Twice this year, NIMBY, one of the favorite Bay Area community arts spaces, kept hundreds of makers (young and old) busy using sheet metal tools to make a small and very cute toolbox at Maker Faire. The timelapse shows many makers along with Claudi on the Sheet metal brake (almost all weekend), Snook on the spot welder, Super dave on spot welder and wire wheel, Eveline on the brake as well, me on the notcher, hammer supervision and corner snips along with a few other helpers. We got a Makers Blue Ribbon for the day.
At both the main San Mateo event and also the East Bay Mini Maker Faire in Oakland, NIMBY rolled out the big and very heavy equpment for the kids.
Mr Snook (NIMBY), Sabrina Merlo (Maker Faire) and a maker holding one of the NIMBY toolboxes made onsite.
Starting with a small square of steel, kids lined up to notch with the notcher, snip with the tin snips to create the pattern to be folded on the brake and spot welded. Handles were hammered and sharp edges were softned with a wire wheel on a bench grinder.
We estimate we made around 500 makers happy with their toolboxes, even though they had to wait a bit during the process they were happy with their results and left with big smiles and NIMBY stickers.
NIMBY is an artspace where we all rent and build our own work. We are seperate individuals working under the one roof. We do not do kids classes or make toolboxes normally but it certainly goes down a treat at the maker faires. Adults seem to want to do it as much as the kids do. There is a wait but it takes time to do metalwork.
Thanks to the great East Bay Mini Maker Faire folks for putting on such a fun day and to all the tenants at NIMBY for chipping in to get people enthusiastic.
