I’ve been going to a few open houses recently, and an interesting topic that’s come up is the noise factor.
The new popularity of the wood shop is such that loads of people are using it now. This is awesome, of course. However, the noise levels are such that it makes tours challenging. Ultimately, part of the job of a tour is that we are selling visitors on the space. If we can’t hold a conversation with people to tell them how good the space is, it’s much harder to sell them on VHS.
So my question is, should VHS Open Houses be “quiet-ish” where the membership agrees not to use loud power tools?
The general thought in the past was to keep things quieter during open nights. It is tricky to give tours when things are really loud.
I can definitely see how noise has increased with all the woodworking tools. Might be a good suggestion for people to do easily portable things like sanding/using a skillshaw etc. in a the loading bay. That would be one way to cut down on noise a little.
Just playing devils advocate here. A lot of members count on Tuesday to be a reliable open time. If open house hours are quiet, maybe we should have a weekly members night as well?
That’s a good idea @imsofluffy. I ran an experiment for a while where I had a regular members open night every Thursday and it was poorly attended. Might be worth trying that experiment again though.
From a member position I can agree that people count on open night to do wood or metal working. Cause usually only 2 nights per week is open according to a calendar. In reality it’s more you just need to ask or kind people open VHS themselves. But I know how much noise it does for sure and hear you guys how distractive it can be for everyone around. I completely agree that good solution would be move part of the work to loading bay area and make Saturday or Sunday open by any keyholders who coming there to hang for a while…
Perhaps at the next VHS home it might be possible to put walls with insulation around the woodshop similar to what was done at The Bunker (for those those who remember those days). It would also serve to keep the wood dust off of everything else outside the woodshop.
The other solution to this problem is imo to…become a keyholder! Sorry - I had to mention that. Keyholder is really the best if you can afford it. You get 24 hour access to the space which is really quite amazing for the price. It’s a win all around really. You get more access. The space gets more funds for equipment/rent/etc. With more keyholders current keyholders aren’t stretched so thin. We can open the space more often for current members and attract more members. More keyholders helps everyone.