REPAIR CAFE FOR BRIDGEND
We Had a very interesting meeting last Thursday. Several months ago we were approached about the idea of setting up a “Repair café” in the Maesteg/Bridgend area. We invited Phoebe Brown
Phoebe made a very strong case for the café, about the need to reduce the amount of equipment that is now going into landfill. When often with a small repair, they could have been put back into use for many more years.
She also spent time explaining the support and training that could be available from the Repair Café Wales organisation should we decide to go ahead with the project. Our members asked some pertinent and interesting questions about procedures and liabilities of running the scheme, which Phoebe answered easily, they were obviously questions that had been asked many times before.
Also present were Jackie Prosser from BAVO and Chris Southern from Men’s Sheds Cymru. Jackie promised BAVO’s support and help for the start up. A question was raised about the pool of expertise needed to cater for the variety of items that could turn up on the day. There will also be a need for volunteers to run the café. From “meeters and greeters” and those to look after the paperwork etc. As the Repair Café will be a separate organisation from the Men’s Shed the call for “Fixers and Volunteers” will be made to the whole community.
Chris liked the idea of involving the members from a cluster of Sheds. This would fit in with one of the objective of the Men’s Sheds, that of working for and with the community. This would also bring in a greater pool of expertise to draw on. If the idea worked in this area then it could be spread across Wales.
The members decide to “Have a go”. Firstly we need to contact the other Sheds in the Bridgend area to see if they would like to be involved and to run a pilot day in the Maesteg area to see in it would be viable.
WATCH THIS SPACE
can easily be decoded on a phone app, this is demonstrated in the video below.
names the Gin Pit because they produced gin. It did produce coal and also iron ore to be used in the iron works. Which was where the Tesco’s store is situated today, just below the Gin Pit. It is believed it was named the Gin Pit after the horse driven machinery that wound the coal and iron ore up the shaft. The depth of the shaft was only 345 feet deep. Maesteg town centre is built where the coal seams come very close to the surface. The coal was worked on an incline, so the actual workings would have been lower than that.
The coal part of the pit was worked using the “Pillar and stall” method. The stall was a narrow road way driven into the coal in a grid fashion. Leaving the pillar squares to help hold up the roof. The stalls are worked to the boundary and then worked in retreat. It is then that the coal within the pillars is removed and the roof allowed to fall in. This method of working was notorious for the difficulty of ensuring good ventilation for clearing any gas(methane) out of the workings. 
