@jeffbob & Tom Cook, thank you for highlighting this issue.
Some places (I think @Brian said WoodWorld) charge $100 an hour just for shop time. AN HOUR! wow. We get such a fantastic deal. $50 covers 720+ hours a month! or or $0.07 an hour if you could take advantage of it all, lol. (I think that would be $72,000 a month at elsewhere at $100 an hour, haha)
Contributions beyond the membership fee help keep our Woodshop in stock with sandpaper, new blades, sharp blades, and so much more. it is important for the rest of the Space too. Filament for 3D, Ink for the Photoprinter, Vinyl and Transfer Paper for the vinyl cutter, Creative Arts Supplies, Sharpies, Masking Tape, Nitrile Gloves, tape measures, magnetic dishes for metal parts (these have become consumables :-/ ).
The contributions also help maintain the tools we have, plus fund new, greater tools.
There are 2 strong trains of thought on goodies at the makerspace.
give it to us, and we will find a use for it.
give it to us, and we will find a use for it eventually. but it is a lot of clutter until then.
So, just like choosing the blue pill or the red pill, or Resistance vs Enlightened in Ingress, choose withā¦ nah. it is not as lasting as those options. Snag it for us! Thank you!
I havenāt used the woodshop in a while, so please pardon my ignorance here. Is there a payment box anywhere (like we have for the the laser cutters)? If we put one up with a sign that says something like, āPlease contribute for consumablesā, maybe people will put in a few dollars from time to time. Or possibly if we put one up next to the sandpaper racks that might be a really good reminder. It would be totally voluntary but the easier it is, and the more it is visible, the more likely we might get a little extra monies that way.
Say, is this true of any cash or paypal donation to a committee account? It never occurred to me this was the case and if so, is something we might want to advertise a bit more. (Or Iām dense as hell and just missed it )
I believe this would be true if we were charging for sandpaper use; however, my understanding is this would be a voluntary donation, which would be deductable.
In many ways this is different from say laser time or 3d filament. The reason is that wood shop (and machine shop) receive a monthly stipend from the member dues, ostensibly to cover operating costs like consumables. Voluntary contributions to cover sandpaper, particularly if you use a lot of it for a project, seems like a decent compromise.