[TheThinkTank] On Shop tools

[Jonathan Morrison]

We have a series of Park CT-3 that are on every bench for geared chains and
have people borrow a Park CT-7 from the master bench for the 1/8" and 1/2"
chains, we just bought pins in bulk and replace them as needed.  Prior to
that we were thinking of doing the following:

Chain Tool Pin (and other) rental.  Where each bench has a chain tool
without a pin and a sign instructing them to talk to a core volunteer about
using the tool.  Which serves two functions:

1) No one uses tools that break without instruction.  Since they have to get
a pin from a core volunteer, the core volunteer can ask, "have you used this
before, and can I show you how?"

2) They could "rent" the pin for a buck, and if it comes back in good
condition they get their buck back.  If they bust the pin you can use their
deposit to buy a new one, however if they return it in working order they
get their buck back.

As for shop pumps, we are working towards installing shop air -- no floor
pump can withstand the abuse of a shop, especially a community bike shop,
and they say that quite clearly in all the distributor catalogs.

BTW, Park Tool will take back broken tools as part of their lifetime
guarantee.

-- 
Sincerely,

Jonathan Morrison
Executive Director
Salt Lake City Bicycle Collective
2312 S. West Temple
Salt Lake City, UT 84115
w: 801-328-2453
c: 801-688-0183
f: 801-466-3856
www.slcbikecollective.org

Get Addicted to Crank!
http://www.slcbikecollective.org/crank/

The mission of the Salt Lake City Bicycle Collective is to promote cycling
as an effective and sustainable form of transportation and as a cornerstone
of a cleaner, healthier, and safer society. The Bicycle Collective provides
refurbished bicycles and educational programs to the community, focusing on
children and lower income households.

On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 10:53 AM, Sherief <sgaber at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> This is Sherief from the Austin Yellowbike, and I was hoping to pool the
> thinktank's experience with shop tools prone to breakage and the like.
> We're currently having huge issues keeping up with Chain Tools and Presta
> Valve pumps especially... it feels like not a week goes by without at least
> one of each of these tools breaking.  W/r/t the chain tools, we recently
> switched from the nicer Park tools to the cheapest we could get out of the
> catalog, but with the way those break there's effectively no net savings and
> even when they are functioning the new cheap ones are no good.  We try to
> make sure people know how to use the tools before they do, etc.  But my
> question(s) today is: Do people have any similar experience out there with
> broken/breakable tools-- specifically good ways to prevent these breakages?
> Does anyone have any recommendations for good chain tools /PV pumps that can
> withstand a bit of overeager volunteerin g?
>
>
> Best,
> Sherief
>
> _______________________________________________
> Thethinktank mailing list
> Thethinktank at bikecollectives.org
>
> http://lists.bikecollectives.org/listinfo.cgi/thethinktank-bikecollectives.org
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.bikecollectives.org/pipermail/thethinktank-bikecollectives.org/attachments/20080331/901f1d26/attachment.html