When I took Woodshop 101 with Alex, he had to clear woodchips that were jamming the vaccuum exhaust and blocking the motor area on the table saw and the jointer. To my mind that isn’t a cleaning up after yourself issue, but seems to indicate there is something wrong with the vaccuum removal system. Perhaps there isn’t enough power for the size? Or maybe the filters are clogging and need more frequent replacement/cleaning?
It seems we already have policies in place, @Robert_Davidson, to cover cleaning up after ourselves and really don’t need anymore. While I could be wrong, I don’t think the problem is being driven by a lot of ‘liitle’ messes and dust by a lot of members, but rather a relatively few really big messes by a few members. I would suggest identifying those members and having the board pursue a staged sequence of discipline. Once there is a known consequence for leaving a huge mess, like the lathe one I described above, the problem will likely self-reduce. At least for the big messes.
Now in terms of the dust that is a problem. I don’t think it is reasonable to expect a member to get the dust they create cleaned up completely. After all, much of this dust gets airborne and can settle quite far from where they are working. So unless we expect every member to take a duster to the whole wood shop every time, dust will accumulate. I propose that the WoodShop committee organize a regular (say weekly) event for members to come and spruce up the woodshop by cleaning up the dust, etc. I would make this part of the Woodshop 101 class, getting the class to do the actual sprucing up as part of the training. That combined with the indentification of and chastisment of those leaving the big messes should solve this problem, I would think.
