We just bought two new lasers but five years ago we had none.
When the member shop opened we supplied an amazing array of hand and power tools. It was a very well equipped space for traditional woodworking and that’s all most anyone wanted. That said, there were a few rebels around who began pushing for digital tools.
The initial reactions to the proposal of getting a laser were essentially “That’s heretical!” There was this notion that somehow a computer-controlled tools was cheating, it wasn’t real woodworking. Only when I heard old-school traditionalists argue that power tools were similarly inauthentic to true woodworking did I understand that similar sentiments existed at the dawn of electric motors being put into hand tools.
Time would again reveal that all tools are useful: hand, power and digital.
Opening the Shop had been costly and in the beginning membership was still ramping up so resources were not abundant. Once the argument for a laser was grudgingly won, we had to find a laser that we could afford and could withstand the vagaries of community use. This meant buying a very-used industrial laser which we could restore/upgrade.
Meet Green
In October of 2017 Green was brought to us by Laser Larry from a shop in Orange County that wanted to upgrade. They had used this laser aggressively for many years and to them it was a tired old machine … to us it was a $3,500 gift from heaven. With Larry’s help we upgraded all that mattered (tube, controller, etc), calibrated the laser and got to work on building a community.
Growing a laser community was slow progress. While there was much interest from the young and the technical membership, it was impractical to teach many people simultaneously with a single laser. Happily Sam Takahashi noticed this bottleneck and offered to remove the bottleneck by buying the Shop a new 100 watt laser.
Meet Blue
In September of 2018 we received Blue. It took a couple of months for Pat to make the modifications for it to behave just like Green but in the end we had a second laser in operation. With Pat’s changes, any of our 40 certified members could use it without retraining.
The job of growing the community was now hitting its stride!
Eventually Shop membership had grown sufficiently that we needed to expand and, coincidentally, our tenant Woodworking Wizards was ready to move on. Shop 2.0 was born and with it the goal of moving our lasers into the new space and out of the dust-filled machine room. August of 2019 brought much change and thanks to GREAT volunteer efforts we moved and installed our existing lasers.
Trained laser users now numbered 150 members. While lasers were finally getting respect from the broader SDFWA community, they seemed to be especially appealing to the prospective woodworker. An important goal of SDFWA has been to increase diversity and grow membership with younger members. If we could increase awareness of our lasers then we could advance this strategic goal.
See the gap between the lasers above? That’s where the gift of Mini Blue was placed. This small K40 laser was purchased to “take on the road” to show a laser in action. While it saw little action due to COVID, we did manage to get it to some Old Too Swap Meets and other events and it did bring in some new members.
Prior to the start of the pandemic in 2020 we were starting to hit a membership ceiling. Our operation could only handle so many members using our all-volunteer operating model. The shop space had also become crowded and there was a strong desire to improve the quality of every member’s shop-using experience. Out of this, the concept of Shop 3.0 was born.
The options of buying-and-building a facility were explored first. However, as time passed and our lease renewal date grew nigh, we got serious about leasing a new existing space. The option of expanding in-place wasn’t an option until, with Gary’s persistence and a little luck, we were granted the option of a six year lease which included an expanded upstairs space. Seems the lasers would be moving again!
This time however the existing lasers would be moving OUT. The important Shop 3.0 goal of an improved member experience included upgrading our lasers. We would be buying new lasers and redeploying our old lasers. To advance our goal of growing the woodworking community in San Diego, Blue was given to Lumbercycle and Mini Blue was sold and gifted to San Diego Craft Collective, both 501c3 nonprofits with woodworking-related missions. Green was sold to a Shop founding member.
After lots of research, many reference interviews and aggressive negotiating, the skys rumbled and in June of 2022 we received our Thunder Lasers. Two important things to know about these lasers: 1) they operated almost identically to our old lasers so little retraining was needed and 2) they were more powerful and mechanically sound than our older lasers. The result is a major upgrade in quality.
The only challenge? Getting them through the window upstairs!
If you’re curious to learn more about “the great lift” then watch this video.
Reception to our new lasers has been fantastic. With a laser certified community of 219 members there ha been much pent-up demand for quality. Within days of finishing the installation we had re-certified 50 members with a brief introduction the the new hardware and the push continues. As of this writing, the backlog of demand to learn to use the lasers is impressive. Early indications are that the Shop 3.0 lasers are delivering.
With new lasers in place, the goal is now to improve our game in a new way. We want to take laser use beyond the basics by introducing and training new techniques. A series of themes are being explored at Saturday Laser SIG meetings and they include: marquetry & inlays, 3D engraving, rotary etching, photography and precision engraving. Topics that interest members will be turned into how-to classes.
In the end I think we’ve shown that lasers are good for woodworking. They are another tool to add to a woodworker’s arsenal and they are very useful as a starting point for makers, the technically inclined and the young. We thank all who supported the Shop during this journey and we hope you enjoy these wonderful new additions to our digital tools suite.
