Enter the Sustainable Shed Competition!
Posted on October 1, 2008
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For more information see:
http://www.ata.org.au/news/renew-magazine%E2%80%99s-sustainable-shed-competition
As the damn link above probably isn’t working on this software, I suggest you start at their website (www.ata.org.au) and just tinker around til you get there. It’s probably better that way and you might learn something…
I know there’s some humdinger sheds out there, so get into it!
Mark Thomson, Advanced Research Director, IBYS
Where Men Hide
Posted on September 24, 2008
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Where Men Hide
Books about the current state of masculinity always have an inbuilt cringe-factor to them. It’s very easy to start wallowing in a type of handwringing victimhood that is fairly embarrassing for those of us who don’t care for the poring-over of grisly emotional details which are the staple of
Overcoming this and getting men to read a useful damn book about men is no easy task and James Twitchell, a US based writer has done a fair job in “ Where Men Hide”.(Published by Columbia University Press with photographs by Ken Ross)
Twitchell has taken a meditative look at a wide range of places where men hang out either alone or in groups. As the author of “Blokes and Sheds”, which was an Australian equivalent , I was interested and amused to read his take on the purpose of everything from hunting camps, baseball dugouts, hardware stores, strip clubs and even recliner chairs.
He writes with a certain fondness for all these people and places although with an arms length academic objectivity that left this reader wondering where he fits into the scheme of things: what is his view of what constitutes good maleness and bad maleness? Perhaps it doesn’t matter as all he may want is to float the subject out there and see what happens. His selective use of advertising examples reinforces his discussion points in useful ways and provides some good thought-provoking content.
Ken Ross’s photographs are excellent. Interestingly, he has chosen to never show the actual occupants of the spaces, which leads to a slightly grim crime scene mood to the photographs at times, as though the occupants have been just handcuffed and taken away by the authorities: let’s face it, we all knew they were guilty as hell – or so you might be lead to think.
In Australia, in the US, there is an unease about the state of masculinity: the toxic tribalism that brought us a whole lot of war, weapons and brutality both at the personal level and at the global level now sits like a big stinking poo in the middle of the post-modern, post-feminist room we now inhabit.
Twitchell makes the point that men still need their ‘gendered space’ (Gawd, that over-precious language annoys me) even though masculinity in the
To my mind, this last point is the reason for the persistence of these “gendered spaces”: introspection balanced by feeling useful. Some of the most haunted pictures of American men we’ve seen lately have been those failed big swing dicks we’ve seen coming out of collapsed investment banks, clutching their working lives in one crappy cardboard box. Now there’s a statement about masculinity and the dematerialised world of work.
Between climate change and economic turmoil we may see a return to a more tangible sense of masculinity where the consequences of one’s actions – both moral and physical - are more direct. Whether the
I recommend James Twitchell’s book, even if I don’t think we are all hiding.
The end of Robby’s or a blow to deep shed culture
Posted on August 20, 2008
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A blow to deep shed culture
Should you be the owner of an ancient Pye radiogram, a Kreisler television or any of the plethora of audio visual appliances once manufactured in this country, then you may well be accustomed to unsuccessfully attempting to have it repaired.
“You can’t get the parts…” the repair guy would say.
Not so fast: you might get the parts - or you could until Robby’s started to close down.
Horace ‘Robby’ Robinson’s shop in Long Street, Queenstown is a vast shambles of electrical components and assorted paraphernalia, its gloomy corridors catalogued with jars of diodes, triodes, transistors, switches, relays, valves, everything.
It is the lurking place of the electrical tinkerers who would never say die to that old radio or record player. They inhabit the half light of Robby’s corridors and byways, searching for elusive buried electrical treasure. These fixers and repairers are an almost secret club of electrical savants who know how all these things work – what a thermal overload relay does or how a three phase rectifier transformer can be fixed. Get them started and they’ll tell you about the glory that was ETSA or how they fixed a discarded Bang and Olufsen television from the hard rubbish with a $2 part (from Robby’s of course). They thrive within a filigree of useful contacts that can repair almost anything that has had a current running through it. Robby’s is – or rather was - one of the vital nodes in that spider web.
But Robby is 89 now and his eyesight is going. The vast stock of the shop, which over the last 50 years has been a car parts business, a hardware store and secondhand furniture shop, is being sold off in a series of sales by his children Lyn and Paul.
Apparently Robby never had any formal training in the electrical and electronic trades but he obviously knew a thing or two about auctions and bargains, picking up the remnants of disappearing industries and enterprises. Equipment from Woomera and the Weapons Research Establishment can still be found amongst the boxes and shelves, some of it made to measure or record some part of that great imperial endeavour that went on secretly in
At these Saturday morning closing sales, Lyn and Paul guard the entrance and reminisce with the regulars. Bargain hunters and repairers– most of whom seem to know each other - emerge from rummaging through dusty boxes and shelves with odd collections of electrical loot for which they can see a potential use. They leave satisfied but often express a sadness that such a place will no longer exist. In a few weeks time there will be a big final auction and the site will no doubt end up as yet another real estate development.
So does it matter that places like Robby’s vanish? It matters not just because we will have boring sterile suburbs but because it represents another unravelling of the rich and largely hidden social networks in which people find meaning, learn new things, share knowledge. Those networks make our cities livable and while the Internet replicates some of those networks, there is no substitute for the tangible experience and deep handiness that goes with places like Robby’s. We will be the poorer for its passing.
Here’s something from the US we could use
Posted on April 29, 2008
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To the Australian eye, Berkeley, the famous University town on the outskirts of San Francisco, has a pleasing aspect; many of the street trees are Australian eucalypts providing a gentle reminder of home.
Berkeley is a famously radical city and the home of numerous famous scientific research laboratories. Part of this heritage is an interesting approach to how their community works, typified by the local library running one of the world’s first Tool Lending Libraries.
Situated at 1901 Russell St Berkeley the Tool Lending Library(TLL) is staffed by some helpful (ie good for advice) people. The tools, which range from the obvious such as shovels and hammers to the more complex such as cement mixers or hammer drills, are free to borrow, although fines accumulate fairly rapidly.
The usual loan periods are two, three or seven days. The TLL seems to have ironed out all the legal issues and it is not excessively bureaucratic. Robert Young and Angel Estes, the two blokes who were running the show when I visited, were very helpful: they seemed like men who had a good job and enjoyed their work.
The bigger tool hire companies apparently don’t regard them as serious competition as the TLL tool borrowers borrow very basic tools and tend to ask a lot of questions and often need advice. The Library would also provide a good way into gardening/renovation/making stuff for people with limited resources who can’t afford to buy tools they might only use a few times a year.
This idea might be one that Community Men’s Sheds could investigate.
Random Excuse Generator - Video
Posted on February 8, 2008
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Hoke’s Tool Co products in UK?
Posted on January 28, 2008
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Mr Lea-Jones has tracked down what maybe one of Henry Hoke’s earliest inventions, photos of which are shown here. A 2 foot long brass pump arrangement, the device has a flared horn with a hinged mesh cage covering the orifice. It seemed very obvious that this was a useful, well-crafted tool… but for what?
At the base of the tool are stamped the letters “MADE IN UK”… possibly. The letters have faded considerably (no doubt from the sweaty palms of its’ operators wearing down the brass over many years) and it is entirely possible that the lettering could have read “MADE IN HOKE’S BLUFF”.
Initial discussions between Mr Lea-Jones and myself concluded that the device may have been a patent Arachnid Arrester, made to capitalise on the mass panic resulting from the spate of dunny seat spider bites that took place in the humid Australian summer of 1926. In fact Mr Lea-Jones used the device in this capacity, and found that it worked perfectly, capturing, I notice, a very rare 5-legged spider. 
After a troubled night’s sleep I have come to the conclusion that I am not quite satisfied with this hypothesis. My latest ‘feeling’ is that it may have been a Vacuum Pump for Hoke’s Credulity Strainer and that the device’s spider-trapping qualities are simply a bonus. There is also the possibilty that it could have been one of Hoke’s Self-Absorbtion Appliances, a tool highly important to a man such as Henry Hoke who was allergic to his own dandruff.
We may never know. Or maybe we will. Your suggestions are welcome.
My thanks to Julian Lea-Jones for his interest .
The Random Excuse Generator - firing on all three cylinders.
Posted on January 23, 2008
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Dr Chris Block and I recently completed a trial run of the reconstructed Random Excuse Generator - the little known masterwork of mechanical genius Henry Hoke.
It was a great occasion: achieving a sort of closure to many years of hard work by Dr Block (who is the Technical Director here at the Insitute) and I.
A film crew was present to record the final triumphant moments and it is viewable on Youtube at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_CvIg_z1rM
(You’ll have to copy that and paste it into your browser)
We are endeavouring to present the REG at a number of public events in the upcoming year.
Ron Edwards passes on
Posted on January 16, 2008
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Ron was one of Australia’s most successful self publishers. Through his Ram’s Skull Press, which he started in 1950, he put out a staggering number of self published and mostly self printed books. Anybody seriously interested in leatherwork, saddlery or bush skills would usually have some of his books. Written in a casually informative way and illustrated with his beautiful sketches, Ron managed to put out many dozens of titles over the years.
His series of books (at least 7 of them) on Bushcrafts are the single largest collection of information about old fashioned bush skills ever amassed in Australia. They are an amazing piece of historical research, done without the aid of any formal qualifications, large institutional backing or funding body - just Ron’s curiousity and interest in spreading useful information. No-one has done more to record the day to day fabric of life in colonial Australia and how people made things to survive. He was interested in music of all kinds, in boat building, all aspects of Aboriginal culture, architecture, everything around him. If you wanted to make a saddle or a piece of complex ropework or a whip or a small ship, Ron knew how. And he kept drawing and painting his simple, elegant pictures his whole life.
We need more Rons.
What are we here for again?
Posted on January 8, 2008
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The sort of shed culture that I am keen to propagate is about a sort of frugal thoughtfulness blended with the sort of creativity that has become unfashionable. Creativity is not an easy subject to raise in these circumstances because in many people’s minds it brings up images of.. well, wankers and artists who are obsessed with themselves. It’s a bloody tragedy that ‘creativity ‘ has now become a specialised activity and that people have bought the idea that there is a small specialised sector of zany, whacky creative types - usually weird messy or otherwise being outsiders - and that there is everybody no is normal and not at all creative.
This proposition strikes me as crap. I meet large numbers of peole who I think are stunningly creative and innovative in many ways but because they haven’t gone down the official art path, or worse still, make things that are useful, they are somehow not ‘creative’. Officially creative means that things have a big white space around them so that you know they are creative, such as in an art gallery or a framed picture (I went to art school, so I know these things)
Saying that most of the art world is basically up itself and a waste of time makes me, of course, an ungrateful barbarian to many of my former colleagues in the art world.
And I would leave it at that but I feel that not harnessing or recognising the full creative talents of a culture could be a fatal flaw for any culture.
I’ve recently been reading “Collapse” by American biologist/geographer Jared Diamond in which he outlines numerous cultures and societies which have collapsed and vanished and why. The story of Easter Island is particularly disturbing. Jared Diamond points out; what could they have been thinking when they cut down the last tree, thus leaving them on a very isolated Pacific ocean with no way of making a boat to leave the place?
“Collapse” certainly makes convinces me that anyone who thinks that somehow the vast magnicient edifice of western civilisation couldnt fall over very easily is deluding themselves.
Hoe\wever I’m starting to rant I think. I’d better go out to the shed and make something.
That’s why I want to encourage a sort of personal sense of responsibility for how the world works around each of us
(Limited Edition) Institute T-Shirt
Posted on January 7, 2008
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Now that the Institute has gone international, this is the one (and only) run of shirts with the “Australasian” logo. On the front is the Institute’s logo, while on the back are the five principles of shed science:
- Never throw anything out.
- I know where everything is.
- Yes, I need seven of those.
- Leave that alone.
- It works better that way.
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Price: $20.00 (AUD)
