After our first whittling class was such a success, in spite of it being on April fools’ day, we’ve added another two events to our summer schedule. One of those is a bumper session on August bank holiday!
Our first wood whittling session went off well today. Lots of spoons and a cute little mushroom were hand crafted with the help of the lovely lads from Woodies.
Some of the crafters also personalised their spoons by engraving them with a photography stylus.
We have another whittling session on Tuesday, 7th May at 6pm – (https://lamm.space/spoon-7-5-24). We are organising more sessions for July and August, which we’ll announce shortly.
All materials, tools and safety equipment will be provided for you and your get to take your spoon, spatula or mushroom home! Under 18s must be accompanied, min 10 years old.
We have set up a crowdfunder at spacehive.com, to buy a variety wood carving equipment, which will be matched pound for pound by the Lancashire Sport and Culture fund. Our goal is to generate a total of £395, but if we can raise £200 ourselves, then it will be matched by the fund and we’ll get the new equipment paid for. The equipment will be accessible to all members of LAMM, but also the public when they are attending classes at our space.
Once we have the equipment, we will put on some courses in wood carving and whittling – any donation of at least £15 will get a place in one of these classes (they will be £5-20, pay-as-you-feel, should you want to pay later).
Set of 6 wood carving gouges (for use with a mallet for relief carving)
A brass headed carving chisel for use with the above
set of 10 wood carving knives (for whittling and spoon making)
2 “safety” wood carving knives, for use by kids or novices.
wood threading kit – essentially a large tap-and-die for making parts for vices and presses
Every donation, from a minimum of £2, is worthwhile and we are already up to £75 out of the £200 we need to raise ourselves! We do need at least 20 discrete donations, so small contributions are still very important!
We had a surge in membership, partly due to a grant from Lancaster University, allowing us to give out free or cheap memberships at different times!
Window Sign
Number of members: 35 in December (best was 59 in June)
Total subscriptions: £447.12 in December (best was £468.67 in June)
85 unique human people were actually members at some time in the year!
We got a new, electronic kiosk to allow you to buy food, drink, laser time and materials… Finally without us having to handle cash and keeping manual records
Shop takings: £237 in December
Shop sales made: 33 in December (best was 42 in May)
Shop transaction fees we paid: £4.30 in December
We got a new, easy to use, quiet diode laser, just in time for making xmas presents (thanks John!)
pew, pew, pew
Diode laser time in November: 192 minutes (3 hours 12 minutes)
Diode laser time in December: 766 minutes (12 hours, 46 minutes)
This raised a total of £192 for us!
We collaborated with a great local charity, Escape2Make, to design and create a myriad of fun items for sale at the heritage market in December
We ran over a dozen free activity stalls, all over the area
festive maps
West End Gardens, Morecambe (Creative West End): 2
We were at the Food Futures winter market today, talking to members of the public about repairing items and offering to let them make some festive decorations from some discarded maps and laser cut baubles.
Yesterday, Saturday 4th November, 2023, we were in the nearby village of Brookhouse getting involved in a repair event. We found lots of young repairers to help us and made a record of what was achieved!
We actually had more repair experts than clients, which was disappointing, but people still need to be educated about even the possibility to repair a lot of items!
You are welcome to bring broken things in to our regular open evening at our makerspace in the centre of Lancaster!
If you haven’t seen the space recently, and are curious about how many abandoned laptops are scattered around (Surprisingly, not as many as last year) take a look at https://lamm.space/about/ for updated images of the space, and the new PCs, 3D printers and equipment.
We have also been given a very kind donation of a dual extruder 3D printer. It is a bit dusty, but think of the possibilities!
Photo credit: the Lancaster Photographer/Lancaster Pride (2019)
Space2 is coming soon!! Yes, LAMM is moving to a bigger and better unit. 👍
We will shortly be getting keys to our new and improved workshop space in Harpers Mill on White Cross Industrial Estate in Lancaster. (Same business park, different building)
Space 2 will be a much larger unit, and we are very excited that it will be much more accessible too. We have spent years looking for an affordable upgrade, and we have finally found it. There is a lift in the new building so people who can’t do stairs will be able to come and join in the fun too! We will still be easily accessible on foot from the city centre and the buses stop right by White Cross business park (opposite the RLI).
So what comes next? Well, members please watch your email for details about when to move your personal projects etc. to the new unit and to volunteer for moving the communal tools and equipment. We will have some setting up to do in the new unit but the first couple of weeks in September are moving weeks!
Space2 should be open for members general usage from Oct and to the general public shortly after that. Full details on how to find us in the swanky new space will be posted as soon as we can open Space2. And, as some of you have been waiting a while, we are happy to say that we will be able to welcome new members as soon as we are in Space2. Use the contact form on the main page to get in touch
In the meantime, we will be proudly waving our banner on Sunday 22nd August as Lancaster Pride returns. Join us from 11am for the March (Sulyard Street starting point). As you can see from the photo of the 2019 event, it’s quite easy to spot out fabulous banner!
