I went for a ride out to Old Petrie Town and joined the North Pine Trades Guild $30.00 AU per year. There are three parts to it woodworking, metalworking and the metal foundry. You can pick what you want to do, or do the lot. You can work on your own projects or group projects, group project's are mainly for things that are for sale to the general public. Money raised from the sales goes to buy equipment and extensions to the shed. Besides doing your own projects you are expected to contribute to group projects which mainly seem to consist of objects made in the woodworking section and the foundry. The general public can come in with projects that they can have done and a fee is charged . I will probably stick mainly with the metal shop and the foundry. I can't seem to think of anything for the Brick that I can make out of wood.
I had a good look around the metal shop and checked out the equipment. A really good turret mill with power feed two good metal lathes, a power broacher, a power key way cutter, drop saw,arc and oxy welders. All the hand tools and electric and air tool you could possibly need. They have a couple of major projects going a large CNC machine is being built for one of the other workshops. There is another small CNC machine around that I did'nt see. My first job is to rebuild my drive shaft I am looking at blocking it off so there is an actual reservoir of grease. I'll start by making a copper heatsink so as not to put too much heat into the rubber shaft damper. They open Tuesdays, Fridays mornings and Sundays. Apparently they have made quite a few hard to obtain car and bike parts.
Regards Martin.