Unveiling a Strategy for Creating Revenue and a Sustainable Business Strategy

March 13, 2015 By Wowser Leave a Comment

On the first full day of Spring, Saturday, March 21^st from noon – 1 pm in the Willits High School Auditorium, we will host an event to celebrate the breakthroughs that came from the local economic summit on February 19^th. We will unveil plans for creating revenue along with a sustainable business strategy that includes creating local jobs. The event is free and is open to the general public and members.

We recently hosted a group of local entrepreneurs, educators, and government officials to discuss opportunities to spur local economic growth. The summit combined with member input, open houses, and the recent 95490 town hall has allowed us to asses the feedback. With the help of a consultant we’ve developed a plan. The recently formed Office of the Chief Executive (OCE) is guiding the organization. The OCE consists of Cyndee Logan, Roger Wilson, and Ian Fitzpatrick.

We’re now doing custom work for hire, we’re opening a members only café inside the facility, and we’ve expanded hours of operation to 12 pm – 10 pm seven days a week. In addition, we’re vetting a list of products to manufacture and sell to create revenue for the community.

We’re standing at the top of our current ladder and we’ve grabbed our next ladder. Tell a friend and come join us as we go forward from the future. Please be in your seat and ready to begin prior to noon.

Join our Facebook event HERE.

Image Credit Photocogitator

Wood Loves Glue

February 21, 2015 By RogerWilson Leave a Comment

Whenever you have to attach two pieces of wood together (and you want them to be PERMANENTLY attached), glue is your best friend. Really. You may not have had much success with it before; but stick around and listen to this. The basic problem with wood is that when you attach two pieces with nails or screws (or even wood dowels), you are depending on the friction between the nail and the wood to hold the pieces together. As the wood dries out (and it always does); the friction lessens. Then the two pieces start to wobble around, and that causes the friction to fade even faster.

Glue to the rescue! By adding glue to the faces of the two pieces of wood (at the area where they touch), you now have a potentially solid joint.

For the glue to work well, you need 5 things:

1. There has to be enough surface covered by glue.

If you have a couple of eight foot long 2”x4”’s attached at the top’s (like a giant upside-down V); and the joint area is 1” x 1”, you are not going to have much success. The glue works by making a relatively large area that prevent the two pieces from swiveling around the nail (or screw or bolt, or dowel) The nail holds the pieces together, while the glue simply keeps them from wobbling.

The fix: This one is trouble. If you can change the design (so there is more area where the two pieces touch); then you are golden. Otherwise, give it to someone else; let them struggle with a poor design.

2. You have to temporarily clamp the two pieces of wood together VERY tightly (while the glue drys.)

Glue is not really “structural”. If the two pieces of wood are not touching really solidly, then the glue has to act like a third piece of wood. And very few glues can do that well. Clamping the pieces of wood together allows the glue to ONLY have to do it’s favorite job. And that is Acting like Velcro. (Velcro can be pulled apart really easily; but try to slide or twist it, never.)

The fix: Wowser has RACKS full of clamps for this very reason. With enough clamps you can press almost anything together long enough for the glue to dry. [Read more…]

Upcoming Mondays at Wowser Schedule

February 13, 2015 By Wowser Leave a Comment

While Wowser will never be a school; it is a place where creative people seem to congregate. And Wowser is certainly a place where you can have fun. Usually that means making something, or learning HOW to make something.

But that is not enough. We aim higher than that. We want Wowser to be a place where you can come in and hear new ideas, see cool stuff that other people have made (or done). Or watch as they do it in front of you.

And that is what “Mondays at Wowser” is all about. Below is the upcoming schedule. The presentations starts at 6 pm. Come by at 5:30, find a seat, and watch what happens.

Oh and these are Free. Tell a friend and come on down.

February 16: DIY Super Capacitors in Your Kitchen. Presenter: Mike Burgess

Mike Burgess is a retired spacecraft electronics engineer with 30 years of experience at TRW/Nortrop-Grauman and is a co-founder of Wowser. He has extensive experience with electronics, and off-grid living with solar power which makes him a perfect fit as an instructor at Wowser.

You can RSVP: HERE.

February 23: The Secrets of Sacred Design. Presenter: Chris Hardaker

Join Chris Hardaker who has a Master’s Degree in Anthropology on February 23rd presentation on The Secrets of Sacred Design: Mother Nature’s Geometry Un-Plugged!

Learn more and RSVP: HERE.

March 2: Electric Vehicles, History & Future. Presenter: Michael Hackleman

Join Michael Hacklemen for a Mondays at Wowser on March 2 for his presentation on Electric Vehicles, History and Future.

Learn more and RSVP: HERE.

NorCal Inventors Club

February 5, 2015 By Wowser Leave a Comment

The first Saturday of every month, Wowser hosts our NorCal Inventors Club. This is a free event and is intended for anyone who’s an inventor (or wants to become one). This is an opportunity to share ideas, resources, and to build a network of people that you can tap into for support. The meeting will start this Saturday, February 7th at 1 pm.

At previous meetings, we had people from all over Mendocino, Lake, Humboldt, and Sonoma Counties.

The agenda is as follows:

1:00-1:15 – Short intro
1:15-1:30 – Current project updates by group members.
1:30-2:00 – Lecture and demonstration of Free Energy project at Wowser.
2:00 – 2:15 – Break
2:15-2:45 – A discussion of ideas on how Wowser can best support YOUR ventures.
2:45-3:00 – Wrap and next meeting agenda developed.

You can RSVP on our Facebook Event Page.

This is an exciting group to be a part of and we hope you can join us. Tell a friend and we’ll see you on Saturday!

Image Credit

Lost-Wax Casting

January 29, 2015 By Cyndee Logan Leave a Comment

I first started lost-wax casting in high school some time ago. Since then life has taken me in many directions. I came back to lost wax casting at Wowser, and since then my creative side has led me to add braising, welding, a 40 ton press, and an electric screw gun to my arsenal of skills for working metals in the creation of jewelry. I am also about to learn how to create 3D pieces of fiber for casting. There is always more to learn about something you love doing.

For this article I am going to take you through the process of lost wax casting. As with any form of art, there are many ways to ‘get there’ and this is just one of them.

Lost-wax casting (also called investment casting) is the process by which a duplicate metal sculpture (often silver, gold, brass or bronze) is cast from an original sculpture. The oldest known examples of this technique are Conservative Carbon 14 estimates, show items to c. 3700 BCE, making them more than 5700 years old!

The steps used in casting small sculptures today are fairly standardized. The process I am discussing today is waste wax process [Read more…]

Free Energy

January 15, 2015 By Wowser Leave a Comment

(The following post is from Wowser Instructor Ron Cole who is teaching a workshop titled Free Energy.)

Free energy is all around us. Making it available when and where we want it is a bit more of a challenge. This takes technology and technology takes money. Until now, this technology took the shape of capital-intensive, centralized power stations far beyond the financial or technical reach of the average homeowner.

This has now changed.

Recently, new breakthroughs in our understanding of how the stars access their OWN energy will change forever, a major source of human insecurity; fear of being unable to provided sufficient resources for our family’s basic needs.

When I was in high school, I was taught that stars were enormous furnaces fired by energy fromhydrogen fusion and that someday, we might be able to duplicate this process and have all the energy we need. After waiting 50 years and watching billions of dollars disappear, I now believe that this is an impossible dream.

Meanwhile, a true scientist, a man who can think like a child when he wants to, decided to ask the stars where they got their energy. Posed in this way, the question led to a different view than the one taught to me in high school. Stars are not producers of energy; they’re consumers of energy just like we are. More accurately, they are converters of energy. So where do they get all that energy? It must be a vast reservoir, indeed!

With a child’s faith that each clue will yield another, our Iranian engineer concluded that all the structures we can see in the universe, from vast to sub-atomic, get their energy from the same source: invisible rivers of magnetic energy flowing endlessly through the very fabric of space.

Invisible to us, yet able to power a star, or a toaster-oven. All we need in order to access this reservoir is a room-temperature converter module. Fortunately for us, our tireless Iranian, Mr. M. T. Keshe, has designed one cheap enough for the poorest person in the poorest hut in the poorest nation on earth, to build for himself. And they are already building them.

You may wait (for an undetermined period), to order one of them from Amazon or, if there are some of you out there who still remember how it was to build your own toys, consider spending some time here at Wowser, building a new future for all of us.

Is this real? Is it possible? Come on down to Wowser and find out. WE think it’s real. You decide. In fact, we have a Free Energy Workshop to learn more. Even if you can’t make this particular time and date, come by Wowser to see more.

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Wowser

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