We advocate for the spread of appropriate technology and hope to empower more people with craft.
One of the important results of making things by hand is creating a community enriched by human scale skills.
Basic skills like tool maintenance, project planning, measuring, accurate layout, precise cutting, are abilities people can put to work for themselves, not just for employers. This is social value that is indelible, and very real. We want to live in a world of competent hands and independent thinkers and doers.
We want to share these skills with you and in return we need your help. We believe that making things this way produces a lot of social value. What it does not produce is the financial value that other companies use to grow and hire employees. We try as much as possible to trade skills for labor or trade. We need photographers, entry level craftsmen, tech savvy folk and advanced apprentices. Our apprenticeship program is based on teaching in return for labor hours. If being a part of our community is interesting to you, drop us a line with the form below.
come lend a hand.
apprentices
Donning the apron can take many forms, from just stopping by the shop for a few hours to help with some tedious repetitive tasks to dedicating some serious time to an apprenticeship where you'll develop the skills to be a competent craftsperson in your own right.
you can learn:
- Hand sewing. with a two needles and a bit of string you can repair every piece of clothing you will ever own and be able to make innumerable cases and useful leather goods for yourself and loved ones.
- Efficient and accurate layout and cutting. If you stay longer you will learn to do design and layout, learn to measure twice and cut once and learn that you never have to make cutting mistakes.
- Tool use and sharpening. You can also learn to effectively sharpen leather and woodworking tools and therefore most any steel tool you will ever encounter.
- Strength and accuracy. This is hard and repetitive work. You will learn dexterity, you will swing a hammer for hours on end and learn to hit your mark every time.
Photographers and digital collaborators
The other side of work like this is sharing what we do with the world, and we as much help as we can get to do that. If you have an idea in mind drop us a line!