Men's Sheds?

I tool a tour through the local railroad museum and saw an old LeBlond 16” lathe looking a bit underutilized...I started volunteering a day a week there, met some really cool old guys with extremely diverse backgrounds, and among us, somebody always comes up with a great suggestion for solving this week’s project. It’s been fun, I get to work on some larger equipment and heavier steel/iron parts than at home, and Tuesday after work is beer time.
 
Yes many versions, In my version the accountant represents management.

Many years ago during my apprenticeship, the founder of the firm brought his son into the business, The young man, only a coupe of years older than I was, had just completed an engineering degree, and was given a position in the drawing office. It didn't take long before he started sending drawings out to the toolroom, where I worked, These drawings were of weird and wonderful Ideas that he had. One day I was given a drawing for a part. after studying it for a while deciding how to go about making it, I realised that it couldn't actually be made. It had a spindle within a spindle, but the slot in the side was not big enough to allow the inner spindle to be installed. I rang the drawing room and spoke to him asking could the slot be made bigger. He slammed the phone down and came storming out to the toolroom demanding that I be sacked because I couldn't read a drawing. Soon the foreman and the shop manager became involved, they supported me and said that it couldn't work. He was furious stormed out shouting that we would all be sacked. He didn't show his face in the toolroom for quite some time.

One of the many idiotic things management did to engineering was make them work only in 2D. When I would bring up things like what you had, they would bring up the drawing and we'd both stare in disbelief. No wonder. Talk about a mess. I was lucky I got to work with a young Hmong engineer and an old Philippino engineer. Both extremely competent ,respectful and without the huge ego the other guys had. We did some great work together and we always shot for simple and if I came up with something more than once they'd say, well why didn't you tell me that before I went through all of this? Together we solved stuff that in the case of one machine had plagued the company for 15yrs. Those two guys made me understand more about the obstacles put in engineers way than I could ever have imagined.
 
Yes we had pretty much the same here, but the self startup men's sheds have made a huge difference, also the volunteer historical groups restoring old steam trains, paddle wheel boats on the rivers, old stem driven sawmills, an pumping stations We have hundreds of these dotted across the country.

There are a lot of volunteer groups in the US. The problem is most advertising is just word of mouth, so it is easy to miss people who don't even know to look. Most of the national forests and parks have interesting volunteer opportunities, and there are lots of historical societies. Zoos, museums etc often have volunteer docent programs as well.
 
My impression from all this is while men's sheds are a great idea that our particular passion is not represented even where the sheds exists.

I would be interested to hear how ACHiPo's local loose association works. How did you find each other, and do you have get together's? This discussion has made me reach out to a local guy on the list and another that I met while buying a tool from him off CL. I guess I'm not looking for something formal but somebody local to network with when I need help or ideas. I don't want to step on anybody's privacy but too bad there's not some way through this site to see who else is local to me.
I learned about it from one of the members here. He invited me to a "meeting" in his shop, and I took a risk and made the 2 hour drive. I'm very glad I did, as I met a bunch of great guys that helpful, knowledgeable, and fun to hang out with. I've since been to a few more meetings, a couple of which were a lot closer so easier to get a "hall pass" from my better half.

Here's the shop in Oakland that looks to be equivalent to accessing HS shops. Not cheap, but a decent set of equipment for metal working.
https://thecrucible.org/
 
I learned about it from one of the members here. He invited me to a "meeting" in his shop, and I took a risk and made the 2 hour drive. I'm very glad I did, as I met a bunch of great guys that helpful, knowledgeable, and fun to hang out with. I've since been to a few more meetings, a couple of which were a lot closer so easier to get a "hall pass" from my better half.

Here's the shop in Oakland that looks to be equivalent to accessing HS shops. Not cheap, but a decent set of equipment for metal working.
https://thecrucible.org/

What you guys have is what I'd like to find locally. More a loose assoc. of folks with their own shops. There is something comparable down SoCal with https://urbanworkshop.net/

Watch the vid, they really have an amazing setup. If I didn't have any equipment or place to work and lived close I'd want to be part of that.
 
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