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A LITTLE ABOUT ME AND WHY I SET WHEELCHAIR WOODTURNERS UP
 Me
on my Wheeled Highchair
I served 27 years in the Armed Services, during
that time I suffered a spinal injury, which is now degenerative
and to cut a very long
story short, now means that I can walk very little and mostly
use a wheelchair for getting around, because of that I have been
accepted as a member of
BLESMA
(British Limbless Ex Servicemen
Association). I also have heart disease
and have had 6 heart attacks. As you will see from my
workshop pictures I am able to use stools to work from and my
favorite is now a wheeled kind of high chair, which allows me to
pull myself around. (you can see it on my workshop page)
I am lucky that I manage to sell all of my work either through
the Craft Fairs we organise (see Craft
Fair page) and other locations this finances the workshop, well almost!
Me at the lathe June 2009
My Workshop is completely Wheelchair friendly.
The concept of WW is to set up a workshop and organization that
can help and advise other people who are disabled or have limitations, whatever
they are as well as able bodied folk who want
to learn a new skill and get involved. To have a website that you can contribute to, if
you have solutions or ideas mail me and if they fly I will post
them and give you credit.
The WW workshop now has four lathes, the VB36 NEW IN MAY 2009
(see Report), and I also have a
Silverdrive Statesman 280
(see Report)
which can be worked at stool height, plus I have also purchased a
Charnwood
Mini Lathe
(see Report) which is for use in the workshop and also for taking
to locations for demonstrating and a Delta Midi lathe which can
be used at wheelchair height. The original garage needed a
complete refit to be good for purpose, I have funded about 50%
of this re-build myself and also obtained a grant from
Scotland UnLtd which
has allowed me to finish the work Ongoing sales of items
allows us to maintain the workshop and be self funding.
I am offering beginners the opportunity to come to my workshop
and learn the basics, plus being able to sort out what they need
to set up their own place, I desperately want to keep this all
FREE, so I am hoping to get advertisers on this site, I
have also built the mobile setup so that I can go out to
locations and give demo's. In time I also want to mount a
webcam in the workshop so that if someone wants to see maybe how
to make a certain object, then hopefully, if I'm up to the task,
I can show them. If anyone knows how to set up a webcam on
this site contact me please.
Wheelchair Woodturners also raises funds for Marie
Curie Cancer Care and we have donated over £500 in 2008 and in 2009
Marie Curie received £500 North Lanarkshire Cancer Care trust £150
HOW WE RAISE FUNDING FOR
OURSELVES AND OTHERS
Wheelchair
Woodturners has always wanted to stand on its own two wheels (or
four or legs) to achieve this we must sell our work. ALL of
the money raised goes back into the workshop or is used to outreach
to other folk or communities.
There are
various way that we raise funds. The first is that we are
lucky enough to organise our own little Craft Fair in the Glasgow
Botanic Gardens, this has now been going for about three and a half
years and is a regular event in the West End of Glasgow. We
have a varied group of crafters and most of them have been with us
for some time now. All profit from the hire of the tables is
paid to charity, mainly Marie Curie Hospice Glasgow, 2008 we
contributed £500 and in 2009 we will have contributed in excess of
£700, £500 going to Marie Curie Hospice in Glasgow and £150 to North
Lanarkshire Cancer Care trust, these folk organise a service which
collects cancer patients from their homes and takes them to their
appointments and then runs them home again. A further donation
will be made to BLESMA (British Limbless Ex Srvicemen Association) in the new year (2010)
Click here to Visit the Craft Fair Page to see
the dates
 Something
new for 2010, we are selling items from this website. This is
not as easy as it sounds, each item is hand crafted in our workshop
from locally sourced wood or other material, some of that wood has been delivered to
us from North Lanarkshire Council through the Arborist section, the
guys are great and some of the wood is stunning, sorry I digress, I
am pretty passionate about the items we make and the wood we use.
So as each item is made it is going to be set aside for either the
Craft Fair or for internet sales, these items must then be
photographed and listed individually, if and when we sell an item
each one is then packaged and posted. Because there IS only
one of them then it has to marked as sold right away on the website.
Use the
menu on the left to navigate to the items we are selling
So we will
see how that all goes in 2010, however as we no longer do a second
craft fair, we feel that there will be a hole in our fund raising
for Marie Curie, to this end we have decided that 20% of all profit
from Internet sales will go direct to Marie Curie, this in addition
to the Botanic Gardens money.
THIS IS A NOT FOR PROFIT ORGANIZATION
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