by Fergus | 16th July, 2018 | Uncategorized
We’ve been working away over the last few months to fund and acquire some new equipment. From a combination of fundraising, donations and earnings from our classes, we have been able to provide some new machines in the workshop and these have come on line in the last few week. In no particular order:
The Rojek 400mm thicknesser was commissioned on Friday. This powerful 3 phase machine replaces the Startrite combination planer-thicknesser we’ve been using up to now. This should be a real boost to the makers in the workshop and should be available to the current Machine Skills class before they finish.
The SCM Surface Planer, which we have had for a while, was also serviced on Friday and the tables tuned up. Brendan has been surfacing elm on it for the afternoon, a good test for it. Its a vital piece of equipment for furniture makers allowing them flatten rough hardwood boards.
The 2.5m table length makes this ideal for straightening long lengths of timber, for table tops, etc.
The Trend Router table along with the Trend T11 router is an excellent routing system, giving precision and safety. Features include 2000w router, feather boards, mitre fence and dust extraction. A great machine for profiling, grooving and rebating.
We’ve had a Festool Domino machine in the workshop for a few weeks now, a very handy tool for fast joinery. They have replaced a lot of traditional mortice and tenon joinery but are a little expensive for all but the busiest makers.
If you haven’t heard of this machine its well worth looking it up.
This one might seem a little out of place with all the woodwork gear but the Ultimaker 3D Printer is part of our push towards providing rapid prototyping technology. We received this one as a generous donation last week and we’ll have it up and running just as soon as we’ve built a dust-proof cabinet for it. Lookout for introductory classes on this later in the year.
The equipment is available to our resident makers immediately, and will be covered in our Machine Skills classes in the near future. It is our plan to continuously upgrade the facilities at Benchspace, to provide the best professional making space we can to makers in Cork.
by Fergus | 15th July, 2018 | Uncategorized
Oak boards coming to the workshop
Oak from Blarney Castle Estate
‘Getting out’ (planing and sizing) the oak
Oak roughed out for night classes
Ready for class projects.
by Fergus | 21st April, 2018 | Uncategorized
Benchspace was started to help makers and designers get into business. For a lot of making disciplines in Ireland it has always been a tough prospect to make it at your chosen occupation. We see a lot of people coming through craft and design courses in Cork, like furniture design at CSN and jewellery at St John’s College. They spend a year or two in a well-equipped creative environment surrounded by lots of like-minded teachers and students, there is time and space to explore their discipline. Then after graduation, they are suddenly cast out into the big bad world and all of these resources are taken away. It’s hard to find space, it’s hard to find customers, and motivation can be a problem when you’re working on your own. Most of all it’s much harder to improve and develop without other people to bounce ideas off or be inspired by.
This is the gap that Benchspace seeks to fill. If you want to have a go at a creative business then you don’t need to buy all of the equipment, you don’t need to rent a lot of space and you can get help finding customers and getting advice about how to run your business. That is the environment we are working to build, not just for woodworkers but for instrument makers, jewellers, ceramicists, product designers, artists, graphic designers, set-designers, etc. In fact we think it will be so good that non-making designers will want to hang out, like web designers, bloggers and architects. When we get to that point, we know that people will interact, inspire and create new things, new ideas, new possibilities, that’s when it gets really interesting.
Even if you’re not a pro, if you’ve just got the woodwork bug or need to get out of the house for a few hours, then we want to meet you too. When it grows up, Benchspace wants to be a kind of ‘third place’, not work, not home but more like a café where you can make stuff. If it’s for an audience of one, or a market of hundreds we want to see people making and creating.
So what has that got to do with a 9ft sycamore table? Well, it’s a small project but it has a lot of the qualities we like in a creative project. The Cork County architect’s office made contact saying that they would like to see some local work in a building fitout they were doing in the Cork Fire & Building Control in the County Hall campus. Often this would be completed with imported contract furniture, but thanks to the County reaching out to Benchspace, we were able to put some really good Cork makers on the job. To complete the project we sourced local wood from Mark Donnelly’s yard in Carrrigrohane, and delivered a smart spalted sycamore dining table to site a couple of weeks ago. This example allowed us connect some emerging makers to a local contract, and we managed to use some local materials along the way. Hopefully we’ll see plenty more projects like this.
The finished table in place
Cork Fire & Building Control Offices
Benchspace provides workshop space
Makers can use the space on a project basis
Assembled piece ready for finish
by Fergus | 1st December, 2017 | Uncategorized
Thanks to everyone for making last Saturday such an enjoyable morning. Kinsale Gin very kindly donated some bottles and glasses and we had some really enthusiastic makers in the workshop creating gin caddies to suit.
by Fergus | 14th October, 2017 | Uncategorized
Fundit crowdfunding campaign a huge success.
Thanks to everyone who donated, spread the word and gave encouragement over the 5 weeks. We made it, the final total pledged was €8,225.00, exceeding the target by an impressive €725.
We received the email addresses of donors on Friday and we are contact you now to issue invitations and to get delivery details for rewards. Hopefully many of you will come to this Friday night’s opening and we can give them to you in person.
Next we are shopping for a good quality 14″ or 16″ planer thicknesser, ideally a quality used machine. Any sightings, please let us know.
We really appreciate your support, thank you.
Sean, Fergus, Tony & all the Benchspace makers
