deal, and you need to have the know-how. It's not that hard once you get set up. So many products ready to go, each with a business plan, construction details, supplies lists and sales outlets that belong to you. You have got to get in on this!
Energy Masters: Everything solar, battery, mechanical and electric. Water systems and windmills. Micro-hydro generation. Industrial water filters, renewable and scaled to home use. Greenhouses fully equipped for off grid family sustainability at low cost. Earth Cooler systems for home air conditioning, cold pantries, in-basement "root-cellar" cold rooms. Ground heat greenhouses to grow oranges and green produce in Canada all year. Backyard fish ponds and waste treatment. Battery powered tools for low-labour low-energy backyard farming.
E-bike and Small Electric Vehicle Makers Club: SEV Club for short. Tesla is going high-end down. We can go small up. Build your own ebike or power trailer using lightweight fibreglass rod instead of steel. Thumb-throttle wheelbarrows to get that load up a hill without a truck. There are several categories of SEVs addressing issues of tools and transportation. A powered bike trailer big enough to carry a lawnmower or run a summer painting and repairs business. 70 km range with a load, you don't need a truck. This is not about money, it's about saving this entire generation of Canadian kids and giving them work instead of student debt. Tying that to sales outlets that they share with other makers in social enterprise. Do you want in?
Pizza Bakers and Bread Makers: And anything else that will go into an oven. Right now you can't get into the market. It's not that hard to make pizza, but selling it is another story. Even a vacant lot starts at a quarter-million! Join the Club. We have strategies for work-arounds that can let you buy bulk, co-market with others, and get baking and delivering without getting buried under a mountain of debt: You in?
Plastic Reshapers Club: Plastic scrap, heated and mixed with hot sand, made into patio stone pavers. A plastic paper mix, fed into rollers to squeeze the air out, then melted into strips through rollers, folded and remelted, pressed into planks. The government has completely failed us on the blue box program. And they hid the fact. We need to take over. We know all sorts of things to make and meld with plastic. You in?
